While some organizations have made strides in employing workers with disabilities as an act of social responsibility, other entities have started to realize the need and value of this untapped human resource (Thakker, 1997). Research has shown that employees with disabilities have low turnover rates, low absenteeism, and high motivation to prove themselves (Fersh & Thomas, 1993). Executives will need to rethink their employment practices in order to compete for employees from the current, shrinking workforce. Further, many employers are looking towards academic institutions for well-qualified employees. The key question here is whether or not our academic institutions and educators are truly prepared to enable, education, and motivate all learners for the changes in the workforce. Specifically, are we able to equip all learners with the necessary technological skills and education to best prepare them for this new workforce outlook? Currently, 54 million Americans with disabilities use information technology (IT) at colleges and universities, which accounts for 20 percent of the population (Oblinger & Ruby, 2004). Unfortunately, statistical data for persons with disabilities is done with a separate survey, which is a part from the U.S. Survey and conducted only every 10 years.

The development of the use of digital intermediation work is accompanied by the growth of labor demand, in a context of reconfiguration of reporting. The economic model of digital platforms, designated by the term "ubérisation" is based on the use of a flexible workforce, available, inexpensive, and supporting business risks. The legal debate crystallizes around qualifying attempts, amid litigation involving the leading companies of this "industry": the digital worker is it an employee, independent, semi-independent? Should there be a special status to this kind of activity? The challenge of adapting labor law to the digital revolution so involves considering economic dependence in which there are workers in this economy to determine the pathways to improving their protection. This study examines these issues under the French legal framework. [googletranslate_en]

From a case study on the deployment of a new unit in the Canadian air force, this article explores the organizational change management as legitimation process. The results of the study show, firstly, that change management is based on four legitimization strategies: the testing of the new unit, the training of actors, changing business rules and broadening its scope of activities; secondly, their articulation defines a legitimation process consists of four phases: construction, sustainability, deepening and development of the legitimacy [googletranslate_en]

Attraction and voluntary resignation of young workers: a case study in the newspaper industry. In this exploratory case study, developed into a large company of the newspaper industry, the purpose was to analyze factors of attraction and resignation of young people who voluntarily chose to leave the organization. The theoretical basis for this research was built on the following aspects: job and career aspirations of Generation Y workers; factors of attraction and retention, and organizational culture, given the organization’s need to adapt its culture to the strategic competitive challenges it has been facing. The data collection was made through in-depth interviews with 17 members of the Generation Y, who chose to leave after at least one year working in the company. As main factors of attraction, there were the image and reputation of the company’s leading newspaper, which greatly contributes to its employer brand. On the other hand, some traits of the organizational culture were in contrast with the participants’ values, indicating a mismatch that may be leading the organization to lose young talent, considered important due to the identified need for a cultural change. Regarding the personal motivations to leave the company, three groups were identified – idealistic ones, career-oriented ones and immediatist ones – driven by different desires and professional perspectives.

From a historical case study, this paper explores the conditions for the emergence of the first "business ecosystem" the ecosystem of information and communications technology (ICT). The case concerns the proposed deployment of the first communication network and sharing digital resources among geographically remote computers: ARPANET (for "ARPA NETwork"). Unlike the majority of the works that consider business ecosystems are the result of the strategic action of "pivots firms", defended the hypothesis in this paper is that the ICT ecosystem is born of a technological breakthrough scope by a community of public and private organizations, including researchers, large commercial firms being relegated to the periphery. [googletranslate_en]

This paper sets out to explain why the UK and Ireland have received a higher proportion of skilled and highly educated European migrants since 2004 than Sweden, arguing that the features of the formers’ liberal market economies as described in the Varieties of Capitalism literature are more complementary to skilled temporary migration than those of Sweden’s coordinated market economy. The flexible labour market, the short-term employment relationships, the emphasis on general education and the centrality of competition in the Irish and British labour markets are identified as the main features attracting skilled temporary European migrants. This stands in contrast to Sweden’s emphasis on specialised vocational training, long-term employment relationships and a rigid, less accessible labour market. These findings imply that European coordinated market economies, in need of skilled migrants due to demographic changes, have to create strong institutional incentives to compete with liberal market economies for skilled migrants.

Background The “gig” economy connects consumers with contractors (or workers) through online platform businesses to perform tasks (or “gigs”). This innovation in technology provides businesses and consumers access to low-cost, on-demand labour, but gig workers’ experiences are more complex. They have access to very flexible, potentially autonomous work, but also deal with challenges caused by the nature of the work, its precariousness, and their relationships with the platform businesses. Workers in the Global North and South may also experience these challenges very differently. Based on our report “Towards an Understanding of Canadian Workers in the Global Gig Economy”, we present a commentary on the implications of a globalized online platform labour market on the health of gig workers in Canada and globally. Main body Based on our scoping review of peer and grey literature, we categorized gig worker vulnerabilities in three ways: 1) occupational vulnerabilities, 2) precarity, and 3) platform-based vulnerabilities. Occupational vulnerabilities are connected to the work being performed (e.g. driving a car or computer work) and are not specific to platform labour. Precarity refers to the short-term, contingent nature of the work, characteristics that may be shared with other forms of work. Some examples of precariousness are lack of health insurance, collective bargaining, or career training and promotion. Finally, platform-based vulnerabilities are particular to the way platform labour is structured. These vulnerabilities include worker misclassification, information asymmetries, and the culture of surveillance. We suggest that, together, these vulnerabilities challenge gig workers’ right to health. Conclusions We propose that the experience of gig workers around the world must be understood in the context of neoliberalism, which has increased both the globalization and precaritization of work. While gig workers share some vulnerabilities, which have important negative consequences on their health, with other workers, the platform-specific vulnerabilities of workers require further inquiry. In particular, the specific health and overall experience of gig workers in different regions of the world – with different labour policies and sociopolitical contexts for work – must be disentangled as workers in the Global North and South experience this work very differently.

In 2013, the Industrial Research Institute (IRI) commissioned the IRI2038 foresight project to research how developments in technology, business processes, regulation and other spheres will impact the art and science of research and technology management over the next 25 years. That study defined three scenarios likely to shape the innovation process in coming years. One of those scenarios was the Hollywood model, in which scientists, engineers, and innovators no longer work for a single firm but rather contract out their services to individual projects and then move on to other projects and companies. Over the course of six months, an IRI Research working group conducted four workshops with R&D leaders at IRI member companies to explore how talent management would be affected in this scenario. The workshops identified challenges and opportunities associated with the Hollywood model as a paradigm for industrial R&D, focused around eight critical aspects of current talent management practice. Although the Hollywood model faces significant infrastructure and legal impediments today, its employment of external R&D workers with diverse experiences and perspectives is likely to create a greater opportunity for significant innovation.

The development of the US manufacturing sector over the last half-century displays two striking and somewhat contradictory features: 1) the growth of real output in the US manufacturing sector, measured by real value added, has equaled or exceeded that of total GDP, keeping the manufacturing share of the economy constant in price-adjusted terms; and 2) there is a long-standing decline in the share of total employment attributable to manufacturing. The persistence of these trends seems inconsistent with stories of a recent or sudden crisis in the US manufacturing sector. After all, as recently as 2010, the United States had the world's largest manufacturing sector measured by its valued-added, and while it has now been surpassed by China, the United States remains a very large manufacturer. On the other hand, there are some potential causes for concern. First, though manufacturing's output share of GDP has remained stable over 50 years, and manufacturing retains a reputation as a sector of rapid productivity improvements, this is largely due to the spectacular performance of one subsector of manufacturing: computers and electronics. Second, recently there has been a large drop in the absolute level of manufacturing employment that many find alarming. Third, the US manufacturing sector runs an enormous trade deficit, equaling $460 billion in 2012, which is also very concentrated in trade with Asia. Finally, we consider the future evolution of the manufacturing sector and its importance for the US economy. Many of the largest US corporations continue to shift their production facilities overseas. It is important to understand why the United States is not perceived to be an attractive base for their production.