A provocative book arguing that the workplace is where we learn to live democratically. In The Pandemic Workplace, anthropologist Ilana Gershon turns her attention to the US workplace and how it changed—and changed us—during the pandemic. She argues that the unprecedented organizational challenges of the pandemic forced us to radically reexamine our attitudes about work and to think more deeply about how values clash in the workplace. These changes also led us as workers to engage more with the contracts that bind us as we rethought when and how we allow others to tell us what to do. Based on over two hundred interviews, Gershon’s book reveals how negotiating these tensions during the pandemic made the workplace into a laboratory for democratic living—the key place where Americans are learning how to develop effective political strategies and think about the common good. Exploring the explicit and unspoken ways we are governed (and govern others) at work, this accessible book shows how the workplace teaches us to be democratic citizens.

A GLOBE & MAIL BEST BUSINESS BOOK OF 2021 The COVID-19 pandemic forced an unprecedented experiment that reshaped white-collar work and turned remote work into a kind of "new normal." Now comes the hard part. Many employees want to continue that normal and keep working remotely, and most at least want the ability to work occasionally from home. But for employers, the benefits of employees working from home or hybrid approaches are not so obvious. What should both groups do? In a prescient new book, The Future of the Office: Work from Home, Remote Work, and the Hard Choices We All Face, Wharton professor Peter Cappelli lays out the facts in an effort to provide both employees and employers with a vision of their futures. Cappelli unveils the surprising tradeoffs both may have to accept to get what they want. Cappelli illustrates the challenges we face by in drawing lessons from the pandemic and deciding what to do moving forward. Do we allow some workers to be permanently remote? Do we let others choose when to work from home? Do we get rid of their offices? What else has to change, depending on the approach we choose? His research reveals there is no consensus among business leaders. Even the most high-profile and forward-thinking companies are taking divergent approaches: --Facebook, Twitter, and other tech companies say many employees can work remotely on a permanent basis. --Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, and others say it is important for everyone to come back to the office. --Ford is redoing its office space so that most employees can work from home at least part of the time, and --GM is planning to let local managers work out arrangements on an ad-hoc basis. As Cappelli examines, earlier research on other types of remote work, including telecommuting offers some guidance as to what to expect when some people will be in the office and others work at home, and also what happened when employers tried to take back offices. Neither worked as expected. In a call to action for both employers and employees, Cappelli explores how we should think about the choices going forward as well as who wins and who loses. As he implores, we have to choose soon.

In this business bestseller, how companies can adapt in an era of continuous disruption: a guide to responding to such acute crises as COVID-19. Gold Medalist in Business Disruption/Reinvention. When COVID-19 hit, businesses had to respond almost instantaneously--shifting employees to remote work, repairing broken supply chains, keeping pace with dramatically fluctuating customer demand. They were forced to adapt to a confluence of multiple disruptions inextricably linked to a longer-term, ongoing digital disruption. This book shows that companies that use disruption as an opportunity for innovation emerge from it stronger. Companies that merely attempt to "weather the storm" until things go back to normal (or the next normal), on the other hand, miss an opportunity to thrive. The authors, all experts on business and technology strategy, show that transformation is not a one-and-done event, but a continuous process of adapting to a volatile and uncertain environment. Drawing on five years of research into digital disruption--including a series of interviews with business leaders conducted during the COVID-19 crisis--they offer a framework for understanding disruption and tools for navigating it. They outline the leadership traits, business principles, technological infrastructure, and organizational building blocks essential for adapting to disruption, with examples from real-world organizations. Technology, they remind readers, is not an end in itself, but enables the capabilities essential for surviving an uncertain future: nimbleness, scalability, stability, and optionality.

With the introduction of policies to combat COVID-19, far greater numbers of employees across the globe—including those with limited job autonomy—have moved to undertake their entire job at home. Although challenging in the current climate, embracing these flexible modes of work such as working at home, including relevant investment in technology to enable this, will not only deliver potential organizational benefits but also increase the adaptability of the labor market in the short and longer terms. Although perhaps not the central concern of many in the current climate, “good” home-based work is achievable and perhaps even a solution to the current work-based dilemma created by COVID-19 and should be a common goal for individuals, organizations, and society. Research also has shifted to focus on the routines of workers, organizational performance, and well-being of companies and their employees along with reflections on the ways in which these developments may influence and alter the nature of paid work into the post-COVID-19 era. The Handbook of Research on Remote Work and Worker Well-Being in the Post-COVID-19 Era focuses on the rapid expansion of remote working in response to the global COVID-19 pandemic and the impacts it has had on both employees and businesses. The content of the book progresses understanding and raises awareness of the benefits and challenges faced by large-scale movements to remote working, considering the wide array of different ways in which the large-scale movement to remote working is impacting working lives and the economy. This book covers how different fields of work are responding and implementing remote work along with providing a presentation of how work occurs in digital spaces and the impacts on different topics such as gender dynamics and virtual togetherness. It is an ideal reference book for HR professionals, business managers, executives, entrepreneurs, policymakers, researchers, students, practitioners, academicians, and business professionals interested in the latest research on remote working and its impacts.

Accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, the world of work has undergone a lasting transformation. Individuals, organizations and institutions are seeking the right balance of workspace opportunities. Workers want to know how remote work can fit into their lives, and how the office can meet their needs. In The Workplace You Need Now: Shaping Spaces for the Future of Work, work environment executives and experts Dr. Sanjay Rishi, Benjamin Breslau and Peter Miscovich deliver a practical framework for how to plan, invest in and create effective digital/physical hybrid workplaces that are beginning to define the world of work. The book explores paths to creating new workplaces that drive the four C's of value: culture, collaboration, creativity, and community. It walks you through the design of custom, flexible, digitally integrated workplaces that manifest new ways of working, and attract tomorrow's top talent. You'll discover the personalized, responsible, and experiential workplace that individuals and organizations alike seek to encourage human interaction, and fuel creativity and growth. You’ll learn the path to the purposeful, resilient workplace that incorporates the emerging imperatives of health, wellness and environmental sustainability. Rich with examples from leading organizations from across the globe, The Workplace You Need Now is an indispensable resource for individuals, as well as businesses of all shapes and sizes trying to find the right solution that works for them right now.

This book analyses some of the many upheavals brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic through the lens of the COVID-19–communication–culture interface, with a particular focus on the new global, virtual workplace. It brings together a pluridisciplinary and multinational team of researchers from the fields of sociology and organisational studies, discourse analysis, linguistics, communication and cultural studies, and includes testimonials from actors within the professional sector such as international managers, consultants and foreign trade advisors. The collection examines a wide range of phenomena including communication on the pandemic by public authorities, the pandemic as a discursive construct, the digital turn and its impact on communication, the role of social media, as well as national diplomacy and questions of surveillance, (bio)power and trust. Issues pertaining specifically to the workplace focus on the impact of remote work, including the challenge of building cohesive work relations and managing cultural difference, distance recruitment, the new forms of professional online communication, the future of the remote work model and questions of identity that are underpinned by the culture of professions. It aims to theoretically inform some of the enormous changes which have been brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic at multiple levels of our professional and social lives. It concludes with a virtual round-table discussion on the question of cultural difference with respect to both the pandemic itself and work practice. COVID-19, Communication and Culture: Beyond the Global Workplace will be of great interest to academics and professionals interested in the communication and discourse and the cultural impact of COVID-19.

The UN Sustainable Development Goals, an increasing interest in Environmental, Social and Governance factors, and the unprecedented impact of the COVID-19 pandemic have triggered a massive change in how companies and employees view their relationship, the role and meaning of work, and how to adapt to new environments and ways of working. This book covers a key topic for companies and management practice – that of how to create and foster a committed workforce in a post-pandemic era that has seen a radical change in working environments, approaches and employee understanding of her/his career and work-life balance. In this book, leading researchers and practitioners in the field of CSR, management, leadership, and human resources from the schools and corporate partners of the Council on Business & Society provide the latest focuses on the workplace post-pandemic, effectively managing virtual teams, collective and responsible leadership, and insights into policies and processes enhancing employee commitment and performance. Each insight is accompanied by key takeaways, food for thought and further reading, and later followed by micro-case studies. This accessible book will be a valuable resource for scholars, instructors and upper-level students across leadership and human resource management-related disciplines, enabling them to synthesise the knowledge presented for their own context (professional, academic, personal, wider society, and the planet).