The Impact of Bureaucratic Control on Organizational Predisposition Towards Distributed Work Arrangements: An Empirical Study

Many organizational businesses today are operating in increasingly complex and turbulent environments. To meet the challenges of such uncertain environments, organizational flexibility and adaptation to change have become important tools for organizational survival. Since the emergence of distributed computing and the Internet, many organizations are evolving to flexible forms where employees work in distributed environments through distributed work arrangements (DWAs). These arrangements could allow firms to operate more effectively in the competitive environment. However, the willingness of firms to adopt such work arrangements may shaped to a significant extent by their pre-existing control systems. This research aims to investigate whether control structures, specifically bureaucracy in organizations, could affect organizational attitudes towards the adoption of DWAs. Using innovation diffusion theory, a path model is proposed wherein bureaucratic control could affect perceptions of organizational decision makers towards, and which ultimately affect their intentions to adopt DWA.