Looking back and looking ahead: Applying organisational behaviour to explain the changing face of work

The face of work is changing with the Fourth Industrial Revolution. This concerns new and unanticipated changes from digitisation, whether it be from artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, automation, big data analytics, cloud technology, high-speed Internet access or other related trends (Brynjolfsson and McAfee, 2014; Schwab, 2018). Human decision-making and actions in all sorts of work domains are being replaced and augmented by AI functionality, including algorithms, natural language processing, machine learning and physical robots. Humans will increasingly work alongside intelligent robots and how we complete our work is increasingly via digital medium. One implication of increasing use of the digital medium is that when, how and where we work changes. With constant connectivity remote working and virtual teams was common, and this is likely to become the new norm in the post–COVID-19 pandemic. These changes are compounded by demographic shifts in the workforce, with increasing numbers of older workers, women and more diverse cultural and ethnic participants (Colbert et al., 2016). Expectations of