About this Research Topic
Given the fast development and increased applicability of social robots in the workplace across business sectors, there is a growing number of questions that require immediate answers: What are the challenges and opportunities posed by social robots in organizations? What are the emerging principles and practices related to the use of social robots at the individual, team and organizational levels? What are the effects of social robots on employees’ identities, relationships and performance? How does the use of social robots in workplaces change the nature of leadership at the individual, team and organizational levels? What are the cognitive, affective and behavioral outcomes of working and collaborating with social robots? On this background, this Research Topic welcomes new approaches to studying, designing, and conceptualizing interactions between humans and social robots, including new areas of applications from private as well as public sectors.
Entering human work spaces in these ways sets social robots apart from other types of industry robotic technologies, and necessitates more research into real-life applications and settings, where humans and social robots interact, engage with each other, and cooperate to solve problems and provide services. This Research Topic aims to expand and deepen state-of-the-art research on recent applications of social robots from a variety of professional work settings (consulting industry, office work, education, healthcare, municipalities, etc.), where human actors interact and co-work with robotic applications.
This Research Topic welcomes full-length conceptual, empirical and review articles, alongside with shorter Mini-reviews and Perspectives. We encourage the use of qualitative, quantitative, or mixed methods, covering a range of themes, including but not limited to the following:
• Organizational and leadership aspects of the use of social robots
• Social robots and group dynamics
• Social robot and trust building
• Social robots and meaningfulness of work
• The effects of social robots on moral aspects of work
• The cultural transformations triggered by the introduction of social robots in workplaces
• Cultural diversity of human-robot interaction in work environment
• Social robot applications across sectors
• Applications of social robots in response to crises (e.g., triggered by the COVID-19 cri-sis)
• Robotic design and experienced sociality
• System requirements for collaborative and effective work with/through robots (especially with a focus on specific target groups such as handicapped)
• Utilization of robotic brain-machine interface for work in the wild
• Human autonomy in decision-making and robotic intervention (e.g., interventions based on user’s attachment to a robot and its data management leading to specific directions)
• Effects of robots on users (e.g., the robots’ teleoperators (e.g., older adult workers) and the interlocutors interacting with the robots).
• Dark sides associated with social robot applications in real-life organizational work-contexts
• Ethical and regulative aspects of social and service robot applications in professional organizations
Entering human work spaces in these ways sets social robots apart from other types of industry robotic technologies, and necessitates more research into real-life applications and settings, where humans and social robots interact, engage with each other, and cooperate to solve problems and provide services. This Research Topic aims to expand and deepen state-of-the-art research on recent applications of social robots from a variety of professional work settings (consulting industry, office work, education, healthcare, municipalities, etc.), where human actors interact and co-work with robotic applications.
This Research Topic welcomes full-length conceptual, empirical and review articles, alongside with shorter Mini-reviews and Perspectives. We encourage the use of qualitative, quantitative, or mixed methods, covering a range of themes, including but not limited to the following:
• Organizational and leadership aspects of the use of social robots
• Social robots and group dynamics
• Social robot and trust building
• Social robots and meaningfulness of work
• The effects of social robots on moral aspects of work
• The cultural transformations triggered by the introduction of social robots in workplaces
• Cultural diversity of human-robot interaction in work environment
• Social robot applications across sectors
• Applications of social robots in response to crises (e.g., triggered by the COVID-19 cri-sis)
• Robotic design and experienced sociality
• System requirements for collaborative and effective work with/through robots (especially with a focus on specific target groups such as handicapped)
• Utilization of robotic brain-machine interface for work in the wild
• Human autonomy in decision-making and robotic intervention (e.g., interventions based on user’s attachment to a robot and its data management leading to specific directions)
• Effects of robots on users (e.g., the robots’ teleoperators (e.g., older adult workers) and the interlocutors interacting with the robots).
• Dark sides associated with social robot applications in real-life organizational work-contexts
• Ethical and regulative aspects of social and service robot applications in professional organizations
Keywords: social robots, organizational psychology, organizational behavior, workplace, work design, cooperation
Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.
