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This paper develops a framework to study the potential feasibility to telework knowledge tasks and jobs. The model analyzes the knowledge tasks according to four basic knowledge processes: generation; codification; storage; and transfer. This taxonomy is used together with the distribution of productive work time of knowledge workers to ellaborate groups of knowledge tasks that are more suitable to be teleworked.

To develop a model that assess the feasibility to telework new product activities.

Literature review of innovation and telework to find criteria relevant to use telework in new product development activities.

The first stage of the model assess the feasibility of telework in new product development activities according to four criteria: importance of teamwork, need of using equipment and laboratories, intensity of data processing, and frequency of meetings. The second stage assess the level of knowledge in each new product development activity. The model analyses the knowledge tasks according to four basic knowledge processes: generation, codification, storage and transfer. The third and final stage assess the distribution of productive work time of new product development employees to obtain groups of new product development activities suitable to be teleworked.

Firstly, to enlarge the taxonomy of variables that define each one of the four basic knowledge management processes included in the model. Secondly, to test empirically with case studies and surveys the working time requirements of knowledge tasks. The number of knowledge tasks included in the analysis could also be enlarged in future studies.

The framework provides an aid to research and managerial application of telework in new product development activities. The methodology developed in the paper may be useful for preliminary analysis of teleworking implementation projects. It may also help to the adoption of information and communication technologies for the company's new development processes.

The adoption of teleworking among knowledge processes arises the question whether teleworking may be used in the company's innovation activities. The methodology proposed in the paper wants to contribute to this topic by developing a framework adapted to the different activities in the new product development process.

Shows the results of a survey about the antecedents of work‐family conflict in a sample of Spanish employees. Analyses and discusses the influence of job‐related and non‐related factors. The results indicate that both groups of factors are antecedents of work‐family conflict. Even though gender is not a significant variable to explain work‐family conflict, the empirical study found differences at the time to explain the antecedents of men and women's work‐family conflict. A few family‐domain and work‐domain perceptions had a strong influence on work‐family conflict such as the gender roles, importance of family, job flexibility and job mental and physical requirements. Some of these perceptions suggest the influence of a culture where traditional gender roles still prevail and family as an institution is very strong. Functional mobility and educational level are also antecedents of work‐family conflict. However, job category level, marital status, and social benefits do not have any influence on work‐family conflict in the multivariate analysis, but the bivariate analysis showed that they have indeed an influence on the work‐family conflict according to the hypotheses developed in the research framework.

Aims to contribute to the teleworking literature by analysing the differences between teleworking adopters and non‐adopters regarding the use and impact of information and communication technologies.

Analyses the differences on the use and impact of information and communication technologies in a sample of Spanish companies. The data for the study come from a survey of a representative sample of 479 small and medium sized companies located in Galicia, a Spanish region in the northwest of the country. The data were obtained through interviews with the company managers (CEO, systems information manager, or technology manager) between May and October of 2003

The results indicate that teleworking companies have adopted more equipment (per company and per employee), and the differences are statistically significant for all type of information equipment but personal computers. Although there is a positive correlation between the number of equipment and firm size (number of employees), there are not statistically significant differences of firm size between teleworking adopters and non adopters. Firm size is not an explanatory variable of equipment use in the adopter companies.

Contributes to the teleworking literature by analysing the differences between teleworking adopters and non adopters regarding the use and impact of information and communication technologies

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the moderator effect of inter‐organizational cooperation in the relationship between workplace flexibility and innovation performance.

Postal survey to a sample of manufacturing and service firms. Hierarchical regression.

It was found that innovation performance is positively associated to internal functional flexibility, and negatively to external numerical flexibility and outsourcing. Inter‐organizational cooperation moderates the relationships between functional flexibility, external numerical flexibility and outsourcing with innovation performance.

The study's single country setting could limit the generalizability of the findings. Longitudinal as opposed to cross‐sectional data are needed for studying the causal assumptions reported here.

The results of this study suggest that high‐cooperation firms may compensate the negative impact of external flexibility and perform better than low‐cooperation firms. External knowledge and cooperation can be complementary. Managers should take into account that the benefits from external workplace (e.g. access to new knowledge) may be enhanced in the context of inter‐organizational cooperation.

To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study that tests whether inter‐organizational cooperation moderates the relationship between external numerical flexibility and innovation performance. The paper also investigates and applies internal and external flexibility in a single study which allows to compare how each of them impacts innovation performance.

The purpose of the paper is to explain the impact of workplace flexibility on managers' perceptions of firm performance. The research focuses primarily on outsourcing, an increasingly common way of creating workplace flexibility, by studying its antecedents based on several economic and organisational theories.

The methodology is a postal survey to a sample of 156 Spanish firms and statistical analysis.

The findings suggest that it is important to take into account different theoretical perspectives to explain the intensity of outsourcing: all proposed antecedents of the intensity of outsourcing except differentiation strategy and cooperation are significantly associated to outsourcing. There is not any significant relationship between outsourcing and firm performance; workplace internal flexibility does impact on firm performance but external flexibility does not. However, the results change according to the category of core and peripheral outsourcing.

This study's single country setting could limit the generalizability of the findings. Longitudinal as opposed to cross‐sectional data are needed for studying the causal assumptions reported here. Future studies should also take a multiple‐source as opposed to a single‐source data collection approach. Finally, objective measures of outsourcing and firm performance, as well as moderated variables are needed to analyse differentiated impacts on firm performance.

This research makes two contributions to both practice and theory. First, the results show that the perceived impact of outsourcing on sub‐factors of firm performance is positive for peripheral activities and negative for core activities. Second, the research provides a framework to analyse the antecedents of outsourcing and the concurrent impact of outsourcing and other workplace flexibility dimensions on firm performance.

The paper explains outsourcing decisions by antecedents based on several economic and organisational theories. It also analyses the concurrent impact of outsourcing and other workplace flexibility dimensions on firm performance.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the contribution of human resource (HR) commitment practices to firm performance through the adoption of workplace practices that require the organisational climate created by HR commitment practices.

The approach is a survey of 156 Spanish firms and statistical test of research hypotheses through structural equation modelling.

The results indicate that the extent that employees have access to HR commitment practices and HR social benefits is positively related to the intensity of telework adoption. Firm performance is positively associated to the intensity of telework adoption, functional flexibility and internal numerical flexibility, and negatively related to external numerical flexibility. HR commitment practices impact directly and indirectly on different measures of firm performance.

Cross‐sectional, survey‐based data that cannot infer causality. Longitudinal and qualitative designs are needed to get a better understanding of the relationships. A follow‐up study of employees perception of several variables analysed in this study (e.g. access to HR commitment practices and employee benefits) could reveal possible contradictions between what policies managers claim there exist, and what policies employees perceive to exist.

The adoption of HR commitment practices can facilitate the organisational change required by the adoption of telework.

The findings provide evidence that HR commitment practices are indirectly related to firm performance through their effects on the use of flexibility practices like telework that require organisational climates containing high levels of trust.

This paper develops a model of teleworking adoption based on the principles of the technology acceptance model. The framework integrates three categories of factors influencing on teleworking adoption: technological, human resources, and organisational factors. The model fills a gap in the teleworking literature by developing research propositions that take into account different theoretical perspectives to study teleworking adoption.

This paper analyzes the results of a survey about labor mobility of a sample of 1,182 Spanish employees. The results indicate that women have lower mobility than men, and that the mobility of men and women is explained by different factors. The employee’s perceptions about job satisfaction, pay fairness, and employment stability are also more explicative of job mobility than traditional job‐related factors, such as wages or training. These results have managerial implications for the segmentation of men and women in the labor market.

The purpose of this paper is to study the effect of gender diversity (in executive boards and top management) on firm performance. To reconcile the inconsistent and non‐conclusive findings from previous studies, competing curvilinear relationships are theorized between gender diversity on boards and firm performance based on different theoretical backgrounds.

The paper comprises a literature review and development of theoretical propositions.

Curvilinear relationships were developed that may integrate different theoretical perspectives.

This paper provides theoretical support to reconcile the inconsistent and non‐conclusive findings from previous theoretical perspectives and empirical studies by proposing that competing recommendations from theoretical perspectives could be tested through curvilinear relationships.

The propositions provide a strong argument for having more women in top management positions who will be promoted later through the “glass ceiling” to more gender‐balanced boards.

The paper reconciles inconsistent and non‐conclusive findings from studies about gender diversity on boards and firm performance.