The working procedures have changed significantly since the COVID-19 pandemic, when organizations adopted new processes that adhered to the guidelines outlined by the World Health Organization (WHO). Most organizations introduced working from home practices, reducing face-to-face communication and interactions that assisted in curbing the spread of the COVID-19 virus (Morikawa, 2020). With such working practices, human resource management (HRM) had to practice virtual management, where employees could be managed from home. At first, it was difficult as most organizations did not have the technology to practice telework, but with time, the practice worked perfectly and organizational productivity could be evident (Dockery and Bawa, 2020). Productivity was promoted by the creativity employees maintained and being responsible. Virtual management ensured that employees were working effectively, although employees also needed to self-manage themselves. The book Virtual Management and the New Normal: New Perspectives on HRM and Leadership Since the COVID-19 Pandemic offers an insight into the working practices before, during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. It also discusses the way employees were managed as they were working from home and the outcomes that the practice yielded. Each chapter has been written by different authors, and the entire book is edited by Associate Professor Svein Bergum, Full Professor Pascale Peters and Assistant Professor Tone Vold.
Chapter 1 summarizes the information discussed in the entire book, and the book is divided into three main sections. The first section of the book is divided into five chapters, beginning from chapter 2 to chapter 6. Chapter 2 discusses the adoption of telework before, during and after the introduction of lockdowns due to the pandemic. It shows the effects that technology had on organizational performance, especially during COVID-19, when physical workplaces were restricted. Chapter 3 discusses the way restrictions imposed by the Ministry of Health to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 promoted the adoption of hybrid work collaboration that ensured employees worked as a team despite working from different localities. It discusses the collaboration from three perspectives: before, during and after the pandemic. Chapter 4 continues with the discussion in Chapter 3, where it discusses the experiences that organizations had while changing their structures to fit WHO guidelines during the pandemic. It also discusses how these changes have affected the discussion about the future of teleworking and organizational identities. It refers to the managers of Norwegian organizations. Trust is one of the leadership qualities that promote effective working between managers and employees. In this case, Chapter 5 focuses on establishing the way managers have managed to create and maintain trust they created before COVID-19 despite managing them virtually. The scholars were concerned about how they managed to maintain it, and the time for working from home was indefinite. Effective and frequent communication was the factor that promoted the development and maintenance of trust. Chapter 6, on the other hand, discusses the implications that organizational managers experienced from shifting from physical offices to working from home, particularly in socio-relationships.
The second section of the book is a reflection of the way HRM and leadership managed hybrid working. This second section is subdivided into seven chapters, running from chapter 7 to chapter 13. Chapter 7 opens the second part by discussing the role of responsible leadership behaviors in managing post-COVID-19 psychological contracts or views about the relationship between employer and employees, as well as the influence it has on employees’ behaviors. To understand the changes, the authors of this chapter have discussed psychological contrast during and after the pandemic. HR managers play the role of designing and implementing HRM policies, and during economic disruptions, they help organizations recover and survive, as discussed in Chapter 8. Managers’ and employees’ perceptions of the pandemic are also determined in this chapter. The next chapter discusses the tension that exists between HR advisors at the centralized place of the organization HQ and HR advisors decentralized in their remotely located organizational departments, how it developed and the changes that took place during COVID-19. Chapter 10 focuses on comparing human resource development before, during and after COVID-19 since organizations had different working styles before, during and after the pandemic. Chapter 11 is concerned about the way organizations handled the newly employed workers, who were working remotely. In this case, organizations deployed onboarding processes that had some challenges, and organizations had to find solutions to help them manage the onboarding process remotely. Chapter 12 continues with what was discussed previously, but now gets into the new employees’ perceptions of onboarding and socialization. On the other side, chapter 13 examines employees’ perceptions of teleworking and the effects it has on their performance.
The third and last section of this book offers a reflection on the results of remote working. Chapter 14 opens the third section by discussing both the positive and negative effects of working from home and the uncertainties that existed between teleworkers and leaders. Chapter 15 deviates from the work from home discussion and addresses new security challenges such as physical safety, security and privacy, as well as psychological ones that were created by virtual working. Chapter 16 discusses the way employees should regain control of their work while regulating the use of technology. Chapter 17 moves away from the ideas discussed in other chapters and discusses the way some organizations have adopted vaccination programs or certificates introduced after the pandemic to keep employees safe, while others are still waiting to see what will happen. Chapter 18 introduces a new aspect that was ignored during the pandemic regarding work–family balance, where most employees were unable to balance the two as they were working from home. The chapter also discusses the roles that managers, supervisors and employees played in balancing work and family during the COVID-19 period. The next chapter goes back to the discussion held in Section 1 about the effects of information and communication technology (ICT) on the way it has altered the organization of work and the leadership styles used, particularly in the creation of the leader–employee relationship. The chapter shows that ICT has created freedom among the employees, especially during COVID-19, increasing their productivity due to a lack of close supervision. The last chapter of the book continues to discuss remote working by speculating on what future work will look like. The chapter checks on whether there is a new normal, its implications for management and leadership and whether it will be sustainable or if it was only adopted during COVID-19 and will be forgotten as the negative effects of the pandemic are resolved.
The book has touched on a topic that most scholars have not thought about. To begin with, it has brought to light the effects the HRM department encountered during the pandemic, especially on managing employees remotely. The introduction of working from home practices created a gap in management where managers could not directly control employees. However, thanks to sophisticated technology that has enabled telemanagement, managers and employees could have frequent and effective communication. The department also faced the issue of training the newly employed workers as face-to-face meetings were prohibited by the WHO. Acquiring new employees with the working environment during the pandemic was a problem as there were no HRM from HQ and HRM from remotely located branches conflicted on the way forward as they. Nevertheless, the department developed and implemented policies and practices to help organizations navigate through the pandemic. Additionally, since the pandemic resulted in economic stress worldwide, HRM has been helping organizations recover by establishing policies and practices. Socialization is the other factor affected by the pandemic, and it influenced management significantly. For instance, the WHO introduced distancing, restricting people from congregating during the pandemic and reducing employees and managers’ interaction. In this case, due to working from home practices, organizations adopted telemanagement to ensure managers could trace employees’ workability and productivity.
The chapters of this book are well organized as they have an introduction, a body that is divided into subheadings that direct the reader on what to expect and a discussion acting as the conclusion. Others, such as Chapter 5 and Chapter 6, have a different organization as they are organized as an experimental study with an introduction, literature or theoretical perspective, methodology, data analysis, findings and discussion sections. However, Chapter 4 is designed like an incomplete experimental study. For instance, it consists of theoretical perspective and methodology but lacks the data analysis section, confusing the reader about how the data collected was analyzed. Despite the book being written by different authors, they have ensured that they have used simple English. The use of simple language helps the readers read it easily and understand it well.
The information presented in this book is significant to different bodies. First, the book is a good academic source to be read by different scholars in need of understanding the effects of COVID-19 on the old normal, resulting in the development of a new normal, and after the pandemic, there is an old-new normal. Students can use it as a reference when researching this topic. Other scholars who can use the book are researchers studying the effects of the pandemic on organizational management. Future scholars could also use this textbook to study COVID-19 and its effects on organizational performance and the strategies, policies and practices adopted by management to deal with the negative implications. The book is significant to future generations in management as it will teach them how to deal with disasters when managing employees. In case there is a disaster of any form affecting the economy, the book will guide the management of the time on the actions they should put in place to deal with it. The public can also benefit from reading this book to help them understand why they are experiencing inflation after the pandemic.
This book gives an analysis of management before, during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. It acknowledges that the pandemic significantly affected HRM worldwide, both positively and negatively. Through these effects, the management worked together with other organizational departments to develop and implement policies and practices that assisted organizations in maintaining their employees and organizational productivity. Nevertheless, the researchers discovered that since not all organizations managed to adopt telemanagement, some ended up closing their doors until the lockdowns and social distancing were lifted in their areas of operation. The book also checks on the effects of the work from home practices on family–work balances. It ends by forecasting the use of virtual management in the future and the effects it will have on employees, managers, leaders and families.
The work is supported by The 2024 “Hainan Province Higher Education Teaching Reform Research Grant Project (Key Project)”: “Research on the Construction of Teaching Management Teams in the Context of National First-Class Undergraduate Program Development−Interdisciplinary Academic Leadership Model for Administrators of Art Colleges and Universities in Hainan Province” (Project No. Hnjg2024ZD-25).
