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Explicating the
Explicating the future of work: future of work
perspectives from India
Som Sekhar Bhattacharyya
Department of Strategic Management,
National Institute of Industrial Engineering, Mumbai, India, and
175
Srikant Nair Received 30 January 2019
National Institute of Industrial Engineering, Mumbai, India Revised 6 March 2019
Accepted 27 March 2019

Abstract
Purpose – The world is witnessing the advent of a wide range of technologies like machine learning, big data
analytics, artificial intelligence, blockchain technology, robotics, additive manufacturing, augmented and
virtual reality, cloud computing, Internet of Things and such others. Amidst this concoction of diverse
technologies, the future of work is getting redefined. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to understand the
future of work in the context of an emerging economy like India.
Design/methodology/approach – The authors undertook a qualitative research with a positivist
approach. The authors undertook expert interviews with 26 respondents. The respondents were interviewed
with a semi-structured open-ended questionnaire. The responses were content analyzed for themes. System
dynamics was applied to explicate the phenomenon studied.
Findings – The authors found that the future of work has multiple facets. The authors found that in future,
organizations would not only use automation for lower end routine manual jobs, but also for moderate
knowledge-centric tasks. Future jobs would have significant data dependency, and employees would be
expected to analyze and synthesize data for sense making. Another finding pointed out that in future,
individuals would be constantly required for skills upgradation and thus learning would become a continuous
lifelong process. In future, individuals would get short-term tasks rather than long-term secured jobs. Thus,
job flexibility would be high as freelancing would be a dominant way of work. Organizations would reduce
dedicated workspaces and would use co-working spaces to reduce office space investments. In future, jobs
that are impregnated with novelty and creativity would remain. A finding of concern was that with the
advent of automated technologies a larger portion of workforce would lose jobs and there could be
widespread unemployment that might lead to social unrest. The provision of universal basic income has been
advocated by some experts to handle social crisis.
Research limitations/implications – This research is based on an organization centric view that is
anchored in the resource-based view and dynamic capabilities. The research contributes to the conversation
of human resource co-existence with automated technologies for organizations of tomorrow. Thus, this work
specifically contributes to strategic human resource with technology capabilities in organizations.
Practical implications – These research findings would help organizational design and development
practitioners to comprehend what kind of interventions would be required to be future ready to both
accommodate technology and human resources. For policy makers, the results of this study would help them
design policy interventions that could keep the nation’s workforce job ready in the age of automated
technologies through investments in automated technology education.
Originality/value – India is bestowed with one of the largest English-speaking, technically qualified young
workforce working at lower salary levels than their developed county counterparts. The advent of automated
technologies ushers in challenges and opportunities for this young qualified workforce to step into future.
This is the first study from India that deliberates on the “future of work” in India.
Keywords Content analysis, Automation, System dynamics, Future of work
Paper type Research paper

1. Introduction
The first industrial revolution started with the discovery of steam, which powered machines
and enabled mass production in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (White, 2009).
Journal of Management
For instance, in the textile industry, the steam powered machines made craftsman (both Development
skilled and unskilled) redundant as the machines had greater efficiency and production Vol. 38 No. 3, 2019
pp. 175-194
capacity (Thompson, 2017). Starting in the year 1811, “Luddites” ransacked machines in © Emerald Publishing Limited
0262-1711
power looms across England because they felt that these machines were causing DOI 10.1108/JMD-01-2019-0032
JMD unemployment (Thompson, 2017). There was definitely job loss; however, the demand for
38,3 unskilled labor increased because the machines were needed to be handled by labor force
(Andrews, 2015). Thus, unskilled labor who were available at the cheapest rate were
engaged for this purpose. These unskilled laborers working over a period of time became
skilled and attained relatively higher level of income (Loftus, 2011). From a social
perspective, the industrial revolution created a fat “middle class” into the social hierarchy
176 sandwiched between the aristocrats and peasants (mainly farmers) (Frykman and Löfgren,
1987). Countries like Japan, USA, England and others witnessed that industrialization
uplifted its citizens to a higher standard of living (Stearns, 2006; Bayly, 2003). More recently,
China witnessed the same phenomena (Xuetong, 2001). India did not harbor any industrial
revolution and largely remained an agrarian economy for many decades post-independence
in the year 1947 (Kaul, 2015). India, since the year 1991, has embraced economic
liberalization, privatization and globalization and witnessed the growth and development of
a dominant services sector. Thus, by the late 2010s, though the majority of Indians were
employed in the agriculture sector, the contribution of this sector to the GDP was low
compared to the services sector contribution to the Indian economy (Bose, 2019). India has
been one of the largest countries with a dominant youth population. According to the
national census of 2011, India had 373m people in the 20–44 year age group (Censusindia,
2018). India has been home to the second largest English-speaking and one of the largest
technically qualified population (Krishna et al., 2000). In addition to the substantial presence
of a skilled workforce, a majority of Indians are involved in manual and routine jobs at low
wage rates (Roy, 2005). This advantage with India has been termed as demographic
dividend as a majority of young working population creates wealth for the country and its
organization (Chandrasekhar et al., 2006). All these factors have made it imperative for one
to understand the future of work in India. The future is the fourth industrial revolution
(Peters, 2017) and beyond. This will be ushered in by technologies like artificial intelligence
(AI), machine learning, Internet of Things, 3-dimensional printing (3D printing), autonomous
cars, blockchain and others (Goertzel, 2007). India, unlike the first and second revolution,
would witness the effect of the fourth industrial revolution. Many pundits have predicted
that automated technologies would eat away jobs ( Jones, 2013). As mentioned earlier, India
would have the largest population below the age of 50 years, comprising both skilled and
unskilled labor, by the year 2050 (Populationpyramid, 2018). Employing this massive
workforce is going to be a challenge for Indian organizations and Indian governments in the
future (Varghese, 2017). Luddites are not dead, even today, there are people who fear
technological advancements (read automated technologies) because of which a great extent
of unemployment would be caused. They have been termed as “Neo-Luddites” ( Jones, 2013).
India, with such a large population, would not lack “Neo-Luddites.” Hence, it becomes
critical to understand how automated technologies would affect the employment
opportunities and organizational jobs for the next generation of the Indian workforce.

2. Literature review
The Future of Work is a theme on which available literature is scarce. However, it becomes
imperative to undertake a literature review of scant existing work to set the context. The authors
have gone through various research papers available on Ebcohost, Emerald Insight, ProQuest,
and Journals databases. The authors then studied corporate reports by McKinsey Global
Institute, World Economic forum, International Labour Organization, Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung,
Deloitte and others that were relevant. Books on the future of professions and growth of AI,
robotics and automated technologies have also been a part of the literature review. The authors
used the string search word “future of work.” The authors have tried to decipher insights into
what the future of the nature of work, work place, and work content would be like. The authors
during the literature review process explored what skillsets would be required by employees in
the future, what the expectations of organizations would be from employees and vice versa. Explicating the
The authors, upon the literature review, could discover the areas where there was a dearth of future of work
both conceptual and empirical work. This literature review was also the basis for generating the
researchable gaps and the research questions for conducting the primary research to answer the
unanswered. The major contributions in the extant literature have been presented in Table I.
The literature reviewed by the authors is representative of the theme, future of work. It is a
conceptual literature review wherein the authors are trying to know what the current 177
understanding on the future of work is. From the extant literature, the authors have narrowed
down to the following literature by carefully selecting the work that provides a vivid description
of the future of work (Rocco and Plakhotnik, 2009; Callahan, 2010; Torraco, 2005, 2016).
The authors systematically attempted through literature review to ascertain the levers that were
driving change toward future of work. The authors also through literature review analyzed the
magnitude of the scope of change in the nature of routine tasks/explicit knowledge jobs as well
as tacit knowledge/non-routine jobs. In Table I, both the research findings and methodology
have been presented.
The findings from Table I indicate there has been a dearth of studies on the future of
work in emerging economies like India and its impact. There has also been a scarcity of
work attempting to predict the impact of automated technologies on economies with a large
population base coupled with a substantial low wage-earning manual workforce. This
research is an effort to throw some light for better understanding of emerging automated
technologies and its impact on the employment scenario in India. Thus, based on these
researchable gaps, the research objectives were to:
• understand the future of work and its implications in India;
• explore what skills would be required by the workforce of future so that they stay
relevant in the face of automation;
• explore what corporates and academic institutions should undertake to impart
relevant skills to job seeker students; and
• understand which type of jobs and industries would be impacted the most by automation.

3. Research methodology, data analysis and findings

To explore the future of work, the authors undertook qualitative research as prescribed by
Maxwell (1996). An exploratory study was conducted because in a futuristic setting on the
future of work, extant empirical theoretical grounding was predominantly absent. Given
this background, the authors undertook in-depth interviews with experts. These experts
had expertise on both technology and regarding the future requirements of work. According
to Roulston (2011), expert interviews provided in-depth understanding regarding a topic
which, in this context, was the future of work. The authors undertook in-depth interviews.
The authors used a semi-structured questionnaire to secure the insights of experts.
The questionnaire has been provided in Table II.
The in-depth interviews based on the semi-structured questionnaire helped in capturing
the perspectives of the experts. The respondent individuals were experts because they had
worked for substantial number of years (minimum five years) in the area of technology,
operations and human resource planning in their organization in an integrated fashion. This
was over and above their other organizational domain and years of work experience. Thus,
such individuals had fair experience and understanding regarding both technology and
human resource so these individuals had expertise regarding the subject domain. The
average duration of interviews was 48 min. The average work experience of experts was
15 years. The maximum work experience of experts was 22 years. The minimum work
experience of experts was five years. The interviews were conducted between September

of work
Table I.
review on future
Systematic literature
Sr.
No. Authors
1 Manyika et al. (2015)
2 Manyika et al. (2017)
3 World Economic
Forum (2018)
4 Anderson and Smith
(2014)
5 Saxer (2017)
6 Manyika et al. (2012)
7 OECD (2016)
8 Gorbis et al. (2014)
Methodology
The authors incorporated inputs from industry leaders,
academia and McKinsey internal experts through interviews.
They also analyzed 2000 activities using US labor market
data
The authors studied at 46 countries which represented close
to 80% of the workforce and examined their automation
potential in the present-day context by analyzing the
activities people were paid for
The authors surveyed the chief executive officers and chief
human resource officers of leading organizations and
analyzed the responses to the survey
The authors surveyed 1,896 industry experts to understand
the economic impact of robotic advances and artificial
intelligence
The author carried out a survey of recruiters in major
industries of ASEAN countries along with comprehensive
literature review
The authors synthesized on past and upcoming research by
McKinsey Global Institute and the work done by McKinsey
and company with business leaders across sectors
The study analyzed opportunities and threats of the gig
economy from a labor protection perspective through
literature review
Institute of Future, USA, conducted a workshop which was
attended by professionals from various sectors. The authors
have reported their findings from this workshop
38,3
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Findings
The authors found that less than 5% of occupations would be entirely
automated. Machines would free employee’s time so that they could focus on
work with higher value. In total, 45% of the activities individuals were paid
to perform presently could be automated by emerging technologies
The authors found that countries having higher proportion of production,
office and administration support jobs would face a higher automation
potential. The USA had a higher proportion of work hours in architecture,
management and engineering jobs so it had relatively lower automation
potential
The authors found out that in 2018, 71% of average task hours were utilized
by humans compared to 29% by machines. This number was expected to be
58 and 42%, respectively, by 2022. Jobs which required “human”
intervention like training and development would continue to grow
The authors found that technology would free mankind and redefine the
relationship with work in a positive and socially beneficial way. New types
of work would be invented which would take advantage of unique human
qualities
The author explored that in digital age, human economy would flourish.
Human economy referred to jobs like in tourism, entertainment, elderly care
and others where humans would be necessary to deliver the service. India
has not even started to explore these opportunities in full extent
The authors found that organizations would make labor cost more of a
variable cost by hiring on-demand workers through apps and internet
websites. Rise of virtual work agreements would act as a catalyst to get
more youth into the working economy and reduce income disparity
The study reported that gig economy could lead to dehumanization of work
when customers start thinking of the humans delivering the service as an
extension of the apps. Consumers would start expecting perfect service even
from humans
The authors found that employers were abandoning the practice of filtering
the candidates based on college credentials; instead, the emphasis now was
on project portfolios that illustrated the ability to learn things quickly
(continued )
Sr.
No. Authors Methodology Findings

9 Sundararajan (2017) The author has expressed his opinions and understanding of Industries that fulfill traditional societal needs would have decreasing labor
future of work in Finance and Development Periodical of demand and this would free up time for new societal needs like climate
International Monetary Fund (IMF) change to be addressed
10 Wolbring (2016) The author analyzed the literature available in EBSCO and There was no work that thematized that robots might decrease the
analyzed articles that discussed the negative impact of employment rate for disabled people by competing with disabled people for
robotics and automation on employability of disabled people the job
11 Qureshi and Syed Authors conducted exploratory research of journals, books, Replacing employees was an inevitable choice for organizations in
(2014) magazines, websites, newspapers, websites of healthcare healthcare especially because of the challenging and sometimes unhealthy
providers related to robotics. The paper made special working environments, but at the same time researchers proposed that it
reference to the healthcare sector should be done in a manner that helped in improving the employee
motivation in this sector
12 West (2015) – Centre The authors conducted secondary research of available The study discovered that at a time when full time employment would take
for technology literature with emphasized on the role of public policy in a hit, benefits like healthcare, pension would not be available to a large set of
innovation at mitigating the effects of automation population. There needs to be a way for people to live fulfilling lives even if
Brookings society needed relatively few workers
13 Rotman (2015) The author published an article on how software and The author found out that advances in technology provided one plausible
automation affected employment explanation for the decline of the middle class. Many people didn’t have the
training and education for the high paying technology jobs which were on
the rise. At the same time, jobs having routine tasks were being replaced by
software
14 Luksha et al. (2015) This was a review report in which the authors interviewed The report found that skills like fluency in multiple languages, systems
industry experts and their views were shared as a part of the thinking, programming IT solutions, ability to work under uncertainty and
report high-pressure situations and environmentally conscious thinking would be
the critical skills for future employees
15 Sachs et al. (2015) The authors conducted brief literature review of the past The authors predicted that rise of robots would lead to an economy where
research on automation followed by numerical analysis of production would be capital intensive and subsequently lead to declining
two-sector model wages, savings and economic well-being of current and future generations
16 Nubler (2015) The author used an inductive approach – explored existing The author revealed that the future of work needed to be shaped by putting
data and, based on these elements, developed a framework to in place processes for continuous societal learning for job creation. Public
explain the process and various forces that would shape job policy needed to play a role by creating a conducive environment for societal
destruction/creation learning

(continued )
179
Explicating the
future of work

Table I.
 38,3

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Table I.
Sr.
No. Authors Methodology Findings

17 Kucera and Mattos The authors wrote an employment policy brief by conducting The authors found that the more flexible a technology was, the more were
(2017) a literature review of the extant work its unintended consequences which could not be predicted. The challenge
was not whether new jobs would be created or destroyed but would the
workers be able to cope up with the transition from old work to new work
18 Daunt (2018) The author summed up the future of work summit held by The author stated that the realities about the future of work were lifelong
Deloitte in 2018 learnings, nimble enterprise and continuous innovation
19 Manyika et al. (2018) The authors gauged the impact of AI on world economy This discussion paper revealed that adoption of AI could raise global GDP
through modeling and simulation using the estimates from by $13 trillion by 2030. Deployment of AI was a challenge along with
past work on this topic making responsible AI
20 Nyugen and Behrendt This was a research paper on innovative approaches for The authors believed that although the proposals for a universal basic
(2018) ensuring universal social protection for the future of work by income might partially address the possible disruption of jobs and the
International Labour Organization changing work and employment arrangements, they also raised
fundamental questions about the balance between personal freedoms and
societal needs, the meaning of work in individuals’ lives
21 Ford (2015) The author compiled his learnings from primary and The author wrote that the internet sector had provided easier access to build
secondary research in the book The Rise of the Robots careers. For people however, these careers have a winner-take-it-all nature.
Even though entry barriers were lowered, the actual outcome it produced
was almost invariably highly unequal
22 Susskind and The author compiled his learnings from primary and The authors raised two moral questions. The first being should there be an
Susskind (2017) secondary research in the book The Future of Professions owner of the practical expertise knowledge available online and secondly
what would constitute the morally unacceptable use of technology which
might be ignored
23 Reese (2018) The author compiled his learnings from primary and The author believed that the assumption that low skilled workers would be
secondary research in the book The Fourth Age eliminated by robots first was wrong. It’s easier for a computer to beat a
human in chess rather do all the things that a nurse does, which involves
human intuition to work with
24 Michael Page Report The consulting firm Michael Page published a series titled The report revealed that knowledge would be acquired on-demand and
(2017) Future of Work effortlessly and discarded as well when not required, as humans have
entered an age of “Liquid Skills”
25 Glasnapp and Gaitán The authors reviewed various research done at PARC in 2017 The authors discover that increased mobility options and ride sharing was
(2017) and reported insights discovered making people productive even in commutes. Offices would become spaces
to experience different environments in a daily routine
Sr. No. Questions
Explicating the
future of work
1 How the advent of new automation technologies is going to threaten various professions in India?
2 Which kind of industries would witness maximum impact because of the emergent automation
technologies?
3 What should be the combined effort of corporate India to manage the emerging scenario?
4 What are the skill set that you look for while recruiting employees to ensure that they thrive in the
wave of automation? 181
5 What should be the focus of Indian educational institutes to make students stay relevant in the job Table II.
market in an era of increased automation? Expert interview
6 Any other point you would like to mention? questions

and November 2018. The interviews were conducted through personal administration,
telephonic and emails. The insights gathered from experts were content analyzed by the
authors for thematic analysis (Popping, 2000; Holsti, 1969; Neuendorf, 2016; Urbina, 1981).
The interview data collection was closed at 26 experts because thematic saturation was
reached. The authors also calculated the values of inter-coder reliability and inter-rater
reliability to ascertain the quality of the qualitative research. The inter-rater coder value was
0.95, whereas the intra-rater coder value was 0.94 and these values were well within the
acceptable range as advocated in the literature (Holsti, 1969; Weber, 1990). The thematic
findings were then utilized with a system dynamics perspective (Sterman, 2001) to ascertain
the entire spectrum of future of work and its impact on society and organizations. The
expert interview sample responses have been provided in Table III, whereas the thematic
insights have been given in Table IV. In Table III, the expert excerpts which were
representing a dominant theme or were providing counter intuitive insight were tabulated.
The thematic content analysis of the findings indicated the presence of 12 dominant
themes on the future of work. This has been given in Table IV.
The authors after identifying the themes applied principles of system dynamics to
develop a model on the future of work. This has been presented in Figure 1. It depicts the
system dynamics approach to understand the “future of work” across various themes. Post-
thematic findings, the authors applied a system dynamics approach. The variables have
been connected by unidirectional arrows. The tail end of the arrow depicts the cause and the
head of the arrow depicts the effect of the cause. A positive sign on the arrow indicates a
positive correlation between the two variables. An increase in the cause leads to an increase
in the effect and vice versa. A negative sign on the arrow signifies that an increase in the
cause leads to a decrease in the effect and vice versa (Sterman, 2017).
As recommended by Sterman (2017), a positive and negative communication loop has been
accommodated in Figure 1 (as evident from the figure) and boundary adequacy has been
ascertained as the future of work in the Indian context. The advent of automation technologies
is the starting point of this model. This will give rise to three phenomena, namely, manual and
routine jobs being automated, the need for training in these technologies and the rise of
creativity-based novel jobs for human intervention. Creativity is something that is inherent in
humans, and machines would find it difficult to replicate this aspect. Other jobs and tasks that
are process based and can be codified would be taken over by machines; however,
creativity-based works like design and marketing would still remain a largely human
endeavor. With the automation of manual labor, a vast majority of the working population
would be unemployed creating a scenario of mass unemployment. This would impact the
bottom of the pyramid where maximum unskilled labor belonged resulting in social unrest and
insecurity over their future. In such a scenario, productivity would still be high; however, the
purchasing power of consumers would reduce because of the loss of jobs. This would prompt
the government to step in and provide measures like providing universal basic income.

Table III.
Expert interview
sample responses
Question-1 Question-2
Sample responses
“[…] […] All industries “[…]. Sectors like
would be affected because infrastructure,
everyone has an IT manufacturing, healthcare
touchpoint […]” would see less of
automation impact
because they don’t have
IT-ready works […]”
“[…] People will have “[…] Repitive and rule
more free time and based worked like
redeployment of people invoicing or PO
will happen from roles generation; Transactional
where human intervention work which is done over
is not needed […]” and over again; Work
which is voluminous,
which takes away a lot of
time have the most
automation potential […]”
“Employees would need to “Finance sector would be
know something about impacted because today
everything and everything banks discourage people
about something […]” to go to the bank. Most
services are given through
applications. Retail and
accounting are the two
other fields would could
get automated […]”
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Question-3 Question-4 Question-5 Question-6
“[…] Organizations must “[…] If the person has the “[…] Every institute runs “[…]. Many more things
decide on the pool of ability to learn something on a core curriculum that would be possible which
people whom they want to new quickly then it’s a needs to stay. Students were not previously
keep with their existing very handy skillset […]” need to be subject matter possible and new type of
skill set and then infuse experts in at least that one companies would come up.
some fresh blood into the area […]” Institutes should
organization who are a bit encourage start-ups.
more tech savvy […]” Technology should be
embraced […]”
“[…]. One thing is to “[…]. First skill is to see if “[…]. Facilitate a safe “[…] constant reskilling
communicate the issue the person has ever come learning environment and learning is crucial […]
properly, they cannot back from a failure. where people can afford to
create a doomsday kind of Second skill is that how fail. This is to ensure that
scenario. The message much is the depth of the students know what
must be about reskilling knowledge in a field of the failure means, far too
[…]” passion or interest. Third much attention is given to
skill is what is the ability success stories […]”
to connect with people
[…]”
“First thing is accepting “Subject matter expertise, “The education program “We have to be more
that things are going to this is the key. Second is have to be more focused, if circumspect and outward
change, and they will keep communication skill people are not looking about the
changing. Understand the because everything is academically strong then happenings around us. All
change and communicate communication based. after a certain level of problems like joblessness
to people that there is a The opportunity to studies, they should be have to be solved by
need to reskill […]” communicate within and given a different career having local solutions.
outside organizations is path. Such students can be People need to be
immense, so this is a given some skill training sensitized and people have
critical […]” to make them employable to be made aware […]”
[…]”
(continued )
Question-1 Question-2 Question-3 Question-4 Question-5 Question-6

“[…]. people will need to “[…]. finance, HR, payrolls

“[…] get the investments “[…] everyone needs to “[…] awareness about “[…] much negativity has
reskill […]. people who are or employee onboarding,
done to implement these understand technology different companies been painted around
in transactional roles these are functions which
technologies […] […] not […] . siloed organizations implementing these automation, it will not be
would move up in enabling are common across sectors
to reduce the no. of people, won’t exist anymore […] Technologies and how the doomsday […] lot of
better decision making, and these are most prone
but to get the same appetite To understand business models have positive would also come
enabling sensibility to automation […] number of people to do business and technology matured after the out of it […]”
calculation […]” functions which are more
much more value-added is the key […]” implementation of these
process driven are more
work […] communication models […]”
prone to automation […]”
is important, fear about
automation has to be
removed […]”
“[…] newer companies will “[…] in education sector, “[…] the adoption of “[…] right attitude, “[…] institutes should “[…] the future would be
grow. Netflix and amazon the onset of digital technology has to be there someone who believes in design smaller courses for about creating seamless
prime are content platforms and MOOC however that needs to be democratic principles, the alumni to comeback platforms and processes
generators along with courses is making it a in line with vision and second is someone who and update themselves which would differentiate
Google and jobs will winner-take-it all sector mission of the believes in agility of once in every two years organization […] […]”
evolve […] jobs won’t […] jobs are changing the organization […] processes and third […]. fundamentals are still
reduce but new type of shape and not reducing investments done in the someone who believes in important […].”
jobs will come up […]” […]. this would happen fear of missing out would openness of systems […]”
across sectors” be in vain […]”
183
Explicating the
future of work

Table III.
JMD Sr. No. Theme
38,3
1 There will be increased prevalence of temporary project-based tasks than permanent organizational
jobs and job roles
2 Individuals have to constantly learn new skills. Thus, learning has to become an integrated and
lifelong exercise for individuals
3 Individuals in future would seek education (mostly technical) spanning across the lifetime in short
184 modules (preferably online) with duration lasting in days, weeks or at most months rather than
pursuing graduation and post-graduation spanning years
4 Human beings would still be important for creative, design and systems thinking. Human skills in
leadership working under complex, ambiguous and stressful contexts would be valuable
5 Routine jobs even which a moderately high end would be done by automated technologies however
jobs which required or has scope for novelty would require human component of intervention
6 Increasingly, workers in future need to possess high level of knowledge. They have to make sense
from data rather than just being feeder or reporter of data
7 Employees in the future would be valued for their capabilities on analyzing and synthesizing skills of
data as the memory related aspects would be taken care by automated technologies
8 In future the prevalence of low investment but robust and good quality information and
communication technologies would allow employees to be remotely located. Further, in different
venues organizations could have co-working space. Thus, in future, employee office space
investments have the possibility of reducing significantly
9 The future of work and decision making would be very data dependent and thus future workers need
to work in the ambience of data and undertake decision making under heavy load of data
10 Increasingly in future, the mode of communication will be digital. Given these human emotions in
team working would be challenging like empathy, ability to listen (receive and respect a divergent
opinion). Digital communication mediums need to incorporate these
11 In the future, there will be job flexibility as individuals would be hired on a job project basis. Thus,
any individual with the required skill set would be able to do the work. Thus, employees with long
years of work experience or with decades old academic degrees would not matter. Thus, the barrier of
professions would reduce
12 There will be net loss of jobs because of widespread adoption of automated technologies. Given this
there would be loss of jobs in the manual and routine category of jobs. There is a potential case of
Table IV. widespread unemployment and thus there could be widespread social unrest. Thus, there is a need
Thematic findings for government in providing some universal basic income

Need for creative

individuals
+
Organizations would
+ be more creative Smarter individuals in
+ the workforce
– HRM costs – Project based work
Creativity based novelty
allocation
jobs for human intervention + Predictability of
+ Remote work
+ + +
+ jobs
Flexibility of work
+
Advent of automated + Continuous
Training to be undertaken + Data analysis and +
technologies + Need to be trained in technology training Firms would
by industrial associations synthesis differentiate offerings
these technologies +
+
Figure 1.
Universal basic
System dynamics +
Barrier to practise a + Access to technologies income
model describing the Manual and routine
jobs being automated
profession – like internet
+
Generation of big
data
effect of each
parameter on another +
Mass
Government
unemployment + Social unrest
+ initiatives

The need for training in emerging technologies would prompt industrial institutions to
impart relevant technical education. This has to be continuous in nature because of the
ever-changing market, business environment and technology landscape. The need for
training in these technologies would also make them easily available to the masses, through
internet-based technologies so that they also get expertise regarding the technologies. This
would lead to a decrease in barriers to practice a profession because anyone with the
requisite knowledge and internet could create a platform to provide services. Journalism Explicating the
could be one such field where anyone can harness the power of social media to write articles future of work
and opinions, the requirement to have formal long duration degrees would reduce. This
would inspire more such people to get technically competent and practice professions. With
large mass of population coming on-board through the internet, there would be a flood of
data about consumers and other things alike. This collection of data would prompt experts
to analyze these data and use these data to unearth knowledge that could be of business 185
value. These insights unearthed from such data analysis would again be used by
organizations for channeling creativity and create differentiated products for consumers.
Creativity-based novel jobs would increase as they would still require a significant amount
of human intervention. Automation would take out the routineness from jobs, as employees
would have to deal with novelty every day. This would reduce the predictability of jobs and,
in turn, force individuals to undertake continuous technology training to keep themselves
relevant at times of unpredictability. Continuous technology training would enable
individuals to become digital nomads who would be hired by organizations for the
execution of specific projects and let go after that. Freelancing would become the new norm
in the economy that will be more about “gigs” rather than permanent employment. Online
platforms will allow prospective clients to meet the experts who will work on specific
projects from remote locations for cost effectiveness. This will encourage freelancing roles.
This would reduce the costs related to human resource management for organizations and
also make working from remote locations possible resulting in greater flexibility in work
styles. Creative jobs would make the organizations creative as a whole, and this would force
them to give differentiated product offerings unless they wish to perish in the wave of
automation. The creative and novelty jobs would also call for smarter individuals who can
carry out such jobs and this would again make the firm offer differentiated offerings.

4. Discussions
The findings of this study indicated that Indian businesses would choose automation in the
future. Some firms have already started implementing automated technologies. Thus,
Indian firms would not be hiring for many of the job positions as these jobs would be
automated. This has been reported by the work of Manyika et al. (2015). The Indian
economy also has been driven significantly by the service sector, and Manyika et al. (2017)
pointed out that nations with a higher level of services sector would confront higher levels of
job loss through automation. Thus, the study findings were congruent with the extant
literature. The experts also pointed out that with the advent of new technologies many
new jobs like human machine interaction would sprout. This has also been reported in
World Economic Forum (2018). However, the study results were not very optimistic
regarding the amount of jobs that would be created because of the adoption of automated
technologies. Anderson and Smith (2014) advocated that the new technologies would
redefine job roles and the required job profiles and this was also voiced by the experts in this
study. Saxer (2017) stressed the fact that in future jobs that would have emotive or humane
aspects would be in greater demand like nursing. The experts also echoed a similar voice
given the fact that in a country like India collectivist social norms have been more prevalent
(Hofstede, 1993). In India, additionally, the culture of service is very strong as it is grounded
in the philosophy of giving, a basic tenet of Eastern philosophies (Egge, 2013). India can
thus be an important country in the world map as India has a good ability in such
professions like doctors, nurses, teachers, elderly care and such others. It is also important to
note that Manyika et al. (2012) indicated that in future, firms would hire workers for specific
jobs on a short-term basis. Thus, unlike the present, going into the future, a large portion of
employees would be temporary workers. This would become challenging for job seekers as
they have to constantly stay relevant. Indian experts also pointed out this aspect. India with
JMD its large population (worker base) would be a very competitive human resource factor input
38,3 market in future. Indian experts, thus, opined that in future, workers need to constantly
engage in training and development initiatives so that they are employable. India, with a
demographic dividend (a large segment of young population which is young), can
participate vigorously in this market not only for Indian firms, but also for international and
global firms. In India, experts opined that this would be challenging for the middle-aged and
186 the above category of workers. Indian human resource experts also were concerned that in
an era dominated by automated technologies, the human element in job between co-workers
that has been so vibrant in Indian organizational culture might go missing as also being
pointed out by OECD (2016). Also, in future like elsewhere (Gorbis et al., 2014), jobs would
become more temporary or project-based than organization long-term-oriented employees of
future would not be required to develop social or team-oriented skills to adequate extent that
are so prized in the present-day context. Indian experts were particularly worried that as job
losses in India would be substantial, individuals would not be able to secure jobs (become
unemployed) and this would create a dent in purchasing capacity in the society. This, in
turn, might create a depression in demand. Sundararajan (2017) pointed out that as routine
jobs would be mostly automated, human beings would take up much higher level and value
adding jobs. The insights from this study corroborated this and further pointed out that
India would gain some and lose some. In India, there is a substantial section of the workforce
engaged with low-end manual work, especially in the unorganized sector. Such jobs would
get eliminated from worker rolls, and India, as a country, would face a challenge to address
this. On the other hand, India is one of the largest countries in the world with English-
speaking technical education compounded with youth. Given this, a large pool of Indian
youths would be able to get into high-end jobs that would be created from the
implementation of new automated technologies. It is important to note that certain skills
would be difficult for robots to replace like leadership, linguistic proficiency (preferably in
multiple languages), designs and systems thinking, handling high-pressure situations,
complex and fast computer programming according to the Indian managers. This was also
reported by the Moscow-based agency for strategic initiatives. Thus, nations and societies
have to develop a process for learning by individuals these soft skills as well as the handling
of technology task skills. This has been advocated by Nubler (2015) as well, corroborating to
the findings of this study. This would be important not only for the young employees
getting jobs, but also for the experienced workers as the experts felt that the experienced
workers would face the maximum difficulties as also noted by Kucera and Mattos (2017).
Daunt (2018) stated that individuals would be required to pursue lifelong learning and
experts in this study, and also noted this to be the mantra of job aspirants (freshers and
experienced ones alike). Indian experts, however, noted that there might be an increase in
global GDP through the deployment of technologies like AI or robotics as pointed out by
Manyika et al. (2018). There is going to be a net decline in job. This has been argued by
Sachs et al. (2015) as well. So Indian experts were of the opinion that there should be a case
for universal basic income for the unemployed as Nyugen and Behrendt (2018) had
proposed; otherwise, widespread unemployment would lead to social unrest in a country
like India with high risk potency. Thus, the advent of automated technologies would usher
in a mixed bag of gains and losses for the Indian workforce.
Ford (2015), in his book, The Rise of Robots, has pointed out that automation will create
winners, but the winners will be few and far in between. The study results also pointed out
that automation technologies in manufacturing would restore the value of developed
western countries in the manufacturing sector as against the lower wage rate developing
countries. Furthermore, the return of manufacturing jobs even in the west would help the
owners of factories much more than the workers working. Susskind and Susskind (2017)
had pondered about the ownership of knowledge issue and morality of application of
advanced technologies. The authors in this study could not find conclusive answers to Explicating the
questions posed by Susskind and Susskind (2017). Reese (2018) pointed out that, for the first future of work
time in the history of humanity, not just low-end jobs but even knowledge-based jobs could
be done by technology. Thus, moderate knowledge intensive jobs would be lost to machines
and this was a concern pointed out by Indian experts as well. Indian experts also
corroborated to the Michael Page Report (2017) on the future of work that in future there will
be on-demand jobs and as and when required employment would sprout. This would be 187
dictated by knowledge requirements (read specialized expertise). Thus, knowledge in the
future in terms of work requirements would be fluid so the skills of employees have to be
dynamic. Some of the Indian experts opinions also indicated that mobile technologies would
help individuals to work anywhere and anytime with more effectiveness as Glasnapp and
Gaitán (2017) stated, and thus, the place of work would only become a varied experience
landscape for employees on their day of working from office as a job could be done from
home as well. In future, firm’s balance sheet would be heavy with technology resources and
highly qualified individuals with very high average salary for such employees. However,
from the book of accounts, low wage salaries would get reduced as well as the total human
resource expense. In other words, the value of technology assets would outweigh human
assets value from an accounting outlook.

5. Conclusion
The authors conducted an exploratory study to comprehend the future of work, especially in
the context of an emerging economy. The authors to gather understanding regarding the
futuristic aspect conceptualized the same into multiple dimensions. This has been given
in Table V.
The main levers that are shaping the future of work are technologies like AI, blockchain
technologies, big data analytics, IoT, robotic process automation, virtual reality, augmented
reality and such others. Customers of the future are going to be more demanding, thus, mass
customization would be required and this would determine the work content in future of
work. This formed the second lever. The third lever would be the reality of a digitized world
in which employees would need to navigate through substantial data yet need to make sense
for quick decision making. The fourth lever would be increasing pressure to reduce costs of
products and services being offered to customers. Such automated technologies would
replace inefficient high cost manual, routine explicit knowledge tasks. The most assuring
aspect about the ‘future of work is that routine work will be taken over by machines and the
intellectual work would be taken care of by human beings. This tenet would hold true but
also increasingly intellectual work would also be taken care of by machines and that is the
news. For a country like India, with such a large population which is young and bears a low
wage rate, the removal of manual labor-intensive work is the emergent reality. However, a
country like India needs to look into the future toward professional education as well
because even relatively low-end professional work would also be automated. The Indian
Government has to undertake capital deepening so that tertiary level education is imparted,
and very specialized and high-end manpower is developed. A country like India would also
suffer because robotics and other automated technology would pull jobs back to developed
countries. Communication amongst employees has been a major aspect in organizational
management. There have been studies that indicate both the importance of free-flowing
communication and the importance of timely communication. With technologies like high
bandwidth internet, augmented reality to virtual reality, lots of employees would work from
remote locations thus communication (in spirit that in voice) to these remote employees
would become pivotal. Another challenge would be to motivate the remotely located
employees. The “future of work” is also about jobs that are project-based and temporary in
nature. So, organizations in future would have a substantial number of temporary workers
JMD Sr. No. Parameters Past Future/new Remarks
38,3
1 Predictability of High Low The predictability of jobs would
jobs reduce in future
2 Skill set required Low High Most of the manual work would be
for repeating/ automated leaving behind only the
manual work very highly skilled manual work for
188 humans
3 Modes of Emails, Emails, telephones and Social network would become a
communication telephones and personal talk + social critical medium of communication in
personal talk network the future along with other modes
4 Data dependency Low High Dependency on data would increase
in the future
5 Structure of work Routinization Novelty Employees would have to do novel
work more frequently in future
6 Work locations Near customer Locations where cost is The work locations would shift to
lowest places which would reduce the
organization’s cost
7 Type of Permanent Freelancing Freelancers would become the
employment employment majority in future
8 Nature of Standardized, Mass customization Technology would allow
products less organizations to offer customizations
customization to each and every customer
9 Type of Professional Past user experience, Technology would enable anyone to
consulting experts crowdsourcing advice secure advice as a matter of expertise
service
10 Barrier to practise High Low The barrier to practice a profession
profession would be lowered
11 Ease of earning Difficult Universal basic income Governments would turn to universal
regular livelihood basic income for the welfare of people
12 Work flexibility Stable job Gigs Freelancers would increase in
number in future
13 Intelligence Function of Analysis synthesis Intelligence would be a measure of
memory ability to make sense out of data
14 College education One-time Lifelong enrollment and Once in a lifetime college education
enrollment for learning multiple short- would be supplemented by lifelong
one course term courses learning and continuous upskilling
15 Offices Dedicated Co-working spaces Co-working spaces would become the
buildings office model of the future
16 Data sense Low High Employees would have to make more
making sense out of big data in future
17 Middlemen Lots of them Very few middlemen Technology would bring the buyer
closer to the seller almost eliminating
Table V. middleman
Comparative 18 Nature of work Jobs Tasks Some of the tasks would be
assessment of the past automated leaving behind only
and future of work creative tasks for humans

and, thus, motivating such employees and getting the best out of these workers in the
absence of permanence would be a paradox that is required to be solved. Furthermore, it is
important to note that skills like creative thinking, design thinking, systems thinking,
leadership, ability to work under uncertainty, ambiguity and stressful context would be
highly sought after from individuals. Organizations wouldn’t be able to achieve these with
machines. Given the constant need for individuals to learn new skills to be employed in
project-based jobs, organizations have to develop an industry level support system so that
training on various technologies is provided. Pure firm-level training and development
might not be so potent in future. Furthermore, organizations in future would increasingly Explicating the
use co-working spaces on a time-sharing basis rather than investing very heavily on future of work
workspaces in dedicated office spaces especially in Indian cities like Mumbai, Delhi or
Bangalore where real estate prices are strong. Given the very robust and high-quality ICT
infrastructure, the future of the work space would be distributed and fragmented. Another
aspect would be increasingly in future, jobs that can constantly throw up novelty would be
remaining and, thus, routine repetitive jobs would be replaced by abilities of synthesis and 189
analysis. Employees would have to undertake a high level of sense making from data. As
jobs would become project-based and temporary, increasingly the barriers to professions
would reduce. Thus, extant employees wouldn’t be protected with the notion of years of
experience or academic degrees earned few decades ago. Any individual who possesses the
required technical skills can secure the job. Thus, for organizations, employee work
engagement would be redefined. It would be a case of very high-end human interface with
advanced technologies. Thus, the proportion of work content contribution by advance
technologies would be more. Firm commitment on HRM would reduce relatively speaking to
value added. However, HRM would continue to be a very critical function. It is important for
organizational designers, development practitioners, strategic HRM practitioners and
theorists alike to head these developments especially in a country like India with sensitivity.
This is because India has a concoction of substantial young, English-speaking and
technically educated professionals.
The “future of work” in India would also be shaped by the fact that employees have to do
multitasking as employees of the future would require a blend of skills on various
man-machine interactions. With the perspective of Industry 4.0 and a big basket of
technologies unfolding simultaneously like AMT, AR/VR, Robotics, BDA, BCT and AI
employees need to apply a set of these technologies as an individual. It is important that
organizations are able to develop and nurture such a workforce. Furthermore, the advent of
these technologies would also usher in an era of remote and flexible work space. Given this,
the organizational structure has to expand and accommodate remote access to employees.
Furthermore, this would also require that an organization focusses in future less toward
monitoring of employees and rather more toward the deliverables received. This would also
mean that in future, there will be increased employee mobility and employees who are
motivated toward adopting new skills would be rewarded. This empirical research was
based in India, an emerging economy. The experience and insights of the experts thus were
predominantly reflective of an emerging economy context. Given the large number of young
population in India and the accompanying low wage rate that advent of automation is going
to eat up routine jobs, the future is going to be most difficult for India. Thus, in the Indian
context, the repercussion would be most significant. This justified not only the context of
the study, but also to comprehend that the future of work has different contours of thought
across various developed and developing countries.
Organizational development practitioners can take cognizance of this study to
comprehend what kind of technologies would replace human inputs for their respective
firms. Both organizational design and organizational development practitioners need to
design organizational structure and communication channel in such a manner that there is
seamless interaction between people and automated technologies. Furthermore, managers
need to redefine the organizational process in such a manner that technology could be
applied across the firm value chain (Normann and Ramirez, 1993), namely, in procurement,
logistics (in-bound and out-bound), marketing (pre-purchase, purchase and post-purchase
stages), human resource planning and utilization, operations and manufacturing and such
others. Furthermore, organizational development practitioners need to understand that
increasingly employees could work from home or remote locations. Thus, remote access and
virtual organizational structure (Lin, 2011) becomes a necessity. Managers need to develop
JMD organizational process that could enable maximum data capture from suppliers and
38,3 customers alike and cater to the requirement of both these stakeholders. Organizational
decision-making practitioners need to develop a mechanism wherein they can apply
AI-based technologies. For human resource managers, the important take away is that
employees have to be continuously trained and, thus, a continuous system on training and
development has to be created that can enable the employees to upgrade their knowledge
190 continuously. Training and development mangers also need to develop a culture wherein
employees are keen to learn new skills not just the extant knowledge base. Organizational
change practitioners need to accommodate the change perspectives that would be required
for the seamless assimilation of technology into organizations of future.
This research contributes to both resource-based view and dynamic capability literature.
This contribution helps secure a perspective that in future the nature of valuable, rare,
inimitable and non-substitutable (VRIN) resources and organizational capabilities would be
human resource applying technologies like AI, AR, VR, BDA, BCT, Robotic, Drones, Cloud
computing, IOT, AMT and such others. In the past, the role of technology relatively was
subdued but in future this would be much more significantly manifested. The perspective of
dynamic capability would sprout because organizations have to develop new sets of
resources and capabilities to deploy and utilize the technologies mentioned. In future,
survey-based studies can be carried out empirically to gather a perspective regarding the
future of work for statistical generalization. The understanding regarding this field at this
point of time in India was nascent so a qualitative exploratory study was undertaken to get
to know regarding the themes. Survey-based studies would help in the possible
development of a model on future of work. Comparative studies can be undertaken between
a developing and developed country highlighting the difference between the nature and
intensity of thematic differences regarding the future of work. This study is a step in
initiating a conversation on the “future of work.”

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Corresponding author
Som Sekhar Bhattacharyya can be contacted at: somdata@gmail.com

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