Metaverse office: exploring future teleworking model

Abstract

PurposeThis study aims to explore the application scenarios of metaverse offices in organizations, including immersive work experiences, weak social networks and virtual meetings. Based on the exploration of this application scenario, this study discusses four levels of organizational change that will be brought about by the future metaverse office, such as the inter-enterprise ecological collaboration model, distributed autonomous organization, flexible leadership and individual belongingness. The metaverse office has some special advantages over traditional office models, but the metaverse office still raises some issues, such as privacy, security, addiction, equity and usability. These issues brake the widespread adoption of metaverse technologies. The study recommends that researchers take these issues into account in future metaverse research and development.Design/methodology/approachThis study surveys the relevant literature by means of a literature review in order to analyze how metaverse technology can be applied to teleworking. Two databases including Web of Science (https://www.webofscience.com/) and Google Scholar (http://scholar.google.com) were selected for this study. Keywords such as “teleworking and metaverse” were used, and 18 publications were found to be relevant to the study. After excluding duplicates, less relevant and older literature, only 14 articles could be used as references for this study. Based on the exploration of this application scenario, this study discusses four levels of organizational change and issues that will be brought about by the metaverse office of the future.FindingsIt presents the application scenarios of the metaverse office in organizations, including immersive work experience, weak social networking and virtual meetings.Social implicationsThe pandemic triggers a desire for contactless working. The three main applications of the metaverse office also have a practical value which has been proven in some high-tech companies. It is foreseeable that an efficient, electronic and personalized office model will be enthusiastically adopted by society. Metaverse office will gradually step into people's view in the future.Originality/valueThe concept of the metaverse office has rarely been touched upon by theoretical research, although the technology is gradually becoming known. Even its application to teleworking has only recently been reached by some organizations.

How teleworking adoption is changing the labor market and workforce dynamics?

“…Innovation in remote work and collaborative technologies may improve communication, which can be important for companies with remote teams, as teleworking technology facilitates collaboration and fosters a sense of connection among team members [ 85 ]. Additionally, new technologies, such as virtual reality [ 86 ] and metaverse platforms [ 87 ] are some examples of promising technologies that can enrich the communication experience between teleworkers.…”

A new perspective in construction management; the metaverse

“…It was proposed by Liu, Chen, Li, Ren, and Wang (2023) that a virtual mining system could be used to improve the safety and efficiency of a physical mining system, which could be used to test, correct, and optimize the proposed methods. The metaverse office offers some special advantages, such as peer interaction and enhanced teamwork; however, privacy, security, addiction, equity, and usability are some of the problems that metaverse technology may create (Chen, 2023). Coded Distributed Computing and blockchain were used in Jiang et al's (2023) framework for the vehicular metaverse to compute reputation values for vehicles for choosing reliable workers.…”

Metaverse-based Industrial Services, Ambient Intelligence and Simulation Modeling Tools, and Brain-inspired Cognitive and Empathetic Computing Systems across 3D Digital Twin Factories

“…Connected machines and data networks, augmented reality glasses and virtual reality headsets, and industrial automation systems (Chen, 2023;Park et al, 2023;Zeng et al, 2023) further digital twin factories across hyper-immersive simulated environments and in the industrial metaverse. Predictive modeling and machine learning-based image recognition tools, geospatial mapping and 3D immersive virtual reality technologies, and artificial vision and empathetic computing systems enable the virtual environment of the metaverse.…”

“…Metaverse decentralized governance and economic systems articulate blockchainbased data and metaverse digital asset management by use of computer vision and deep learning algorithms, edge artificial intelligence computing and distributed autonomous control systems, and immersive geospatial data visualization and sentiment recognition technologies. (Table 5) Chen, 2023;Park et al, 2023;Zeng et al, 2023 Networked embedded sensing devices, affective and perceptual technologies, and contextual data monitoring and virtual navigation tools are instrumental in 3D virtual immersive environments and in the industrial metaverse. Bhattacharya et al, 2023;Cho et al, 2023;Truong et al, 2023 Immersive interconnected virtual worlds and the industrial metaverse require realistic 3D digital twins, geospatial mapping and deep learning-based sensing technologies, and virtual simulation and computer vision algorithms.…”