1. Introducing the Future of Work: Key Trends, Concepts, Technologies and Avenues for Future Research

The Future of Work is not a new idea; however, following the Covid-19 pandemic, it has become not only a major discourse in all aspects of life but a central pillar of government policy worldwide. The pandemic has mainstreamed a plethora of terms (see Table 1.2) for how we work in a post-Covid world—hybrid working, remote working and co-working are just some of artefacts that have travelled from the Future of Work to the now of work.

The Future of Work is both a short-term and long-term concern, and while central to industrial strategy, it is by no means limited to this domain. This is particularly evidenced in the European Union where the Future of Work plays a central role in the updated European Industrial Strategy and the European Pillar of Social Rights Action Plan, and is a field of action for the European Research Area and its policy agenda (European Commission, 2022). At the time of writing, the European Commission has invested c. €1.9 billion in areas related to the Future of Work, including research and innovation, economic competitiveness and social protection measures (European Commission, 2022). It should not be a surprise therefore that the Future of Work is of significant interest to scholars. Despite this interest, it would seem to be something everybody understands but nobody can explain.

This chapter seeks to provide greater clarity on what the Future of Work is or might be. The remainder of the chapter begins with a discussion on the definition of the Future of Work and proposes a working definition for the purposes of this book. This is followed by a brief overview of key trends, themes and concepts on the Future of Work before providing an overview of the topics discussed in the remaining chapters of this book. We conclude with a discussion on some potential future avenues for research and highlight the need for inter- and multidisciplinary research, evidence to validate the many assumptions and hypotheses underlying extant Future of Work research and policy, greater use of futures methodologies and a future of research agenda that is even in its coverage of population and employment cohorts, regions, sectors, workspaces and organisation types.

The term “Future of Work” in itself poses at least three significant challenges for researchers, practitioners and policymakers alike. Firstly, the study of the future requires boundaries. Predicting the future in the social sphere is particularly difficult as there are no strong laws (as in the sciences), and identifying and aggregating relevant information is complicated by its dispersal across different people and organisations (Chen et al., 2003). In particular, one needs to be careful not to fall foul of the so-called futures fallacies (Dorr, 2017). Thus, any future projection should not:

The second challenge relates to what we mean when we say “work.” A quick review of the literature will reveal that when we talk about the Future of Work it may be related to a particular activity (what), the process of working (how), the worker (who) and the workplace (where), or any combination of these. Thirdly, the Future of Work can be viewed from a variety of perspectives from macro to micro, from a society, industry, firm or an individual level (Stoepfgeshoff, 2018).

When dealing with the future, it is always a movable feast. The Future of Work is not new but rather is the latest iteration of an established phenomenon where the current wave of interest is largely driven by the impact of Covid-19 on accelerating technology adoption and new flexible work arrangements. To paraphrase Webster (2006), there is both change and persistence.

Given its prominence in the public discourse, it is unsurprising that increasingly scholars are arriving at the conclusion that there is no clear understanding about what the Future of Work is (Stoepfgeshoff, 2018; Santana & Cobo, 2020). The scholarly literature is remarkably scarce on precise definitions of the Future of Work. Instead, the literature on the Future of Work is defined by characteristics or narratives. This is even a feature of reviews of Future of Work research. For example, Balliester and Elsheikhi (2018) define the Future of Work along five dimensions in which changes brought about by megatrends such as technology, climate change, globalisation and demography impact the world of work, namely (1) the future of jobs; (2) the quality of jobs; (3) wage and income inequality; (4) social protection systems; and (5) social dialogue and industrial relations. Mitchell et al. (2022) do not define the Future of Work but categorise the most influential research into four key research streams: (1) workplace relations, (2) workplace change, (3) diversity and (4) personal skills. Similarly, in their review, Kolade and Owoseni (2022) do not define the Future of Work but rather identify three underlying theoretical perspectives from the literature, namely (1) socio-technical systems theory, (2) skill-biased technological change and (3) political economy of automation and digital transformation.

This is not to say that there are no definitions but perhaps one must look elsewhere, for example, to practice. Gartner (2022) defines the Future of Work as “[…] the changes in how work will get done over the next decade, influenced by technological, generational and social shifts.” The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) defines the Future of Work as “a projection of how work, workers and the workplace will evolve in the years ahead” (SHRM, 2022). In the same vein, Deloitte defines the Future of Work as “encompass(ing) changes in work, the workforce, and the workplace” (Schwartz et al., 2019). While Gartner (2022) puts a specific, albeit moving, time horizon of ten years, both Gartner (2022) and SHRM (2022) include a consideration of a time still to come unlike Schwartz et al. (2019). However, while Gartner’s definition focuses exclusively on how work (the what) will be done in the future, the SHRM and Deloitte definitions are wider including how workers (the who) and the workplace (the where) will evolve. Moreover, Gartner recognises that the Future of Work is impacted by the outside world and accommodates these shifts. None of these definitions recognise that the Future of Work may be inflected by the actor perspective. As such, for the purposes of this book, we propose the following definition of the Future of Work which accommodates these existing definitions as well as important dimensions recognised in scholarly literature, namely technological, socio-economic, political and demographic changes (Balliester & Elsheikhi, 2018; Anner et al., 2019; Santana & Cobo, 2020; Mitchell et al., 2022):

The Future of Work is a projection of how work, working, workers and the workplace will evolve in the years ahead from the perspective of different actors in society, influenced by technological, socio-economic, political, and demographic changes.

Based on our discussion on the definitions of the Future of Work, it is clear that extant thinking is heavily inflected by a number of predominant trends, themes, concepts and technologies which can be viewed at different levels of granularity. At a high level, technology, climate change, globalisation and demographic changes are common megatrends cited in the literature (Balliester & Elsheikhi, 2018). At a more granular level, the focus breaks out into a wide range of trends—the impact of restructuring on efficiency including supply chain optimisation and outsourcing, ageing populations, increased migration and mobility, greater emphasis on work-life balance and wellness, amongst others. More recently, of course, the role and impact of Covid-19, and indeed, future pandemics, has become more prominent and is likely to remain part of the discourse for some time.

In a recent article, Paul Deane (2021) said: “when thinking about the future, we often overemphasise the role of technology and underestimate where technology fits in a social context.” This has undoubtedly been true in the case of the Future of Work. The predominant theme of literature, from the academy, industry and policymakers, has focussed on the implications of greater digitalisation, automation and analytics on the Future of Work. Unsurprisingly, much of this discourse focuses on advancements in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and associated labour-market and societal effects, although more often than not the distinction between narrow task-focussed AI and more wide-ranging artificial general intelligence (AGI) is ignored.

Academia is neither ignorant of these trends nor deaf to concerns. In their recent review of the 32 most influential publications in the field, Mitchell et al. (2022) categorise the research into four themes. These are further subdivided into 11 sub-themes—workplace relations (well-being, job insecurity, grievance process, mentoring); workplace changes (evolution of the workplace, telecommuting); diversity (workplace diversity, gender diversity, age discrimination) and personal skills (people skills and storytelling). Echoing Dorr (2017), it is important to remember that Future of Work research merely provides “snapshots of an inherently dynamic process.” Santana and Cobo (2020) discuss the thematic evolution of Future of Work research over four periods from 1959 to 2019 based on a systematic mapping of 2286 documents, which is largely consistent with Mitchell et al. (2022). These are summarised in Table 1.1. While it is clear that specific perspectives, fears, insights and recommendations are of their age, there are also persistent themes (e.g., telework) and themes that go in and out of vogue (e.g., employment).

In addition to thematically analysing the evolution of Future of Work research, Santana and Cobo (2020) further categorise themes into four dimensions—technological, social, economic and political/institutional. Technologies such as automation, digitalisation, platformisation and AI are both creating new forms of work (e.g., gig working) and enabling flexible work arrangements (e.g., hybrid, remote and shared working) (Santana & Cobo, 2020). Furthermore, AI is introducing new forms of management through algorithmic management, which in turn require new types of skills to train, monitor and optimise such tools. Key terms and concepts in the Future of Work are presented in Table 1.2.

The transformative effect of technologies, and specifically digital technologies, on how society operates and how social actors interact with each other is well-documented and much-discussed (Martin, 2008; Reis et al., 2018; Lynn et al., 2022). The technological impact on work has a knock-on effect on individuals and citizens. There are real and serious concerns about how new forms of work and working arrangements affect the social dimension of the Future of Work (Santana & Cobo, 2020) and social cohesion more generally (Anner et al., 2019). While benefitting some parts of society, innovations such as remote working and gig working may exacerbate other social problems and anxieties such as work-life conflict and burnout, as well as other outcomes including career development and progression and job satisfaction (Santana & Cobo, 2020). Weil (2014) has argued that innovations such as the gig economy can result in “fissured workplaces” where the bulk of employees are no longer central to the operation of the company due to outsourcing, franchising, and supply chain optimisation. Furthermore, the adoption of algorithmic management and other analytical techniques for employee surveillance while improving efficiency, performance and productivity may have adverse effects on employee voice and individual autonomy (Anner et al., 2019; Figueroa, 2018). Weil (2014), Anner et al. (2019), ILO (2017) and others argue that such advancements may, if not checked, result in a decline in wages and working conditions, while increasing levels of precarity and vulnerability experienced by workers. In contrast, Willcocks (2020), while suggesting that there will be considerable workforce and skill disruption due to technological advancements, suggests that claims on net job loss are exaggerated. Indeed, he argues that not only do extant studies fail to factor in dramatic increases in the amount of work to be done, they also fail to consider ageing populations, productivity gaps and skills shortages. Increasingly, this view is finding increasing support from several leading academics (Bessen et al., 2020; Malone et al., 2020).

The social and economic dimensions of work are inexplicably linked. When discussing the economic dimension of the Future of Work, the impact is different whether taking the perspective of the economy, sector, the firm or the individual worker. While technological advancements and increased efficiency, performance and productivity have a significant positive impact for economies and firms, the extant Future of Work literature highlights some major risks related to employment, wage inequality and job polarisation (Anner et al., 2019). As discussed, the impact of automation, robotics and AI on job numbers and wages is a significant topic of debate. Undoubtedly, some jobs will be replaced and some tasks automated, but equally new jobs and tasks will be created and to some extent AI will augment human capabilities (Bessen, 2018; Malone et al., 2020). Some commentators highlight some of the serious risks that a more globalised, gig- and remote working future might present to ensuring decent working conditions, minimum standards for workers and social cohesion (Anner et al., 2019). For example, Balliester and Elsheikhi (2018) note that the combination of labour-market changes and technological trends represent at least eight risks to existing working conditions. These include flexibility in hours and location, short-term and casual contracts, longer working hours, low pay and payment uncertainty, reduced occupational safety and health policies, dissolution of workers’ organisation and bargaining power, erosion and absence of legal protection, and informality (Balliester & Elsheikhi, 2018).

“The future is already here, it’s just not evenly distributed,” a quote ascribed to the American science-fiction writer, William Gibson, foreshadows a key aspect of the discourse on the Future of Work and particularly the unevenness of the potential impact of technology on work (see, for example, Bessen, 2018 and Malone et al., 2020). Managing the adoption, and associated disruption, of these transformative technologies requires policymakers, political institutions and organisations to develop new organisational forms, policies and regulations to support and incentivise socially responsible adoption and use (Santana & Cobo, 2020; Willcocks, 2020), but also to retrain and transition workers to new occupations (Bessen, 2018; Malone et al., 2020; Mindell & Reynolds, 2022). This requires a significant multi-stakeholder effort and investment not only to train and upskill the workforce of the future and avoid potential skills inequities but to reduce adverse effects from disruption to longstanding societal norms and expectations. It may require not only a re-imagination of work but education, social protection, regulations and the role of institutions in the design and safeguarding the Future of Work. Given the delicate balance between social and economic policy, and the wide range of stakeholders affected by the Future of Work, governments need to consult and liaise with all stakeholders. This should not be limited to employers and labour organisations but should include the public, community organisations, education providers, data protection authorities and civil liberties advocates as early and transparently as possible so that suitable governance mechanisms are put in place to provide not only input but oversight on Future of Work initiatives.

The nine remaining chapters in this book provide perspectives and insights that advance our understanding and help make sense of the Future of Work. They demonstrate that while there has been substantial intellectual effort in the conceptualisation of the Future of Work, we are still at an early stage in theorisation, exploratory and explanatory research, and more importantly actionable outcomes for practice. They are presented as follows.

Chapters 2 and 3 are dedicated to the impact of the increasing adoption of digital technologies in the workplace on employees’ well-being and professions, respectively. More specifically, Chap. 2 focuses on new ways of working (NWW) which are defined as work practices that are enabled by complex information systems and virtualised organisational formations. The authors adopt self-determination theory (SDT) as a lens to explore the impact of NWW on three employees’ universal needs, namely autonomy, competence and relatedness and the actual and potential implications for employees’ well-being. The findings of this review suggest that relatedness is set to play a critical role in supporting the needs for autonomy and competence in increasingly digital workplaces.

Chapter 3 responds to an ongoing and growing debate on how professional roles are impacted and somewhat threatened by technology. This chapter looks at two professions that have been listed by the World Economic Forum (2018) among the most “at risk,” namely accounting and law, and how they may be impacted by the shift from process and knowledge-oriented activities as a result of the adoption of AI and data analytics. The authors point out that professionals do not always face “standard” situations that can be solved using predetermined rules. On the contrary, most cases require individual professionals to make decisions based on their own judgement; this cannot and should not be replaced by an algorithm. The authors argue that while advancements in digital technologies can supplement and support human judgement, professionals must continue to apply autonomy and reflexive considerations to form independent judgments.

Chapter 4 turns the attention to the so-called gig-economy and related flexible and contingent forms of working that are enabled by digital platforms. More specifically, this chapter delves into how “gig-work” organisations have developed digitally enabled control systems that leverage AI and Machine Learning (ML) to manage their workforce. While the use of algorithmic management provides clear benefits for digital platforms in terms of higher efficiency and lower risks and labour costs, it also creates challenges for management practices, legislators and policymakers, as well as for workers. These challenges are discussed in more detail in the chapter, but they essentially point to the fact that the perceived independence from managerial control that is typical of gig work does not necessarily result in increased autonomy for workers and that closer attention needs to be paid to a number of aspects of gig work, such as the lack of various forms of support, that may detrimental for both gig workers and organisations.

Trust is arguably the cornerstone of any work relationship and the foundation of any social interaction. The increasing use of digital technologies, particularly those systems that leverage advancements in AI and ML, is likely to change the trust dynamics between employees and the organisation. This is the topic of Chap. 5, which is built on the argument that common practices of advocating the benefits and strengths of new technology are unlikely to be effective in building/protecting employees’ trust as they fall short when it comes to supporting perceptions of organisational character or capability. The authors identify and discuss various challenges posed by the use of smart technology in the workplace (e.g., automation of leadership) and highlight a number of pathways to maximise the benefits of smart technology without undermining organisational trust.

Chapter 6 is dedicated to the role of leadership in the Future of Work. Leadership heavily relies on a leader’s social presence which consists of three dimensions, namely co-presence, behavioural engagement and psychological involvement. While there is an extensive body of research exploring the factors that affect any of these three dimensions, little is known about how leadership dynamics change in a virtual and distributed workplace. The authors present a review of academic literature on leadership and the Future of Work and highlight and discuss four underexplored areas which represent avenues for future research, namely leadership in the context of virtual teams, leader-follower relationships in a digital workplace, the development of human and social capital in the digital world, and leadership in the platform-mediated economy. The authors point out the need for organisations’ leaders to pay closer attention to both the range of digital technologies available and how these can be used to achieve organisational goals.

One of the main consequences of increasing globalisation is the growing diversity of the workforce in terms of race, ethnicity, gender, age, religion, culture, nationality and language. In addition to this, the use of digital technologies has facilitated the implementation of virtual and distributed teams implying that many organisations no longer have a dominant, traditional or homogenous pool of workers, nor do they have universal structures or approaches to work and working time. This poses both opportunities and challenges for organisations and these are presented and discussed in Chap. 7. The authors argue that the combination of a more diverse workforce, organisational leaders who are more aware of detrimental discriminatory attitudes and behaviour, and digital technologies that can transform the nature of work provides organisations with a unique opportunity to rethink their definition of success and what roles individual workers can play within the organisation to help organisations succeed.

The adoption of digital technologies not only changes how and where people work but also the skills required to play an active role in the digital economy and how these skills are acquired and developed. Chapters 8 and 9 discuss the learning aspects of the Future of Work. Chapter 8 delves into key skills required for the Future of Work and explores how these skills can be developed and co-created through formal yet flexible higher education and the potential impact this may have on the higher education system. The authors first outline the growing demand and pressure coming from the evolution of work and how this is affecting the higher education system and then highlight the need for universities to move away from a technical focus on skill development to a more holistic view of human-centred development. To conclude, the authors argue that higher education institutions should focus on providing students with innate capabilities and strategic awareness which will help them to identify and ask the right questions, to think critically, to explore silences and inequities, and to seek their own wisdom. In so doing, universities will prepare students for the various “futures of work” that they may be facing rather than a predetermined Future of Work that is based on current fixed disciplinary knowledge and predetermined career trajectories.

Chapter 9 discusses the role of digital technologies in the context of human resource development, specifically their role in learning and development (L&D). In this chapter, the authors highlight how, despite the growing attention received over the last few years and particularly during the Covid-19 pandemic, digital learning is still defined in a rather general all-encompassing way in the L&D literature. They provide an overview of L&D technology-based applications that would fall under this definition (e.g., AI, augmented and virtual reality, analytics, learning management systems, etc.) and describe their current use in this field. The authors then discuss how the drive for shorter, faster and less costly training and learning methods may undermine learning quality if digital learning methods are not designed with learning pedagogy in mind and call out the need for further research on synchronous and informal digital learning capabilities and effectiveness before conclusions can be reached concerning the effectiveness of digital learning in the context of human resource development.

Finally, Chap. 10 is dedicated to ethical considerations for the Future of Work. It considers how the adoption of digital technologies generates a new set of ethical questions regarding their contribution to workers’ personal flourishing and to the good of society. In this chapter the authors argue that there is a need for an agent-centred approach to ethics, based on goods, norms and virtues, to analyse the ethical implications of digital technologies on the Future of Work.

This chapter introduces some of the challenges with Future of Work research, not least the lack of common definition in the scholarly literature. To address this gap, we define the Future of Work as “a projection of how work, working, workers, and the workplace will evolve in the years ahead from the perspective of different actors in society, influenced by technological, socio-economic, political and demographic changes.” While we summarise the key trends, themes and concepts in the literature, this is largely from a social science perspective. Given that technology, and specifically digitalisation, automation, robotics and AI, is the predominant theme in the Future of Work discourses, we call for more inter- and multidisciplinary collaboration so that a more nuanced discourse on the impact of specific technologies or types of technologies on both jobs and tasks emerges. In particular, with the exception of a relatively small number of authors (see, for example, Malone et al., 2020 and Selenko et al., 2022), the differences between narrow AI and artificial general intelligence are under-appreciated and consequently under-researched.

The increased acceptance of new forms of working including remote working, hybrid working and other forms of teleworking during the Covid-19 pandemic has led to a renewed interest in where work is performed and how this may impact the design of workspaces. During the pandemic, work was increasingly performed in spaces beyond the commuting distance to the employer’s work site, typically in their homes. However, there were notable increases in workers not only working remotely in holiday accommodation but also co-working spaces. In some instances, these co-working spaces were other workers’ homes although not necessarily workers of the same employer (Rossitto et al., 2017). This so-called hoffice network phenomenon, in itself, may provide significant opportunities for future research. Contemporaneously, there has been a surge in interest in how extended reality (XR) technologies in all its various forms can be applied to work. Technologies such as virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), mixed reality (MR), telepresence and mirror worlds have the potential to transform how we conceptualise workers and workspaces but also how we train, reskill and transition workers (see, for example, Anderson & Rainie, 2022). We encourage researchers to consider how these new technologies and workspaces impact how workers conceptualise where and how they perform work and the implications for workspace design, social interactions, management and organisational forms, amongst others.

Given the size and scope of the book, each chapter provides only a selected snapshot of a given topic. Notwithstanding this, each chapter identifies a potentially rich vein of research to validate or invalidate the hypotheses and arguments made to support a given academic or policy position. This does not mean one should be bound to the arguments of today and the timeline of the future. While there is an increasingly mature set of tools in social sciences for conceptualising the future, these are often not employed in scholarly research on the Future of Work or rather social science research, to echo Bainbridge (2003), is constrained by methodological rigour or value commitments. Thus, we call for not only greater use of futures methodologies but also research across more specific and longer-term time horizons. For policymakers, in particular, this will enable greater consideration of actionable interventions that can be taken within a more realistic timeframe.

Future of work literature, like much scholarly research, is often led by the more developed countries often focussing on the larger and more advanced commercial entities worldwide. This is particularly the case when discussing technological innovation and disruption. Small and medium-sized enterprises represent approximately 90% of businesses and more than 50% of employment worldwide and even higher in rural areas (World Bank, 2021). The Future of Work will impact different regions, sectors and organisation types in different ways and at different time scales. Similarly, the changes brought about by the Future of Work will impact different demographics and population cohorts, directly and indirectly, at different times. Successful adoption of new forms of work, workplaces or working arrangements is likely to depend on the worker’s mindset at a given time. Accordingly, we call on researchers to ensure that Future of Work research is equally distributed across population demographics and cohorts, regions, sectors and organisation types.

Earlier in this chapter, we described the Future of Work as a movable feast characterised by persistence and change. For each generation, there is a new generation of Future of Work research, and for each Future of Work scholar, to borrow from Chambers (2010), a “cornucopia of potentials.”