Software development is a fast-paced environment where developers need constant update to ever-changing technologies. Furthermore, process improvement initiatives have been proven useful in increasing the productivity of a software organization. As such, these organizations need to decide where to invest their training budget. As a result, training in technological update to their workforce or training in process conformance with its productive processes become conflicting alternatives. This paper presents a system dynamics simulation of a software factory product line. The objective of this simulation is to understand the changes in behavior when selecting either one of the above-training alternatives. The system dynamics model was validated with an expert panel, and the simulation results have been empirically validated—using statistical process control—against the performance baseline of a real software development organization. With the simulation under statistical control and performing like the baseline, the independent variables representing process conformance (process training) and technology skills (skills training) were modified to study their impact on product defects and process stability. Our results show that while both variables have positive impact on defects and process stability, investment in process training results in a process with less variation and with fewer defects.

This paper analyses theoretical and empirical scientific literature about the impact of technological innovations on unemployment, considering the former as a key driver of long-term productivity and economic growth. Using panel data from 25 European countries for the period of 2000-2012, we aim to examine whether technological innovations affect unemployment. We used triadic patent families per million inhabitants as our main proxy for technological innovations, as well as other unemployment controls, in our model, which were estimated using System Generalized Method of Moments (SGMM). Finding no significant relationship between technological innovations and unemployment in our base estimation, we re-estimated it testing the impact with a time lag as well as using alternative proxies for technological innovations. Overall, the research estimations do not suggest that technological innovations have an effect on unemployment.

The United States has experienced an unsustainable increase of the biomedical research workforce over the past 3 decades. This expansion has led to a myriad of consequences, including an imbalance in the number of researchers and available tenure-track faculty positions, extended postdoctoral training periods, increasing age of investigators at first U.S. National Institutes of Health R01 grant, and exodus of talented individuals seeking careers beyond traditional academe. Without accurate data on the biomedical research labor market, challenges will remain in resolving these problems and in advising trainees of viable career options and the skills necessary to be productive in their careers. We analyzed workforce trends, integrating both traditional labor market information and real-time job data. We generated a profile of the current biomedical research workforce, performed labor gap analyses of occupations in the workforce at regional and national levels, and assessed skill transferability between core and complementary occupations. We conclude that although supply into the workforce and the number of job postings for occupations within that workforce have grown over the past decade, supply continues to outstrip demand. Moreover, we identify practical skill sets from real-time job postings to optimally equip trainees for an array of careers to effectively meet future workforce demand.-Mason, J. L., Johnston, E., Berndt, S., Segal, K., Lei, M., Wiest, J. S. Labor and skills gap analysis of the biomedical research workforce.

We report the results of qualitative research on adults who enrolled in a vocational and education training (VET) program with the intention of changing their careers. The participants were 30 adults aged between 25 and 45 years. A modified version of the consensual qualitative research method was applied to transcriptions of semi-structured interviews with the participants. There appeared to be two main reasons underlying the decision to enrol in a VET program with the aim of initiating a career change. Based on the reasons given, two groups (career changers and proactive changers) and five distinct categories were recognized. The career changers included individuals who wished to change careers due to dissatisfaction with their current situation. In this group, the decisions were motivated by either health problems or personal dissatisfaction. The proactive changers included individuals who wished to reorient their career because of a desire to undertake new projects. In this group, there were three categories of reasons: a wish to attain better working conditions, a search for personal growth and a desire to have an occupation that fit the person's vocation. Thus, the participants reoriented their careers according to various motivations, pointing to the existence of a heterogeneous population and the complexity of the phenomenon. The results highlight the importance of understanding the subjective reasons behind career changes and the need to adjust career interventions accordingly.

Human beings must develop many skills to cope with the large amount of challenges that currently exist in the world: media empowerment for an active and democratic citizenship, knowledge acquisition and conversion for lifelong and life-wide learning, 21st century skills for matching demand and supply in labor markets, and dispositional employability for unpredictable future career success. One of the tools for achieving these is online education, in which students have the chance to manage their own time, content, and goals. Thus, this paper analyzes these issues from the perspective of skills gained through e-learning and validates the Socio-Technical E-learning Employability System of Measurement (STELEM) framework. The research was carried out with former students of the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya. Exploratory and confirmatory factorial analyses validate several consistent and reliable scales in two areas: (i) employability, based on educational social capital, media empowerment, knowledge acquisition, knowledge conversion, literacy, digitalness, collaboration, resilience, proactivity, identity, openness, motivation, organizational culture, and employment security; and (ii) socio-technical systems existing in this open online university, based on its information and communications technology (ICT), learning tasks, as well as student-centered and organizational approaches. The research provides two new psychometrical scales that are useful for the evaluation, monitoring, and assessment of relationships and influences between socio-technical e-learning organizations and employability skills development and proposes a set of indicators related to human and social capital, valid in employability contexts.

In recent decades, international organizations have developed initiatives that incorporate lifelong learning as a tool to increase the employability of citizens. In this context, the goal of this research is to test the influence of formal e-learning on estimating employment status. The research made use of a sample of 595 citizens in 2007 and 1,742 citizens in 2011, using microdata from Eurostat's Adult Education Survey (AES) implemented by the Spanish Statistical Office [Instituto Nacional de Estadística] (INE) in Spain. Controlling for socio-demographics and formal education-level information, multiple binary logistic and ordinal regression models on formal education activities are used to check the separate effects of independent variables and demonstrate that Spanish people who have done formal lifelong e-learning activities are more likely to have an employment contract: i) in 2007, before the start of the economic crisis, for all individuals; ii) in 2011, during the economic crisis, for all individuals; iii) in 2011, for individuals with any level of computer literacy; iv) in 2011, for individuals whose highest education level is primary, secondary, or post-secondary non-tertiary; and v) in 2011, for individuals having more stable employment contracts, understood as a combination of duration (temporary, permanent), and working hours (part-time, full-time). Consequently, after inferential judgements based on the empirical results, it is shown that one of the most important factors for estimating employability in times of economic crisis has to do with lifelong e-learning. Moreover, formal e-learning activities can be a strategy for obtaining better job stability.

While the ethics of technology is analyzed across disciplines from science and technology studies (STS), engineering, computer science, critical management studies, and law, less attention is paid to the role that firms and managers play in the design, development, and dissemination of technology across communities and within their firm. Although firms play an important role in the development of technology, and make associated value judgments around its use, it remains open how we should understand the contours of what firms owe society as the rate of technological development accelerates. We focus here on digital technologies: devices that rely on rapidly accelerating digital sensing, storage, and transmission capabilities to intervene in human processes. This symposium focuses on how firms should engage ethical choices in developing and deploying these technologies. In this introduction, we, first, identify themes the symposium articles share and discuss how the set of articles illuminate diverse facets of the intersection of technology and business ethics. Second, we use these themes to explore what business ethics offers to the study of technology and, third, what technology studies offers to the field of business ethics. Each field brings expertise that, together, improves our understanding of the ethical implications of technology. Finally, we introduce each of the five papers, suggest future research directions, and interpret their implications for business ethics.

Not limited to a simple description of the technical consequences entailed automation for enterprises and employees concerned, the originality of the analysis Naville is in search of the deeper meaning of automatism as the ratio between men and machines. At company level, internal Transferis imply a qualitative upgrading of staff, changes in qualifications, adaptation of training for these skills, etc. While this reduces the pass working time on machines, empty it produces are not in attic recreation, but by activities such as additional controls suppletifs, conferences and training courses, meetings of development, etc., esta say activities at the service of corporate affairs (p. 140). This shift of human functions to read or signs of interpretation in the trial production is one of the main novelties caused by automation (p. 228). [googletranslate_en]

Activation policies aimed at getting working-age people off benefits and into work have become a buzzword in labour market policies. Yet they are defined and implemented differently across OECD countries, and their success rates vary too. The Great Recession has posed a severe stress test for these policies, with some commentators arguing that they are at best “fair weather” policies. This paper sheds light on these issues mainly via the lens of recent OECD research. It presents the stylised facts on how OECD countries have responded to the Great Recession in terms of ramping up their spending on active labour market policies (ALMPs), a key component in any activation strategy. It then reviews the macroeconomic evidence on the impact of ALMPs on employment and unemployment rates. This is followed by a review of the key lessons from recent OECD country reviews of activation policies. It concludes with a discussion of crucial unanswered questions about activation.