Exploring the Moderating Effect of Interdependence on Performance and Satisfaction in Virtual Work Environment

With the explosive proliferation of smart devices that may be connected to the fast Internet, virtual desktop interfaces(VDI) are being implemented in enterprises allowing employees to work anywhere anytime in the same technological environment. As this kind of systems are intended to raise the work performance, a research model is constructed from the review of research literature on service quality and work design. The model consists of VDI system service quality (ubiquity, availability, compatibility, security and ease of use), system satisfaction, task performance and job satisfaction. As VDI is designed as a support system for cooperative work, the task interdependence adopted from the work design theory is postulated here as moderating the effect of user satisfaction on task performance and job satisfaction. 147 data points were collected by a survey of VDI users in a global firm and subjected to PLS analysis. Interestingly, ubiquity and compatibility seem to be not statistically significant for user satisfaction while availability, security and ease of use of VDI system are statistically significant. Task interdependence is found to be a relatively strong mediator between system user satisfaction and task performance, however, interestingly, the coefficient come out as negative. This may indicate that the influence of VDI user satisfaction on task performance would not be high in highly interdependent tasks. Considering that VDI is intended for supporting `interdependence` in cooperative work, this finding is a bit surprising. In-depth discussions are made in the discussion followed by future research directions.