Skip to Main Content
HBS Home
  • About
  • Academic Programs
  • Alumni
  • Faculty & Research
  • Baker Library
  • Giving
  • Harvard Business Review
  • Initiatives
  • News
  • Recruit
  • Map / Directions
Working Knowledge
Business Research for Business Leaders
  • Browse All Articles
  • Popular Articles
  • Cold Call Podcasts
  • About Us
  • Leadership
  • Marketing
  • Finance
  • Management
  • Entrepreneurship
  • All Topics...
  • Topics
    • COVID-19
    • Entrepreneurship
    • Finance
    • Gender
    • Globalization
    • Leadership
    • Management
    • Negotiation
    • Social Enterprise
    • Strategy
  • Sections
    • Book
    • Cold Call Podcast
    • HBS Case
    • In Practice
    • Lessons from the Classroom
    • Op-Ed
    • Research & Ideas
    • Research Event
    • Sharpening Your Skills
    • What Do You Think?
    • Working Paper Summaries
  • Browse All
    • COVID-19 Business Impact Center
      COVID-19 Business Impact Center
      Working (From Home) During a Crisis: Online Social Contributions by Workers During the Coronavirus Shock
      03 Apr 2020Working Paper Summaries

      Working (From Home) During a Crisis: Online Social Contributions by Workers During the Coronavirus Shock

      by Prithwiraj Choudhury, Wesley W. Koo, and Xina Li
      This study shows that people working from home (WFH) make more online contributions to socially helpful topics, yet face higher psychic costs and anxiety about time constraints. Managers might consider giving WFH workers more temporal flexibility to deal with time constraints during this crisis.
      LinkedIn
      Email

      Author Abstract

      Prior research has documented that during mortality-related crises workers face psychic costs and are motivated to make social contributions. In addition, management practices that encourage workers to make social contributions during a crisis create value for firms. However, the coronavirus crisis of 2020 is unprecedented given conditions of social distancing. It raises the question of whether workers who continued to work (albeit from home) during this crisis were constrained in their ability to make social contributions and exhibited disproportionately greater psychic costs compared to workers who could not work from home. We exploit this shock to estimate differences in content contributions to an online community by workers who work from home (WFH) relative to workers who cannot work from home (CWFH). Online content contributions are especially pertinent in our context because social distancing constrained traditional forms of social contributions such as physical volunteering. Using data from a popular question-and-answer platform, we estimate a difference-in-differences specification and report nuanced results: while WFH workers made 19% fewer online contributions on average and contribute less to topics such as ‘family’, they make 148% more contributions on topics related to ‘WFH best practices.’ Using natural language processing tools, we also find that WFH workers exhibited greater psychic costs than CWFH workers. We provide evidence for a plausible mechanism, i.e. time allocation, and show that WFH workers attempted to catch up on social contributions at the end of their workday, suggesting time constraints. Our research contributes to literatures on managing workers during a crisis, WFH and online communities, and have several immediate implications for managing WFH and CWFH workers during the coronavirus crisis.

      Paper Information

      • Full Working Paper Text
      • Working Paper Publication Date: Revised April 2020
      • HBS Working Paper Number: HBS Working Paper #20-096
      • Faculty Unit(s): Technology and Operations Management
        Trending
          • 06 Jan 2021
          • Research & Ideas

          Unexpected Exercise Advice for the Super Busy: Ditch the Rigid Routine

          • 11 Jan 2021
          • Research & Ideas

          Is A/B Testing Effective? Evidence from 35,000 Startups

          • 13 Jan 2021
          • Research & Ideas

          How 'Small C' Change Can Beat Large-Scale Rebuilding

          • 13 Jul 2020
          • Research & Ideas

          Merck CEO Ken Frazier Discusses a COVID Cure, Racism, and Why Leaders Need to Walk the Talk

          • 25 Feb 2019
          • Research & Ideas

          How Gender Stereotypes Kill a Woman’s Self-Confidence

      Prithwiraj Choudhury
      Prithwiraj Choudhury
      Lumry Family Associate Professor of Business Administration
      Contact
      Send an email
      → More Articles
      Find Related Articles
      • COVID-19
      • Crisis Management
      • Social and Collaborative Networks
      • Working Conditions

      Sign up for our weekly newsletter

      Interested in improving your business? Learn about fresh research and ideas from Harvard Business School faculty.
      ǁ
      Campus Map
      Harvard Business School Working Knowledge
      Baker Library | Bloomberg Center
      Soldiers Field
      Boston, MA 02163
      Email: Editor-in-Chief
      →Map & Directions
      →More Contact Information
      • Make a Gift
      • Site Map
      • Jobs
      • Harvard University
      • Trademarks
      • Policies
      • Digital Accessibility
      Copyright © President & Fellows of Harvard College