The Sociocultural Barriers of Work-From-Home Arrangement Due to COVID-19
Pandemic in Asia: Implications and Future Implementation
Abstract
The rapidly escalating COVID-19 pandemic entails many unprecedented life
circumstances, including in the way people work. The social distancing
policy has forced companies to adopt work-from-home (WFH) arrangement to
maintain business sustainability amidst both health and economic crises.
While in many developed countries, WFH arrangement has been a common
practice, this is not the case in some Asian countries, particularly in
countries where high power distance emphasizing heightened supervision
and punishment among workers are still a preferred managerial style,
such as Indonesia, China, India, and Thailand. For companies with such a
power-reliance managerial style, WFH could be seen as a threat towards
productivity as face-to-face supervision cannot be performed. On the
other hand, not all workers have a positive attitude and a sense of
readiness towards implementing WFH and having involuntary WFH
arrangement adds as a potential stressor on top of those caused by
management demands and lack of trust. While acknowledging that WFH is
considered as beyond an option in this pandemic period, this commentary
paper aims to critically identify key barriers of WFH implementation in
some Asian countries, particularly in autocratic societies, using both
theoretical and contextual approach. The paper concludes by discussing
recommendation for future studies and proposing strategic implications
for companies and workers to effectively adopt WFH arrangement,
especially in societies where WFH is still a new practice or is
involuntarily held.