Framework for the assessment of feasibility of telecommuting in Australian organisations

This paper proposes a systematic approach that will help managers evaluate the suitability of alternative telecommuting configurations. In particular, the main task of this paper is to develop a conceptual framework and a decision support system (DSS) for telecommuting managers to assess the tradeoffs involved in introducing telecommuting in their organisations. The proposed DSS is in the form of an interactive system facilitating the evaluation and assessment of the effectiveness of promising telecommuting configurations before they are actually implemented. The system is designed to contain economic cost/benefit models, statistical models, heuristics, and simulations of “what-if” scenarios. The system is being developed from the results of existing studies of telecommuting effectiveness, and is in the process of being calibrated and extended with the results of further telecommuting studies