The remote work transformation: new actors, new contexts, new implications

The remote work transformation: new actors, new contexts, new implicationsSince the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic (WHO., 2020), remote and digital work practices and technologies have been rapidly transformed on global and local levels (Leonardi et al., 2024), and international human resource management (IHRM) theory and practice need to take up the task of steering and managing this transformation.The starting point was more than challenging: Under COVID-19 induced crisis conditions (Mandeville et al., 2022), people and organizations had to find immediate answers to novel and pressing workplace challenges (Christiansen & Barton, 2021), without being necessarily prepared or equipped for doing so (Wiles, 2020).Thus, it suddenly became unclear where IHRM was heading or should be heading (Cooke et al., 2021).The pandemic threw people and organizations into an unprecedented work-from-home experiment on a global scale, with often paradoxical or at least contradictory effects.On the one hand, remote work, and its technologies, became more widely employed, on the other hand, it was not always accepted.Whereas some employees started to experience overload and isolation (Zacher & Rudolph, 2021), others found remote work and remote counselling to be empowering tools (Mayer, 2023;Mayer & Vanderheiden, 2023).Reliance on information and communication technologies (ICTs), on the one hand, caused digital fatigue and technostress (Pothuganti, 2024) and, on the other hand, eroded a 'culture of on-site presence' and thus enabled the participation of previously disadvantaged groups, such as those with care-work obligations (Mahadevan, Strkle, et al., 2025).Some studies found that the pressure of constant online availability can erode work-life balance and mental health, particularly for those without clear boundaries between work and home life (Lorentzon et al., 2024).Other studies, however, showed the advantages of work-life integration, with both spheres enriching each other and thus resulting in individual resource gains, not losses (Mahadevan, Metzler, et al., 2025).From an HRM perspective, the context of the COVID-19 pandemic thus exemplified HRM under high uncertainties, as outlined by Wood et al. (2018).This concerned, for example, performance evaluations,