OTOH, look at some of the open-source projects that are managed successfully by people scattered across the world who rarely, if ever, meet in person. I've see

OTOH, look at some of the open-source projects that are managed successfully by people scattered across the world who rarely, if ever, meet in person. I've seen the problems with telecommuting that you describe, but I think it's attributable to culture and expectations. If you're adding a layer of telecommuting to a business that's already got well-established conventions for operating out of an office, and all of the baseline expectations, communication channels, feedback cycles, etc. are adapted to face-to-face interaction, then telecommuting probably isn't going to work well, because the telecommuters are going to be significantly out of step with the rest of the company. If you want it to work, you may actually need to eliminate the office, replace it with a core set of online tools, e.g. wikis, message boards, IRC channels, and force all internal communication through those media, until a new set of conventions and expectations emerge that optimizes 'virtual office' productivity.