MIT Sloan Management Review Article on Managing the New Tensions of Hybrid Work

Developing corporate culture and inspiring innovation were tough three years ago, when everyone sat in adjoining cubicles all week, drinking coffee from the same pot. Now that hybrid work appears to be here to stay, with many employees dividing their working hours between home and a company location, these challenges are magnified. New research shows that managers are deeply concerned about the downsides of hybrid arrangements for two domains that are, beyond most others, inherently social: Although evidence of damage to innovation and culture remains largely anecdotal, the potential threat is real.

We define hybrid work as a flexible balance, with working hours divided between a company location and elsewhere, typically a home office. Its endurance became manifest during the two years we studied market-leading global corporations that had adopted the model during the COVID-19 pandemic. All of the managers in our sample said that their companies intended to create long-term hybrid strategies or had already done so.

About the Author

Jonathan Trevor is an associate professor of management practice at the University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School and author of Re:Align: A Leadership Blueprint for Overcoming Disruption and Improving Performance (Bloomsbury, 2022). Matthias Holweg is the American Standard Companies Professor of Operations Management at Oxford’s Saïd Business School. The authors are grateful to Ricoh Europe for supporting the research.

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