The Proximity Paradox: How Distributed Work Affects Relationships and Control

Interview data is used to examine how managers enact organizational control when separated from their direct reports by geographic distance. Findings suggest that a need for additional context drives managers to cultivate deeper relationships with their staff, creating an unexpected outcome: working at a distance means managers feel closer to their staff. A theoretical framework demonstrating how context and relationships are related to organizational control is presented and implications for distributed work and organizational control research are discussed