Search results

This paper aims to provide a comprehensive review of the literature examining the relationship between automation and employment, with a focus on understanding the debates of automation displacement and enablement, and the mediating role of employee augmentation in driving organisational productivity.

A semi-systematic literature review was conducted across the areas of automation, work-design and employee skills over the past 3 years.

The academic literature was found to still be in its infancy, with empirical evidence in an organisational setting scarce. However, research suggests that automation does not cause job displacement or a negative impact on employment. In contrast, data suggest that automation leads to new job creation, task enlargement and skills enhancement. The findings suggest that organisations should employ augmentation alongside automation to drive productivity, in a way that promotes strong work-design, builds trust and leverages human creativity. A further recommendation is made for organisations to focus on continuous upskilling to combat the shortening shelf-life of skills and adapt to the constant change brought around by advances in automation.

Through a synthesis of diverse perspectives and academic evidence, this paper contributes to the nuanced understanding of the complexities surrounding automation and its impact on employment. This literature review underscores the need for organisational strategies that leverage augmentation to harness productivity savings, alongside a renewed focus on widespread employee skills enhancement. In addition to creating new recommendations for practitioners and organisational leaders, this paper also furthers the research agenda through a list of research gaps for scholarly attention.

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic organisations are adapting to a new environment of global talent shortages, economic uncertainty and geo-political turmoil. As an outcome, the organisational strategies of digital transformation and remote working have been accelerated in the race to boost innovation, competitivity and attract staff. This has led to the rise of two new organisational dynamics: the increase of virtual teams (VTs) and focus on widespread work automation. However, despite the rise of these two related phenomena, literature does not connect them as one research area, and there is a gap in the understanding of the new employee wellbeing needs they form and how to respond to them. This paper aims to bridge this gap through a systematic literature across these areas.

This paper conducts a systematic literature review across the areas of leadership, VTs and automation over the past three years.

In this review, a number of newly arising employee wellbeing needs are identified such as fear of job displacement, a lack of self-efficacy and social cohesion, poor relationships with leaders and more. In addition, this paper recommends three fundamental research gaps to be addressed by future studies: 1. How to build and cultivate the new leadership skills needed to support VTs and workplace automation? 2. How to design work in a way that caters for employee wellbeing needs when operating in VTs or hybrid teams and working on or with workplace automation? 3. How to design work in a way that builds and emphasises the new employee skillsets to support augmentation and solves for the new employee wellbeing needs experienced by workplace automation?

This paper provides a novel contribution to literature by centralising current schools of thought across the cross-disciplinary themes and synthesising literature to recommend new wellbeing and leadership skills for organisations to focus on, alongside producing a new research agenda for scholars to focus.

This study is the maiden attempt to understand the influence of four specific sources of employee support (SES), on the life insurance agents’ retention (AR) with the mediation of felt obligation (FO) in the context of the life insurance industry.

This study adopted a quantitative methodology and used the partial least squares-structural equation modelling to test the hypotheses of the study. Using convenience sampling method and a web-based questionnaire, this study gathered data from agents (n 265) of life insurance companies located in the central region of Malaysia.

The results reveal a positive relationship between all SES and AR. This means when agents perceive higher levels of support from their supervisors, peers, technology and mentors, they are more likely to remain in the industry. Contrary to the expectations, FO does not mediate the relationship between SES and AR, indicating that SES directly influences AR without the involvement of FO.

This study is the first to explore how an integrated model of SES influences AR within the Malaysian life insurance industry. The model takes a comprehensive approach, incorporating various SES including the less studied perceived technological support in influencing AR through the framework of social exchange theory.

Even after establishing their business successfully, many business owners get demotivated, and it leads to unwillingness to grow. This study aims to propose a comprehensive model that represents interrelationships among various personal factors affecting “unwillingness to grow.”

The personal factors for unwillingness to grow were identified by extant literature, and expert interviews were conducted to establish the contextual relationships among these factors. The interrelationships among the filtered variables have been done using interpretive structural modeling (ISM) and MICMAC analysis was done to determine the importance of each factor in influencing “unwillingness to grow.”

In total, 30 personal attributes were identified from previous literature, out of which 15 were selected for the final study. The result identifies 7 variables having a strong impact on “unwillingness to grow.” These attributes are “absence of strong network,” “lack of vision,” “lack of proactiveness,” “reluctance to involve external consultants,” “absence of/small founding team,” “lack of ambition” and “improper attitude.”

The research attempts to create a bricolage of all the important personal factors affecting “unwillingness to grow.” Previous researches have used few attributes, but with the help of ISM, a graphical modeling technique, it became possible to draw interrelationship between 15 attributes. Further, with the help of MICMAC, the importance of each attribute was determined.