THE IMPACT OF TELEWORK ON EMPLOYEE PERFORMANCE DURING COVID-19 CRISIS: THE CASE OF IT COMPANIES IN WEST BANK
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Date
2022-06-23
Authors
Heba Asmar
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Abstract
Abstract
Background: During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, enterprises were forced to go into telework mode. This shift was a big challenge for companies and employees to maintain the required level of performance due to a lack of telework experience. So, the purpose of this research is to study the impact of mandatory telework on employees' performance by checking organizational support and teamwork especially by examining technology as a mediator factor. To the best of our knowledge, there is no empirical evidence of the effect of mandatory telework on employees’ performance in the literature, and no such study has ever been conducted in Palestine as a developing country. Besides, no previous study has examined the effect of technology on telework performance as a mediator variable.
Objectives: Therefore, this research seeks to answer the following research questions: first, "How is the effect of teamwork, organization support, and technology on telework performance?” and second “Does technology mediate/improve the relationship between teamwork, organization support, and telework performance?”.
Methodology: Thereby, this research undertakes a thorough literature review and proposes a conceptual model tested on software employees in IT companies in West Bank. A questionnaire was used as part of the methodology containing 21 questions based on a literature study and previous research on the topic. Partial Least Squares analyzed the result–Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) statistical software. The effective response rate is 58.28%.
Results and Conclusions: The obtained results based on a sample of 176 software employees show that organizational support, teamwork, and technology affect telework performance positively.
Furthermore, results confirm that technology is a significant mediator in the relationship between organizational support, teamwork, and teleworking performance. This thesis contributes to the extant theory of telework performance in developing countries and how organizational support, teamwork, and technology as mediating factor affect employees' performance. In practice, this study helps software companies to implement telework and obtain high-performance indicators from employees by exploiting the best technological and administrative resources, thus, facilitating the successful implementation.
Keywords: Telework, COVID-19, Pandemic, Performance, Teamwork, Technology, Organizational Support, PLS-SEM.