Journal Article

The literature highlights the role of communities of practice (CoPs) in the creation and sharing of tacit knowledge and anchored. However, their impact on the innovation process remains the subject of debate. We strive to better understand the role of CoPs in innovation at the scale of a multinational firm. From the in-depth case study of an innovation developed in a subsidiary and deployed in another, we show the critical role of the joint involvement of two different types of CoPs, one driven and supported by the top management and the other autonomous and spontaneous. We specify the modes of coordination between these CoPs that have supported the development and deployment of innovation in the MNC. [googletranslate_en]

People tend to be happier in more egalitarian societies. Most people, including those with mental disorders, tend to benefit from taking part in activities which contribute to society. People benefit mentally from feeling that they have a say in decisions which affect their lives. Advances in robotics and the de-skilling of labour will decrease the opportunities for people to gain satisfaction from economic employment. “The organization of society in such a way as to maximise health by encouraging health equality cannot, of course, be brought about simply by philosophical argument” Guha (2014) but Aristotle’s writings at least suggest a philosophic framework upon which an alternative form of society might be built.

I inspect the relevant literature on the rise of an automated jobless society, providing both quantitative evidence on trends and numerous in-depth empirical examples. Building my argument by drawing on data collected from The Century Foundation, Frey and Osborne (2013), McKinsey Global Institute, Pew Research Center, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, and The Washington Post, I performed analyses and made estimates regarding the best paid and least/most vulnerable occupations, automation potential based on demonstrated technology of occupation titles in the U.S. (cumulative), percentage who say that in the next 50 years robots and computers will “definitely” or “probably” do much of the work currently done by humans, technical automation capacity of U.S. jobs, and proportion of U.S. adults who think it is not at all/not very/somewhat/very likely that the following jobs will be replaced by robots or computers in their lifetimes.

The author investigates the evolution of job skill distribution using task data derived from the U.K. Skills Surveys of 1997, 2001, and 2006, and the 1992 Employment Survey in Britain. He determines the extent to which employee involvement in the workplace and computer technologies promote the use of higher order cognitive and interactive skills. He finds that literacy, other communication tasks, and self-planning skills have grown especially fast. Numerical and problem-solving skills have also become more important, but repetitive physical skills have largely remained unchanged. He finds that employee involvement and computer technologies privilege the use of greater generic skills but substitute for repetitive physical tasks. However, the classification of all tasks as either routine or non-routine is found to be problematic. Finally, the author finds a strong connection between the rising use of more academic skills and the education level required for entry into the labor market.

The educational innovation is gradually becoming in the field of training and education because it can meet new challenges in the digital age. These issues are both the appropriation of new digital tools but also the fact of rethinking a value-added-face. Thus, it will capture attention and create change in mindset, to acculturate to new working methods and make concrete theoretical learning. In this context, the mode hackathon Design Thinking, is a training vector that acquires both, methodological and behavioral skills. This article outlines the features and benefits of this practice è from the analysis of a real experiment with a public human resources, company employees of faculty and students. The analysis shows that during the place of the day, the formula allows each of the participants to adopt complementary learning postures mentioned by the experiential cycle Kolb (1984). Thus, beyond knowledge, these are the methods and behaviors that are acquired to form the basis of new skills. [googletranslate_en]

We use Census and Labour Force Survey (LFS) data for the period from 1971 to 2012 to investigate whether the Canadian Wage and employment structures have polarized, that is, whether wages and employment have grown more in high- and low- than in middle- paying occupations. We find that there has been faster growth in employment in both high- and low-paying occupations than those in the middle since 1981. However, up to 2005, the wage pattern reflects a simple increase in inequality with greater growth in high-paid than middle-paid occupations and greater growth in middle than low-paid occupations. Since 2005, there has been some polarization, but this is present only in some parts of the country and seems to be related more to the resource boom than technological change. We present results for the US to provide a benchmark. The Canadian patterns fit with those in the US and other countries apart from the 1990s when the US undergoes wage polarization not seen elsewhere. We argue that the Canadian data do not fit with the standard technological change model of polarization developed for the US. 1.

In the last twenty years, higher education policies have become increasingly important national priorities in both the developed and the developing countries. According to the endogenous growth theory, higher education and thereby accumulation of human capital is considered to be the main driver of economic competitiveness in the growing global economy founded on knowledge. Thus, as education is undoubtedly one of the main drivers of economic growth and development, an increase in the real expenditures for education is found in many countries. All this is especially evident in times of rapid technological changes. The interest of this paper is to show the relationship between GDP and public spending on education by applying the method of panel data analysis on the selected EU Member States and former Soviet Union Countries for the period 2000-2011. The results of the analysis showed that public expenditure for education, as well the size of the tertiary educated workforce and the number of researchers have a positive impact on GDP growth.

To meet its labor needs unskilled in seasonal sectors, Canada Hiring temporary foreign workers (TFWs). As part of a study on the hiring of management issues TFWs, employers and key informants were asked about the motivations of firms to use the TFW. The main motivation, unlike that which would be expected, is not cost saving. The interest to hire TFWs based on cost-utility considerations, such as benefit from available manpower, efficient, fair, and present all season, flexibility for employers to reduce the risk and uncertainty of production. Employers and give their preferences to TFW rather than local workers. TFWs would meet all their expectations of flexibility in terms of numbers, schedules, pay and skills. [googletranslate_en]

This paper uses new data on the task content of occupations to present a new picture of the labor market effects of technological change in pre-WWII United States. I show that, similar to the recent computerization episode, the electrification of the manufacturing sector led to a "hollowing out" of the skill distribution whereby workers in the middle of the distribution lost out to those at the extremes. OLS estimates show that electrification increased the demand for clerical, numerical, planning and people skills relative to manual skills while simultaneously reducing relative demand for the dexterity-intensive jobs which comprised the middle of the skill distribution. Thus, early twentieth century technological change was unskill-biased for blue collar tasks but skill-biased on aggregate. These results are in line with the downward trend in wage differentials within U.S. manufacturing up to 1950.