NewsHour Coverage
A report on roadblocks on the information highway .
A year in the life of the Internet.
How encryption keeps your work private.
Browse the
NewsHour's Cyberspace Index
OUTSIDE LINKS
|
Zaoliang Luo of Munich, Germany asks:
I want know more information about Telecommuting in the international sphere. Does the U.S. lead the way, or are there examples of other countries implementing successful telecommuting systems? What lessons can be learned?
Dr. Michelle Weil responds:
I have seen no evidence of other countries embracing telecommuting as we have in
some urban areas of the United States. However, in our chapter on Corporate
TechnoStress, we describe a two-year research study we performed in 23 countries
that showed marked differences in the use of technology around the world.
Certain countries showed eager acceptance of technology in the home, business
and leisure while others were either hesitant or downright resistant. For
example, people in Singapore and Israel, two of the countries where we conducted
our studies, were what we call "Eager Adopters" of all technologies thanks to an
open cultural attitude and government support. Other countries were not so
eager. These factors will obviously play a major role in the future of
"international telecommuting."
Mr. Jack Nilles responds:
At least half of the world's telecommuters are in the U.S., about 13 million
of them at the moment. There should be about 2.6 million telecommuters
(including more general teleworkers, including some home-based businesses)
in the European Union countries by the end of this year. There are 1
million telecommuters in Canada and a few hundred thousand in Japan. There
MAY be as many as 2.5 million teleworkers in Eastern Europe, including
Russia, but that figure is harder to verify. Annual telework growth rates
generally exceed 20% in most of the developed world, although the U.S. has
slowed down, percentage-wise. Almost all of these are part-time, home-based
teleworkers.
I have spent quite a bit of time in Europe and Asia in the past five years
and have concluded that the three primary barriers to faster acceptance of
telecommuting are:
1. Managers' resistance based on fears of loss of control,
2. Managers' resistance based on fears of loss of control, and,
3. Managers' resistance based on fears of loss of control.
The growing acceptance of the Internet and intranets with remote access is
eroding these fears as managers learn that it is possible for people to
work effectively together even when they are in widely separate locations..
Click to continue...
|
