The Future of Work and Teleworking: A Conceptual Study of Employee Preferences, Managerial Strategies, and RTO Mandates

This conceptual paper examines how personality, mediated by cognitive processes as described by Ajzen’s (1991) Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), influences employees’ attitudes toward tele-working. Research suggests that superior outcomes and attitudes associate with teleworking, but such research is one-dimensional because nomological relationships that associate attitudes and teleworking do not include cognitive components that research has long demonstrated predict atti-tudes. The current study constructs a richer, more predictive model that uses the TPB to explore, in greater depth, how employees’ attitudes associate with teleworking from home versus working in an office. The study uses a five-factor model to assess how individuals view teleworking based on traits that best classify personalities, offering managers greater understanding of the forces that shape employees’ work preferences.