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This dissertation studies determinants of the U.S. labor market structure and human capital development, with a focus on technological change. A key feature of the U.S. labor market since 1980 is the substantial growth of the employment in high skill occupations and there is a substantial literature attributing this change to technological change. However, since 1999, the employment growth of high skill occupations has decelerated markedly despite continued rapid growth in technology. The first essay documents this novel trend and examines the role of technological change in explaining this phenomenon. It shows that technological advancements since the late 1990s, such as the onset of Internet, have expanded what computers can do and become substitutes for high skill occupations. This change can explain a substantial portion of the stagnancy in employment growth for high skill occupation in the 2000s. The second essay examines the role of computer adoption in explaining the differences in the change of gender wage gap between 1980 and 2000 across cities in the United States. It uses the city-level routine task intensity in 1980 to predict the subsequent increase in computer adoption and shows that cities with one percent greater increase in computer adoption experienced a 0.7 percent more decrease in the change of male-female wage ratio between 1980 and 2000. Computerization explains about 50 percent of the decline in the male-female wage gap between 1980 and 2000. The third essay studies the causal effect of maternal education on the gender gap in children’s non-cognitive skills. It shows that maternal education reduces boys’ disadvantage in non-cognitive behaviors relative to girls at age 7. To explain the mechanism of this effect, it provides suggestive evidence that better educated mothers spend more time going outings with boys while reading to girls at age 7, and going outings could be more closely related to non-cognitive development than reading.

Thesis--University of Illinois, 1972. / eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record.

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Over the twentieth century advanced economies have seen an economic and social development process which was build upon the consolidation of a strong middle class. Yet, recent decades have seen an increase in wealth and income inequality, reaching levels not seen since before the Second World War. This thesis explore some of the these issues in two parts. The focus of the first part of the thesis is on the role of education and technology in the rise of the middle class. By means of an overlapping generations model with endogenous growth, I study the conditions that enable a society to transit from underdevelopment to development. The model in place reproduces a Kuznets curve, which is deemed an important empirical feature of the history of advanced economies. The second part focuses on the fall of the middle class, by studying the effect of technology and skills in job polarisation - i.e. the fall in employment in middle-skill occupations. The approach is both theoretical and empirical. A sorting model based on tasks is developed and adapted to study polarisation. Central to this model are the distributions of skills that workers have. Thus, a complete chapter is dedicated to characterise these ability distributions, using longitudinal data from the UK for 1991-2008 in an econometric model based on the so-called Mincer equation. The estimated distributions - positive skewed - are used to calibrate the sorting model. Then, this model is used to identify the nature of the technological process affecting the UK economy over the selected period of study. Simple counterfactual exercises shed light on the strong effect of technical progress on both polarisation and inequality. In contrast, the role of change in skills is negligible. The overall conclusion is that the nature of technological change is essential in defining distributional outcomes: whilst technology can enable the rise to a strong middle class, it can also undermine it.

Industry is a key player in the transition to a sustainable society, where manufacturing companies need to respond to the challenges of environmental concerns in several ways. The need for managing environmental technological change in production systems is and will continue to be a challenge for manufacturing companies, as they often tend to focus on short-term priorities to stay economically competitive, rather than developing the organisation to manage longer-term environmental competitiveness. In accordance with this, the objective of the thesis is to develop an understanding of how to manage environmental technological change in a production system. By identifying four categories of contextual preparedness, these being short-term focused, trade-off prepared, balance-seeking or long-term prepared, the thesis provides perspectives on how to manage change related to time and contextual aspects. The operation managers need to manage the projects by allocating individuals who can work systematically and build a strong knowledge base by collaborating with internal and external stakeholders. It shows that knowledge is not only about technology but also about realising the need for change and developing strong longer-term objectives. A model is developed to support operations managers with purposeful actions, such as reflecting upon their long-term capabilities and making conscious decisions when to manage their environmental technology change processes regarding their own production system. The model presents how to “zip” sustainability into operations, so as to provide guidance for operations managers on how to systematically manage long-term change in a context that needs to work with multiple time aspects - and priorities. By using the term zip it is emphasised that the long-term developments have to be consciously integrated into the organisation aligned to the short-term needs. Literature reviews, as well as four empirical case studies, have been conducted in order to explore environmental technological change. In the first two studies, the factors which affect environmental technological change in a production system have been identified. In the two subsequent studies the change processes as such were studied, leading to an increased understanding of how the production system and temporal dimensions influence the change processes. The studies conducted and the results are presented in six appended papers.

In the past thirty years, the IMP Group's Interaction and Network Approach has gained its increasing popularity in researching economic behaviours among resource-dependent business actors through relational linkages (Håkansson et al., 2004; Turnbull et al., 1996). Within network research, understanding the dynamics in business networks, in which interfirm relationships are regarded as crucial constituents, has been of particular interest (Johnston et al., 2006; Möller and Halinen, 1999). Moreover, technology has been identified as an important component driving the evolution of a business network, where technological change may bring about positive and negative effects on the relationships embedded in this network, and consequently, results in network dynamics (Afuah, 2000; Christensen, 1997; Håkansson and Waluszewski, 2002b; Lundgren, 1995). A perspective of resource interaction (e.g. Håkansson et al., 2009) suggests that technological change needs to be treated as a process rather than a critical event. However the nature of this process as well as how it impacts on the configuration of a technology-based business net and on dynamics of relationships constituting this net remains under-examined.Based on qualitative research methods, a longitudinal single-case study is chosen to conduct an empirical investigation in the optical recording media industry, in order to address the above research problems. To facilitate the data collection, a focal net perspective and an input-process-output model are employed. The focal net under study is characterised as a value-creating and technology-bundled business net. A total of 72 interviews were carried out in three stages and with the focal actor, its customers, suppliers and a complementor. The empirical data allows the research to reconstruct the evolution of the focal business net, which covers a time-span of more than 10 years from 1998 to 2008, and in which major technological change has taken place three times, from CD-R to DVD-/+R, DVD Double Layer and HD/Blu-ray technologies. In the development of the optical recording technology, the focal net has experienced four net reconfigurations in which radical changes of relationships as well as disturbance in resource interaction are observed. Based on the case study result, empirical observations are offered and new insights into the process of the arrival of technological change and net reconfiguration and relationship dynamics affected by this technological arrival are developed. Moreover, theoretical contribution, managerial implications, limitations and future research directions are provided.

Significant advancement in technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine-learning, and robotics has sparked broad debate amongst economists, futurists, and current business leaders regarding the future of jobs. The purpose of this research was to determine the impact of technological change on jobs and workforce structures. The study involved a structured collection, classification, and analysis of secondary data. It aimed to (i) determine a relationship between futures and labour economics literature, (ii) identify occupational groups with higher susceptibility to job automation, and (iii) project changes in workforce structure for various industries. This study found that there is alignment between predicted probabilities of job automation and parameters of task routineness and task complexity from the routine-task-biased and complex-task biased technological change models. Routine-simple occupations are more susceptible to job automation, followed closely by nonroutine-simple occupations. Complex occupations are least susceptible. Stratum I occupations were more susceptible to job automation than occupations in higher strata of workThe projected change in workforce structures is highest for large hierarchical industries such as machine bureaucracies and divisionalised forms (Type 1 and 2 industries). Technological change will bring about both productivity improvements and technological anxiety. Business in affected industries must develop appropriate innovation and workforce strategies to manage this disruption. / Mini Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2017. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / MBA / Unrestricted

In terms of affecting organizations’ ability to streamline their work, digital upscaling has played a major role as it allows for flexible environments and the use of digital communication tools. Digital communication tools, such as email, text messages and video calls are increasingly replacing the traditional way of meeting face to face. This puts pressure on leaders who are forced to adapt to the digital tools and its possibilities. Possibilities include a more flexible work environment which is something e-leadership has gained ground for as organizations are looking to establish a cost effective and productive workforce. However, such possibilities can also cause constrain on employee’swellbeing as it allows for work outside office hours. E-leadership has become the theoretical framework when researching the digitalization’s effect on leadership. Through a literature overview we have conducted a study based on three indicators: competence, communication and virtual teams. The findings reveal a complexity in the concept as many factors need to be accounted for. Vital for successful e-leadership is putting clear guidelines in place while making sure leaders have an understanding of the possibilities and limitations of the digital tools being used. A possibility, which has also turned out to be a limitation, is that work and leisure are becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish.