Corporate design principles to integrate digital nomads in post-bureaucratic organisations

• Ano de defesa: 2016
• Autor(a) principal: Leitner, Talitha
• Orientador(a): Vasconcelos, Flávio Carvalho de
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Tipo de acesso: Acesso aberto
• Idioma: eng
• Palavras-chave em Português: Nómadas digitais; Gestão global de recursos humanos; Motivações e barreiras; Princípios de conceção; Entrevistas qualitativas
• Link de acesso: http://hdl.handle.net/10438/18188

Experts predict that more than one billion people will adapt to the lifestyle of digital nomads until 2035. Digital nomadism is a new lifestyle and employment oportunity and arises from the combination of reliable and affordable technology and the increasing mobility of employees. Digital nomads spend at least a few months per year abroad, change their destination frequently, and earn their living with digital jobs. Retaining and developing these digital nomads are one of the biggest challenges for companies in the future. They have to find new solutions to match labour supply and demand in the digital era. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the strategic posture of corporate organisations towards digital nomadism and to develop suitable design principles to successfully integrate digital nomads into the corporate environment, which has not been research yet. The derived research aim of this study is threefold. The first objective is to identify and analyse the motivational drivers of corporate organisations to integrate digital nomads. Second, this thesis aims at clarifying the nature of potential challenges while integrating digital nomads. Third, design principles for corporate organisations are developed to propose a smooth integration process of digital nomads. Due to a lack of theoretical and empirical insights, a qualitative, explorative approach was employed to achieve the established research aims. Accordingly, nine interviews with digital nomads and companies employing digital nomads were conducted. The analysis of transcripts reveals two major motivations of corporate organisations to integrate digital nomads, namely (1) Proactive Motivations and (2) Reactive Motivations . Similarly, there are two main categories of challenges for corporate organisations to integrate digital nomads, namely (1) Organisational Challenges and (2) Social Challenges . These corporate motivations and challenges were enriched by digital nomads’ perspectives to create a more sophisticated picture. Finally, five design principles: (1) Corporate Culture, (2) Career Planning, (3) Govern ance, (4) Performance Measurement and (5) Tools at Work were derived to help corporate organisations to successfully integrate digital nomads. This study contributes to both theory and practice by bringing more clarity to the understanding of this newly emerged phenomenon.