Journal Article

Orientation: South Africa currently has the twin challenges of worsening youth unemployment and scarce skills that threaten its economic and social stability. Artisanal trades are an occupation category that strongly reflects this current problem. Simtech Training Institute in Durban, the study setting, currently trains artisan apprentices and facilitates their internship work placements. Research purpose: The objective of this study was to identify some of the critical success factors that differentiated Simtech artisan apprentices who obtained permanent employment, compared to those who are currently unemployed. Motivation for the study: The main motivation of the study was to improve the conversion rate of artisan apprentices to permanently employed artisans. Research design, approach and method: The study was a cross-sectional study conducted among 51 artisan apprentices who had graduated over the past 3 years at Simtech and who were selected randomly. An online questionnaire comprising primarily Likert scale type questions was utilised to obtain the responses from the sample. Factor analysis was used to remove scale items from the independent variables that did not impact the variability sufficiently. Then the remaining scale items that impacted variability significantly were combined and categorised as new composite independent variables. Logistic regression analysis identified success factors for permanent employment of Simtech graduates.

Purpose- The main objective of this paper is to analyse the link between human capital depreciation and the educational level of Spanish salaried workers. Design/methodology/approach- Wage equations are estimated by sector and occupation, following the empirical framework proposed by Neuman and Weiss. Data in this study refer to the Spanish labour market, using two cross‐sectional employee‐firm matched data. Findings- The estimates provided in this paper suggest that human capital depreciation rates are not homogeneous for the whole sample; in contrast, they vary across educational levels, being greater as the workers' school attainment increases. Research limitations/implications- The main restriction of the paper is the limited availability of quality longitudinal data to estimate human capital depreciation. Practical implications- Knowledge acquired by workers may quickly become obsolete in a context of technological change. Thus, the paper's main findings support the need for ongoing training programs to update workers' skills to changing market requirements. Originality/value- The added value of this paper is two‐fold. On the one hand, returns to education and human capital depreciation for the Spanish labour force are estimated using a pseudo‐panel created from two cross‐sectional data bases. On the other hand, earnings equations are estimated by sector and occupation in order to calculate human capital depreciation rates; this procedure allows the authors to take into account the worker's occupation and their level of education as well as technological differences associated with their job.

In recent years, the UK government and policymakers have sought to maximise the impact of the creative economy via a programme of targeted intervention. Intermediary agencies − those organisations that sit between government and policymakers on one hand, and creative practitioners and microbusinesses on the other − are increasingly seen as crucial to the functioning of the creative economy. This article reports on the activities of one creative intermediary − Cultural Enterprise Office − based in Glasgow, Scotland. CEO’s remit is to help creatives become more ‘businesslike’, and they provide or facilitate access to training and skills development. The article draws on interviews conducted with CEO staff and clients, and ethnographic material gathered from observation of CEO’s working practices. I explore how creatives narrativise their personal and professional development in relation to intermediaries and demonstrate the tension at the core of CEO’s practice − between their remit to support a skills and employability agenda and their understanding of the limitations of this agenda. I also explore the emotional component of business support, which arises in response to the extreme individualisation associated with creative work, and the precarious working conditions that creatives face. The rationale for writing this article stems from the fact that the creative economy is now a globalised concept, with many countries looking to the UK for guidance on growing the sector. Yet little is known about what services creatives draw down from intermediaries, why and when, or how they understand the role of intermediaries.

The implementation of Industry 4.0 has a far-reaching impact on industrial value creation. Studies on its opportunities and challenges for companies are still scarce. However, the high practical and theoretical relevance of digital and connected manufacturing technologies implies that it is essential to understand the underlying dynamics of their implementation. Thus, this study examines the relevance of Industry 4.0-related opportunities and challenges as drivers for Industry 4.0 implementation in the context of sustainability, taking a differentiated perspective on varying company sizes, industry sectors, and the company’s role as an Industry 4.0 provider or user. A research model comprising relevant Industry 4.0-related opportunities and challenges as antecedents for its implementation is hypothesized. In order to test the model, partial least square structural equation modeling is applied for a sample of 746 German manufacturing companies from five industry sectors. The results show that strategic, operational, as well as environmental and social opportunities are positive drivers of Industry 4.0 implementation, whereas challenges with regard to competitiveness and future viability as well as organizational and production fit impede its progress. Moreover, it is shown that the perception of Industry 4.0-related opportunities and challenges as antecedents to Industry 4.0 implementation depends on different company characteristics.

Purpose - Technology is a combination of tools and crafts, a balance of hardware and software. Hospitality technology has advanced through innovation in the application of both machines and tools, and systems and organizations. The purpose of this paper is to offer perspective on past technological advancements and some predictions for those just on the horizon in the hospitality field. Design/methodology/approach - The paper reviews the definition of technology and the changes that have occurred in the hospitality industry in relation to the technology used. It then goes on to make some forecasts about the use of technology for the future through past studies and an insight into the technology of today. Findings - Technology is heading in a direction that will produce more dramatic change than at any time over the past 100 years. Expected changes are to turn the hospitality industry from the age of labor to the age of wireless - as equipment becomes more efficient, less labor will be required. As the consumers and employees become more wireless in their orientation, restaurants, and hotels must be accommodating to these changes. Practical implications - Restaurants and hotels are adapting to technology at a slower pace than other organizations and that could mean problems as the technology continues to change at an extremely rapid rate over the next decade. The changes that are occurring will help with human resource practices in screening applications, bringing more knowledge of the brand to consumers and employees, processing of orders in a more efficient way, and eliminating some of the inefficiencies of old. Originality/value - The paper takes a look at the past and projects the current scenario related to technology and hospitality into the future. Human resource practices will change as the technology for training and recruiting gets more cost-effective, and guest services will improve as marketing can be done to the guests where they live - online and wireless.

Nowadays, the economic activities have become increasingly digital since hundreds of millions of Internet users are using crowdsourcing platforms either to work at an online job as workers, or as a model of problem-solving and production as requesters. This growing workforce makes it necessary from the perspective of the online platforms, to fully understand the business dimensions of this emerging and innovative “online labor” phenomenon, which can rapidly change the future of work and work organization in the online world. This paper aims to investigate and analyze the visits of online labor platforms that offer crowdsourcing and crowdfunding services. Using websites’ metrics data drawn from Alexa for the time period 2012-2016 the paper uses Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) and Fixed Effects (FE) regression analysis to examine correlations between visits and website characteristics. The research shows that the sessions of an online labor marketplace website from mobile devices have an increasing trend to be positively correlated to the quality mechanisms a website deploys as well as on location-dependent factors. The results are expected to provide insights on how the online labor website characteristics affect their traffic and thus inform about their evolution and improvement.

The proportion of women in Canada’s information and communication technology (ICT) sector is well below their proportion in other fields. One hypothesis for this phenomenon is that women may not have the “right stuff” to be heavily involved in ICT. We use basic ICT scores derived from Statistics Canada’s 2012 Survey of Adult Skills, which is the Canadian portion of the 2012 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies as a proxy for the “right stuff.” We find that, after controlling for appropriate covariates, Canadian women score higher than men on basic ICT skills. However, women with the same ICT test scores are much less likely than men to be employed in ICT occupations. We also find that hourly wages in ICT occupations are lower for women, but this wage gap is no greater than that in the general labour market. Given the current and projected shortages of ICT professionals, women represent a large, yet untapped, pool of talent for this sector.

The end of the 20th century was marked by several studies that revealed the collective mechanisms of the development of knowledge as a joint activity in working teams. Thus, the idea that acquiring knowledge was an unproblematic transfer of what is already available and can be unilaterally transferred and assimilated was rejected [Lave, Wenger, 1991]. The aim of this paper is to study the possibilities of electronic network platforms to use the collective nature of knowledge in the interests of further developing knowledge and innovation through online communication of professionals. Based on a literature review on the development of knowledge, the paper compares the basic principles of knowledge application in formulating new decisions during real joint activity and during online communication within specialized platforms for ‘knowledge exchange’. The author argues that electronic networking platforms contribute to the fragmentation of knowledge representation of participants, eluding a common sense and purpose. Thus, such platforms blur the boundary between knowledge and information. The article indicates that the desire to increase the effectiveness of collective creativity via online communication risks not developing competencies, discretion, and exploration of others’ experiences. Instead, this desire leads to strengthening external control and separation of functions into primary routine operations when an individual participant is valued not for his/ her knowledge and previous experience, but for his/ her communicative capabilities. The produced effect is akin to the industrial revolution of the machine era; when this effect is widespread, there are risks that knowledge workers will be turned into easily replaceable, piecemeal workers. To avoid this, electronic platforms should either learn to recreate the conditions of offline micro-environments of innovation, or not claim to fulfil the role of knowledge production.

Organizational trends towards outsourcing and contingent workers have redefined our current views towards careers. Organizations that are seeking a cost efficient and simple process to complete specified tasks are benefiting from utilizing crowdsourcing. Crowdsourcing also proves to be a beneficial option for employees interested in a contingent-employee position. Online marketplaces where organizations post tasks for workers to complete on a pay-per-task basis give workers the flexibility to select the tasks they want to complete and complete them from anywhere in the world. Results from an international survey of 404 knowledge workers participating in crowdsourcing activities help to form an understanding of some of the current perceptions and future trends in crowdsourcing. Findings from the survey are discussed within the context of traditional and protean careers. The practice of utilizing these online marketplaces, and the benefits and costs associated with doing so, are also discussed from the employer and employee perspective.