Some time ago I was awarded with the professorship of my institution. As part of my inauguration I was asked to give a short talk on the topic 'The Next Normal of Work - How to Manage People and Technology in Times of Change'. I want to shortly summarize my considerations here.
The term Next Normal was mostly coined during the last year and a half to illustrate the impacts COVID19 had on our lives. Most of us could experience on our own, that the pandemic served as an accelerator for digitalization, and also had an impact on our working lives.
So, with these developments as a starting point, I want to invite you to visualize an image of the future of work for yourself: What do you see when you visualize the future of work?
While there are many depictions of the future of work for example in Science Fiction movies like Minority Report, or the Netflix series Black Mirror, instead of showing you these, I tried the royalty-free version and typed „future of work“ into Pixabay. Let’s look at some of the results I received.
Maybe some of these images correspond to your visualizations somehow. But what‘s striking to me is that there 1.) is a tendency of dark colors and dystopian vibes, and 2.) the future of work seems to be filled with technological wonders that will make our lives easier. Let’s keep these images in mind while proceeding.
While we may be already good at making imaginative leaps into the future (see for example here), it seems we’re not very good at making sense of where the present ends and where the future begins. But that actually is one of the main challenges we face when adapting to change in the workplace. Sure we can all see the small clues around us: 3D-printers, Virtual-Reality-Headsets, smart buildings, etc. Yet, somehow, the future always seems like something that is going to happen rather than something that is happening.
Both science fiction and futurism seem to miss an important piece of how the future actually turns into the present. They fail to capture the way we don’t seem to notice when the future actually arrives.
Venkatesh Rao
Thus the future always seems to be far away, but of course, a quick look back to your own life ten or twenty years ago will turn up all sorts of evidence that your life has, in fact, been radically transformed. The psychology here can for example be explained with some sort of normalcy bias. Or, like Venkatesh Rao states in his work: we live in a state of Manufactured Normalcy – and while technological advances change rapidly, human behavior (for most parts) changes as minimal as possible. We can even say that technological advances work best, as long as they still feel somehow ‘normal’ to us.
To summarize 1.) the future continuously seems to be ages away, even when it is not and people seem to like it that way, and 2.) focusing not only on technology, but also on human behavior as a core aspect of our considerations will be essential for future success. Or, in other words, we need to spend more time thinking about what it will feel like to be a human in the future of work.
A Behavioral View of Organizations
Of course, focusing on human behavior at work is nothing new. Look for example at this really strong quote from around 60 years ago, which is still as relevant today as it was then.
An organization which depends solely upon its blueprints of prescribed behavior is a very fragile social system.
Daniel Katz, 1964
Thinking back to what the business world looked like 60 years ago – or at least imagining it – will give you a grasp of how much the surroundings changed. While the surroundings are constantly changing, the basics of human behavior at work however might not have changed too radically. In order to get a better understanding of this behavioral view of organizations, I want to shortly explain two terms essential to it in the following paragraph.
The first term is role performance (we could also use a different term, namely task performance). It basically describes what one needs to DO in their job. These tasks can often be found in a classic job description, are more or less measurable and usually are also part of feedback circles (see for example Borman & Motowidlo, 1993). The second term is extra-role behavior. While there is a proliferation of different concepts dealing with extra-role behaviors, most of these encompass behaviors such as: Cooperative activities with fellow members, actions that protect the system or subsystem, creative suggestions for organizational improvement, self-training for organizational responsibility, and the creation of a favorable climate for the organization in the external environment (see for example George & Brief, 1992; Organ, 1988; Van Dyne, Cummings & McLean Parks, 1995).
Whereas the dimensions of role performance vary can between different jobs, even within an organization, the scope of extra-role behavior generally encompasses activities which support the organizational, social, and psychological environment in which the actual task performance – or even the organizational purpose – must function.
So why is this relevant for our considerations on the future of work?
We all know that there is this massive debate on whether and which jobs will be susceptible to computerization in the future – and I don’t want to go there (in case you want to, you can start by having a look at this visual graph showing the discussion spurred by the popular paper ‘The Future of Employment: How susceptible are jobs to computerisation?’ by Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael Osborne). For now however, I just shortly want you to reflect which class of behaviors will be more easily automatable – and I guess we can all agree that it will be harder to teach extra-role behaviors to robots in the future.
Organizational Adaptability: Workforce and Structure
So let me come back to one of my real research projects. One form of extra-role behaviors are creative/innovative suggestions for organizational improvement – something that might also be needed for organizational adaptability. The modern business landscape is shaped by fast-paced changes, as we heard before. In order to be able to survive and adapt to these changes, organizations will have to ensure that their workforce and structures allow for agility (also see Jacobides & Reeves, 2020; Matzler, Strobl & Bailom, 2016).
Research has shown that extra-role behaviors are better predicted by individual differences than role performance is (see e.g. Borman & Motowidlo, 1993). So we might come to the conclusion that screening for traits related to innovation in recruiting and placement might be a good idea. And let me just add that: If you are thinking about having AI do that job for you, let me shortly summarize one of my recent articles: DON’T (at least for now).
But: We know organizational adaptability is not only about selecting the respective workforce, but also about implementing the respective structures. Thus let’s have a short look at Situation Strength theory (also see for example Meyer, Dalal & Hermida, 2010). It basically indicates that the way individual differences translate into behavior depends on the strength of the situation. Strong situations (= many constraints, clear rules and regulations) lead to little trait-based variation of behavior, whereas weak situations (= fewer constraints, ambiguous requirements) will result in more influence of traits on behavior. A traffic light would make a good example for a strong situation. Even people describing themselves as somehow adventurous for example would probably stop when they see a red traffic light. Or – with our example – regardless of whether individuals would be able to show innovative work behaviors, there are certain organizational features that can rule these behaviors out.
So, in order to foster innovative work behaviors, organizations should 1.) screen for respective individuals, and 2.) create an environment where consequences linked to wrong decisions are relatively small, an individual’s freedom to take action is only limited by constraints when absolutely necessary, and daily tasks and responsibilities are not too clearly structured or consistent over time.
So far – so good. But what is the possible role of technology in this?
On the one hand – and you just have to scroll through some ads trying to sell applications using buzzword technology nowadays – we have shiny technology that comes with the promise to bring structure, make things clearer and more efficient. On the other hand however, we know that this will also hinder behaviors we need for the survival of our organization. And, of course that does not really capture the whole complexity of this problem, but it underlines that when only focusing on the technology part here, we might not reach what we actually wanted in the first place.
Thus the only solution for this from a strategic management point of view is to apply a holistic approach here, which also for example includes futuring techniques (e.g. see Githens, 2019).
Managing People and Technology in Times of Change
So how should we actually manage people and technology in times of change? As often – of course there is no easy answer to a complex problem. Imagining a future where robots will take over the world leads to many experts saying that in the future humans will need to focus on skills and behaviors innately human. In order to do that in a successful way they will however also need an environment and structures allowing for it. Sure, all these fancy buzzwords like Blockchain, AI, or whatever will come next will be of interest too. But – and I guess this is they key takeaway: without 1.) a solid understanding of what these technologies can do and how to apply them, but also 2.) understanding which consequences their application will have in terms of human behavior, we will not be able to succeed in the future. This ultimately can only be reached when organizations apply a holistic approach and put their focus on People AND Technology
References
Borman, W. C., & Motowidlo, S. J. (1993). Expanding the Criterion Domain to Include Elements of Contextual Performance. In N. Schmitt & W. C. Borman (Eds.), Frontiers of industrial and organizational psychology. Personnel selection in organizations (2nd ed., pp. 71–99). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
George, J. M., & Brief, A. P. (1992). Feeling good-doing good: A conceptual analysis of the mood at work-organizational spontaneity relationship. Psychological Bulletin, 112(2), 310–329. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.112.2.310
Githens, G. (2019). How to Think Strategically: Sharpen Your Mind. Develop Your Competency. Contribute to Success. Maven House.
Jacobides M., & Reeves, M. (2020). Adapt Your Business to the New Reality. Harvard Business Review. (September-October), 134–141.
Katz, D. (1964). The motivational basis of organizational behavior. Behavioral Science, 9(2), 131–146. doi:10.1002/bs.3830090206
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Matzler, K., Strobl, A., & Bailom, F. (2016). Leadership and the wisdom of crowds: how to tap into the collective intelligence of an organization. Strategy & Leadership, 44(1), 30–35. https://doi.org/10.1108/SL-06-2015-0049
Meyer, R. D., Dalal, R. S., & Hermida, R. (2010). A Review and Synthesis of Situational Strength in the Organizational Sciences. Journal of Management, 36(1), 121–140. doi:10.1177/0149206309349309
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Organ, D. W. (1988). Organizational citizenship behavior: The good soldier syndrome. Issues in organization and management series. Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books.
Spieß, T. (2015). Antecedents of employees’ innovative work behavior – The influence of the big five personality traits and grit, the perseverance of effort and consistency of interest. European Academy of Management Conference EURAM 2015, June 17-19, Warsaw, Poland.
Spieß, T. (2017). An Interactional Perspective of Innovative Work Behavior Analysis of the Situational Specificity of Broad and Narrow Personality Traits as Predictors. Dissertation Universität Innsbruck.
Van Dyne, L., Cummings, L. L., & McLean Parks, J. (1995). Extra-role behaviors: In pursuit of construct and definitional clarity (A bridge over mudded waters). In B. M. Staw, L. L. Cummings, & R. I. Sutton (Eds.), Research in organizational behavior (17th ed., pp. 215–285). Greenwich, Conn.: JAI Press.
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