EDITORIAL From teleworking to hybridity: a new way of thinking about the management of our organisations?

Abstract

The first documented experiments in teleworking date back to 1970s America (Lenehan, 2016) and came to prominence when Jack Niles created the first remote communication system for NASA (Chiru, 2017). Legislative changes, the emergence of new technologies and, most recently, the Covid-19 health crisis have resulted in the development of teleworking, to the extent that it has even become the norm in some companies (Chênevert et al., 2022). Implementing teleworking practices involves a number of adjustment issues for the employee and management issues for the employer. Prior to the pandemic and the widespread use of teleworking in the context of lockdowns, this approach to organising work was both unusual and unfamiliar to most of those involved. To clarify the concept of telework, we propose a definition.Teleworking is defined as:“a regular and formal method of organising and carrying out work activities, taking place wholly or partly at a distance (i.e. away from the employer’s premises for at least one day a week) and via the use of information and communication technologies”In other words, teleworking is the practice of carrying out professional activities and tasks away from the premises made available for working groups by the employer, using information and communication technologies to stay connected with colleagues and the company. Vayre (2019) suggests that teleworking can also be considered as formal or informal, occasional (less than one day per week) or extensive (more than one day per week) and finally traditional (during traditional working hours) or non-traditional (evenings or days not usually worked)…