Machine and human is the new workspace in emerging economies: A phased approach as the strategic framework to reach sustainable economic system readiness

Intelligent technology systems are the new co-workers in the workspace. The wide adoption of these systems in emerging economies, such as South Africa, threatens to worsen unemployment. The expected unprecedented benefits of integrating intelligent technology systems within firms is likely to act as a catalyst for wide, seamless and rapid adoption in emerging economies. This paper proposes a conceptual framework: a phased approach to strategically reach sustainable economic readiness. The proposed conceptual framework defines central mechanisms to guide emerging towards achieving sustainable economic system readiness for human and machine interface in the workspace. An in-depth literature review, on firms' introduction of technologies in the workspace, was conducted, to extract key variables that aided the development of the proposed framework. The research followed a case study approach, where key variables were extracted from literature to compose the proposed framework. The output of this research is envisioned to contribute towards an improved understanding on how emerging economies ought to respond to the coming wave of intelligent technology systems in the workspace. This improved understanding is aimed to be a central enabler in developing suitable policies to manage the impact The next phase of the research would be to select firms within emerging economies to test for causality among variables composing the proposed conceptual framework.