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In recent years, there has been a growing trend of individuals willingly opting for employment positions that do not fully use their education, skills and abilities, a phenomenon known as voluntary overqualification. This study aims to investigate the factors that influence and the formation mechanism of this emerging phenomenon. Drawing upon social cognition theory, this study explores the relationship between work values and voluntary overqualification while also examining the mediating role of the future work self and the moderating role of perceived marketability.

This study used a longitudinal approach, collecting data through questionnaires administered at multiple time points. The sample consisted of 607 employees from various departments of five Chinese companies. Regression analysis using the PROCESS macro in SPSS was used to test the research hypotheses.

The results indicate a positive relationship between employees’ work values and voluntary overqualification. Furthermore, this relationship is mediated by the future work self. Additionally, perceived marketability plays a moderating intermediary role in the whole model.

This study contributes to the overqualification literature by introducing a novel type of overqualification and unveiling the mechanism by which work values influence voluntary overqualification. The findings provide insights for understanding and managing employees who are voluntarily overqualified.

The world of work is changing and creating challenges and opportunities for the employment inclusion of young people with disabilities. In this article, the perceptions held by young adults with disabilities regarding participation in the future of work are examined.

One-on-one interviews were conducted with Canadian young adults (ages 18–36 years) living with a disability. Participants were asked about their thoughts regarding the impact of the changing nature of work on their labor market involvement and career aspirations. A thematic analysis was performed to identify and examine emergent salient themes.

In total, 22 young adults were interviewed; over half held secure employment. Career aspirations and work-related decisions were primarily shaped by a participant's health needs. The future of work was seen as a more proximal determinant to employment. Digital technologies were expected to impact working conditions and create barriers and facilitators to employment. Participants who indicated being securely employed held positive expectations regarding the impact of digital technology on their work. Participants working precariously held negative appraisals regarding the impact of digital technologies on employment opportunities. The role of technological and soft skills was critical to participating in a labor market reliant on advanced technology. Participants reported barriers to developing job skills related to their disability and their work arrangements.

This research highlights the importance of considering changes in the future of work, especially the digital transformation of the economy, in the design of initiatives which promote the employment inclusion of young adults with disabilities. Despite the significance of the changing nature of work, supporting health needs and encouraging access to secure work arrangements also remain paramount.

The study explores the perceptions of graduates on their employability and future of work, in light of the challenges thrown upon by new vicissitudes in the work environment. The study intends to assess the preparedness of management graduates in facing the challenges and uncertainties of the actual job market.

Semi-structured and informal interviews with 65 management graduates from UK, Canada, Italy and India. The thematic analysis uncovered the concerns and areas to develop for management graduates regarding their future employability perceptions.

The authors benefited from a unique opportunity to capture the views and experience of graduates who are undergoing management education during this ambiguous period. Three major themes were developed on how to develop oneself for an ambiguous future of work which includes Psychological strengths, Skill enhancement and Future mindset. The study also unearthed the major focus areas for better employability from a graduate perspective.

Practical contribution comes from strategies to prepare university graduates for sustainable careers. Study hints at the importance of work experience, adaptability and skill enhancement in meeting the challenges of the future.

From a global approach this is one among the first studies to look into the graduate perspective of their preparedness for future work.

The world is witnessing the advent of a wide range of technologies like machine learning, big data analytics, artificial intelligence, blockchain technology, robotics, additive manufacturing, augmented and virtual reality, cloud computing, Internet of Things and such others. Amidst this concoction of diverse technologies, the future of work is getting redefined. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to understand the future of work in the context of an emerging economy like India.

The authors undertook a qualitative research with a positivist approach. The authors undertook expert interviews with 26 respondents. The respondents were interviewed with a semi-structured open-ended questionnaire. The responses were content analyzed for themes. System dynamics was applied to explicate the phenomenon studied.

The authors found that the future of work has multiple facets. The authors found that in future, organizations would not only use automation for lower end routine manual jobs, but also for moderate knowledge-centric tasks. Future jobs would have significant data dependency, and employees would be expected to analyze and synthesize data for sense making. Another finding pointed out that in future, individuals would be constantly required for skills upgradation and thus learning would become a continuous lifelong process. In future, individuals would get short-term tasks rather than long-term secured jobs. Thus, job flexibility would be high as freelancing would be a dominant way of work. Organizations would reduce dedicated workspaces and would use co-working spaces to reduce office space investments. In future, jobs that are impregnated with novelty and creativity would remain. A finding of concern was that with the advent of automated technologies a larger portion of workforce would lose jobs and there could be widespread unemployment that might lead to social unrest. The provision of universal basic income has been advocated by some experts to handle social crisis.

This research is based on an organization centric view that is anchored in the resource-based view and dynamic capabilities. The research contributes to the conversation of human resource co-existence with automated technologies for organizations of tomorrow. Thus, this work specifically contributes to strategic human resource with technology capabilities in organizations.

These research findings would help organizational design and development practitioners to comprehend what kind of interventions would be required to be future ready to both accommodate technology and human resources. For policy makers, the results of this study would help them design policy interventions that could keep the nation’s workforce job ready in the age of automated technologies through investments in automated technology education.

India is bestowed with one of the largest English-speaking, technically qualified young workforce working at lower salary levels than their developed county counterparts. The advent of automated technologies ushers in challenges and opportunities for this young qualified workforce to step into future. This is the first study from India that deliberates on the “future of work” in India.

Concerned with the rising social, economic and technological disruption in the world, the impact of the technological disruption had a significant impact on the future of work and it has been tremendously increased in past five years. Further, with the rising uncertainties and COVID-19 in the picture, the trends suggested by earlier literature might not hold. The purpose of this paper is to understand the evolution of technology in the workplace in the past five years, how does it stand during COVID-19, will the trend continue in light of disruption caused by COVID-19, the impact of COVID-19 on the future of work.

The paper uses bibliometric techniques to identify the conceptual and intellectual structure of the studies. The programming language named after authors Robert and Ross (R) software and Biblioshiny were used to identify the structures and the themes underlying those structures, which further helped in forecasting the trends of the studies.

The paper shows the drastic evolution of the studies in past few years and different technologies implemented at the workplace in the same period. It further identified the influential papers, authors, journals in the area with an emphasis on the various collaboration network among authors and countries. It also paints a picture of the impact of COVID-19 on the future of work. The paper finally concluded with future directions for the emerging trends and themes in the area in aftermath of COVID-19.

This paper takes the microscopic view of the studies carried out in the past five years as during the past five years, the studies related to this topic have grown tremendously and accordingly many trends have been identified but with the COVID-19 pandemic in the picture, the trend is likely to get accelerated. This paper takes this view and identifies the trends in the future by identifying the themes based on periods and at different levels – organizational, managerial, individual.

The author argues that we must stop and take a look at what our insistence on human labour as the basis of our society is doing to us, and begin to search for possible alternatives. We need the vision and the courage to aim for the highest level of technology attainable for the widest possible use in both industry and services. We need financial arrangements that will encourage people to invent themselves out of work. Our goal, the article argues, must be the reduction of human labour to the greatest extent possible, to free people for more enjoyable, creative, human activities.

This study aims to investigate whether and how a high turnover rate stimulates employees to engage more in learning behavior.

Drawing on self-regulation theory, the authors suggest that the motive for employees to engage in learning behavior is to improve themselves. Such a need can be activated when they reflect on themselves and realize the discrepancy between their current selves and desired future selves. The authors argue that the employees’ perceived poor performance at daily work may induce their desire for self-improvement via making the future work selves salient, and in turn engage more in learning behavior. This is particularly so when turnover rate is high because employees may be alert of and concerned more about their own poor performance. In an experience sampling study, the authors obtained evidence for these hypotheses.

When turnover rate was high, employees’ poor performance increased salience of future work selves, which in turn facilitated their learning behavior. This relationship was not significant when turnover rate was low.

Contrary to the typical view that high turnover rate leads to knowledge loss for the companies, the present study findings suggest that it could also serve as a motivational factor facilitating employees’ learning behavior, which is an important way to increase knowledge pool of the companies.

This paper draws on research undertaken for the State of Play in the Futures Field (SoPiFF) project and aims to explore the contribution of futures work to understanding and resolving aspects of the global problematique and to examine the social interests evident in futures work.

The project used an integral meta‐scanning framework to review publicly available futures material. The framework categorizes futures work according to organizational type, social interests, methods, domains and geographic location (details of the methodology are outlined in the accompanying introductory paper as well as on the web site created for the project).

The futures field has made a series of significant contributions to understanding the global problematique and has contributed to the pre‐conditions for its resolution. However, the bulk of mainstream futures work does little to improve the preparedness of humanity for looming future crises. More innovative futures work remains marginalized and largely ignored by the powerful and the wider public. There is a strong case for more effective political engagement than has occurred hitherto.

Further research is needed on shared definitions for the field, interactions with the media, public and other fields of enquiry and action, measurement of individual foresight capacity, strategies for achieving influence – particularly in the political sphere, the role of subcultures within the futures field and suitable publishing strategies.

The paper recommends specific actions to promote and publicize good work, provide annual digests of futures‐related information, develop and use focused briefings, provide support for “cutting‐edge” futures work, further develop advanced futures methods, create new alliances, build the social capacity for foresight and strengthen the nexus between foresight and philanthropy.

The paper uses an integral meta‐scanning framework to provide a novel analysis of the futures field. The findings will be of value to all futures and foresight practitioners that are interested in the future success of the field.

The world of work and education is changing at a rapid pace, driven by continued technological disruption and automation. The future is uncertain and difficult to envisage. A futures thinking scenario planning approach is used in exploring and guiding education policy makers on how best to respond to the range of possible futures. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

This study utilizes elements of prior scenario planning methodologies to devise a practical model of preferred and plausible likely scenarios in the context of rapid and continuing technology disruption. Based on the notion of “impact and uncertainty,” two possible future alternatives of work and learning were developed. Incorporating elements of the possibility space scenario framework and a vignette approach of current emergent technologies, this paper assessed the usefulness of the preferred and likely outcomes.

While preferred future scenarios entailing collaborative styles such as human–machine cooperation, smart virtual active learning campuses and living knowledge learning environments may produce more desirable benefits for education stakeholders, the more likely plausible scenario is one based on continued disruptive technologies. Automation, artificial intelligence and the advent of 5G network technologies will drive customization and personalization in higher education delivery and revolutionize the work landscape in the immediate future. Universities will need to embrace and respond to these changes.

The paper gives insights into how universities can prepare their students for future of work and improve their employability. In addition, this author recommends ways in which HEIs can leverage these newer technologies to drive educational services and commercial value.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze why and when the future work self affects employee creativity.

Survey data were collected from 171 supervisor–employee dyads in four Chinese enterprises.

The results indicate that the future work self has a positive effect on employee creativity. Further, thriving at work mediates the links between the future work self and employee creativity. The authors also theorize that overall fairness moderates the positive effects of the future work self on thriving at work and employee creativity.

The study supports the self-determination perspective regarding the future work self and strengthens the application of this perspective in an effort to understand the relationship between the future work self and employee creativity.