Determinants of Employee Adaptation Processes in the Digital Economy

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to identify determinants of employee adaptation process and to evaluate the strength of their impact on the above-mentioned process. Using the Concurrent Nested Design strategy (Creswell,2003), 165 employees among five companies rooted in the digital economy had been questioned parallel to their employers being interviewed. The research shows the existence of three different factors (individual dimension, characteristic of an organisation and characteristics of the business context) determining the efficiency of employee adaptation processes. If preceded by thorough selection process, the individual dimension has the weakest impact. The post-adaptation satisfaction is higher among companies offering flexible and personalised programmes, and the context of business operations influences the level of cross-cultural training. The paper extends previous studies with the number of perspectives and factors taken into consideration as well as suggesting some solutions depended on an individual company’s settings. The research was conducted before the COVID-19 pandemic, hence had not taken into consideration the process being conducted remotely. Hence, further research is required involving employees experiencing on-boarding process before and during the pandemic, as well examining companies on their approach to the adaptation process over past few years to identify the trends and examine efficiency of on-line employees’ adaptation process.