Revisiting enabling formalizations of remote work: Learnings for short-term and long-term impacts

Abstract

Currently, there is not enough understanding about how controls and especially formalizations can support or restrict employees’ performance in remote conditions. The chapter employs the concept of enabling formalization, which conveys the idea that management control can actually support employees’ work and organizational performance. Thus, we seek to understand the effects of the “new remote work” on enabling control and formalizations. The chapter provides several perspectives to enabling control and formalizations in remote conditions, with the help of three illustrations from different perspectives (highly decentralized forerunner organizations, thesis supervision processes, and joint play). Altogether, we illustrate how digitalization, featuring automated procedures, might change the nature of activities (e.g., when shifting from the physical to the remote work mode). Hence, digitalization requires that actors rethink enabling control from the viewpoint of intended outcomes of actions in the remote work setting. Based on the illustrations, the chapter contributes to the literature on enabling control, by suggesting that the characteristics of enabling formalization, and the empowerment of the people involved, seem to provide a fruitful starting point for the “new remote work.” However, as the chapter shows, if we just try to reenact the physical work setting online, controls might eventually become coercive, if some fundamentals within activities have changed when moving to remote work. Finally, the chapter provides implications for establishing enabling formalizations and fostering learning in the new remote setting.