Riassunto analitico
Digitalization touches almost all areas of business and society, and it is an inevitable trend. At a high level, digital transformation creates changes in both industries and society. At the organizational level, digital transformation helps firms to drive better operational performance. One of the most significant influences of digital transformation is on work arrangement. Information technology (IT) enables more forms of working, and one representative way is teleworking. In the literature, telecommuting, remote work, virtual office, off-site work, the flexible workplace may also be referred to as telework, and these terms are considered to be synonymous. Furthermore, telework can be defined with four modes: telecommuting, satellite offices, neighborhood work centers, and mobile workers. Telecommuters make use of ICT tools (such as phones, text messages, emails, and video communicating) to contact each other.
This new type of work is becoming more widespread. Surprisingly, few studies are available on how remote e-work impacts leader-member exchange quality and team-member relationships. Generally, the researches on teleworking are limited to how it affects job satisfaction, how it has implications on work-family conflicts. Moreover, there is a limited empirical study that investigates to what extent teleworking influences leader-member exchange quality and co-worker relationships.
This thesis is structured as follows:
The first part introduces the phenomenon of digitalization. Beginning with the definition of digital transformation, then the process of digitalization, and also analyzes the digital transformation in different areas. Chakravorti and his colleagues (2017) examine the state and rate of digital evolution across 60 countries and divide them into four groups (stall out, watch out, break out, and stand out). Later the digital transformation in three leading economies is discussed: the USA, Europe, and Asian-Pacific areas.
The second part is the literature review with five sections. The first section is about team-member exchange theory. After a brief introduction of the team-member exchange theory, the concept and connotation of TMX are defined and deeply analyzed. Later the TMX is discussed with types, dimensions, and measurement aspects. The theoretical basis of TMX has also been mentioned, such as reciprocity theory, role theory, and social exchange theory. The second section is about the leader-member exchange theory. After the presentation of early studies and later studies of LMX theory, the dimensions and measurements of LMX are discussed. The third section is the literature review of teleworking, and teleworking is described from several points of view: dimensions, modes, communication channel, benefits, and challenges. The last two sections discuss the TMX and telework relations and LMX and telework relations from the view of antecedents respectively.
In the third part of the thesis, the study hypothesis will be checked with the 6th EWCS secondary data. Specifically, a sample is taken from the entire sample consisting of only employees (not self-employed) to identify whether and what effect that remote e-work that poses an impact on TMX and LMX. In this sense, the research questions emerged: Does remote e-work affect team-member exchange quality? Does remote e-work affect leader-member exchange quality?
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