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International Journal of Information Science and Management
Vol. 20, No. 2, 2022, 229-245
https://dorl.net/dor/20.1001.1.20088302.2022.20.2.14.9
Original Research
A Bibliometric Mapping of Five Decades Research in Telecommuting
Khairul Hafezad Abdullah
Associate Fellow, Social Security Management Center
of Excellence, School of Business Management,
Universiti Utara Malaysia, Sintok, Kedah, Malaysia.
khafezad@uum.edu.my,
ORCID iD: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3759-6541
Siti Zubaidah Othman
Associate Prof., Department of Human
Resource Management, School of Business
Management, Universiti Utara Malaysia,
Sintok, Kedah, Malaysia.
Corresponding Author: zubaidah@uum.edu.my,
ORCID iD: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8576-2965
Received: 26 June 2021
Accepted: 14 August 2021
Abstract
Globalization, new media development, and a chaotic job climate have transformed
the nature of the workplace in the 21st century. Thus, understanding areas of
concern and expanding collaborating networks are essential to progress scientific
creation towards integrated efforts. This study aimed to map the global research
trends in telecommuting publications, research areas, prolific sources, most cited
documents, authors’ co-authorship, institutions co-authorship, countries co-
authorship, and keywords co-occurrence. Using the Scopus database, a total of
1453 telecommuting publications were disseminated between 1964 and 2020. The
findings revealed that the number of publications fluctuated with hike in
publications in 2020. It can be interpreted that telecommuting research is
miscellaneous by evaluating research fields. About 44.80% of the overall
worldwide publications have been contributed by scholars from the United States,
leading 77 other countries. Also, among the most prolific sources, the
Transportation Research Record was the topmost of the other 159 outlets. The
undertaken bibliometric study offers a comprehensive and in-depth view of
telecommuting research that may be useful to practitioners and researchers in
advancing potential knowledge in this field.
Keywords Collaborating Network, Graphical Visualizations, Publication Trends, Scopus,
Vosviewer, Telecommuting, Bibliometrics.
Introduction
Globalization, the advancement of digital technologies, and the stressful working
environment have changed the 21st-century workplace essence. Serving as a telecommuter
away from the office has been available to many workers worldwide, making mobile
communications much cheaper (Ma, Hen & Chooi, 2019). New job agreements and
telecommuting have evolved to create a work climate anytime and anywhere (Narayanan et
al., 2017). Telecommuting opportunities are strengthened by home computing technologies
that provide job accessibility, facilitate social interactions, allow product transactions, and
make travel and online access more convenient and interchangeable (Lyons, 2015).
A Bibliometric Mapping of Five Decades Research in Telecommuting
IJISM, Vol. 20, No. 2 April-June 2022
230
Since the advent of personal computers, notebooks, and cell phones in the 1980s, these
devices’ costs and sizes have plunged, increasing speed and bandwidth (Kizza, 2013).
Telecommuting has also grown, and more people will work at home, using a computer and
the internet to link in their careers (Picu & Dinu, 2016). Moreover, the transition from
factories to a knowledge economy has expanded the number of telecommuting employees
(Kizza, 2013). Telecommuting is defined as “a work practice that involves members of an
organization substituting a portion of their typical work hours … to work away from a central
workplace-typically from home-using technology to interact with others as needed to conduct
work tasks” (Allen, Golden & Shockley, 2015, p. 44). Its’ use has been increasing, with more
than 25 million in the United States (Gallup, 2017), and the growth rate is projected at 11% to
30% in many parts of the world (Tugend, 2014).
Advancing information and communication technology often improves daily work access.
Employment remains an anchor for jobseekers, a constraint requiring non-discretionary travel
within a focused duration around which all daily expedition is organized (Le Vine, Polak &
Humprey, 2017). Furthermore, mobility is a core principle in transport planning to quantify
time, expense, or distance penalties that bind individuals, goods, events, and opportunities
dependent on open transport systems (Reggiani, Bucci & Russo, 2011). Academics and
learning institutions emphasize that technology is dramatically changing how culture
facilitates achievement and positivity, motivation and leadership (Caranto, Sergio & Oribiana,
2020).
The concept of space-time geography helps understand this phenomenon, as
telecommuting decreases the spatial and temporal restrictions on the availability of a person to
conduct activities at various locations within a specified timeline (Wang, Chen, Yuan, Wang,
Lam & Li, 2018). Telecommuters have greater flexibility of when and where they perform
work tasks and spend doing other activities; making them more available to be at different
places during the day (Tavares, Santos, Diogo & Ratten, 2020). Indeed, research in China
and the United States has concluded that telecommuters tend to travel more for other purposes
and that demand for non-work activities will affect their preference for telecommuting (Loo &
Wang, 2018).
Telecommuting is a broad term that encompasses various aspects of an employee’s travel,
activity, and attitude (Asgari & Jin, 2015). Additionally, Asgari and Jin (2015) asserted that
telecommuting is not a single-level decision but a hierarchy of integrated decisions that take
several long-term and short-term resolutions into account. Regardless of how telecommuting
is defined or quantified, there appears to be widespread agreement on its benefits. Individuals
employed with telecommuting organizations became more involved than non-telecommuting
organizations (Belzunegui-Eraso & Erro-Garcés, 2020). Telecommuting was explicitly and
indirectly connected to dedication by presumed target encouragement and task advancement
(Ma et al., 2019). Individuals who have reached their personal goals should, nevertheless,
retain high levels of engagement (Masuda, Holtschlag & Nicklin, 2017). Home-based
telecommuting has been the most viable and profitable way for employees to deliver better
jobs (Hornung & Glaser, 2009). Human resource practitioners are developing strategies to
improve employees’ health based on balancing work and life to encourage well-being and
happiness and counter tiredness and burnout, leading to high turnover (Haladay, Sergio,
Opulencia & Antiado, 2016). Knowing that managers can expand workers' lives without
Khairul Hafezad Abdullah / Siti Zubaidah Othman
IJISM, Vol. 20, No. 2 April-June 2022
231
losing organizational needs provides a new model. It would give staff and employers fair
practices (Macasukit–gernal, Sergio & Al Shuali, 2013).
The fundamental purpose of the current research was to establish patterns in
telecommuting-focused publications over the last 56 years (from 1964 to 2020). It is also to
classify research areas, prolific sources, most cited documents, authors co-authorship analysis,
institutions co-authorship analysis, countries co-authorship analysis, and keywords co-
occurrence analysis on telecommuting. The information provided by this study is intended to
provide a concise overview of the future of telecommuting research that will allow readers
and researchers to obtain insight that benefits their studies. The approach to this bibliometric
review could lead to substantial contributions to current telecommuting research.
Materials and Methods
A bibliometric analysis is a mechanistic approach to comprehending global research
patterns based on an academic literature database (Sweileh, 2020). This kind of approach
separates the bibliometric from the review paper, which was mainly projected to address the
most recent development and possible directions of a topic discussed by the authors
(Ellegaard & Wallin, 2015; Zupic & Čater, 2015).
Design of the study and database selection
A bibliometric analysis was conducted to analyze data related to telecommuting research's
inclusion, use, or application. The data was based on the countries and languages of
publications, the annual evolution of the number of publications, the most prominent journals
and authors, and the key areas of research in which the publications are framed. Bibliometric
analysis was conducted using several databases such as Web of Science (WoS), Scopus, and
Google Scholar. The Scopus database was used in this study to retrieve data on
telecommuting research. This is because the documents compiled in the Scopus database
contained the most critical abstracts and citations in research. The database is also containing
over 16,000 peer-reviewed journals, conference proceedings, trade papers, book series, and
patents, offering the broadest possible scope for research, scholarly, medical, and social
sciences (Khudzari, Kurian, Tartakovsky . & Raghavan, 2018; Sweileh et al., 2016).
Data collection
Bibliometric data was retrieved on December 5, 2020. The retrieved data was initiated by
identifying precise keywords, appropriate information, and the specific objective of the study.
The keyword “Telecommuting” based on TITLE-ABS-KEY and the quotation marks were
used to generate precise search results. The result of retrieved data produces 1453
publications from 1964 to 2020. Out of1453 publications, 944 were articles from various
journal sources, 315 were conference papers, 76 were book series, 74 were books, and 44
were trade journals. A total of 1421 publications were written in English, 17 in French, and
less than ten in other languages such as German, Spanish, Chinese, Persian, and Hungarian.
Data in the form of Comma-separated Values (CSV) and Research Information Systems (RIS)
such as years, authors, thefield of study, article sources, countries, and languages were
exported to Microsoft Excel, Publish or Perish (PoP), and VOSviewer software for further
analysis.
A Bibliometric Mapping of Five Decades Research in Telecommuting
IJISM, Vol. 20, No. 2 April-June 2022
232
Maps of network created with Vosviewer
The extracted data set was mapped to show co-authorship in terms of authors, institutions,
countries, and keyword co-occurrences. The free online VOSviewer was used to map
co-authorship and keyword co-occurrences (Van Eck & Waltman, 2010). The network
is the most basic display mode, depicting iterations of co-authorship and the
formation of some clusters. The size of a node in the network map is
proportional to its frequency of occurrence (Abd Aziz, Abdullah & Samsudin, 2021). The
map demonstrated that related terms exist in close proximity and share the same color by
taking keyword co-occurrence into account. The terms with the most nodes have the most
frequency. Each cluster of terms with the same denotes a research topic or theme. As a
result, the number of corresponds to the number of research topics found in the
retrieved documents.
Results
Publication trends
Figure 1 showed that within 56 years, a total of 1453 articles have been written. However,
only 173 out of 1453 publications were considered open access, suggesting that most of these
publications are not publicly accessible and the user needs to pay to access the information.
Thus, it is recommended that articles be written in open access to gain more . The
earliest publication was back to 1964, and no more record was found until 1976. The
finding also suggests that intense interest in telecommuting research began in 1994
more than 20 documents were found. In 1996, the publications rose by 57 and fluctuated until
2019. The number of publications soared exponentially by 180 in 2020, fourfold over 2019.
This might be due to the global Covid-19 pandemic, which leads to an ongoing change to
remote work in 2020 and is expected to continue in future research. In response to the Covid-
19 pandemic, many companies have adopted telecommuting workers to ensure market
stability and meet social distance needs. The effect of telecommuting on accessibility and
family-work conflict is seen as a crucial issue for researchers and policy-makers (Lyttelton,
Zang & Musick, 2020). Apart from the high infection risk of the virus, federal, state and
municipal authorities have closed schools and businesses and meetings
in most infected countries. Teleworking enhances perceived performance without flipping
about and the expected workplace disruptions (Lincoln, Khan & Cai, 2020). Also, the number
of researchers worldwide and the increased number of telecommuting research in the Scopus
database have undoubtedly affected the number of publications. By witnessing the
exponential growth observed in telecommuting research between 1994 and 2020, it can be
construed that this research area is pertinent and reputable.
Khairul Hafezad Abdullah / Siti Zubaidah Othman
IJISM, Vol. 20, No. 2 April-June 2022
233
Figure 1: Publication trends in telecommuting research
Analysis of research areas
Telecommuting is vast, and several research groups worldwide are involved in these
areas. As in Table 1, social science interests are the main focus in telecommuting
research. This finding is expected as the subject under this review is relevant from social
sciences perspective, where the focus was centered on the relationship between employees’
work-family issues, attitudes, and work outcomes, including job satisfaction,
commitment and identification, stress, performance, wages, withdrawal , and firm-
level metrics. This aspect addresses related theoretical issues that could affect or change the
effects of telecommuting, including the essence of the work done during telecommuting,
mechanisms such as information exchange and creativity, and external aspects
that provide explanations for telecommuting, such as family responsibilities (Allen et al.,
2015). Another field of study stands out is Computer Science, with 430 publications and
Engineering, with 413 publications. The findings indicate that telecommuting and data
sharing remains a central aspect of modern networks and internet access retrieval systems. In
addition, engineering disciplines integrate theoretical principles into practice-oriented
research, providing frameworks and methods for acquiring new skills. The current
information system functions in an immersive online mode, enabling the user to communicate
with the host from a varied remote location via a contact connection, unlike traditional
systems (Arora, Kaur, Chandra & Bhatt, 2013; Tate, Lartey & Randall, 2019). Also, with the
telecommuting environment continuously changing and the information technology industry
improving, the use of electronic energy and computer technology will have something to
expect in the coming years (Raji-Lawal, Adesina & Akerele, 2020).
1 2 1 2 3 3 9 5 4 6 6 3 6 12 9 10
28
39
57
48
45
44
56
37
35
49
34
39
42
51
49
59
41
61
66
47
44
34
52
40
51
43
180
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
140
160
180
200
1964
1976
1977
1981
1982
1983
1984
1985
1986
1987
1988
1989
1990
1991
1992
1993
1994
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
2017
2018
2019
2020
Documents
Year of publications
A Bibliometric Mapping of Five Decades Research in Telecommuting
IJISM, Vol. 20, No. 2 April-June 2022
234
Table 1
Research area in telecommuting with at least 100 publications
R
ank
Subject Area
Publications
1
Social Sciences
503
2
Computer Science
430
3
Engineering
414
4
Business, Management and Accounting
345
5
Medicine
143
6
Environmental Science
124
Prolific sources
In order to identify the most influential source titles in telecommuting research, Table 2
presents a list of the ten source titles, which is ranked based on the number of publications.
Considering the number of publications, Transportation Research Record to be the
most influential source in this field, with 40 publications. Other relevant sources are the
New Technology Work and Employment in the second rank and Transportation at the third
rank. Based on this finding, it is suggested that the publications have been contributing useful
knowledge that will allow prospective researchers to refer to and be beneficial for their future
telecommuting research. The information provided also indicates that telecommuting research
has been widely published in various conferences and proceedings.
Table 2
The ten most influential source titles with at least ten publications
Source Titles
Publications
Transportation Research Record
40
New Technology Work and Employment
29
Transportation
19
Transportation Research Part A Policy and Practice
16
Lecture Notes in Computer Science
14
Proceedings of The ACM SIGCPR Conference
11
Environment and Planning A
10
Proceedings of The Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
10
Proceedings of The Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
10
Technological Forecasting and Social Change
10
Most cited documents
The next step is to the most active and successful authors in the field of
telecommuting. A list the five most-cited documents is provided in Table 3. Although
several factors can affect the importance of a paper, the number of citations is generally seen
as a fair representation of the popularity and influence of work among the scientific
community (Merigó & Yang, 2017). As indicated in Table 3, the 1999 paper written by V.
Venkatesh stands as the most cited publication of all times, with 849 citations for the article
entitled “Creation of favorable user perceptions: Exploring the role of intrinsic motivation”
Khairul Hafezad Abdullah / Siti Zubaidah Othman
IJISM, Vol. 20, No. 2 April-June 2022
235
published by MIS Quarterly: Management Information Systems. Next was R.S. Gajendran’s
and D.A. Harrison’s work in 2007, with 490 citations for an article entitled “The Good, the
Bad, and the Unknown About Telecommuting: Meta-Analysis of Psychological Mediators
and Individual Consequences”. By considering the citations rate per year, this study found
that the article was written by A.S. Fauci, H.C. Lane, and R.R. Redfield in 2020 entitled
“Covid-19 - Navigating the uncharted” obtained the highest citations rate, which is 349.
Table 3
The five most cited-documents in telecommuting research
Rank
Cites
Cites Per
Year
Authors
Year
Title
Source
1
849
40.43
V. Venkatesh
1999
Creation of favorable
user perceptions:
Exploring the role of
intrinsic motivation
MIS Quarterly:
Management
Information
Systems
2
490
37.69
R.S.
Gajendran,
D.A. Harrison
2007
The Good, the Bad, and
the Unknown About
Telecommuting: Meta-
Analysis of
Psychological Mediators
and Individual
Consequences
Journal of Applied
Psychology
3
373
19.63
E.J. Hill, A.J.
Hawkins, M.
Ferris, M.
Weitzman
2001
Finding an extra day a
week: The positive
influence of perceived
job flexibility on work
and family life balance
Family Relations
4
364
26
E.E. Kossek,
B.A. Lautsch,
S.C. Eaton
2006
Telecommuting, control,
and boundary
management: Correlates
of policy use and
practice, job control,
and work-family
effectiveness
Journal of
Vocational
Behavior
5
349
349
A.S. Fauci,
H.C. Lane,
R.R. Redfield
2020
Covid-19 - Navigating
the uncharted
New England
Journal of
Medicine
Another relevant issue in the bibliometric analysis is determining the most influential
authors in the field. Table 4 shows six authors with at least seven publications related to
telecommuting. Mokhtarian, P.L. is the top in the list with 42 publications, followed by
Salomon, I. (18 publications), Golden, T.D. (11 publications), He, B. (8 publications), Asgari,
H. (7 publications), and Jin, X. (7 publications). It is noteworthy that over the last 56 years,
authors from the United States associated with the University of California, Davis, Lally
School of Management, Troy, and Florida International University, Miami have been the
most active authors to publish in telecommuting research. This is due to some causes that
increased the interest in telecommuting in the United States over the last few decades.
A Bibliometric Mapping of Five Decades Research in Telecommuting
IJISM, Vol. 20, No. 2 April-June 2022
236
Stimulated by the oil shortage, telecommuting first entered the national vernacular of the
United States in the 1970s, forcing staff to eliminate traffic concerns, and decision-makers
began funding demonstration projects to explore the efficiency of telecommuting (Allen et al.,
2015).
Table 4
Status of authors published telecommuting research with at least seven publications
Rank
Author
Articles
H-index
Affiliation
Country
1
Mokhtarian,
P.L.
42
57
University of California, Davis
United States
2
Salomon, I.
18
31
Hebrew University of
Jerusalem, Jerusalem
Israel
3
Golden, T.D.
11
14
Lally School of Management,
Troy
United States
4
He, B.
8
5
Guangdong University of
Technology, Guangzhou
China
5
Asgari, H.
7
8
Florida International
University, Miami
United States
5
Jin, X.
7
10
Florida International
University, Miami
United States
Authors co-authorship analysis
Collaborative publications have the most significant recognition and scientific impact,
accompanied by inter-institutional collaborative articles, single-country articles, and single-
author articles (Wambu & Ho, 2016). The most popular form of collaborative network is
called co-authorship. The network visualization of co-authorship in telecommuting research is
presented in Figure 2. Each circle refers to the author, and the size of the circle is the number
of publications. The link between the two circles stands for the cooperative relationship
between the two authors, and the width of the link reflects the strength of the partnership.
Authors with a minimum of two publications are visualized in Figure 2 using a network
visualization. Out of the 2783 authors who have conducted telecommuting research, 18
authors reached the thresholds and were related. Circles denoting authors in the same cluster
suggested that the authors should work in a related area and collaborate closely. As shown in
Figure 2, the largest cluster consists of three authors (marked in green color). The second
cluster (turquoise) consists of two authors. The third cluster (red) consisted of four authors.
The fourth cluster (yellow), the fifth cluster (violet), the sixth cluster (light blue), and the
seventh cluster (orange) consisted of two researchers, respectively. The eight clusters (brown)
consisted of one researcher.
Khairul Hafezad Abdullah / Siti Zubaidah Othman
IJISM, Vol. 20, No. 2 April-June 2022
237
Figure 2: Network of Authors’ Co-authorship
Institutions co-authorship analysis
The study of co-authorship institutions represents the degree of contact between
institutions and prominent institutions in research (Reyes Gonzalez, Gonzalez Brambila &
Veloso 2016). The contribution from the numerous institutions was estimated by the
affiliation institute of at least one author of the written articles, and 1000 institutions had been
chosen. Figure 3 presents the network of institutions performing a co-authorship analysis of
16 institutions in a single cluster.
Figure 3: Network of Institutions Co-authorship
Countries co-authorship analysis
A network analysis was carried out to classify the authors' countries that have made the
most contribution to telecommuting research (Figure 4). Moreover, the most productive ten
countries of the network are shown in Table 5. As shown in Figure 4, the co-authorship
A Bibliometric Mapping of Five Decades Research in Telecommuting
IJISM, Vol. 20, No. 2 April-June 2022
238
network consists of 36 countries and is divided into eight clusters. The nodes serve the
countries, and the higher the nodes indicate many publications. In this scenario, the United
States had more significant nodes. It has been revealed that the United States has many
publications (647). The second rank goes to the United Kingdom with 95 publications, and
Canada was in the third rank with 72 publications. Co-authorship analyses have shown that
the United States has become a focal point and has cooperated closely with several nations
such as the United Kingdom, Ireland, Denmark, Israel, and India, illustrating the fact that
increasing international exchanges have encouraged scholarly cooperation and play an
essential role in improving scientific interaction in telecommuting research. The most
productive ten countries of the network are shown in Table 5.
Figure 4: Network of Institutions Co-authorship
Table 5
Status of the top ten countries
Rank
Countries
Publications
Percentage (%)
1
United States
651
44.80
2
United Kingdom
95
6.54
3
Canada
72
4.96
4
Australia
60
4.13
5
Japan
52
3.58
6
China
46
3.17
7
France
36
2.48
8
Germany
32
2.20
9
Netherlands
31
2.13
10
Israel
27
1.86
Keywords co-occurrence analysis
This section provides a visual description to deepen the conclusions of the authors’ co-
occurrence keywords. VOS viewer also allows for analyzing the most frequent keywords
appearing in a given set of publications. In this analysis, VOSviewer had mapped the
keywords of the authors. Figure 5 provides a network diagram of the author’s keywords in
which various colors, node sizes, font sizes, and the thickness of the connecting lines illustrate
Khairul Hafezad Abdullah / Siti Zubaidah Othman
IJISM, Vol. 20, No. 2 April-June 2022
239
the relationship with other keywords (Sweileh et al. 2017). Keywords that appeared more than
five times, with a count of 69, were included in the map. VOSviewer divided the keywords
into eight main clusters representing 69 authors’ keywords. The keyword “telecommuting” in
green nodes is the most frequent keyword. Some different popular keywords in terms of co-
occurrence are “telework”, “remote work”, “information technology”, “virtual work”, “work-
life balance”, and “covid-19”. This confirms that research on telecommuting has an
interdisciplinary perspective and connects with a wide range of fields, including computer
science, health, business and management, and social sciences.
Figure 5: Network Visualization Map of Authors’ Keywords
Discussion
Telecommuting workers have nearly doubled in the last two decades. This is hardly
unexpected given the many advantages of working from home, including higher productivity,
job satisfaction, and lower overhead. Providing remote working options appears to be
something that many companies can do with little thinking. Nevertheless, telecommuting is a
novel notion with its own set of concerns. While many of these issues are typical among
home-based professionals, solutions are readily available to those committed to
telecommuting. This study conveys a concise summary of the future of telecommuting
research to help readers and researchers obtain valuable insight into their studies. It is also
beneficial to make significant additions to present telecommuting research. This study is
based on the evolution and the progression of publications pertaining to telecommuting
research worldwide that have been indexed in the Scopus database. The VOSviewer software
A Bibliometric Mapping of Five Decades Research in Telecommuting
IJISM, Vol. 20, No. 2 April-June 2022
240
was customized to conduct assessments and visualize all data acquired during the scrutinizing
process.
The evolution and progression of telecommuting research are denoted with publications
increasing significantly and soaring exponentially by 180 in 2020, fourfold over 2019. It is
interesting to note that this scenario might occur due to the global Covid-19 pandemic, which
leads to an ongoing change to remote work in 2020 and is expected to continue to some point
in future research. In response to the Covid-19 pandemic, many companies have adopted
telecommuting workers to ensure market stability and meet social distance needs. The effect
of telecommuting on accessibility and family-work conflict is seen as a crucial issue for
researchers and policy-makers (Lyttelton et al., 2020). Apart from the high infection risk of
the virus, federal, state, and municipal authorities have closed schools and businesses and
limited neighborhood meetings in most infected countries. Teleworking enhances perceived
performance without flipping about the expected workplace disruptions (Lincoln et al., 2020).
Also, the number of researchers worldwide and the increased number of telecommuting
research in the Scopus database have undoubtedly affected the number of publications. By
witnessing the exponential growth observed in telecommuting research between 1994 and
2020, it can be construed that this research area is pertinent and reputable.
Based on the research areas, telecommuting research was prominently a focus of the
social science nuance. A possible explanation is that theoretical issues affecting
telecommuting, such as the nature of the work performed while telecommuting,
organizational mechanisms such as information exchange and creativity, and external factors,
such as family responsibilities, provide better explanations for telecommuting in a social
milieu (Allen et al., 2015). Another compelling research area is computer science. This
finding indicates that telecommuting and data sharing remains central to modern networks
and internet retrieval systems. Unlike traditional systems, the current information system
functions in an immersive online mode, enabling the user to communicate with the host from
a varied remote locations via a contact connection (Arora et al., 2013; Tate et al., 2019). Also,
with the telecommuting environment continuously changing and the information technology
industry improving, the use of electronic energy and computer technology will have
something to expect in the coming years (Raji-Lawal et al., 2020). Thus, our findings indicate
that a diverse range of telecommunications concepts and research disciplines could contribute
to a more comprehensive knowledge of the impact of telecommunications on producing
productive employees and meeting organizational goals.
Transportation Research Record, New Technology Work and Employment, and
Transportation are the three most prolific source titles in this study. Hence, it is signified that
those source titles have contributed helpful knowledge that will allow prospective researchers
to refer to and benefit their future telecommuting research. Additionally, the study of source
titles revealed that research on telecommuting has been widely published in various
conferences and proceedings. The findings imply that conference proceedings include a
sizable portion of the published literature and are critical for disseminating information to
researchers (Lisée, Larivière, & Archambault, 2008).
Based on the most cited document, academic work published by V. Venkatesh stands to
be the most cited publication for an article entitled “Creation of favorable user perceptions:
Exploring the role of intrinsic motivation” published by MIS Quarterly: Management
Information Systems. The article discusses a significant issue confronting academics and
Khairul Hafezad Abdullah / Siti Zubaidah Othman
IJISM, Vol. 20, No. 2 April-June 2022
241
practitioners of information systems has been the difficulty of eliciting good user reactions to
new technology. The findings greatly favored training with intrinsic motivation. Based on the
article, it is imperative to comprehend the factors contributing to telecommuting technology
adoption. At the same time, telecommuting significantly affects motivation, where motivation
also greatly impacts job performance (Awit & Marticio, 2022).
It has been revealed that the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada had a
significant nexus of co-authorship by countries. Captivatingly, co-authorship analyses have
shown that the United States has become a focal point and has cooperated closely with several
countries such as the United Kingdom, Ireland, Denmark, Israel, and India. Thus, this finding
illustrates that increasing international exchanges have encouraged scholarly cooperation and
play an essential role in improving scientific interaction in telecommuting research. It is
deemed crucial since current trends in multidisciplinary and worldwide collaborations and
citation analyses significantly impact authorship patterns, specialized journals, and
determining the scientific quality of articles (Gasparyan, Ayvazyan & Kitas, 2013).
It is noteworthy that over the last 56 years, authors from the United States associated with
the University of California, Davis, Lally School of Management, Troy, and Florida
International University, Miami have been the most active authors to publish in
telecommuting research. This is due to some causes that increased the interest in
telecommuting by the United States over the last few decades. Stimulated by the oil shortage,
telecommuting first entered the national vernacular of the United States in the 1970s, forcing
staff to eliminate traffic concerns, and decision-makers began funding demonstration projects
to explore the efficiency of telecommuting (Allen et al., 2015).
The keyword “telecommuting” is the most frequent keyword that nexus closely to some
different popular keywords such as “telework”, “remote work”, “information technology”,
“virtual work”, “work-life balance”, and “covid-19”. The results confirm that research on
telecommuting has an interdisciplinary perspective and connects with a wide range of fields,
including computer science, health, business and management, and social sciences. The co-
occurrence of author keywords also revealed that most publications in telecommuting
research are related to recent technological advancements that enable ever-affordable mobile
connections. This finding established the rationale of Kizza (2013), where telecommuting
opportunities increased along with home computer capabilities. A likely reason is that since
the 1980s, when personal computers were introduced, followed by laptops and cell phones in
the 1990s, the prices and sizes of these devices have reduced while the speed and bandwidth
have improved (Kizza, 2013). As a result, working away from the office as a telecommuter
has become increasingly accessible to many workers worldwide. Indirectly, it is implied that
telecommuting has grown in popularity and piqued the curiosity of both scholars and
practitioners.
Conclusion
In conclusion, this bibliometric review promotes examining and integrating established
directions in telecommuting research and the emerging new trends. Based on a bibliometric
review of 56 years of telecommuting research, this review found that the information below
will be able to provide readers, practitioners, and researchers with the related facts:
1. The number of publications on telecommuting research had fluctuated, and the highest
number of publications was 180 in 2020.
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IJISM, Vol. 20, No. 2 April-June 2022
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2. “Social Sciences” became the most researched area, with 503 publications in
telecommuting research.
3. The Transportation Research Record seems to be the most influential source title in
telecommuting research.
4. V. Venkatesh is the most cited publication of all times, with 849 citations for an article
entitled “Creation of favorable user perceptions: Exploring the role of intrinsic
motivation” published by MIS Quarterly: Management Information Systems.
Mokhtarian, P.L. became the most influential author in telecommuting with 42
publications.
5. Co-authorship analyses have shown that the United States has been a focal point and
has collaborated closely with other countries. It is indicated that the growing foreign
collaborations have facilitated academic collaboration and played an essential role in
enhancing intellectual engagement in telecommuting research.
6. Research on telecommuting has an interdisciplinary perspective, as it connects with a
wide range of fields, including computer science, health, business and management,
and social sciences.
Limitations and future research
This study has some limitations that can provide direction for future studies. First, the
current study examined and mapped an article published in the Scopus database using various
bibliometric methods, including productivity and growth metrics and relational methods
involving co-authorship and co-occurrence analysis. As a result, the findings of this study
were limited to identifying the central themes or critical keywords associated with
telecommuting research. Thus, if future studies wish to expand on the background or address
broad concerns to provide the best relevant evidence synthesis, they are recommended to use
more traditional review methodologies, such as systematic literature reviews or meta-
analyses. Additionally, other rational bibliometric metrics such as bibliographic coupling are
recommended if future researchers are interested to understand telecommuting research’s
scientific productions better. Second, this paper concentrated on peer-reviewed articles from
the Scopus database. Thus, the findings are restricted to articles or academic works only
available through the Scopus database. Suppose future researchers are interested in producing
a more comprehensive overview of telecommuting research’s leading trends, directions, and
performance. In that case, other databases such as Google Scholar and Microsoft Academic
can be considered for the analysis. Third, VOSviewer software analyzed and mapped the
collected and retrieved data. This software only captured networks with fewer than 10,000
nodes and was limited by computational and memory constraints. Thus, if future studies
would like to visualize big data in various contexts, then software programs such as the R
package, BibExcel, CiteSpace, and SciMAT can be utilized. Finally, the scope of a
bibliometric analysis is constrained. Only publications that adhere to the methodology’s
search refinement (“telecommuting”) have been included. The report’s major shortcoming is
limiting scientific results and not assisting various organizations in fully comprehending
telecommuting. Therefore, future research that is interested in evaluating the pattern in
telecommuting publications relevant to key performance indicators is suggested to insert
additional keywords based on various organizations such as “telecommuting” AND
“education” or “telecommuting” AND “banking industry” or “telecommuting” AND “public
and private organizations.” This is critical for determining the most effective key performance
Khairul Hafezad Abdullah / Siti Zubaidah Othman
IJISM, Vol. 20, No. 2 April-June 2022
243
indicators for measuring remote work productivity in various organizations.
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