Technology Disrupts Employment Relationships and Brings Chaotic Turbulence in High-tech: A Multiple Case Study Approach

Journal article, 2021

We conduct a multiple case study of technology disrupting employment relationships in the early era of the automobile (1903-1912), of e-business (1995-2000), and of data science (2010-now). In each era, technology experts used their expertise of a new high-demand technology to bring chaos and redefine interaction boundaries between them and their employers, thereby gaining significant benefits and redefining relationships with their employers. Through a structured literature review, we identified six key concepts and a pattern of the disruption. Based on the findings, we provide a critical review of technology-enabled disruption theories, the structuration theory framework, the chaos theory and the turbulent environment theory. We finally propose a full map that technology enables the employment relationship disruption harnessed by experts and managers, bringing chaos and turbulence