Does Digitalization Affects Work-Life Flexibility? A Perspective of MNCs in Malaysian Working Environment

Abstract

MNCs advances in digitalization have changed the way one work and the way they live their lives. The long-term goal of this study is to better understands, organize and restructure each MNCs digitalized knowledge system parallel to their employees’ work-life flexibility. This chapter aims to investigate the impact of digitalization and knowledge absorptive capacity and employees’ work-life flexibility in MNCs industry. Previous research has primarily relied on organizational science that have explored digital innovation in specific industry and the did not treat work-life flexibility as pre-requisite in order for an employee to achieve wellbeing or performance. Besides that, this study treats digitalization as an example of external disruptive technology that influences knowledge transfer from MNCs subsidiaries to contract manufacturing in a post-Covid environment where it has changed the way instructions, methods, and ideas transferred across these organizations and its effects to employee’s work-life flexibility. Previous research fails to fully recognize the unique and distinct characteristics of digitalization and their formative and transformative effects in terms of MNCs operational logics and to achieve work-life flexibility. Therefore, this study is investigating the relationship of digitalized knowledge transfer between MNCs’ subsidiaries and contract manufacturers and employee work-life flexibility in the context of learning intent on the effectiveness and efficiency of knowledge transfer among the technical team across organizations.