Sarah Soroui

While alternative work arrangements, such as remote work, have long been part of the work landscape, their growth in recent years signifies a profound transformation in the organization of workplaces. While the pandemic has increased the visibility and diffusion of these practices, the years preceding it saw a significant rise in remote work arrangements. This study examines economic development practitioners’ perceptions of the presence and impact of remote work arrangements. It uses interviews with practitioners and remote-utilizing businesses in Connecticut to explore understandings of remote work trends. Economic development practitioners’ strategies for responding to remote work trends were also analyzed. It draws on the concepts of weak signals and maladaptive learning processes to demonstrate how alternative work arrangements, entrenched professional routines, and institutionalized mental models may hamper the ability of practitioners to detect and understand alternative work trends. Moreover, response strategies reflect traditional economic development orientations and are rationalized to support existing policy approaches. Focusing on the period before the pandemic provides insight into the factors influencing practitioners’ receptivity and responsiveness to emergent developments that have the potential to alter conventional strategies and development trajectories.

Remote working reconstitutes the contextual and relational dynamics between individuals and the workplace, altering conventional opportunities and avenues for organizational integration. Furthermore, the rise of this post-industrial form of workplace organization has been accompanied by contrasting perspectives about whether untethering the workforce will enhance social capital development to the benefit of workers’ local communities. Drawing on interview data with thirty formerly office-based remote employees, this study examines how remote employees make use of social capital assets embedded within their local environments. Insufficient attention has been paid to social networking and capital building in the context of remote work arrangements. This research explores the motivations and modalities of remote employees’ local engagements, paying particular attention to how the use of local social assets intersects with physical dislocation from their work organization’s social infrastructure. Mindful of the heterogeneity of remote work spatial arrangements, it accounts for variations in geographic access to formal organizational assets, providing further nuance and texture about the conditions influencing remote employees’ local behavior.

Transformations in the institutional environment and advances in technological infrastructures have led to a rise in remote work with implications for local environments. While there is significant literature on the social and spatial effects of telecommuting, the growth of remote work warrants a holistic analysis of its specific implications for local economic and community life. Drawing on interviews with representatives of 22 firms in one state, this exploratory study examines how locational factors drive firms' remote work utilization. Together with an analysis of interviews with 12 remote employees, it also examines how remote work arrangements are modifying firms' and employees' connections to the local environment. The firm interviews indicate that remote work is increasingly utilized as a strategy to overcome regional talent acquisition challenges. The analysis reveals that remote work utilization can rework or attenuate the local economic and social linkages of remote-utilizing firms and remote employees. These findings suggest that the dynamics of remote work in local environments entail processes of disembedding and reeembedding, moderated by organizational and contextual factors. By situating questions and findings in relation to local contexts, this study details how firm dynamics and work-life patterns associated with remote work introduce opportunities and challenges for community and economic development efforts.