Stephanie Moller, Jill E. Yavorsky, Leah Ruppanner, Joseph Dippong
{"title":"Remote Work Penalties: Work Location and Career Rewards","authors":"Stephanie Moller, Jill E. Yavorsky, Leah Ruppanner, Joseph Dippong","doi":"10.1177/23294965241240784","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Remote, home-based work has long been devalued in the United States as it is associated with flexible work, disproportionately pursued by women, and a violation of ideal worker norms. The shutdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic created a scenario where a large proportion of professional/white-collar workers experienced remote work; and workers and managers witnessed the potential for continued productivity. This potentially shifted managers’ perceptions of remote work, no longer signaling deviance from the ideal worker norm. Conversely, it may still trigger workplace penalties, despite wider adoption during the pandemic. Understanding these perceptions is important, especially for workers with young children who disproportionately access remote work. This study tests competing explanations for productive employees with young children through a survey experiment that assesses whether managers perceive that managers (i.e., their peers) (1) are equally supportive of remote and in-person employment; (2) think that rewards should be allocated differently in light of work location; and (3) impose different performance expectations in light of work location. We find that managers perceive that peers allocate higher rewards to in-person workers. This is partially explained by different perceptions of leadership, work commitment, and to a lesser extent competence. We do not find gender effects.","PeriodicalId":44139,"journal":{"name":"Social Currents","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.8000,"publicationDate":"2024-03-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Social Currents","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1177/23294965241240784","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"SOCIOLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Remote, home-based work has long been devalued in the United States as it is associated with flexible work, disproportionately pursued by women, and a violation of ideal worker norms. The shutdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic created a scenario where a large proportion of professional/white-collar workers experienced remote work; and workers and managers witnessed the potential for continued productivity. This potentially shifted managers’ perceptions of remote work, no longer signaling deviance from the ideal worker norm. Conversely, it may still trigger workplace penalties, despite wider adoption during the pandemic. Understanding these perceptions is important, especially for workers with young children who disproportionately access remote work. This study tests competing explanations for productive employees with young children through a survey experiment that assesses whether managers perceive that managers (i.e., their peers) (1) are equally supportive of remote and in-person employment; (2) think that rewards should be allocated differently in light of work location; and (3) impose different performance expectations in light of work location. We find that managers perceive that peers allocate higher rewards to in-person workers. This is partially explained by different perceptions of leadership, work commitment, and to a lesser extent competence. We do not find gender effects.
期刊介绍:
Social Currents, the official journal of the Southern Sociological Society, is a broad-ranging social science journal that focuses on cutting-edge research from all methodological and theoretical orientations with implications for national and international sociological communities. The uniqueness of Social Currents lies in its format. The front end of every issue is devoted to short, theoretical, agenda-setting contributions and brief, empirical and policy-related pieces. The back end of every issue includes standard journal articles that cover topics within specific subfields of sociology, as well as across the social sciences more broadly.