Risk Management: Exploring Emerging Human Resource Issues during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

The unanticipated coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has hit global business heavily, disrupting the management of human resources across numerous industries. More than 500 articles (indexed in Scopus and the Web of Science) on the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak on emerging human resources issues and related practices were published from 1 January 2020 to 31 January 2021. In this study, we conduct a systematic literature review on emerging studies in the business and management field to explore what the emerging human resource issues are during the COVID-19 pandemic and propose related practices to solve these issues. The analysis of the published literature identifies nine main human resource issues across 13 industries. The findings of this study suggest that COVID-19 has enormous impact on conventional human resource management and requires the theoretical and empirical attention of researchers. The propositions nominate related human resource practices to deal with emerging human resources issues and identify several research venues for future studies in this field.

COVID-19 and People Management: The View of Human Resource Managers

“…The use of technology also emerges in processes such as recruitment and selection or training and development. HR issues such as "employee wellbeing", "remote work", and "communication" were also identified by Zhong et al (2021) as those which have been greatly impacted by the current pandemic.…”

“…As the COVID-19 pandemic emerged unexpectedly and is set to continue indefinitely, the continuous study of its repercussions for organizations is essential for good management as well as for associated learning processes. Thus, as concluded in the systematic literature review by Zhong et al (2021), the COVID-19 pandemic has challenged the maintenance of conventional HRM practices, demanding both conceptual and empirical attention from the scientific community in order to deal with such challenges. In fact, this concern should not only be on behalf of those who research HRM, but, as Butterick and Charlwood (2021) highlight, also on behalf of those who teach and practice it to improve its role, especially in mitigating the unequal work experiences accentuated by the current pandemic.…”

“…Out of this wealth of knowledge, not only is the role of leaders also worthy of note in managing crisis situations, but in particular that of human resource managers, whose importance has been reinforced by the pandemic (Caligiuri et al 2020). In this regard, see, for example, the systematic literature review by Zhong et al (2021) in which several HRM practices were identified that can assist in the management of the crisis triggered by the current pandemic, or the reflection by Butterick and Charlwood (2021) on the role of HRM in managing the inequalities experienced by different groups of workers in such a situation.…”

Home Countries Matter for the Internationalisation of Emerging Market Multinational Enterprises

“…Although EMNEs tend to have higher risk tolerance in host countries compared to DMNEs (Buckley et al 2018), their rapid and aggressive expansions have triggered risks from both home and host country factors. A variety of risks resulting from political events, economic crises, natural disasters and the COVID-19 pandemic (Zhong et al 2021b) have made the global economy even more volatile. We aim to bring attention to the approach of EMNEs in coping with turbulent environments during their internationalisations.…”

Expatriate Management of Emerging Market Multinational Enterprises: A Multiple Case Study Approach

“…In a volatile environment, there could be disruptions in MNEs' expatriate management and related human resource (HR) issues, such as staffing approach, recruitment and selection, training and development, and knowledge transfer (Scullion et al 2007). New HR issues and disruptions are emerging during the COVID-19 pandemic (Zhong et al 2021). The COVID-19 pandemic has transformed the workplace but also influenced HR practices in the context (Minbaeva 2020).…”