Cogent Business & Management

Flexible Work and the Future of Management

Hybrid and remote work have become enduring features of contemporary working life, reshaping how managerial work and leadership is enacted and experienced across sectors and occupations. As work becomes more digitally mediated, managers are expected to lead across physical distance, coordinate dispersed teams, sustain performance, support employee wellbeing, and foster communication, trust, and collaboration through a combination of online and in person practices. These developments also raise important questions about the competences managers need to navigate new demands related to digital tools, relational leadership, work design, employee monitoring, and changing organizational boundaries. At the same time, hybrid and remote work affect employees’ opportunities for learning, inclusion, autonomy, recovery, and work-life balance, while also creating new tensions around visibility, control, and surveillance. This article collection seeks to advance critical and practically relevant knowledge about how leadership, competence, and work are being reconfigured in increasingly hybrid and remote organizational contexts.

This topic is important because hybrid and remote work are no longer temporary adjustments but central conditions shaping organizational effectiveness, employee health, and the future of management. Although many organizations have adopted flexible work arrangements, there is still limited understanding of how such arrangements influence leadership practice, managerial competence, employee outcomes, and workplace learning over time. Managers are often expected to handle these shifts without clear guidance, despite growing demands to balance flexibility with coordination, trust with accountability, and support with performance management. Furthermore, the digitalization of work has intensified concerns about surveillance, technostress, social isolation, inequities in access and visibility, and the blurring of boundaries between work and private life. These challenges have significant implications for both research and practice. A focused article collection can therefore provide timely insight into emerging dilemmas, effective practices, and theoretical developments that help explain and improve work and leadership in hybrid and remote settings.

This Article Collection welcomes submissions that examine hybrid or remote work in relation to managerial leadership, competence, employee wellbeing and performance, workplace learning, and digital surveillance. Relevant subtopics include, but are not limited to, leadership practices in hybrid teams, managerial and employee competences for digitally mediated work, trust and control in flexible work arrangements, performance management at a distance, employee voice and inclusion, collaboration and coordination across locations, learning and knowledge sharing in hybrid environments, digital monitoring and algorithmic management, work environment risks, and the implications of hybrid work for equality, identity, and organizational culture. We invite original empirical studies using qualitative, quantitative, or mixed methods approaches, as well as conceptual papers that develop new frameworks or critically rethink existing assumptions. High quality literature reviews are also welcome, especially those that synthesize fragmented knowledge and identify future directions for research, practice, and policy in this rapidly evolving field.

When submitting to this Collection, please be sure to select the Section Name, "Human Resource Management," as well as the name of the Collection when prompted.

Andreas Wallo is Professor in Education at Linköping University, Sweden. His research interests include competence supply management, human resource development, human resource management, workplace learning, leadership, and hybrid work. Specifically, Wallo has focused on how managers, leaders and HR professionals facilitate employee learning and development in daily work.

Daniel Lundqvist is a Senior Associate Professor at Linköping University in Sweden. His research focuses on issues related to the work environment and the organization of working life, with particular emphasis on psychosocial aspects, health and well-being, as well as development and learning. Daniel is also interested in the relationship between managers’ conditions for exercising leadership and employees’ opportunities for well-being and development.

Marja Känsälä (DSc. Econ.) is Senior Researcher at the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health. Her research focuses on technology-mediated work and interface of work and personal life, especially in the private sector and the ICT sector. Her recent research interests include hybrid work and the use of AI in leadership work.

Tuomo Alasoini (PhD Tech., PhD Soc.Sc.) is Research Professor at the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health. His research focuses on technology-mediated work, new forms of work and the twin transition in working life, especially in the private sector. His recent research interests include hybrid work, the use of AI in professional work and the antecedents of green innovations.

The Guest Advisors do not have Conflicts of Interest to Disclose.

For more information about this Collection please contact the Commissioning Editor, Dr. Molly Cole, at [email protected].