Pandemic Pandemonium and Remote Working: An Investigation of Determinants and Their Contextual Behavior in Virtualization of Work-From-Home (WFH) Process

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Disruption at the physical workplace, developed by threats like the coronavirus, triggers revisiting old assumptions and exploring opportunities for new ways of remote working. With the global epidemic spreading, businesses are gearing up with the managers and their respective teams to work from home (WFH). This research has offered a setting for advancing understanding of virtualization of WFH process by exploring the factors that enable or constrain the information and communication technology (ICT) enabled virtualization of processes in employee’s WFH process through empirical support for the process virtualization theory (PVT). Setting pandemic outbreak as a context, outcome of this research is reliant on two independent studies conducted to examine the influencing factors. First study conducted just before the onset of pandemic outbreak, found that parts of the constructs proposed in the PVT had expected outcomes regarding the characteristics of process virtualization. Contrary to this, second study conducted after pandemic outbreak found that major constructs proposed in the PVT behaved otherwise regarding the characteristics of process virtualization. To fill the gaps in empirical knowledge, the enablers and inhibitors so found together may be motivations to anticipate business organizations and their workforces to experiment with this form of work process, predominantly improved flexibility for organizations and employees, improved productivity, quicker responsiveness to the needs and unexpected man-made and natural disasters, lower absenteeism, improved employee retention, greater cost control, along with more general social benefits.