Makó, Csaba

Makó, Csaba
Csizmadia, Péter
Illéssy, Miklós

One of the most widely known forms of the flexible working arrangements is telework. There were several attempts in Hungary aimed to increase the number of employees working in the form of telework. However, these governmental initiatives generally underestimate the importance of the social and organisational context of telework. In our view, telework is a form of organisational innovations and its successful implementation requires different – social, organisational and cultural – changes. Therefore our project was aimed to widen the focus of the research and involved (1) an overview of the international literature of telework, (2) statistical analysis of telework diffusion in Hungary in the international comparison and (3) organising a workshop with the participation of international experts of the world of labour. In the framework of this project we gave an overview of the telework literature with the aim of indicating the abovementioned wider social, organisational and cultural context of telework and – more generally speaking – the organisational innovations. We also made a statistical analysis of the diffusion of telework in Hungary and in Europe on the basis of the results of the European Working Conditions Survey (2005) and the Labour Force Survey (2007). The analysis concerned not only telework but other forms of flexible working arrangements, too (e.g. mobile work). Both type of flexi-work is very rarely diffused in Hungary. An international workshop was also organised where 4 leading European experts were invited: Prof. James Wickham (Dublin), Prof. Chris Warhurst (Glasgow), Prof. Jan Karlsson (Göteborg) and Dr. Tuomo Alasoini (Helsinki). In the final report we evaluated the governmental telework initiatives of the last 10 years and proposed new ones as well as new research topics and calls for proposal.