Influences in flexible teams : how does flexible work affect interpersonal influences within work teams?

Abstract

Flexible work arrangements of various forms have become more and more common within organizations. Work flexibility often implies times when members of a same team work remotely from each other and thus communicate using telecommunications. Therefore flexible work might impact the way members influence each other, as social influence is processed through interpersonal perception and interaction. Moreover, organization members are given certain freedom in designing their own work schedules, but in reality the latter can often be influenced by work contingencies, in particular by other team members. This thesis attempts to answer the following research question: how does flexible work affectinterpersonal influences within work teams? For this purpose, interviews are conducted among 17 members of 10 different organizations and then analyzed qualitatively. We find 10 distinct influence goals by induction – assistance, guide work, review work, coach target, influence decisions, assign work, get target to understand purpose, influence team cohesion and culture, get information and influence target’s schedule – most of which are found to be impacted rather negatively or not impacted by flexible work. Notably, remote work and communication represent obstacles to engaging in spontaneous communication and conveying and detecting non-verbal communication cues, key aspects of several influence processes. Practical guidelines are proposed in response to those possible effects offlexible work on influences in teams.