Campus Location

Dallas Campus (Online)

Date of Award

11-2022

Document Type

Dissertation

Department

Organizational Leadership

Degree Name

Doctor of Education

Committee Chair or Primary Advisor

Katherine Yeager

Second Committee Member or Secondary Advisor

Peter Williams

Third Committee Member or Committee Reader

Marisa Beard

Abstract

Telework allows employees to perform work tasks in any location using information communication technology. Though organizations and employees can benefit from teleworking arrangements in many ways, most managers implemented teleworking relatively slowly prior to the COVID-19 quarantine. Research suggests managers avoided supervising remotely based on a lack of trust for remote employee productivity, a lack of technology self-efficacy, and their perceptions of organizational support and politics. Pandemic COVID-19 quarantine conditions in March 2020 required most organizations to mandate teleworking for all employees whose work could be performed remotely and simultaneously mandated teleworking supervision for managers. This narrative inquiry aimed to explore managers’ experiences with mandated teleworking supervision and contribute to a deeper understanding of effective teleworking supervision practices. The conceptual framework for the study included the job demandsresources and conservation of resources theories. Three midlevel managers (between 5- and 12- years managerial experience managing at least three employees simultaneously and no remote supervisory experience before the COVID-19 related mandate) shared their experiences during three loosely structured interviews with each participant. Transcripts of the interviews formed the foundation for the collaborative creation of field texts with the researcher. Combined with the field texts, reflexive journaling was utilized to identify and explore possible threads influential to remote supervision, forming the discussion of findings and recommendations. Identified themes included the need for quantifiable performance expectations and indicators when supervising remotely working employees, managers’ technology self-efficacy and confidence, and consistent organizational remote working policies. Suggestions for future research to enhance the supports organizations provide for effective remotely working employees included exploration of gender- v based self-efficacy/self-confidence influences and successful experiences of additional hierarchical levels of management (executive or front-line supervisors).

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

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