May I work from home Views of the employment relationship reflected in line managers' telework attitudes in six financialsector organizations

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to contribute to two related contemporary debates on the changing views of the employment relation and on the adoption of telework as a new work practice by analyzing line managers' general teleworkattitude formation processes, and possible outcomes in concrete request situations, mirroring managers' views of the employment relationship. Designmethodologyapproach This multimethod study among 65 managers in six financialsector organizations comprises two parts. The interview part focuses on managers' arguments for or against telework in their departments, and how these are weighed in the teleworkattitude formation process. In the vignette study, managers assess their attitudes towards specific, hypothetical, but realistic telework requests of fictive employees in their departments. Findings Combining the results of both studies, it is shown that the governance view dominates. Some managers, however, consider telework an idiosyncratic deal. Particularly in teleworkrequest situations, also the exchange view enters into the managers' perceptual frames. In order to decrease managers' ambivalence towards telework, the human resource management HRMsystem needs to be internally consistent and based on a view of the employment relationship which stresses commitment and trust as guiding principles, rather than control and coordination. Originalityvalue Employing a configurational approach to strategic HRM, this paper focuses on the importance of the embeddedness of telework practices in larger HRMsystems in general, and the role of cultural obstacles in particular. Telework arguments are considered the HR principles guiding the teleworkattitude formation process, and mirroring managers' views of the employment relationship as part of their workforce philosophies.