The Rise of Remote Intelligence: A Management and Marketing Report

This report delves into the concept of remote intelligence, tracing its evolution from telecommuting and examining its implications for modern business. It defines remote intelligence and differentiates it from traditional telecommuting, highlighting how companies leverage it for cost savings and efficiency gains. The report explores the enabling technologies and the potential threat remote intelligence poses to the sustainability of workforces in developed nations. It also discusses the ethical considerations, benefits, and drawbacks associated with remote intelligence, as well as the leadership styles and skills required for its effective management. The report emphasizes the disruptive impact of remote intelligence on wages, business practices, and the redistribution of skills in the global market, providing a comprehensive analysis of its multifaceted effects.

Sustainable management and marketing
Name
Date

Contents
Introduction.................................................................................................................................................3
The Rise of Tele-Commuting from a Historical Perspective.......................................................................3
Defining Remote Intelligence......................................................................................................................4
Why companies use of remote intelligence is not necessarily telecommuting.............................................5
The nature of remote intelligence and how this has been enabled...............................................................6
The threat of remote intelligence to the sustainability of work forces in developed Western Nations.........7
The ethics of using remote intelligence.......................................................................................................8
Benefits of remote Intelligence....................................................................................................................8
Disadvantages or relying on remote intelligence to supply core business needs..........................................9
Leadership style and skills required to sustainably manage remote intelligence.........................................9
References.................................................................................................................................................10

Introduction
Globalization is a form of arbitrage that is driven by the concept that certain items can be
sourced more economically in one region or country than in others. In the modern world, there
are significant differences in international wages and salaries: arbitraging wage differences has
proved to be a more difficult challenge (Boisot and Meyer, 2008). Further, widespread political
opposition to mass migration of low wage workers mean that these skilled workers are mostly
stuck at home with limited or no opportunities (de Haas, 2008). However, with the advent of
technology, it is possible for low wage and highly skilled workers to sell their labor in richer
nations and regions without the need to leave their home countries, such that labor crosses
borders without the laborers and immigrants crossing the borders as well (Tyrväinen, 2016).
Advances and convergence in telecommunication and computing means that many more people
can work remotely without ever leaving their homes in an economical way: in a manner that does
not disrupt fragile border and political relations that would occur in the event of mass migration.
This is the brave new world of remote intelligence in which companies and organizations find
new uses for two way communication through wireless telemetry and communicate with remote
devices to among other things create new opportunities and improve customer service
(Salvalaggio, 2018). This paper discusses the concept of the rise of remote intelligence in a
historical context after defining it as well as explains why remote intelligence is not necessarily
telecommuting. The paper also discusses why companies use remote intelligence and how this
has been enabled and whether it will significantly threaten the sustainability of western work
forces. The paper then discusses remote intelligence and the ethics behind it as well as its merits
and demerits. Finally, the paper discusses the required leadership skills and style necessary for
the sustainable management of remote intelligence
The Rise of Tele-Commuting from a Historical Perspective
Tele commuting is a work arrangement where employees do not travel or commute to a
centralized place of work; instead they work from home. Teleworkers in the twenty first century

make use of mobile communication technologies, for instance computers, Wi-Fi equipped
laptops and portables, or even smart phones to work from any location, including in coffee shops
(Siha and Monroe, 2006). Data from Reuters shows that 20 percent of workers in Asia, Middle
East, and Latin America frequently telecommute and about 10% of these workers work daily
from home. In the early 2000s, even taking vacation or being on annual leave was seen as being
absent from work rather than ceasing work and office employees used telecommunications
technologies to telework, enabling them check their work e-mails and other correspondence even
when on vacation (Reaney, 2012). In the 1990s, pop culture took attention of telecommuting
leading to the coining of the term
Work is something that you do, not something you have to travel to
In 1995, Governments, nonprofit organizations, and businesses have slowly adopted
telecommuting to lower costs such as costs of hiring out office space, improve the quality of life
of workers, and allow workers balance family roles with work responsibilities, as well as for
environmental reasons to reduce pollution (Gajendran and Harrison, 2007). Data shows that
about 40% of the US working population (50 million) can work from home even if part of the
time; a marked increase from 2008 when just about 2.5 million excluding self-employed persons,
used their home as their primary place of work. By 2010, about 9.4 million workers in the US
(about 6.6% of the labor force) have reported working from home (Reynolds, 2017).
Telecommuting has gained greater prevalence from 1995, paralleling the advances in
telecommunications, and now the internet.
Defining Remote Intelligence
Remote intelligence is a form of productive engagement in the labor force in which a laborer
performs work from a remote location, making use of available telecommunication and
communications technologies. For instance, a hotel cleaner working from Mexico or South
America will be able to clean a hotel room using Telerobotics, where they remotely control the
cleaning robot. In this case, instead of AI (artificial intelligence) controlling the robot, a human
being across the globe actually does control the robot. A skilled surgeon in India can perform a
delicate operation through a robot on a patient in the USA without physically being present in the

USA. In the same period (between 1994 and 2014), countries such as the US have experienced a
significant decline in male participation in the labor force for males aged between 18 and 54
years; this makes it the second to experience such a decline among OECD nations. The main
reason is because manufacturing jobs are being outsourced, helped by advances in technology in
production methods; this has made employment in this sector no longer cost efficient. At
present, white collar jobs are faced with this strain as well; with high skilled workers capable of
being ousted, thanks to technology like robotics and advances in telecommunication and the
internet (Baldwin, 2017).
Why companies use of remote intelligence is not necessarily telecommuting
Telecommuting essentially refers to working from home and making use of technologies such as
e-mail., the internet, and telephone to work. Remote intelligence entails using skilled workers
located in remote locations to operate machinery or equipment that results in productive work as
though the person was actually working on site. For instance, telemedicine is a form of remote
intelligence where patients are diagnosed remotely and even medicines prescribed, or tele-
surgery (Fell, 2014). Another example is the operation of drones; the US military and other
developed nations, for example, use skilled soldiers from a remote location to operate drones in
conflict areas without risking life and other expensive equipment such as aircraft. The operator
is skilled in drone operation and is actually a soldier but works remotely from the ‘field of
action’. Another example is a global healthcare chain that has a specialists located in different
parts of the world; a heart surgeon working from India can then perform an operation on a
patient in South America, using a complex robot that they control to successfully perform the
surgery (Pomerleau and Pomerleau, 2017).
Companies using remote intelligence may have the workers working from an office in a normal
work environment and are highly skilled persons, rather than semi-skilled workers working from
home, doing tasks such as filling out forms or entering data. The companies using remote
intelligence save costs and attain efficiency; a hotel worker in Europe earns about $ 2100 a
month, a similar worker in India earns about $ 300; the cleaning company can invest in a
cleaning robot that the remote worker based in India operates, at a higher wage of say $ 1000 a

month, saving $ 13200 a year. A company can outsource or hire an accountant in South Africa
whose labor cost is one third that of the same accountant in the UK, despite, say having similar
qualifications and experience (Shorrock, 2009). For this reason, remote intelligence and the firms
that use them are markedly different from telecommuting; the firms can also outsource services
or even manufacturing to high skilled, low wage workers: the example of China’s manufacturing
for global brands is a good example.
The nature of remote intelligence and how this has been enabled
Much of the present work culture is characterized by expensive wage earners working from
expensive glitzy offices in expensive cities. This approach makes a lot of sense from a business
point of view since a lot of services cannot be produced without face to face presence and
interaction among workers (Baldwin, 2017). Having all team embers when making a
presentation with a short deadline enhances success and productivity, hence face to face
collaboration and cooperation makes sense. Remote intelligence works on the premise of
someone located miles away, with the right skills, able to perform a task efficiently and much
cheaply than having the same work done by a local employee (Dixon, 2017). It can mean a
remote surgeon operating on a patient using a robot over the internet and using
telecommunication and internet technologies to ‘see’ what they are doing as though they were in
the operating room (Eveleth, 2014).
Remote intelligence can mean a company outsourcing some manufacturing to a remote
company, or doing assembly in a remote location where workers are highly skilled and charge
much less wages; this makes even more sense if the finished products are intended for sale in
those remote locations. The advent of technology and reduction in language barriers mean that
the traditional barriers to people working productively which are language, skills, and location
have been greatly reduced. The quality of video and voice is greatly improving, thanks to
technology. With technology getting cheaper and ubiquitous, as well as being mobile, it will be
possible to have project teams collaborate from different locations around the world in real time.
This will result in fewer expensive employees having to be assembled in expensive buildings in
expensive cities (Turner, 2010). These developments are slowly but surely heralding tele

migration or virtual offshoring in the labor market. Remote intelligence will enable (is already
doing so) unbundling of labor services from laborers and delivering them internationally.
The threat of remote intelligence to the sustainability of work forces in
developed Western Nations
Traditionally, there is a big gap in wages between the North and South for professionals such as
engineers, accountants, designers, publishers, lawyers, and even doctors. With technology and
the internet, as well as advances in robotics, this is about to change and it will see companies use
equally skilled but lower wage professionals in remote locales to become more efficient and
lower costs, while being able to get new insights and ideas from cultural diversity that remote
intelligence offers (Baldwin, 2017). Technologies such as Building Information management
(BIM) allow various professionals to collaborate on a building project in real time, such that an
architect from Philippines can work with a civil engineer in Brazil, a mechanical engineer in
China, and interior designer in Morocco and successfully complete a building project in Wales at
a much lower cost and much faster and efficiently. Yes, there is every reason for traditional
professionals and employees in Western countries to be very worried about remote intelligence
(Baldwin, 2017). It is going to be even more disruptive than the more considered Artificial
Intelligence. In education, even Western Universities have cause for worry; acquiring a
university degree has become way too expensive; with the need to seek accommodation, acquire
visa, and pay fees and tuition, as well as living expenses. With remote intelligence, Academic
services providers can take advantage of technology such as the internet to offer real time lessons
to remotely located students in real time, with complete team participation at a much lower cost.
Already, many companies are using this model to lower costs and increase efficiency but
outsourcing manufacture of some components or even services such as design to remote low cost
locales and are reaping benefits. It will be a very big shock to Western professionals ring fenced
by geography and politics and low wage laborers in third world countries with not much to do
with their skills; remote intelligence is going to redistribute skills and work, and have a major
disruptive effect, especially on wages and efficiency as well as how companies conduct business
(Mignone et al., 2016).

The ethics of using remote intelligence
Remote intelligence already raises a lot of ethical issues; a drone operator in Pakistan operating a
killer drone over Afghanistan means that the ethics of war are not observed; a fighter in
Afghanistan has no chance to face their opponents in a battle filed, instead, they remain sitting
ducks that can be struck any tine, sometimes accidentally so that innocent people and children
end up dead. The operator of the drone can project their power without projecting vulnerability,
key aspects of any rational conflict or combat (Deptula, 2013). Because of labor cost savings,
another ethical issue arises; firms are ever seeking to maximize their profits and returns to
shareholders; using remote intelligence with low cost labor where they pay a third of what they
would pay locally for the same work also raises serious ethical issues. It implies using people for
greater gain, and knowingly paying less; this aspect however, has a thin line in the context of
ethics. Another ethical issue is sociological, what to do with highly skilled but expensive
professionals found locally, that paid through the nose for their education and rely on their
present job to feed their families and run their economies (Deptula, 2013).
Benefits of remote Intelligence
Remote intelligence has massive benefits for both corporations and people with skills but
without jobs and their economies. For companies, remote intelligence provides then an
opportunity to attain high levels of efficiency and drastically lower costs by using equally (or
even better skilled) employees to perform tasks on demand at a fraction of the cost. For a global
healthcare provider with specialists spread across the world, they can gain from 24 hour
operations since a surgeon in Malaysia can perform a delicate operation on a patient in the US
using tele Robotics in the dead of the night, when the US surgeon is unavailable, or even on
leave (Loubier, 2017). Further, firms can attain 24 hour operations, with skilled workers from
different locations around the world working on projects and tasks at any given time due to
geographic and time differences. For a manufacturer or apparel producer, workers can be
working in Asia while those in South America are asleep. The approach leverages robotics and
human intelligence; human judgment is much better than that of machines and so the result is
higher efficiency work. For workers, especially those in low income countries, this presents a

wonderful opportunity not only to earn more, but to greatly enhance their skills and be more
productive. For host economies, the concept of remote intelligence will greatly improve their
economies. For clients, the result is high quality products at more affordable prices, if firms pass
on the cost savings gained from using remote intelligence to consumers. It also expands the
talent pool for companies and benefits the environment.
Disadvantages or relying on remote intelligence to supply core business needs
It still lacks the ‘personal’ touch so essential in service sector delivery, such as sales and
marketing. Remote intelligence means workers have limited interaction with others or the ability
to use other skills, resulting in low internal motivation for their jobs, while also removing the
valuable aspect of trust generated from face to face interactions. Lack of coworker engagement
and pressure to perform can result in lower job engagement (Juan, 2012).
Leadership style and skills required to sustainably manage remote intelligence
Managers will be working with virtual teams in remote locations with different worth ethics,
culture, and even social and religious values. This is because these leaders will have their
leadership mediated via technology especially because research shows satisfaction among virtual
workers fluctuates wildly, for instance, due to a sense of isolation as there is no face to face
contact. As such, the concept of remote intelligence requires motivational leaders that can keep
others motivated. They need leaders that let the teams do their work and involve them in decision
making. These leaders need excellent communication skills, team building skills, and have
cultural and social awareness to deal with barriers. Such leaders need excellent skills in task
delegation and working with autonomous teams (Dennis, Meola, & Hall, 2018).

References
Baldwin, R. (2017). Forget A.I. 'Remote Intelligence' Will Be Much More Disruptive. [online]
HuffPost. Available at:
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/telerobotics_us_5873bb48e4b02b5f858a1579 [Accessed
24 May 2018].
Boisot, M. and Meyer, M. (2008). Which Way through the Open Door? Reflections on the
Internationalization of Chinese Firms. Management and Organization Review, 4(03), pp.349-
365.
de Haas, H. (2008). The Myth of Invasion: the inconvenient realities of African migration to
Europe. Third World Quarterly, 29(7), pp.1305-1322.
Dennis, D., Meola, D. and Hall, M. (2018). Effective Leadership in a Virtual Workforce. [online]
Main. Available at: https://www.td.org/magazines/td-magazine/effective-leadership-in-a-virtual-
workforce [Accessed 24 May 2018].
Deptula, D. (2013). Remotely Operated Air Power: Implications for Ethics, Policy and Strategy.
[online] Ausairpower.net. Available at: http://www.ausairpower.net/APA-EMEAC-2013-01.html
[Accessed 24 May 2018].
Dixon, N. (2017). The organizational learning cycle. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
Eveleth, R. (2014). The surgeon who operates from 400km away. [online] Bbc.com. Available
at: http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20140516-i-operate-on-people-400km-away [Accessed 24
May 2018].
Fell, S. (2014). Why Are Companies Still Avoiding Telecommuting?. [online] Entrepreneur.
Available at: https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/240189 [Accessed 24 May 2018].
Gajendran, R. and Harrison, D. (2007). The good, the bad, and the unknown about
telecommuting: Meta-analysis of psychological mediators and individual consequences. Journal
of Applied Psychology, 92(6), pp.1524-1541.

Juan, A. (2012). Collaborative and distributed E-research. Hershey, PA: Information Science
Reference.
Mignone, G., Hosseini, M., Chileshe, N. and Arashpour, M. (2016). Enhancing collaboration in
BIM-based construction networks through organisational discontinuity theory: a case study of
the new Royal Adelaide Hospital. Architectural Engineering and Design Management, 12(5),
pp.333-352.
Pomerleau, M. and Pomerleau, M. (2017). The Army is testing if it wants to operate combat
drones remotely. [online] C4ISRNET. Available at:
https://www.c4isrnet.com/unmanned/uas/2017/12/14/the-army-is-testing-if-it-wants-to-operate-
combat-drones-remotely/ [Accessed 24 May 2018].
Reaney, P. (2012). About one in five workers worldwide telecommute: poll. [online] Reuters.
Available at: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-telecommuting/about-one-in-five-workers-
worldwide-telecommute-poll-idUSTRE80N1IL20120125 [Accessed 24 May 2018].
Reynolds, B. (2017). 8 New Stats About Working from Home - FlexJobs. [online] FlexJobs.
Available at: https://www.flexjobs.com/blog/post/8-interesting-stats-about-working-from-home/
[Accessed 24 May 2018].
Salvalaggio, M. (2018). Remote Intelligence: Will It Become a Threat to All Western Workers?.
[online] The Market Mogul. Available at: https://themarketmogul.com/remote-intelligence-
threat/ [Accessed 24 May 2018].
Siha, S. and Monroe, R. (2006). Telecommuting's past and future: a literature review and
research agenda. Business Process Management Journal, 12(4), pp.455-482.
Shorrock, T. (2009). Spies for hire. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Turner, B. (2010). The Routledge international handbook of globalization studies. Abingdon,
Oxon: Routledge.
Tyrväinen, P. (2016). Change in Human Technology's Publisher: Continued Focus on Open
Access Human-Technology Research. Human Technology, 12(2), pp.103-104.