In early 2020, the world began what is undoubtedly the largest work-from-home experiment in history. Now, as countries reopen but Covid-19 remains a major threat, organizations are wrestling with whether and how to have workers return to their offices. Business leaders need to be able to answer a number of questions to make these decisions. Primary among them is “What impact has working from home had on productivity and creativity?”
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Photography by Marcus Cederberg
The Implications of Working Without an Office
Early research on how people are — and aren’t — adapting and how leaders can help.
July 15, 2020
· Long read
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Ethan Bernstein is the Edward W. Conard Associate Professor of Business Administration in the organizational behavior unit at Harvard Business School and a coauthor of “How Intermittent Breaks in Interaction Improve Collective Intelligence” (PNAS, 2018). Twitter: @ethanbernstein
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Hayley Blunden is a PhD student in the organizational behavior program at Harvard Business School.
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Andrew Brodsky is an assistant professor of management at McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin. He is on Twitter @AndrewSBrodsky.
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WS Wonbin Sohn is a PhD student in the management department at McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin. Find him on Twitter at @wonbinsohn. -
Ben Waber is a visiting scientist at the MIT Media Lab and a senior visiting researcher at Ritsumeikan University. His research and commercial work is focused on the relationship between management, AI, and organizational outcomes. He is also the author of the book People Analytics. Follow him on Mastodon: @bwaber@hci.social.
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Change management,
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