Slide 13 of 14
Notes:
Here is one reason why telecommuting makes little sense in some countries.
Taking the street price of a PC in the USA as 100, and using the admittedly crude comparison of per capita GDP as a basis, we can calculate what I have called the “perceived relative cost” of a PC for consumers or enterprises in different countries or regions. In real money terms let’s say a PC costs one thousand euros. If your take home earnings are 52,000 euros the perceived cost is one week’s pay. If your take home earnings are only 26,000 euros the perceived cost is twice as high - two weeks pay. With a take home pay of 13,000 euros, four weeks pay.
In Denmark the perceived cost is close to that in the USA.
But look at Greece, where the perceived cost is more than twice that in the USA. A good strategy for Denmark would be a bad strategy for Greece.
And Denmark also provides a good example of how an understanding of these differences can affect development of a successful local, national or company strategy.
The Danish government introduced a scheme whereby companies can provide employees with a PC for use at home for private purposes without the employee or the company incurring tax liability. In the Danish context this is attractive to the employee, the cost to the company is marginal, and the revenue loss to government is effectively nil. The result is to further accelerate use of PCs at home in the country that already has one of the highest take up levels in Europe. More PCs in the home means more learning and experience and better opportunities for telework, electronic commerce and other information society applications. But the same approach in Greece would have quite different and possibly damaging results.
