Working from Home and Management Controls

The Covid-19 pandemic and the corresponding shift toward working from home (WFH) amplifies control problems within organizations and poses severe challenges for management control as employees’ tasks are difficult to observe under WFH conditions. We examine how the physically distant working environment caused by the shift towards WFH influences the design of management controls. Based on a survey among employees in a large international corporation, we find that under WFH conditions the organization more intensively uses standardization and planning participation. We also examine the effect of WFH on employee outcomes. The findings suggest that WFH has increased the time employees spend in meetings as well as employee job focus and decreased the remaining working hours per day. Overall, the study adds to the literature by exploring the role of WFH in explaining the use of management controls in organizations