Sub-theme 16: A Good Life for the Fluid Workforce: Illusion or Reality?
Call for Papers
The labor force of most economies and enterprises has become more diverse over the last decades. Thus, we have seen that
the “standard working relationship” has been declining in many countries and that the contractual statuses of workers have
become more varied (ILO, 2016). Moreover, not all employment relations today take place within a bounded space, a structured
time, or with a task-based job description (Minbaeva, 2021). All these triggered the emergence of workforce referred to as
freelancers/independent contractors, temporary gig workers, paid-crowdsourced workers, moonlighters, workers borrowed from
partners, volunteers, or hybrid workers that was recently proposed to be grouped under an umbrella term “fluid” workforce
(Altman et al., 2021; Capgemini Research Institute, 2020; Vaiman, 2021). Overall, there is no one common definition of fluid
work, except the acknowledgment that many people today do essential work for organizations that cannot be easily subsumed
under the classical employee–employer relationship and that this workforce is also an integral part of the broader workforce
ecosystem (including also regular employees) and are vital for creating value for organizations (Altman et al., 2021).
Organizations use a fluid workforce to address a specific need when it comes to specialized skills (e.g., related
to some specific projects), cost reduction (e.g., related to savings on benefits such as pensions, or office space needed),
quality (usually these are specialized experts in some specific field), speed (with deep expertise comes agility and speed),
and globalization efforts (i.e., experts needed in some specific country without sending expats) (e.g., Altman et al., 2021;
Capgemini Research Institute, 2020; Vaiman, 2021).
Fluid work is overall not new but has significantly expanded
in scale. Especially, the Covid-19 crisis has rushed its arrival together with the advent of a new broader “Future of Work”
(World Economic Forum, 2020). Thus, the lockdowns have triggered the proliferation of remote or hybrid work, automation, and
reliance on working arrangements other than full-time workers because also organizations became more fluid as jobs are being
deconstructed, reinvented, and more and more automated (Boudreau & Donner, 2021). The line between who is an employee,
and hence part of the workforce, and who is not has also become blurry. This potentially offers more flexibility in working
arrangements but also poses challenges to workers, enterprises, and society.
Unlike regular workforce, fluid
workers are often not on the organization’s payroll, have temporary contracts, enjoy either no or limited benefits including
social security, and their work is not as of yet well-regulated from a legal standpoint in many contexts (e.g., Davis-Blake
et al., 2003; ILO, 2016). These consequently question also the quality of their good life (e.g., Caza et al., 2021) such as
their wellbeing or work-life balance.
Fluid work and its implications are being widely discussed uncritically
in the practitioners’ circles (e.g., Altman et al., 2021; Capgemini Research Institute, 2020), which provides a one-sided
view on this matter. Despite these, growing media and public attention generated because of worker classification and misclassification,
discrimination, harassment, and wage and benefits issues, academic research in the area is still relatively scarce. As the
diffusion of the fluid workforce (e.g., gig workers) and relevant technologies (ILO, 2021) generated many of these legal and
ethical concerns (Tursunbayeva et al., 2021), we believe it is important to understand implications from fluid work arrangements
for workers, enterprises, managers, and society more broadly so that we can organize and manage fluid workforce for the “good
life” (and happiness) of all of these actors.
Therefore, we invite conceptual and empirical contributions
that have been inspired by the multidisciplinary, multi-level, multi-stakeholder, multi-method, and culture-sensitive approaches
(Caligiuri et al., 2020) on diverse types of the fluid workforce in different sectors (e.g., the reliance on the fluid workforce
in healthcare during the Covid-19 pandemic) as well as on their relations and interactions with employees with traditional
contract types, especially if these can provide learning for their organization and management, as well as contribute to a
good quality of their life. A non-exhaustive list of relevant research topics includes:
Who are fluid workers (e.g., occupations, roles) in different sectors, and have they been rising?
What are the main benefits and challenges related to organization and management of fluid workforce for employees, for organizations, and more broadly for societies?
What are the (physical and digital) experiences and perceptions of the fluid workforce on the quality of their interactions, socialization, collaboration, and more broadly on their jobs and life?
To what extent has Covid-19 been a trigger for the diffusion of the fluid workforce?
What are the strategies, processes, and practices related to the organization and management of the fluid workforce (e.g., their planning, job design, redeployment, career management, well-being, or remote and flexible working)?
What are the conceptual models for fluid work employment relationships, leadership, teamwork, motivation, and engagement?
How has the workforce architecture been affected by the arrival and diffusion of the fluid workforce?
What is the role of technology (e.g., HRIS; AI, machine learning, analytics) and data in the diffusion of fluid work, as well as its impact on the organization and management of the fluid workforce?
What data sources are available to grasp the scale of the fluid workforce internationally?
Are there any ethical and regulatory issues emerging related to the organization and management of the fluid workforce?
What does the future hold out for the fluid workforce?
References
- Altman, E.J., Schwartz, J., Kiron, D., Jones, R., & Kearns-Manolatos, D. (2021): “Workforce Ecosystems. A New Strategic Approach to the Future of Work.” MIT Sloan Management Review and Deloitte, April 2021, https://sloanreview.mit.edu/projects/workforce-ecosystems-a-new-strategic-approach-to-the-future-of-work/.
- Boudreau, J., & Donner, J. (2021): “Are You Ready to Lead Work Without Jobs?” MIT Sloan Management Review, https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/are-you-ready-to-lead-work-without-jobs/.
- Caligiuri, P., De Cieri, H., Minbaeva, D., Verbeke, A., & Zimmermann, A. (2020): “International HRM insights for navigating the COVID-19 pandemic: Implications for future research and practice.” Journal of International Business Studies, 51, 697–713.
- Caza, B.B., Reid, E.M., Ashford, S.J., & Granger, S. (2021): “Working on my own: Measuring the challenges of gig work.” Human Relations, first published online on June 21, 2021, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00187267211030098.
- Davis-Blake, A., Broschak, J.P., & George, E. (2003): “Happy Together? How Using Nonstandard Workers Affects Exit, Voice, and Loyalty Among Standard Employees.” Academy of Management Journal, 46 (4), 475–485.
- ILO (2016): Non-standard employment around the world: Understanding challenges, shaping prospects. Report, https://www.ilo.org/global/publications/books/WCMS_534326/lang--en/index.htm.
- ILO (2021): World Employment and Social Outlook 2021: The role of digital labour platforms in transforming the world of work. https://www.ilo.org/global/research/global-reports/weso/2021/WCMS_771749/lang--en/index.htm.
- Minbaeva,
D. (2021): “Disrupted HR?” Human Resource Management Review, 31 (4),
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.hrmr.2020.100820. - World Economic Forum (2020): Resetting the Future of Work Agenda: Disruption and Renewal in a Post-COVID World. https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_NES_Resetting_FOW_Agenda_2020.pdf.
- Capgemini Research Institute (2020): The Fluid Workforce Revolution. How a blended workforce strategy is key to success in the age of AI and automation. https://www.capgemini.com/insights/research-library/fluid-workforce/.
- Vaiman, V. (May 20, 2021): The Rise of Fluid Work [Video]. YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFsbigIl6ic.