What is Distributed Work

This chapter reviews research in distributed work, relating it to the way organizations manage collaboration between home-based customer support agents. The analysis focuses on the importance of shared identity to development of trust and social capital. The distributed work literature recognizes trust enables knowledge sharing through social exchange and gift giving activity. The discussion outlines two social norms—the norm of beneficence that encourages gift giving and the norm of reciprocity that encourages social exchange. These two norms provide a framework for understanding how knowledge sharing starts and continues in organizational relationships. The chapter next discusses the organizational strategies companies use to implement home-based customer support. The discussion concludes that the available research findings of applied studies of distributed work suggest that the most effective organizational strategy for home-based customer support enables knowledge sharing by blending face-to-face meetings, with other employees and management, and distributed work online.