Chapter 5: HRM and the Service Sector

Technological advances and the speedy transfer of information have diminished the contribution that labour once made to manufacturing. Improvements in technology mean that products are now more readily produced and complex processes are more easily replicated. The rise of artificial intelligence (AI) has consolidated the reduction of the importance of a large, skilled production labour force (Wilson & Daugherty, 2018). It is expected that machines will continue to take over much of the tedious operational work. The work that will increasingly become more dominant and valuable will be interpersonal work: tasks that primarily require direct engagement with other people (AlphaBeta, 2017).