The Impact of Teleworking on Work Motivation in a U.S. Federal Government Agency

Abstract

Although work-related duties are performed via teleworking in all sectors, the U.S. federal government has taken the lead in offering telework arrangements to its employees; thereby causing a proliferation of the number of employees in the federal government who telework. In spite of this occurrence, public organization research has largely ignored the effect of teleworking on government employees. As a result, the goal of this article is to examine the association between several teleworking arrangements and work motivation in a federal government agency—a test of social exchange theory. After controlling for organizational, job, and individual characteristics, as well as mission attainment, the empirical analysis revealed that teleworkers (frequent and infrequent) did not consistently have higher levels of work motivation than nonteleworkers, providing only partial support for social exchange theory. The implications of these findings are thoroughly discussed in the article.