Abstract

Virtual offices have been a growing trend in today’s work environment and have been used to improve organizational performance for several decades. However, more and more companies also experience the challenges and problems brought by the use of virtual office in current years. One famous example would be the Yahoo’s decision to withdraw its work-from-home program. Therefore, the studies about the dark side of virtual office start to attract interests from researchers and practitioners. This paper aims at providing a critical view of the changes in employees’ work life due to the shift to virtual office from four perspectives: communication, social relation, achievement recognition and work-life balance. This paper also discusses the impact of such changes on employees’ quality of work life in terms of job satisfaction. This paper intends to conceptually extend the understanding of alternative working arrangements by considering the “dark side” of virtual office in employees’ work life. 

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