Resource integration and dynamic capability of frontline employee during COVID-19 pandemic: From value creation and engineering management perspectives

The cornerstone of any successful organizations is the frontline employees. Frontline employees (FLEs) are always in action at the frontline of the business. They do not operate from the office space or from the corporate setting. Frontline employees directly interact with their customers. During the COVID-19 pandemic, many frontline employees experienced numerous challenges as most of the places there were full or partial lockdown imposed by the government agencies and the frontline employees could not be able to directly connect with their customers. Not many studies are there which investigated the issue of resource integration, dynamic capabilities, and engineering management abilities of the frontline employees such as technological capability, emotional intelligence, and psychological capability which perceived to influence the frontline employee adaptability and organization performance. In this background, the purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between frontline employee adaptability and organization performance during COVID-19 pandemic from technological, emotional, and psychological perspectives. With the help of dynamic capability view and different adaptability theories, a theoretical model has been developed conceptually. Later the conceptual model has been validated using partial least square – structural equation modeling technique considering 412 respondents from frontline employees of different organizations in Asia and EMEA. The study found that frontline employees’ dynamic capabilities and engineering management abilities significantly and positively impact employee adaptability which in turn impact the performance of the organization mediating through employee job satisfaction and employee performance.