The virtual workplace: A new alternative merging technology and policy for more environmental, economic and social sustainability

摘要

At present, both developed and developing countries alike are facing challenges of a growing "virtualized" world. Organizations and policymakers have to understand the importance of the Virtual Workplace (VW) and constantly make efforts to "re-think" their strategies and policies to deal with this new reality. There is a growing body of literature focusing on the topic of the Virtual Workplace. However, to date there have been few theoretical and empirical studies related to the application of this topic especially in developing countries. This paper represents a first attempt to explore the challenges related to the implementation of the VW concept in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, mainly Egypt. To investigate these challenges empirically, we examined a number of the well-known Egyptian commercial public sector banks that have already taken serious steps towards an e-banking system. The results of an open-question survey distributed to a random sample of employees at the top, middle and executive levels of management suggest that VW has several potential advantages and drawbacks correlated with the environmental, economic, technological and social context in Egypt. For the analysis of textual data and the administration of the large qualitative data sets, we used ATLAS.ti software. The research highlights the fact that female employees have different perspectives than males with respect to the VW concept. Egyptian women tend to be environmentally and socially oriented, while men give more attention to the economic andtechnological aspects of the VW. The paper concludes with some theoretical and empirical proposals for corporate strategies, as well as for public policies to aid the adoption of an innovative VW programs, in particular to satisfy the requirements of environmental, economic and social sustainability in developing countries.