The Dark and Bright Sides of Personal Use of Technology at Work: A Job Demands–Resources Model

As employees increasingly use technology for personal purposes in the workplace, tensions between proponents of control versus flexibility are rising. Proponents of control emphasize negative consequences and argue for employee restrictions and monitoring, whereas those for flexibility highlight positive consequences and advocate for employee discretion. We build consensus between these two approaches by adopting the job demands–resources model to show why the personal use of technology at work has both negative and positive effects on organizational outcomes, and then, we theorize about several boundary conditions that mitigate or strengthen these effects. We discuss implications for human resource development (HRD) scholars and professionals

Talent disrupted: opportunities and threats for HRD strategy and practice in the gig economy

This chapter addresses calls for research exploring the implications of Human Resource Development (HRD) and its likely role in the gig economy (Scully-Russ and Torraco, The changing nature and organisation of work: An integrative review of the literature. Human Resource Development Review, 19(1), pp. 66–93, 2019). This chapter reflects on a case study of a ‘new law’ digital platform firm that sought to implement an HRD strategy for its highly diverse and gig-based workforce. At a time when HRD has seen its role move from specialist to distributed, demonstrating ongoing relevance and contribution to global, real-world issues becomes paramount. The amorphous, often hidden and fast-changing nature of the gig economy presents renewed challenges for scholarship and practice in Human Resource Development (HRD). This chapter proposes how a critical HRD lens can reassert HRD as a key discipline in supporting a broader range of interests and needs in the gig economy. The critical HRD lens contributes to understanding the nature of precarious work in the gig economy by exposing localities of power and disadvantage but also practical solutions for leveraging equality, capability development and knowledge transfer in the gig economy