Work Design for Global Workers: Improving Work Relationships and Outcomes

Research on work design dates back over three decades, but has come under fire recently for not reflecting the changing nature of work. Despite a rapid expansion in globally distributed work, for example, few studies examine how the design of these jobs affects workers’ satisfaction, dedication, and well-being. Furthermore, evidence suggests that the social and relational aspects of work are becoming increasingly important. Based on interviews with 48 global workers in a multinational high-tech company and a survey of 468 global workers in a multinational engineering company, we identified relational work design characteristics, such as accessibility of coworkers, usefulness of collaboration technology, and learning-oriented visits to the locations of distant workers, that significantly predicted interpersonal closeness. We further found that interpersonal closeness mediated the relationship between these relational work design characteristics and outcomes traditionally associated with improved work design, such as job satisfaction, dedication and well-being. Our findings extend research on work design by identifying characteristics that are important to this modern-day work context and empirically demonstrating interpersonal closeness as a key mechanism for behavioral, attitudinal, and well-being outcomes in globally distributed knowledge work.