Despite considerable research, many managers remain ambivalent about introducing telecommuting as a business strategy.1 Should the strategy be aimed directly at solving business problems or be integrated into the reward structure of the organization? These and other questions persist. Although a few detailed case studies address telecommuting, analytical frameworks for examining cost/benefit issues are rare.
In this article, we describe in detail a successful telecommuting program implemented at a 150-person company that provides interactive marketing and sample-distribution services for the pharmaceutical industry. Each of the firm’s eight divisions is headed by a director or vice president who sits on the firm’s executive board. The general manager — a champion of high-tech solutions who has supported the telecommuting program since its inception — creates company policy, which the executive board members implement. The information architecture of the company consists of a mainframe, a minicomputer, and more than 200 personal computer (PC) systems linked by four file servers. Headquartered in New Jersey, the firm had also maintained sales offices in Pennsylvania and Illinois before introducing telecommuting.
In 1995, the company’s twenty-person salesforce became remote workers who relied on mobile computing equipment to conduct business. By 1998, the company had expanded its telecommuting program to support two more sales-people and fourteen part-time telecommuters in managerial and analytical positions... To read the complete article, login or sign-up using the form below.
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