Quality is more important than quantity: Social presence and workplace ergonomics control predict perceived remote work performance

Abstract

The Covid-19 pandemic has caused a widespread disruption to the way that we work. One of its lasting consequences will be the ubiquity of remote work. The effective use of collaboration tools is therefore a critical factor for information systems (IS) research when design the workplaces of the future. We theorize that social presence and workplace ergonomics control are important predictors of perceived performance. Moreover, we investigate how different factors (i.e., collaboration tool efficacy, mode of work, and number of meetings) influence social presence. Using survey data (N = 389), we provide evidence that workplace ergonomics control and social presence are indeed important for perceived performance. Surprisingly, we observe that only collaborative platform efficacy has a significant impact on social presence, and that neither the number of meetings nor the modality were significant factors. Based upon these results, we derive implications for theory and practice.