Metaverse office: exploring future teleworking model

Abstract

Purpose

This 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/approach

This 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.

Findings

It presents the application scenarios of the metaverse office in organizations, including immersive work experience, weak social networking and virtual meetings.

Social implications

The 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/value

The 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.