40 Part One Organizations, Management, and the Networked Enterprise INTERACTIVE SESSION ORGANIZATIONS Will the Coronavirus Pandemic Make Working from Home the New Normal? As COVID-19 continued to spread around the globe, laptop computers, tablets, smartphones, email, mes- companies large and small started to make changes saging, and videoconferencing tools. As companies to the way they work, shuttering their offices and shift their work from face-to-face to remote, video con- requiring most or all of their employees to work ferencing is becoming the new normal for meetings. remotely from their homes. People are trying to have good conversations, share . During the pandemic, ClearRisk, which offers critical information, generate new ideas, reach con- integrated, cloud-based software solutions for sensus, and make decisions quickly on this platform. claims, fleet, incident, and insurance certificate Although less than ideal for face-to-face interac- management had its entire staff working from tions, videoconferencing is becoming more powerful home. and affordable. There are many options, include Many large law firms, including Reed Smith, ing Skype, Skype for Business, Zoom, Microsoft Baker Mckenzie, and Nixon Peabody, closed Teams, Amazon Chime, BlueJeans, Cisco's WebEx, offices and required work at home during the GoToMeeting, and Google Meet. Some business peo- pandemic. The law firms emphasized that they ple are using the same tools they do in their personal could continue to serve clients despite office communications, such as FaceTime and Facebook closings and remote work. Messenger. (FaceTime now supports group video OpenText Corp., a Canadian provider of enter- chat with up to 32 people.) prise information management products, plans Video conference software such as WebEx and to eliminate more than half of its 120 offices BlueJeans appears designed for more corporate uses. globally, with 2000 of its 15,000-person work- Other software such as Microsoft's Skype and Zoom force working from home permanently. feels more consumer-friendly and easier to set up, In mid-May 2020, Twitter Inc. notified employ- with free or low-cost versions suitable for smaller ees that most of them could work from home indefinitely. businesses. Skype works for video chats, calls, and instant messaging and can handle up to 50 people in According to a recent MIT report, 34 percent of a single video call. Skype allows calls to be recorded Americans who previously commuted to work stated in case someone misses a meeting. Skype also pro- that they were working from home by the first week vides file-sharing capabilities, caller ID, voicemail, a of April 2020 due to the coronavirus outbreak. Prior split view mode to keep conversations separate, and to the pandemic, the number of people regularly screen share on mobile devices. working from home remained in the single digits, Up to 1,000 users can participate in a single Zoom with only about 4 percent of the US workforce work- video call, and 49 videos can appear on the screen at ing from home at least half the time. However, the once. Zoom includes collaboration tools like simul- trend of working from home had been slowly gaining taneous screen-sharing and co-annotation, and the momentum thanks to advances in information tech- ability to record meetings and generate transcripts. nology for remote work and changes in corporate Users can adjust meeting times, select multiple work culture. The coronavirus pandemic may mark hosts, and communicate via chat if microphones and a tipping point. cameras are turned off. It's likely that many people who started working There are definite benefits to remote work: lower from home for the first time during the pandemic overhead, more flexible schedules, reductions in will continue to do so thereafter. New health guide- employee commuting time and attrition rates, and lines about distancing will require some workplaces increases in productivity. (Many companies reported to expand to accommodate all their employees or to that productivity did not suffer when employees have a significant percentage of employees work per- worked at home during the pandemic.) According to manently from home. Global Workplace Analytics, a typical company saves Information technologies driving these changes about $11,000 per half-time telecommuter per year. include broadband high-speed Internet connections, Working remotely also poses challenges.Chapter 1 Information Systems in Global Business Today 41 Not all employees have access to the Internet connection of face-to-face conversations. Remote at home, and many work in industries that require work also inhibits the creativity and innovative on-site work. About 80 percent of American adults thinking that take place when people interact with have high-speed broadband Internet service at home. each other face-to-face, and videoconferencing is However, according to a Pew Research Center study, only a partial solution. Studies have found that peo- racial minorities, older adults, rural residents, and ple working together in the same room tend to solve people with lower levels of education and income problems more quickly than remote collaborators, are less likely to have in-home broadband service. and that team cohesion suffers when members work In addition, one in five American adults access the remotely. Internet only through their smartphones. Employees with little children or small apartments find working Sources: Dana Mattioli and Konrad Putzier, "The End of the Office," at home more difficult. Wall Street Journal, May 16-17, 2020; Rani Molla, "This Is the End of Full-time employees are four times more likely to the Office as We Know It," Vox, April 14, 2020; Josh Lowy, "Over- coming Remote Work Challenges," MIT Sloan Management Review, have remote work options than part-time employees. April 9, 2020; Cate Pye, "Coronavirus: What Does the New Normal According to Global Workplace Analytics, a typical re- Mean for How We Work?" Computer Weekly, April 3, 2020; Lindsey mote worker is college-educated, at least 45 years old, Jacobson, "As Coronavirus Forces Millions to Work Remotely, the US Economy May Have Reached a 'Tipping Point' in Favor of Work- and earns an annual salary of $58,000 while working ing from Home," CNBC, March 23, 2020; Derek Thompson, "The for a company with more than 100 employees. Coronavirus Is Creating a Huge, Stressful Experiment in Working Although email and text messaging are very use- from Home," The Atlantic, March 13, 2020; Kevin Roose, "Sorry, but ful, they are not effective tools for communication Working from Home Is Overrated," New York Times, March 10, 2020. compared to the information exchange and personal CASE STUDY QUESTIONS 1. Define the problem described in this case. What 3. Will working from home become the dominant are the management, organization, and technol- way of working in the future? Why or why not? ogy issues raised by this problem? 2. Identify the information technologies used to pro- vide a solution to this problem. Was this a success- ful solution? Why or why not? and strengthened the benefits that flow from trade, and also created significant dislocations in labor markets. In 2005, journalist Thomas Friedman wrote an influential book declaring the world was now flat, by which he meant that the Internet and global communi- cations had greatly expanded the opportunities for people to communicate with one another and reduced the economic and cultural advantages of developed countries. The United States and European countries were in a fight for their economic lives, according to Friedman, competing for jobs, markets, resources, and even ideas with highly educated, motivated populations in low-wage areas in the less developed world (Friedman, 2007). This globalization presents you and your business with both challenges and opportunities. A growing percentage of the economy of the United States and other ad- vanced industrial countries in Europe and Asia depends on imports and exports. In 2019, an estimated 30 percent of the world economy resulted from foreign trade of goods and services, both imports and exports. Half of Fortune 500 US firms obtain nearly 50 percent of their revenue from foreign operations. For instance, more than 50 percent of Intel's revenues in 2019 came from overseas sales of its microprocessors