Discussion of “Working from Home—What is the Effect on Employees’ Effort?”

In their article Rupietta and Beckmann study the effect of working from home (WFH) regimes on employees’ provided work effort. The authors’ goal is to understand how WFH and its frequency influence employees’ provided work effort. Employee’s work effort is defined by a newly developed measure, first introduced by Beckmann et al. (2017).¹ In the first large scale study of such effects, the authors draw onto data from the German Socio Economic Panel (SOEP) from the years 2002, 2006 and 2009. As WFH settings become more ubiquitous around the globe and rising shares of employees make use of them the topic’s importance is growing. Yet, transferable and reliable research results do not exist, as preceding research has only focused on smaller populations and case studies have pertained to individual industries. …