Flexible global working arrangements: An integrative review and future research agenda

Work from home practices as corporate strategy- an integrative review

The Covid 19 pandemic led to major changes at the individual, organisational and institutional levels of policy, productive functions, and organising. During Covid 19 morbidity, public institutions enforced social isolation, mandatory self-isolation, quarantines, and administrative regulatory lockdowns, which led to a movement away from the physical, material world and into an all-consuming digital universe. With growing interest in work-from-home (WFH) opportunities, this article provides an integrative review of 107 papers. It comprises the bibliometric analysis and manual review of the articles, on the basis of which we present an elaborative discussion and agenda for future research. According to the analysis, WFH looks a tad of a double-edged sword in that it may have major but unintended repercussions for institutions, and organizations as well as hidden, positive as well as negative consequences for individuals/employees. One of the significant insight from our analysis was the absence of HR function's strategic or operational input or oversight during corporate WFH strategies. We suggest several theoretical frameworks for further developing, theorizing, and empirically testing various aspects of WFH. Further, we recognise that WFH is becoming increasingly visible as a result of the pandemic scenario and significant technical advancements, which must be reflected in the research. Finally, because WFH represents a significant disruption in how organizations produce work and manage it, we propose employee and managerial consequences as future research agendas.

Walking at the edge: How tempo-spatial nexus forms HRM practices in project-based organizations

Introduction

Research has scrutinized the role of different HRM practices in Project-based Organizations (PBOs) mostly in terms of project success and articulated the challenges of traditional HRM to reconcile with the project context. Nevertheless, HRM practices have been addressed less in PBOs with a practice-based research lens. Particularly, the role of tempo-spatial nexus in shaping such practices in this organizational form has been under-researched, although PBOs provide a very suitable context for doing so.

Methods

Drawing upon a comparative case study in the oil and gas industry of Scotland and adopting a practice-based approach, this research aims to shed light on how HRM practices are shaped and re-shaped in the project-based context. The study, specifically, scrutinizes the role of temporality and space in the formation, adoption and adaptation of HRM practices in these organizational forms.

Results and discussion

The findings reveal that project characteristics, specifically their duration, size and technical properties, induce different temporalities that along with different work locations and inter-organizational relationships, impact HRM practices as a threefold structure.

Remote work and the COVID-19 pandemic: An artificial intelligence-based topic modeling and a future agenda

As remote work has become more common than ever throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, it has drawn special attention from scholars. However, the outcome has been significantly sporadic and fragmented. In our systematic review, we use artificial intelligence-based machine learning tools to examine the relevant extant literature in terms of its dominant topics, diversity, and dynamics. Our results identify-eight research themes: (1) Effect on employees at a personal level, (2) Effect on employees' careers, (3) Family life and gender roles, (4) Health, well-being, and safety, (5) Labor market dynamics, (6) Economic implications, (7) Remote work management, (8) Organizational remote work strategies. With further content analysis, we structure the sporadic research into three overarching categories. Finally, for each category, we offer a detailed agenda for further research.

From travel to virtual work: The transitional experiences of global workers during Covid-19

The Covid-19 pandemic has transformed how global work is conducted in multinational enterprises. There has been a rapid and forced shift from global mobility to global virtual work. Taking a transition perspective and drawing on event system theory, this paper examines the transitional working experiences of global workers amid a global health pandemic. Through 32 in-depth interviews (pre- and in-Covid-19), our findings reveal how this exogenous event has transformed previously unquestioned and enshrined global work routines. By unpacking the transition process, we find that global workers were challenged to reconfigure the structural and relational dimensions of their global work. We disentangle the strategic and sustainable lessons learnt on the future of global working for multinational enterprises.

Navigations for Hospitality Human Resource Management Research: Observing the Keywords, Factors, Topics under the COVID-19 Pandemic

The hospitality industry is one of the most affected by the pandemic, and because of its human close interaction and labor-intensive characteristics, it has left Human Resource Management (HRM) puzzles with organizations’ stabilization and recovery. This study aimed to summarize current research on hospitality HRM research outcomes and trends during the COVID-19 pandemic. Utilizing the PRISMA technique and NVivo software, 102 research articles were extracted and analyzed to highlight to overall achievement and movement of hospitality HRM research under the shadow of the COVID-19 crisis. Considering the main purpose of this study, which was to show the status and prospects, the findings indicated 309 free nodes and 26 secondary nodes based on grounded theory. 7 key themes clustered from the analysis and include “environmental factors”, “industrial factors”, “HRM practice”, “organization”, “employee”, “external outcomes”, and “methodology”. The results demonstrated the COVID-19 pandemic driven HRM transformation. In addition, it sheds light on how research responds to the shifting navigation of HRM within the hospitality context under the COVID-19 conditions.

A Literature Review of the COVID-19 Pandemic’s Effect on Sustainable HRM

The ramifications of the COVID-19 pandemic continue to emerge across all facets of the world of work, including the field of human resource management (HRM). Sustainable HRM, drawing on the triple bottom line elements of the economic, environmental and social pillars of sustainability, provides an ideal basis from which to understand the intersection of the COVID-19 pandemic and HRM. In this systematic literature review, we analyze peer reviewed articles published in the nexus of the pandemic and sustainable HRM, identifying the dimensions and extent of research in this topical area of study. Our CEDEL model—complicator–exposer–disruptor–enabler–legitimizer—conceptualizes our understanding of the role of COVID-19 in sustainable HRM. This paper provides a framework from which future studies can benefit when investigating the impacts of COVID-19, and a comprehensive identification of future research avenues.

The potential of virtual global mobility: implications for practice and future research

Purpose

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced global organizations to adopt technology-driven virtual solutions involving faster, less costly and more effective ways to work worldwide even after the pandemic. One potential outcome may be through virtual global mobility (VGM), defined as the replacement of personal physical international interactions for work purposes with electronic personal online interactions. The purpose of this article is to establish VGM as a theoretical concept and explore to what extent it can replace or complement physical global work assignments.

Design/methodology/approach

This perspectives article first explores advantages and disadvantages of global virtual work and then discusses the implementation of VGM and analyses to what extent and how VGM can replace and complement physical global mobility.

Findings

Representing a change of trend, long-term corporate expatriates could become necessary core players in VGM activities while the increase of the number of global travelers may be halted or reversed. VGM activities will grow and further develop due to a continued rapid development of communication and coordination technologies. Consequently, VGM is here to stay!

Originality/value

The authors have witnessed a massive trend of increasing physical global mobility where individuals have crossed international borders to conduct work. The authors are now observing the emergence of a counter-trend: instead of moving people to their work the authors often see organizations moving work to people. This article has explored some of the advantages, disadvantages, facilitators and barriers of such global virtual work. Given the various purposes of global work the authors chart the suitability of VGM to fulfill these organizational objectives.

Risk Management: Exploring Emerging Human Resource Issues during the COVID-19 Pandemic

The unanticipated coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has hit global business heavily, disrupting the management of human resources across numerous industries. More than 500 articles (indexed in Scopus and the Web of Science) on the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak on emerging human resources issues and related practices were published from 1 January 2020 to 31 January 2021. In this study, we conduct a systematic literature review on emerging studies in the business and management field to explore what the emerging human resource issues are during the COVID-19 pandemic and propose related practices to solve these issues. The analysis of the published literature identifies nine main human resource issues across 13 industries. The findings of this study suggest that COVID-19 has enormous impact on conventional human resource management and requires the theoretical and empirical attention of researchers. The propositions nominate related human resource practices to deal with emerging human resources issues and identify several research venues for future studies in this field.