申論題

Much of the attention on the future of work has been on the relationship between artificial intelligence (Al), robotics, and humans. A limited focus has been on what will be desired in the work itself. Knowledge work will increasingly be performed virtually, continuing the trend accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Either due to real estate costs or locational preferences. individuals are going to prefer working remotely. One of the foremost organizational challenges of the future of work is how to maintain a culture when most, if not all, the employees are virtually distributed and may not even be employed by the organization in traditional ways. Organizational identification is a key challenge in virtual work (Wiesenfeld, Raghuram, & Garud, 2001), making it imperative to establish a virtual but perceptible culture. On a fundamental level, one has to ask the question--What does organizational culture even mean in a virtual and distributed setting when many of the workers are independent agents? How is an organizational culture created, maintained. and sustained in virtual and globally distributed settings?
       Research is needed to understand how a combination of physical and virtual settings can be used to create and maintain a culture built around the acceptance of ambiguity. What is the role of physical settings in helping create such a culture? Going beyond social interactions, are physical spaces also about serendipitous knowledge interactions? What is the role of virtual meetings in creating and maintaining culture? Will social trust wane in importance in virtual settings? Will organizational culture be based on expertise-based trust? Or will social trust be even more important than ever? If so, then what type of social interactions will be needed through digital means to build and maintain organizational culure? The experiences with intensive virtual work during the pandemie can help us understand what we learned best to do in virtual scttings and the aspects of "physical location" work that were missed the most. 

       New organizations that emerge as the harbinger of the future of work--for example, Uber– will increasingly rely on algorithms to cficiently match workers with work, monitor work performance, and decide on compensation for work. However, there is a great deal of dysfunction. ofien acting to erode any culture, which results from algorithms being so central to work. Employees may increasingly harbor a sense of injustice toward algorithmie work allocation and compensation. This would then make their engagement with future work organizations purely transactional and may engender dysfunctional behavior from employees (Malhotra. 2020). Research is needed to understand the relationship between the extent of the use of algorithms by organizations and employees' sense of procedural and distributive justice.

       Organizations are also increasingly realizing that the knowledge required to create new and innovative value may largely reside outside the traditional boundaries of the firn. Therefore, organizations will have more open, engaging external independent agents ("gig workers") outside the organization to get work done. Customer communities. open-source development, and crowdwork are all early manifestations of the future of work. Work teams may co from inside and outside th e the organization who come : together on an ad hoc basis. Work itself may comprise individuals be of short duration. n, with teams forming ng and disbanding and reform ming as needed.

        At any given time, an organization may be managing several such work teams with individual agents working together on multiple projects. In turn. individuals can and will have multiple reporting lines. Consequently. organizations will be more matrixed than ever before (Ford & Randolph. 1992). Managing ing in the matris rix can be very challeng equiringjuggling g ofmultiple reporting lines and multiple performance reviewers. This may require heavier reliance on the use of algorithms to manage work.                Central to the culture of organizations is work motivation. We need to rethink the theories of motivation for the future e of work (Steers, Mowday, & s Shapiro, , 2004). ). While initial t theories of worker motivation tended to focus or ivation, future of work theories will need to focus on intrinsie motivation. Beyond extrinsic motivation. such as fair compensation for work. intrinsic motivation may drive what an individual chooses to work on and with whom. Attracting the right "intrinsically motivated" workers through the right intrinsic motivators is going to be essential for organizations in the future. Dual incentive sche chemes to appeal to both the intrinsic and extrinsic motivations of individuals will need to be leveraged. Research is needed on the right intrinsic motivators and their combinations, depending on the context, that are effective in attracting independent agents from within and outside the organization.

        Collaborative opp sportunities and learning have been two of the most salient intrinsic motivators, which will only increase in intensiy in the future of work. The challenge facing organizations is presenting work as a collaborative opportunity whereby the output is dependent not just on an amalgamation of individu dual knowledge but more importantly on the integration of knowledge so that the combination yields inno ovative o outputs (Majchrzak && Malhotra a. 2020). The first wave of such organizations is represented by Wikipedia and Open Source Sofiware Development. In the future, the entire work output will be collaboratively created through large- scale collaborations that openly engage all interested d agents inside and across oranizations. Research is needed on how technology can support large-scale collaborations. and outside the organization and How can the technology allow collaborators to stay connected and alert them in real time to each other's knowledge and the need for integration of emerging knowledge? As machines and Al perform routine work in the future. I re, human agents ts will need to learn to perform non-routine an re not the domain of machines, Leaming to perform such tasks will require feedback-both negative as well as positive. The challenge for organizations of the future will be how to provide such feedback through algorithms. However, automatic feedback, ofien in the form of ratings, may be negatively perceived and impair leamning. Rescarch is needed on how to design algorithm-based feedback to be perceived positively? What will be the role of human managers in fedback provision? Will human feedback be more for exception handling and creative work? There is very little research on human-machine synergies in feedback provision, especially as it relates to the future of workwhich itself may be performed through human-ac chine synergies.

         Inclusion in the workplace is becoming critical for the success and functioning of organizations (Shore, Randel, Chung. Dean. Holcombe. & Singh. 2010).  In future work environments, the need for inclusion is going to become even more crucial. As our societies become more neuro-diverse, organizations of the future will have to focus on the design of work to include. Jeverage, and thrive on neurodiversity. At the same time, organizations will also have to focus on enging,rey demographic diversity. es especially racial diversity, when designing inclusive work. Algorithm- driven organizations should be more inclusive by reducing human biases in hiring for, assigning. and rewarding work. However, human biases have been shown to plague the development of algorithms. Research is needed on the governance ce of algorithn ithms to avoid the biases that act against inclusion. Research should also focus o on what we learned about inclusivity in performing intensive virtual work during the pandemic and the implications for the future of work. 

References: Malbotra. A. (202 1) The Postpandemic Future of Work. .Jownaw of Management. 47(5): 1091-1102,