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Industry 4.0 and its leading-edge components are transforming all aspects of human life with wide-ranging repercussions for managing production and workforce in the digital age. The traditional definitions of formal and informal employment are no longer applicable to our world, thanks to disruptions of various nature. The innovation landscape is radically altering the way work is done as well as where it is done, leading to an expansion of the gig economy with its freelancers, contract workers, agile workforce, or independent workforce who are constituting increasingly more temporary providers of labor. In addition to a tension between technological development and loss of jobs at the expense of individuals with lower set of skills, advancing technology is enabling new forms of organizing through facilitating new work arrangements. The new world of work is characterized by short-term contracts, fluidity, fragmentation, transience, temporariness, increased autonomy, and independence, on the one hand, and by precarity, financial instability, job uncertainty, and insecurity embedded in its very fabric, on the other, hence presenting both opportunities and challenges that need to be urgently addressed by researchers and policymakers. The inevitable tension between technology-driven developments in economy and labor markets is further exacerbated by the most recent pandemic and global economic recession, making scholarly and policy discussions all the more relevant.

The world needs to pave a path towards sustainable development to solve global poverty and inequality, thereby ensuring that no one is left behind. The transformative changes brought about by the fourth industrial revolution (4IR), encompassed by the new world of work (NWOW), pose a significant threat to the displacement of jobs, especially in developing contexts, where many jobs are susceptible to automation. This results in a tension between the stakeholder and shareholder perspectives, which results in the phenomenon referred to in this study as the People Versus Profit Paradox. The purpose of this study is to determine business leaders’ perceptions of this paradox by generating an in-depth understanding of its nature and potential consequences. This study generated insights through a generic qualitative research design based on 10 semi-structured interviews with business leaders from multiple industries in developing countries. This study’s major contribution is the development of an up-to-date understanding of business leaders’ perceptions of sustainable development with respect to the 4IR and the People Versus Profit Paradox in developing countries. The two main findings of the study reveal that organisational purpose has changed towards a more inclusive stakeholder perspective, and that business leaders’ perceptions reveal a relative state of bias regarding the current impact of the 4IR in developing contexts. This study aims to inspire business leaders in developing contexts to embrace sustainable development and the disruptive changes brought about by the 4IR, to usher in a sustainable future where no one is left behind.

Looks at the 2000 Employment Research Unit Annual Conference held at the University of Cardiff in Wales on 6/7 September 2000. Spotlights the 76 or so presentations within and shows that these are in many, differing, areas across management research from: retail finance; precarious jobs and decisions; methodological lessons from feminism; call centre experience and disability discrimination. These and all points east and west are covered and laid out in a simple, abstract style, including, where applicable, references, endnotes and bibliography in an easy‐to‐follow manner. Summarizes each paper and also gives conclusions where needed, in a comfortable modern format.

Two major trends – demographic shifts in the working-age population, and the proliferation of web technologies – are having a profound and generally unrecognized effect on the nature and characteristics of work, and on opportunities for the mature workforce. Key features of the workplace point to seven broad work trends. These trends have significant implications for organizations and for older workers. Six interdependent organizational changes are central to the far-reaching effects on enterprises and operating approaches. These changing work characteristics require certain essential behaviors for mature workers to be successful in the contemporary work environment. Such a dynamic workplace provides opportunity to introduce new thinking and propose new models. Realigning organizational and workforce interests calls for developing solutions beyond the individual level, reorienting enterprise capabilities, and reframing of the organization development practitioner role as work ecosystem advisor. High-leverage strategies and systemic interventions, such as multiconstituent initiatives and action research, can be used to influence constructively the multifaceted world of work.

With increasingly precarious work contracts, more remote work, and additional flexibility in the timing of the workday, the new world of work is creating both relational opportunities and relational challenges for modern workers. In this chapter, we pair recent research on human thriving with trends we observe in organizations' efforts to create and maintain a sense of community. Key in these efforts is a new kind of built environment – the coworking space – which brings together remote and independent workers and, increasingly, traditional employees as well. We show that in curating community, or perhaps even the possibility of community, coworking spaces may support the interpersonal learning and vitality that help workers to thrive.

Introduction Consider a hi‐fi loudspeaker manufacturing company acquired on the brink of insolvency by an American multinational. The new owners discover with growing concern that the product range is obsolete, that manufacturing facilities are totally inadequate and that there is a complete absence of any real management substance or structure. They decide on the need to relocate urgently so as to provide continuity of supply at the very high — a market about to shrink at a rate unprecedented in its history.

This paper aims to address the relevance and impact of the fourth industrial revolution through a theoretical and practical perspective. The authors present both the results of a literature review, highlighting the new competences required in innovative workplaces and a pivotal case, which explores challenges and skill models diffused in industry 4.0, describing the role of proper organizational learning processes in shaping new work cultures.

The paper aims to enhance the discussion around the 4.0 industrial revolution addressing both a theoretical framework, valorizing the existing scientific contributes and the situated knowledge, embedded in a concrete organizational context in which the fourth industrial revolution is experienced and practiced.

The findings acquired through the case study endorse what the scientific literature highlights about the impact, the new competences and the organizational learning paths. The conclusions address the agile approach to work as the more suitable way to place humans at the center of technological progress.

The paper explores a specific organizational context, related to a high-tech multinational company, whose results illustrate the empirical evidence sustaining transformations in the working, professional and organizational cultures necessary to face the challenges of the fourth industrial revolution. The research was conducted with the managers of an international company and this a specific and limited target, even though relevant and interesting.

The paper connects the case with the general scenario, this study currently faces, to suggest hints and coordinates for crossing the unfolding situation and finding suitable matching between technological evolution and the development of new work and professional cultures and competences.

Due to the acceleration that the COVID-19 has impressed to the use of digital technologies and remote connexion, the paper highlights some ambivalences that the quick evolution of the new technologies entails in relation to work and social conditions.

The opportunity to match both a literature analysis and an in-depth situated case study enhances the possibility to achieve a more articulated and complex view of the viral changes generated in the current context by the digitalization process.

Work has historically been an important basis of identity, but the sharp decline in the availability of stable attachments to jobs, organizations, or occupations jeopardizes paid work’s capacity to sustain identity. If available work opportunities are increasingly precarious and short-term, can the same be said for identities? Analysis of the efforts of members of an unusual occupational group – stage actors – to support an identity based on unstable work provides insights into the variability and indeterminacy of responses to structural employment uncertainty. Despite manifold identity threats, actors struggle to maintain identity as actors both in others’ eyes and in their own.

The Covid-19 pandemic, which started in China and spread rapidly all over the world in a short time, can be considered as a dynamic struggle that forces all individuals and therefore organizations to act with new strategies. When considered in terms of its effects and consequences, it can even be regarded as the beginning of a new world order. In this new order, individuals who are unintentionally exposed to chaos theories and possible disaster scenarios related to Covid-19, both in their daily life and in organizational life, can make an effort to continue their lives with the increase in their anxiety levels. While this new order, which shakes the vital balance, forces individuals to struggle, the managers of the organization become a part of this struggle. In addition to the individual struggles of the employees, organizations are also in a separate struggle as providing the necessary support. In this chaos environment, it is important that the psychological health of the employees and the strategic moves of the organizations are mutually supportive in order to ensure a healthier working life. Therefore, this research was carried out with the support of current data and literature to evaluate the Covid-19 pandemic under the headings of remote work, work−family balance and the psychological reflections they cause. In this context, the changes caused by covid-19 were evaluated from the employee’s point of view, and inferences were made from the possible consequences of the situation.