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  • 2022
  • Article
  • Human-Computer Interaction

How Does Working from Home during COVID-19 Affect What Managers Do? Evidence from Time-Use Studies

By: Thomaz Teodorovicz, Raffaella Sadun, Andrew L. Kun and Orit Shaer
  • Format:Print
  • | Pages:26
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Abstract

We assess how the sudden and widespread shift to working from home during the pandemic impacted how managers allocate time throughout their working day. We analyze the results from an online time-use survey with data on 1,192 knowledge workers (out of which 973 are managers) in two waves, a pre-pandemic wave collected in August/2019 (615 participants, out of which 506 are managers) and a post-pandemic wave collected in August/2020 (577 participants, out of which 464 are managers). Our findings indicate that the forced transition to WFH created by the COVID pandemic was associated with a drastic reduction in commuting time for managers, but also an increase in time spent in work rather than on personal activities. This included reallocating time gained from commuting into more time spent in meetings, possibly to recoup some of the extemporaneous interactions that typically happen in the office. This change is particularly pronounced for managers employed in larger organizations. We use the results from the time-use studies to discuss implications for the development of new technologies.

Keywords

Time-use; Working-from-home; COVID; Managers; Knowledge Workers; Health Pandemics; Time Management

Citation

Teodorovicz, Thomaz, Raffaella Sadun, Andrew L. Kun, and Orit Shaer. "How Does Working from Home during COVID-19 Affect What Managers Do? Evidence from Time-Use Studies." Human-Computer Interaction 37, no. 6 (2022): 532–557.
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About The Author

Raffaella Sadun

Strategy
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More from the Authors
  • Management and Firm Dynamism By: Nicholas Bloom, Jonathan S. Hartley, Raffaella Sadun, Rachel Schuh and John Van Reenen
  • Training Within Firms By: Brayan Diaz, Andrea Neyra-Nazarrett, Julian Ramirez, Raffaella Sadun and Jorge Tamayo
  • The Cybernetic Teammate: A Field Experiment on Generative AI Reshaping Teamwork and Expertise By: Fabrizio Dell'Acqua, Charles Ayoubi, Hila Lifshitz, Raffaella Sadun, Ethan Mollick, Lilach Mollick, Yi Han, Jeff Goldman, Hari Nair, Stew Taub and Karim R. Lakhani
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