Graduation Year
2024
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree
Ph.D.
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)
Degree Granting Department
Business Administration
Major Professor
Uday Murthy, Ph.D.
Committee Member
Margaret Christ, Ph.D.
Committee Member
Kristina Demek, Ph.D.
Committee Member
Mark Taylor, Ph.D.
Keywords
manager decisions, psychological distance, regulatory fit, remote work, task type
Abstract
As the use of remote and hybrid work arrangements continues to grow, it is important to understand how these arrangements can yield performance. In this paper, I conduct two studies to examine how the remote work environment affects managers’ task assignment decisions across different task types and how those decisions affect workers’ task performance. First, I survey managers, in both a cross-section of industries and specifically in accounting, to study the effect of remote work on their task assignment decisions. Consistent with prior literature and economic theory, I predict and find that managers are more inclined to assign generative tasks (i.e., creativity-focused and less structured) to in-person workers and evaluative tasks (i.e., accuracy-focused and more structured) to remote workers as a mechanism to reduce managers’ individual costs. Second, I conduct an experiment to examine the effects of work environment (remote versus in-person) and task type (generative versus evaluative) on workers’ task performance. Leveraging concepts from Regulatory Fit Theory, I predict and find that remote workers perform better on generative tasks than evaluative tasks due to a stronger regulatory fit between remote work and generative tasks. Contrary to my prediction, results reveal that in-person workers’ performance does not differ significantly between generative and evaluative tasks. Overall, my combined results suggest that managers’ task assignment preferences have the potential to impair remote workers’ performance before even beginning their assigned tasks. My study both answers the call for accounting research examining how remote work affects managerial decisions and worker behavior, as well as contributes to a growing literature examining regulatory fit theory in an accounting context.
Scholar Commons Citation
Mautz, Richard D. III, "Home Is Where the Work Is: How Biases in Managers’ Resource Allocation Decisions Affect Task Performance in Remote Work Environments" (2024). USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations.
https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/etd/10218
