A. (Anna) Tillmann

Over time societal, technological and economic changes have reflected in labour market changes and these issues have been important and challenging for organizations. Changes in the labour market cause inevitable needs for adaptions and transformations throughout organizations in terms of their working community, shift of boundaries and the nature of work itself (Schwab, 2017). An organization needs to understand the content and the implications of labour market changes, in order to act upon these dynamics effectively.

Labour market changes in the 21st century are defined as rapid but transformative since changes have significant impacts for business operations, societies and cultures (Xu, David & Kim, 2018). In the literature the current societal and technological changes are referred as the fourth industrial revolution. The fourth industrial revolution is a complex phenomenon since it impacts all spheres of the economic systems and lacks clarity about what organizations need to consider when encountering it (Popkova, Ragulina & Bogoviz, 2019). In comparison to former revolutions, as the second or third industrial revolution, which mainly affected technical aspects such as process adaptions, the 4th revolution has far-reaching consequences for organizations. It goes way beyond technical adaptions and re-defines the nature of work and the way people relate to work (Diaconu, 2019). This highlights the need to study the impacts of the fourth industrial revolution from an HR perspective.

In order to study how the 4th industrial revolution impacts organizations from an HR perspective it is important to understand what the developments of the 4th revolution and the corresponding challenges for organizations are. Since the 4th industrial revolution is not considered as a clear concept, organizations ask for clarity about what to consider in their organizational and HR strategies. Therefore, this research outlines environmental changes in terms of market disruptions and internal organizational challenges related to HR.

The goal of this research is to investigate how organizations are impacted by these 4th industrial revolution developments and how they respond from an HR perspective in terms of new HR practices and workforce measures. We study the organizational responses in terms of new HR practices or workforce measures and investigate the concrete implementation processes to document the connected uncertainties, on-going dynamics and challenges. Organizations need to understand (A) what these challenges are, (B) how to manage them effectively with regards to the nature of work and the organizational work relation and (C) how the changes in the organizational work relationship affect possibilities for labour sourcing and the organization of work. This can be summarized in the research question of: How organizational responses to the fourth industrial revolution – reflected in workforce measures and HR practices – impact the organizational work relationship and the nature of work?

Responses to the fourth industrial revolution in terms of HR practices and workforce measures

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In order to study the research question, we investigate these issues in various units of a large organization undergoing major strategic change mirroring key aspects of the fourth industrial revolution. The organization decided to partly respond to on-going dynamics by introducing a new technology. The operational introduction of the new technology and the debates around it can be seen as the embodiment of the changes that are happening in people’s work situations. In this study, the implementation of the new technology is used as a setting to study how organizations respond to changing market conditions and how these changes impact the nature of work and the organizational way of working. To practically study the phenomenon, three papers are established which should provide insights on the research question. The first paper aims to identify how our organization sees the key developments in its environment and how it explains its strategic response with a specific focus on new workforce measures and new HR practices it aims to introduce. The introduction of a new HR practice is considered part of a broader organizational response to the changing labour sourcing needs of the organization and the labour market trends in the fourth industrial revolution. The triggered impacts by a new HR practice and the key dilemmas are investigated. It provides an overall understanding of the evolving market situation and key environmental and organizational developments. It takes a strategic HR perspective and investigates the impacts on different units of the organization with regards to new HR practices from different contexts. The different contexts consider the external market trends, organizational requirements and key managerial dilemmas related to new HR practices.

The second article becomes more concrete and analyses the change process related to the organizational response to the introduction of a specific new HR practice. We investigate how different actors involved understand the introduction of the HR practice, how they interact and engage and what they consider to be key challenges and tensions as part of the on-going change process. This article takes the perspective of stakeholders and managers and how they understand the situation and purpose of the new HR practice. The second paper will incorporate a comparison of different views, definitions, resistances and problems. The definition of opposing views and perspectives among internal and external factors raised by various individuals will lay the foundation for effective change management.

Responses to the fourth industrial revolution in terms of HR practices and workforce measures

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Lastly, the third article builds upon the first and the second article and zooms into the key dilemmas in organizational responses to the fourth industrial revolution with regards to the nature of work, the working community and the organizational functioning.

The goal of paper three is to zoom into the most important dilemmas and analyse people’s fundamental fears and choices related to the new HR practice illuminating how the broader organizational changes provide concrete challenges for people engaging with them now.

By zooming into the most important dilemmas, possible pathways on how to deal with these dilemmas can be demonstrated. New pathways to overcome these dilemmas are related to new forms of working e.g. a new nature of work or a changing organizational work relationship.