An Ecosystem Approach to Human Resource Management

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, both practitioners and academics faced surmountable issues that created a massive toll on both organizations and employees. The new complexities surrounding organizations call for novel approaches in understanding the future of work and its components. HR carries a critical strategic function for organizations to adapt to the various complexities and develop strategies that enable them to manage people when uncertainty prevails. The “ecosystem” emerged as a concept that drove theoretical and HR strategy discussions in the last two decades. Its advancement reflects a growing interest regarding the interdependence in elements, structures, and actors across organizations and activities. The COVID-19 pandemic highlights the critical importance of interconnectedness for surviving in today's highly volatile environment. Thus, this work proposes a preliminary theoretical model of the HR ecosystem in the COVID-19 context using the arguments of systems and complexity theories and the current HR literature.