Digital HR: A Critical Management Approach to the Digitalization of Organizations

This book is about the complex relationship between the meaning people attach to work experience as a fundamental component of their personal and social identity and the radical transformation that technologies are operating on the labour market. Yet, within the last decades, technologies have continued to evolve, providing very sophisticated applications and justifying the use of eloquent labels to refer to them, such as “cognitive technologies”, “bionic brains”, “smart machines”, “amplified intelligence”. Technologies have been proved to potentially be a precious complement to human work, helping workers to be more productive and delivering higher-quality results. However, beyond these evident beneficial effects, the use of technologies is also challenging the labour market and the implications of such revolution are still to define yet. Technology will inevitably lead to the elimination of some jobs, at least of some of the most simple and routinized ones. It will also lead to the redefinition of many jobs and to the introduction of new kinds of professionalities. Consequently, workers with strong digital skills will have the opportunity to make further progresses and to lead smart machines, while those unequipped workers will probably give up to this revolution.