Juliette Fronty, IUT Toulouse 3

Christelle Havard, BSB Education

Work in organizations is experiencing numerous changes and is questioned by several challenges. The integration of ecological issues in productive and organizational choices, along with the development of digital technologies and artificial intelligence, is modifying the nature of work performed, its modalities, and the relationships that workers develop with each other and with various organizational stakeholders such as managers, clients, and suppliers. The rise of digital platforms is also changing the relationship to work and the nature of services provided by workers, who become to some extent independent. The growing diversity of worker profiles and expectations, combined with increasing aspiration for remote work, complexifies work situations and disrupts team functioning and managerial relationships.

These challenges put tension on work and on the various forms of social dialogue existing in organizations: institutionalized social dialogue (formal and informal) involving management and employee representatives in instances and negotiation spaces, as well as proximity social dialogue occurring between workers, their direct managers, and employee representatives present in teams. New subjects must be addressed at both dialogue levels: the consequences of ecological and digital transition on work, such as remote work arrangements. New forms of collective representation are also emerging at organizational boundaries, challenging traditional social dialogue actors: neo-unions are emerging around ecological issues; non-unionized collectives represent digital platform workers. Direct participation spaces called professional dialogue by practitioners are created at team levels and question proximity social dialogue. These challenges therefore interrogate social dialogue through its actors (traditional actors like unions and new actors), its objects (work and its regulation), its spaces (infra-organizational and at organizational boundaries), and its modalities (mechanisms aiming to organize these different types and levels of dialogue).

In accordance with the editorial line of the journal @grh, this special issue can welcome theoretical or empirical contributions based on qualitative or quantitative methodologies. Contributions can be written in French or English and concern organizations in France or internationally.

Potential topics

• Effects of remote work on collective representation modalities, proximity social dialogue, and professional dialogue
• How networked or flattened organizational forms modify spaces and modalities of social dialogue on work
• Articulations between social dialogue and professional dialogue, between formal and informal social dialogue concerning work mutations
• Employee access to organizational governance, new forms of participation and voice, and dialogue about work
• Use of virtual tools and artificial intelligence, their effects on work, and dialogue by actors about these technologies
• Spaces where ecological transformation effects on work are discussed, actors involved, and the nature of ecological social dialogue
• Collective representation of independent workers and platform workers, conceptions of work they promote, and dialogue instances
• Digital transformation and artificial intelligence effects on work nature, modalities, and worker relationships
• Ecological transition challenges in productive and organizational choices
• Diversity of worker profiles and expectations, remote work aspirations, and impacts on team functioning and managerial relations
• New collective representation forms emerging at organizational boundaries challenging traditional social dialogue actors
• Direct participation spaces called professional dialogue created at team levels

Timeline

• June 1, 2024: Publication of call for contributions
• January 15, 2025: Paper submission deadline
• April 1, 2025: Feedback to authors
• June 1, 2025: Reception of revised article versions
• September 1, 2025: Final acceptance of selected articles
• December 1, 2025: Publication of special issue

Matej Černe, University of Ljubljana

Marko Orel, Prague University of Economics and Business

Fabiola Mancinelli, University of Barcelona

Stefanie Reissner, Durham University

Brian Harney, Dublin City University

Digital nomadism combines location-independent, digitally mediated work with sustained or recurring geographic mobility. It has often been discussed as a lifestyle, tourism, migration, or mobility phenomenon, including in research on transformational travel, destination ecosystems, workation practices, and digital nomad visas. Yet, digital nomadism also raises central questions for human resource management: how organizations attract, organize, support, govern, develop, and retain workers whose employment relationships, work locations, and social embeddedness are increasingly fluid. This special issue invites HRM scholarship that treats digital nomadism as both a distinctive empirical setting and an analytically powerful context for rethinking work, workforce, and workplace in an international and digitally mediated economy.

The special issue is motivated by a simple premise: digital nomadism exposes the limits of HRM models built around stable organizational membership, fixed work sites, nationally bounded employment systems, and co-located employment relationships. It foregrounds the spatial, contractual, social, and institutional fragmentation of work and speaks directly to recent calls to rethink HRM in light of distributed, fragmented, and fluid work arrangements. It also brings together developments that are usually studied separately, including remote and hybrid work, global mobility, platform and freelance work, flexible staffing, coworking, workation practices, digital infrastructures, destination ecosystems, and transnational employment regulation. In this sense, digital nomadism sits at the intersection of new global ways of working, technology-enabled change, and the shifting boundaries of talent management and careers.

We seek theory-driven conceptual and empirical papers that use digital nomadism and related forms of mobile, distributed, or location-independent work to advance HRM theory and practice. Recent reviews show that digital nomadism is a growing but still fragmented research field, with much of the literature developing outside HRM and organization studies. At the same time, emerging work on digital nomads' online conversations shows how this form of work is deeply connected to career management, community building, portability of career capital, and the broader future of work. Papers should make clear how their arguments speak to HRM phenomena, systems, practices, functions, or outcomes. We are especially interested in contributions that move beyond describing digital nomads as a lifestyle group and instead examine the implications of mobile digital work for organizations, workers, HR professionals, and institutional actors.

We welcome conceptual papers and empirical studies using qualitative, quantitative, mixed-method, longitudinal, comparative, multilevel, ethnographic, experimental, diary, or archival designs. We particularly encourage studies that capture movement across places, organizations, roles, communities, and regulatory environments, and studies from underrepresented regions including Africa, Latin America, South and Southeast Asia, and Central and Eastern Europe.

Potential topics

• Work design, job demands and resources, autonomy, flexibility, isolation, insecurity, time-zone dispersion, infrastructure variability, and performance
• Leadership, coordination, voice, psychological safety, performance management, and feedback in mobile and distributed work arrangements
• The implications of digitalization, AI, algorithmic management, and digital platforms for where, how, and under what contractual conditions work is performed
• Talent attraction, selection, retention, and employer branding for mobile and location-independent workers
• Careers, employability, career self-management, protean careers, sustainable careers, and boundaryless or globally mobile talent pathways
• Wellbeing, recovery, work-nonwork boundaries, social embeddedness, loneliness, identity, and community among digital nomads and other mobile workers
• Onboarding, socialization, belonging, organizational identification, informal learning, and knowledge sharing when workers are geographically mobile
• Destination ecosystems, coworking spaces, local communities, employers, governments, and intermediaries as actors shaping mobile digital work
• Comparative research on digital nomadism across countries, regions, sectors, occupations, employment forms, and regulatory regimes
• Employment relationships, psychological contracts, commitment, fairness, inclusion, and duty of care in remote, freelance, contractual, hybrid, or employee-based arrangements
• International HRM, global mobility, digital nomad visas, taxation, labor law, social security, cross-border compliance, data protection, and institutional complexity
• HR architecture and governance: balancing flexibility, autonomy, coordination, control, equity, risk management, and organizational support

Timeline

• April 30, 2027: Manuscript deadline

The rapid digitalization of work—driven by advances in information and communication technologies, remote and hybrid work arrangements, and GenAI-enabled systems—has fundamentally reshaped the boundaries between work and family domains. While digital tools provide unprecedented flexibility and autonomy, they also blur temporal and spatial boundaries, intensify role demands, and generate new forms of work–family conflict. This transformation is especially salient in knowledge-intensive and digitally-mediated work contexts, where the 'always-on' culture may foster constant connectivity, hinder psychological detachment, and undermine employee well-being and family functioning. At the same time, digitalization presents important opportunities for work–family enrichment. Flexible work arrangements and hybrid models can enhance individuals' capacity to integrate work and family roles, consistent with resource-based perspectives on the work–home interface. However, these benefits are not evenly distributed. Emerging evidence suggests that technostress, digital surveillance, and inequalities in access to flexible work may exacerbate existing disparities, particularly along gender and occupational lines. As digital work continues to expand, the absence of effective strategies for managing work–family boundaries may normalize excessive work intrusions into family life, ultimately challenging the sustainability of modern work systems.

Furthermore, the recent wave of return-to-office mandates by major organizations and governments worldwide has reignited debates about the contested value of flexible work, underscoring the need for rigorous research on how policy reversals affect employees' boundary management strategies and family well-being. At the same time, the mainstreaming of GenAI in everyday work introduces qualitatively new challenges—including cognitive offloading, accelerated work pace, and algorithmic task allocation—that may reshape work–family boundaries in ways not yet captured by existing theoretical frameworks. We also encourage research adopting dyadic and family-systems perspectives that examine how digital work demands cross over between partners and spill over to other family members, particularly in dual-earner and dual-career households.

By foregrounding the challenges and strategies associated with the digital work–family interface, this Special Issue seeks to advance timely and evidence-based insights into how individuals and organizations can navigate increasingly blurred boundaries between work and family domains. We encourage authors to clearly articulate the theoretical contributions of their work (e.g., extending boundary theory, role theory, work–home resources model, or socio-technical systems perspectives) and to highlight practical implications for organizations, policymakers, and employees. Papers offering cross-disciplinary perspectives or comparative insights—such as examining digital work–family dynamics across cultural or institutional contexts—are particularly welcome. Ultimately, this Special Issue seeks to catalyze a rigorous academic conversation that will help organizations and employees proactively navigate the opportunities and challenges of digital work—ensuring that technological advancements support sustainable well-being and effective work–family integration rather than undermine them.

Potential topics

• Blurring of work–family boundaries in remote and hybrid work environments
• Emerging challenges in time–spatially flexible work
• GenAI use and digital overload, and their spillover effects on family life
• 'Always-on' work cultures and impacts on recovery and well-being
• Algorithmic management and implications for job autonomy and control
• Digital surveillance and privacy concerns in home-based work
• Gender inequality in digitally mediated work arrangements
• Individual boundary management strategies in digital contexts
• GenAI literacy and self-regulation in managing role demands
• Leadership behaviors that facilitate work–family integration
• HR practices mitigating digital work–family conflict
• Designing technology to support boundary control and well-being
• Time–spatial crafting as a boundary management strategy
• Work (re)design and home (re)design strategies to re-vitalize work and family life
• Positive spillover via flexible digital work arrangements
• Digitally-mediated tools supporting family engagement
• Hybrid work models and work–family enrichment
• Reconceptualizing integration in the digital era
• Micro-transitions between work and family roles across time and space
• Cross-cultural differences in digital work–family norms
• Individual differences in digital work–family strategies
• Institutional and policy influences
• Multi-level (individual–team–organization) dynamics
• Longitudinal changes and causal effects in work–family relationships
• Within-person variability in boundary management across days and situations

Timeline

• May 20, 2026: Opening date for manuscripts submissions
• November 30, 2026: Closing date for manuscripts submission