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This paper aims to explore the implications of virtual work arrangements on employee knowledge hiding (KH) behaviour and the different strategies of KH used by employees in these arrangements.

Following a grounded theory approach to understanding KH, 21 semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with employees engaged in virtual working setups. The data collected from these informants were then analysed using qualitative methods.

The study revealed that virtual work arrangements increase employee KH behaviour because of three reasons: ease of hiding, digital burnout and loss of control. Further, the study found that rationalized hiding is the most commonly adopted strategy by employees engaged in virtual work arrangements, while inclinations towards evasive hiding strategy decrease in this arrangement.

This is the first study in knowledge management literature that seeks to explain KH in the virtual work context.

Literature on virtual and other new ways of work is diverse and confusing, indicating a need for a framework to structure and systematize the related terminology. The purpose of this empirical study is to address the lack of empirical research on how well (and if at all) characteristics of employees' national and occupational culture determine the management challenges and employees' satisfaction with virtual work arrangements.

Empirical data was gathered using case study research. An Estonian and a Russian company operating in the service sector suited best as they had a diverse multinational workforce and several years of virtual work experience.

The paper concludes that occupational culture determines much better than national culture the employees' attitudes towards and satisfaction with virtual work arrangements.

The main limitation arose from the lack of national culture research in East European countries: for many of these nations, national culture dimensions/characteristics (e.g. like offered by Hofstede) are still unknown.

The results help service organizations' managers to prepare a multinational workforce better for virtual work, knowing ahead the potential challenges and thus train the employees based on their occupational culture background.

The paper contributes to theory by offering a framework which enables to systematize the diverse range of terminology used for new, flexible ways of work. The case studies reveal a huge gap waiting to be filled with research on national culture characteristics of East European countries.

However, while the benefits of adopting virtual work structures have been extensively discussed, ethical considerations have been largely ignored in the existing literature. To fill this gap, this study aims to investigate the key ethical issues associated with virtual workplaces. It also aimed to examine the various preventive measures that could be considered for effectively managing such challenges.

The study adopted an inductive research approach using qualitative methodology. Data was collected by executing the technique of dual moderator focus group discussion. By using the purposive sampling technique, the sample comprised 24 software professionals from emerging economies such as India. All sessions were transcribed, and the data were analysed using the content analysis method.

The study reports some interesting results related to various ethical issues and the preventive measures to handle such issues in virtual workplaces. The themes that emerged related to ethical issues have been categorised into three broad categories, i.e. People, Technology and Culture. In contrast, preventive measures have been reported in both contexts, i.e. pre-preventive and post-preventive measures. Furthermore, few recommendations have been made to improve virtual work experiences for remote work professionals. The identified themes and categories were classified and arranged in “Network View”, a feature embedded in Atlas.ti7 software, to analyse the conceptual relationships.

The findings may help managers regarding various ethical issues in virtual work settings. It may also provide an insight to the managers about the benefits of adopting preventive measures for handling ethical dilemmas in virtual workplaces in an emerging economy like India.

The study may be seen as one of the earliest attempts to consider the lingering debate on ethics in virtual workplaces. The findings of the study have implications for further theoretical research on the topic.

This paper investigates how global talent management processes are adopted and implemented in a virtual organization to successfully address the challenges of global work arrangements and the sustainable human and social outcomes that can be achieved.

Adopting a single, exploratory and critical case study methodology, this paper analyzes a global distributed company, Automattic Inc., to provide in-depth and rich insights on successful business process management in the human resources (HR) domain.

The findings offer some exemplary and valuable lessons in sustainable human resource management for firms in all sectors on how to embrace global talent management in a more creative and sustainable way – and the benefits in terms of efficiency and effectiveness that can be derived – by identifying talent through auditions, recruiting by inspiring others to apply, developing talent by sharing the value of learning and retaining talent by having fun.

The study contributes a more rounded understanding of successful business process management in the HR domain. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this is particularly relevant and timely for all organizations (traditional or virtual) venturing into successful global work arrangements.

The unanticipated disruption caused by the ongoing coronavirus pandemic led to the extensive use of flexible working arrangements. In such a boundaryless work environment, however there are significant concerns, especially around inclusivity and discrimination. Given the increasing concerns surrounding hybrid and remote work settings, the authors investigated whether the extent of working in substantially flexible working arrangements relates to employees’ perceived ostracism and inequality, distinguishing between working from home, in a hybrid mode or from the office. In addition, the authors theorised that in flexible working arrangements, high-quality leader relationships, such as leader–member exchange (LMX) and servant leadership are likely to reduce perceptions of ostracism and inequality. Based on a survey of 161 professionals, who worked to varying degrees in flexible working arrangements, the authors found that employees who worked extensively in a hybrid mode were less likely to report experiences of ostracism and inequality in comparison to employees who worked mainly from home or in an office. Furthermore, a moderation analysis showed that the effects of LMX and servant leadership on perceptions of ostracism and inequality were much stronger for individuals who work in hybrid working arrangements than those who work at the office or from home. This research makes an important contribution to our understanding of how different degrees of flexible working arrangements affect employees by demonstrating the role of high-quality leader relationships in reducing perceptions of ostracism and inequality at different degrees of work flexibility.

To achieve their business objectives, many companies are exploring varying degrees of virtuality or remote working (away from the office location), facilitated by technology. Managers have to decide when, where, and for whom such virtuality is appropriate to ensure that rewards are maximized for the staff and for the organization. This paper explores the challenges for managers in establishing virtual offices or teams. It suggests that successful virtual offices require more than just technology. They require radical new approaches to evaluating, educating, organizing and informing workers. The real challenge in maximizing the virtual experience lies in designing the organization structure and processes to achieve agreed goals.

The purpose of this paper is to document the experiences of team members in order to map the kinds of experiential outcomes that they report while working in virtual teams. The study will help to expand the understanding of various issues related to virtual work arrangements from the perceptions of information technology (IT) professionals in India.

The study was conducted by adopting an exploratory approach with the use of qualitative methodology. The method of sampling adopted was purposive cum snowball sampling. Semi-structured interviews (face-to-face and telephonic) were conducted by taking a sample of 52 respondents, who are employed by IT organisations. The interviews were recorded digitally, transcribed and analysed by using the content-coding approach followed by a thematic analysis.

The foremost contribution of the study is that it has considered the various motivators and the skills required to be a successful virtual team player. Significant challenges encountered in virtual teams have also been identified.

Virtual teams in the contemporary business environment are evolving with an unparalleled velocity. The findings of the paper have implications for managers, team leaders and change agents regarding how to transform and sustain in the rapidly changing business context of emerging economies.

In the extant literature on virtual teams very little is known about how individual members perceive this new form of teamwork. The findings of the study advance research on the topic of virtual teams by lending empirical support with respect to the interaction effects between IT and human beings. Recommendations have been provided for individual team members and organisations.

Virtual work presents new challenges for managers compared to using ordinary, face‐to‐face work practices. The purpose of this paper is to show how different virtual work types are related to different challenges that require different managerial and co‐operation approaches.

Empirical data were gathered during a period of two years using a questionnaire (3,156 respondents from 323 companies representing different Estonian service sector branches) and interviewing.

The paper concludes that a higher level of work virtuality leads to a lower level of work satisfaction, mainly due to inappropriate management techniques and problems related to information and communication technology‐mediated communication.

The sample consists of only service sector organizations, limiting generalization of the results to the practice of manufacturing companies.

The results will help managers of service organizations to prepare and choose appropriate management techniques for working with virtual workforce.

The paper shows that service sector organizations operate with different degrees of virtuality that lead to different challenges and consequently require different management techniques.

The paper uses the dramaturgical perspective for conceptualising trust development within temporary virtual teams. The underlying assumption is that temporary teams do not have the luxury of time that, according to the traditional trust theories, enables familiarity among team members and promotes trust development. Yet, in these teams, trust needs to develop quickly and it is important that it lasts throughout the short duration of the project lifecycle. Using the metaphor of a theatre, a dramaturgical perspective on trust relationships is adopted and is used to present actors, co‐actors and audience as all playing a key role in scripting, staging and performing virtual plays. The dramaturgical perspective provides an illustrative approach for uncovering the interactions between key players. As it is argued, these interactions elicit the process of trust development within the temporary setting of virtual teams, constituting a type of trust relationship that is mutually negotiated and jointly constructed. This type of trust is called “situated” and emerges from the scripted, pre‐scripted, co‐scripted, re‐scripted and unscripted computer‐mediated interactions of virtual players. The implications for theory and practice are discussed.

The authors investigate empirically emigrants' intentions and motivations to work virtually for their country of origin. The study focuses on a country with substantial, persistent emigration and explores theories of diaspora investment motivation and virtual work characteristics.

An exploratory questionnaire survey on migrants' intentions and motivations to work virtually for their country of origin was conducted in late 2016 on 3,022 respondents, all emigrants from Lithuania.

Migrants are more likely to engage in virtual work for their country of origin when they experience negative career satisfaction, perceive the country of origin as their home country, belong to a recent wave of migration and possess occupational skills commonly employed in virtual work.

A major limitation of this study conducted on emigrants from one country is that it does not permit generalisation of the results to other countries and regions. It is limited, thus, to making general comparisons to what is known in the literature about migrants from other nations. However, the authors have identified some of the main factors which have theoretical and empirical import for future research, and the auhtors have argued that the results of our study possess only a few inherent geographic limitations. This research is a starting point for studies connecting diaspora motivation and their linkage to virtual work as a mean of human capital gain for the country of origin. The findings inform the conceptual model of virtual workplaces of Kumpikaite-Valiuniene et al. (2014) in relation to migrants and support Nielsen and Riddle's (2010) migrant diaspora investment motivation theory.

Understanding how and when organisations will work virtually with migrants from the country of origin as well as knowing more about their needs and expectations for migrants' knowledge, skills and work experience are necessary for future research on the attractiveness and potential of virtual work. As a first step in exploring diaspora motivation for virtual work, the authors recommend conducting qualitative research that would investigate more deeply the various motivations migrants can have for virtual work with their country or origin. This study revealed that females are more motivated to work virtually compared to males. However, gender issues have not been explored in this survey and constitute a future study direction.

Moreover, future research should examine what areas of human capital, commercial and cultural knowledge can be productively delivered by migrants working virtually for organisations in the country of origin, which will contribute to greater understanding of knowledge transfer and human capital issues (“brain gain”) in the migration literature. Further, specific forms of virtual work should be studied empirically for the extent that they provide opportunities for self-development and for satisfaction in personal lives and work careers. In addition, the potential business and societal benefits for the country of origin should be studied further through examining diverse dimensions of family, community, work and careers. These studies will expand knowledge of virtual work and related research phenomena and will contribute to this gap in the migration and human resource management (HRM) literature studies.

This research is a starting point for studies connecting diaspora motivation and their linkage to virtual work as a mean of human capital gain for the country of origin. The findings inform the proposed conceptual model of virtual workplaces by Kumpikaite-Valiuniene et al (2014) in relation to migrants and support Nielsen and Riddle (2010) migrant diaspora investment motivation theory. The authors have identified some of the main factors that have theoretical and empirical import for future study. This research topic and new related studies on diaspora have the potential to contribute to the fields of migration, HRM, work and career studies.