Purpose: This study aims to systematically map the state of work on human–machine collaboration in organizations using bibliometric analysis.Design/methodology/approach: The authors used a systematic literature review to survey 111 articles on human–machine collaboration published in leading journals to categorize the theories used and to construct a framework of human–machine collaboration in organizations. A bibliometric analysis is applied to statistically evaluate the published materials and measure the influence of the publications using co-citation, coupling and keyword analyses.Findings: The results inform that the research on human–machine collaboration in the organizational field is targeted at four aspects: performance, innovation, human resource management and information technology (IT).Originality/value: This work is the first exploratory piece to assess the extent and depth of research on human–machine collaboration.

Purpose: This study aimed to explore the relationship between job insecurity and unsafe behaviour in human–machine collaboration, as well as investigating the mediating roles of emotional exhaustion and moderating roles of psychological detachment.Design/methodology/approach: The authors followed the stressor-detachment model to build our research model. The authors selected manufacturing and service industry employees as samples, and designed three independent studies using the time-lagged method for SPSS and AMOS to test the hypotheses.Findings: The results indicated that emotional exhaustion mediated the relationship between the two types of job insecurity and unsafe behaviours among service industry employees, while psychological detachment moderated the effect of qualitative job insecurity on emotional exhaustion. In manufacturing, psychological detachment moderated the effect of quantitative job insecurity on emotional exhaustion, while emotional exhaustion mediated the relationship between quantitative job insecurity and unsafe behaviours.Research limitations/implications: The authors enhance understandings of how individual employee characteristics and the work environment jointly influence employees' levels of emotional exhaustion and likelihood of engaging in unsafe behaviours under the stressor-detachment model.Practical implications: The authors suggest an important role of psychological detachment in human–machine collaboration. The authors also that organisations and managers could encourage employees not to check work-related emails on weekends to achieve full detachment.Originality/value: This study contributes to both the stressor-detachment model and job insecurity literature. In addition, it investigates the role of detachment and emotional exhaustion by employees in human–machine collaboration.

Purpose: This study aims to test the relationship between emotional labor and service quality of the frontline employees of Chinese restaurants during the coronavirus disease pandemic (COVID-19). This study further investigated the mediating role of work fatigue (WF) and the moderating role of supervisor–subordinate Guanxi (SSG). Design/methodology/approach: The authors used a time-lag approach to gather data from a sample of 365 frontline staff members working in Chinese restaurants. All hypotheses were tested using SPSS and AMOS. Findings: First, restaurant frontline employees’ deep acting was associated with higher service quality, whereas surface acting leads to lower service quality. Second, WF mediated the relationship between emotional labor and service quality. Third, SSG moderated the impact of emotional labor on WF during COVID-19. Research limitations/implications: All variables measured in this study were self-reported by restaurant frontline employees, which may increase the risk of common-method bias. However, this study enriches the literature on emotional labor, WF and SSG during COVID-19. Practical implications: COVID-19 has severely affected the hotel, restaurant and catering sector and especially the psychological state and the work performance of frontline employees. Restaurant managers should implement some measures to improve employees’ service quality during COVID-19. Originality/value: The present findings show that restaurant frontline employees adopted various emotional labor strategies when they were faced with higher than usual job demands and the risk of infection during COVID-19.