Think Work – Think Office? Examining Managers' Stereotypes About People Working From Home and Their Impact on Promotion Recommendations

Abstract

Although working from home has become a widespread and institutionalized practice across organizations worldwide, evidence suggests that it continues to carry adverse career consequences for employees. Prior research indicates that such consequences – often referred to as the flexibility stigma – are contingent on a range of moderating factors that remain insufficiently understood. Addressing this gap, this study examines managers' stereotypes about people working from home and the moderating impact of these stereotypes on the flexibility stigma. We conducted a vignette-based online survey experiment with a sample of U.S. managers in May 2025, combining a self-developed Implicit Association Test with an explicit measure of managerial stereotypes. Results reveal consistent ‘think work – think office’ stereotypes across both implicit and explicit measures, associating people working from home more strongly with leisure and those working in the office more strongly with work. The explicit measure further indicates that managers who spend a greater proportion of their own work time at home hold weaker stereotypes. Our results also demonstrate that a flexibility stigma occurs only when employees work entirely from home, but not when they use a hybrid arrangement. Both implicitly and explicitly measured stereotypes strengthen the flexibility stigma that arises when employees work fully from home.