Does remote working work? Quantifying the effect of remote working on the motivation of employees during the Covid-19 pandemic

Sammanfattning: One of the most obvious impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic is perhaps the increase in the number of people working remotely. Never before in modern days has there been a remote workforce this large and who have persisted this long. More than a year after the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, as society starts to open up again, the verdict of the success of remote working still awaits. This has given attention to the academic field of work design. So far, studies have unproportionally focused on productivity as a measure of the success of remote working while little attention has been dedicated to the topic of motivation. This thesis aims to quantitatively explore how motivation has been affected by the pandemic's extraordinary context by surveying 151 individuals using the Job Diagnostic Survey (JDS) developed by Oldham and Hackman. Further, two new moderators, self-discipline and social need for interaction are introduced. Findings reveal perceived motivation decreased in a remote setting compared to on-site which could be predicted by the proposed moderators. Finally, this study contributes to the JDS theory as constraints were found in its ability to predict perceived motivation during the pandemic due to its limitation in capturing the social dimension as a moderator.