Recontextualising remote working and its HRM in the digital economy: An integrated framework for theory and practice

Abstract

Continuing advances in digital technology are producing widespread changes in work and its management, particularly where work is performed away from an employer’s premises through remote working. Whilst such changes can offer remote workers greater temporal and locational flexibilities, there is growing concern that their work is being insidiously commodified in line with Labour Process Theory to enhance the position of firms in Global Value Chains (GVCs). Integrating insights from these frameworks and relevant fields of scholarship, we examine how the nature and location of remote work and its HRM are being recontextualised. Our systematic analysis of peer-reviewed published empirical findings demonstrates the need to broaden the existing firm-centric focus of the GVC literature to encompass workers and their HRM, particularly as there are increasing numbers of workers operating outside firms using digital technology. It also reveals that the digitisation of the labour process is generating a spectrum of nuanced and unfolding implications for remote workers and their HRM, and a complexity of spatial reconfigurations, which provoke debate and agendas for future research and HRM practice.