Summary

Competition in business is the effort of two or more parties acting independently to secure the business of a third party by offering the most favourable terms. Seen as the pillar of capitalism in that it may stimulate innovation, encourage efficiency, or drive down prices, competition is touted as the foundation upon which capitalism is justified. According to microeconomic theory, no system of resource allocation is more efficient than pure competition. Competition, according to the theory, causes commercial firms to develop new products, services, and technologies. This gives consumers greater selection and better products. The greater selection typically causes lower prices for the products compared to what the price would be if there was no competition (monopoly) or little competition (oligopoly).

However, competition may also lead to wasted (duplicated) effort and to increased costs (and prices) in some circumstances. Similarly, the psychological effects of competition may result in harm to those involved.

Teleworking

Teleworkers are people who work for companies, but not in companies. That is to say, they do company work at home, usually on computers.

Teleworkers communicate with their supervisors by telephone or fax. They usually transfer information from their own computer to the office computer by electronic means. Some companies also give video phones to their home workers so they can see colleagues when they speak to them.

Teleworking is becoming popular in Ukraine. There are many reasons for this increase. The biggest advantage for companies is that teleworking reduces their running costs. Fewer employees at work means less office space. Also, computers are now quicker and easier to use, and the price has fallen sharply. For a company which needs more manpower, one of the cheapest solutions can be to train employees in computer skills and to give them a personal computer to use at home.

But before you apply for a job as a teleworker, you should ask yourself if it is really the best situation for you. Bill Farrar, who works for a big paper recycling company, hasn't enjoyed his last three months at home. 'I often fall asleep at the computer because I don't have anybody to talk to,' he says. 'So, at lunchtimes, I often go to the nearest bar – which is just at the end of my road – and then the afternoon is gone!' Next week, he's starting a new job in a company where there are five people in one small office. 'I can't wait!' he says.

Current trends

Teleworkers need not necessarily work from the home. A more recent extension of teleworking is distributed work. Distributed work entails the conduct of organizational tasks in places that extends beyond the confines of traditional offices. It can refer to organizational arrangements that permit or require workers to perform work more effectively at any appropriate locations, such as their homes and customers' sites – through the application of information and communication technology. An example is financial planners who meet clients during lunchtime with access to various financial planning tools and offerings on their mobile computers, or publishing executives who recommend and place orders for the latest book offerings to libraries and university professors, among others.

Summary

Advantages of teleworking

• Teleworking options increase the employability of marginalised groups, such as mothers with small children, the handicapped and people living in remote areas.

• Teleworking can ensure that a company is virtually open for business around the clock.

• Teleworking has also enabled offshore outsourcing.

• Teleworking has actually forced service providers to increase network performance, improve reliability, architecture, and their strategies.

• Teleworking allows for travel avoidance that saves on time, traffic jams, office and parking space; and, therefore, results in cost savings for the employer.

• Teleworking provides employee flexibility, eases the working parent's burden, increases employee productivity, and reduces absenteeism.

• Virtual offices allow employers to keep valuable employees, allow employers to hire employees otherwise not available, and have facilitated productive re-engineering of order-management and customer service processes.

• From an environmental point of view, if 10 % of the workforce teleworked once a week, we'd save more than 1.2 million gallons of fuel, resulting in 12,963 tons of avoided air pollution.

Disadvantages of teleworking

• Teleworking has come to be viewed as more a complement rather than a substitute for work in the workplace.

• Intranet access for the teleworker may be slow due to telephone or modem connections and may be blocked for security reasons. Remote use of groupware, browsing, and downloading may be excruciatingly slow; and therefore, the capacity for work over a telephone line is greatly reduced, although the advent of broadband is changing this limitation.

• As for the life of the home teleworker, fellow employees in the home office sometimes resent home teleworkers. The home teleworker becomes socially isolated and further job advancement is more difficult to achieve. Work hours at home can either be not enough or too much, and there may be too many distractions at home.

• Employers risk loss of data confidentiality and integrity because of the lack of access control in the home office.

• Certain office functions such as corporate culture, loyalty, communication, access to people, and managerial control have yet to be replaced by the virtual office.

• Lastly, the cost of computing at the main office is increased.