Generating a Telework Implementation Matrix Model: The Role of Culture in Interdisciplinarity

Taizo Yokoyama

National University of Laos

Aims: This paper argues that even a single business undertaking such as telework implementation demands multifaceted and composite perspectives and analysis through interdisciplinary research. Interdisciplinarity is both necessary and effective. It constructs a matrix that organizes the comprehensive considerations for telework implementation by classifying the multifaceted meanings of telework into eight dimensions, synthesizing prior research that has been fragmented across individual academic disciplines. It advances the thesis that historical and cultural conditions undergird the other analytical dimensions, thereby demonstrating the foundational positioning of the humanities and historical perspective within interdisciplinary research. These eight dimensions exert multilayered and cyclical influences on three actor levels involved in telework adoption: the micro level (individual teleworker), the meso level (intermediate organizations such as labor unions and corporations), and the macro level (government/policy). The discussion focusses on comparative analysis of telework adoption patterns across EU member states and Japan, review of prior research in management science, labor economics, sociology, and organizational psychology. The analysis of the divergent national responses to uniform national-level lockdowns during the COVID-19 crisis reveals that cultural factors exert foundational influence across all three actor levels. Examining positive and negative factors affecting telework adoption rates by country, the Netherlands is identified as an exemplary case in which tripartite cooperation among government, labor, and management—rooted in the cultural heritage of Christian Democracy and personalism—has structurally enabled flexible working. Taking this cultural perspective into account, the paper demonstrates that historical and cultural conditions do not merely constitute one dimension among many, but function as the bottom line of foundational stratum undergirding law and policy, corporate systems, job design, and individual psychology. From this perspective, the distinctive feature of telework adoption in Japan is identified in the spontaneous civic behavior of workers within non-institutionalized and non-discretionary domains. The proposed eight-domain matrix model provides a bird’s-eye framework that foregrounds the foundational positioning of the humanities and historical perspective within interdisciplinary research on telework.

Article link: https://www.asianinstituteofresearch.org/JEBarchives/generating-a-telework-implementation-matrix-model%3A-the-role-of-culture-in-interdisciplinarity