Riassunto analitico
With the advent of the digitalization process, resulting from the fourth industrial revolution, the opportunities of information technology along with the development on communications were leveraged.
The Industry 4.0 was based on the specialization of a more flexible way of live and work and it was with this background that remote practices of work started to be adopted.
Despite remote working was already present in European countries with a share of people working from home at around 5% throughout the last decade, the practice began to spread due to the recent event of the COVID-19 pandemic, that forced people to remain at home in order to contain the illness from spreading.
In a constantly changing situation, what need to be addressed is the attitude of organizations towards the use of technology, their structure and the importance that is given to leadership. In this case the focus is on a new set of principles that need to be followed when trying to thrive in situations of disruption such as the ongoing pandemic.
The present study is aimed at exploring the background where agile principles are adopted but most importantly at understanding the implications of the implementation of remote working practices on some indicators of productivity, well-being and work-life balance.
The innovative aspect of the thesis relies on the importance given to the so called autonomous dispersed teams that are teams of work in which the participants are geographically dispersed.
The main question that is addressed is whether employees participating to a team and working in different locations can effectively maintain their level of productivity and how the implementation of a remote practice impacts on their well-being and work-life balance.
More in detail, the first chapter will provide a brief analysis of the current situation of crisis due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and possible ways to address the recent changes.
Then, the second chapter will be focused on the way of implementing different remote practices, their advantages and disadvantages and the main differences with the practice of teleworking.
Next, in the third chapter, agile working is depicted along with its main principles, focusing on the importance of team and leadership.
Finally, in the last part, an empirical analysis will be conducted on data collected from the European Working Conditions Survey (EWCS), considering the last available edition of 2015.
Among a totality of 43’850 respondents, sub-samples of employees undertaking remote working practices in autonomous dispersed teams using ICT tools are created along with proxy variables of productivity, work-life balance and well-being to study the impact of the implementation of remote activities. Specifically, three regression models will be developed to investigate the influence of remote working on the three dependent variables that are productivity, well-being and work-life balance.
As a conclusion of the research, the main findings will be discussed and limitations and suggestions for future research will be given.
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