Information Technology and the U.S. Workforce Where Are We and Where Do We Go from Here? (2017) / Chapter Skim
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4 Changes in the Nature of Work and Its Organization
4 Changes in the Nature of Work and Its Organization
Pages 80-114
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From page 80... ...
dynamism and flexibility in the workforce; (3) demographics and job satisfaction; (4)
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From page 81... ...
However, the number of companies with zero employees, which the U.S. Census calls "nonemployers,"8 has risen substantially over the last 10 years, from about 18.7 million in 2003 to 23 mil 2 Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2014, "Labor Force Statistics from the Current Population Survey: Labor Force Characteristics 2014," last modified March 10, 2016, http://www.bls.
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From page 82... ...
One hypothesis is that individuals will increasingly provide their labor services in some form of independent contractor relationship with firms; independent contractors can now offer their services efficiently to a much bigger customer base. Alternatively, part of the on-demand or "gig" economy may be a new version of a personal service economy where personal services like transportation and delivery of food and other services are accessible through widely available technology on smartphones and other similar devices.
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From page 83... ...
In addition, crowdsourcing mechanisms can be -- and are -- used within firms to open up the performance of work tasks broadly to their existing employees.14 Contest-based work solicitation systems, in contrast, operate by seeking solutions to often large-scale, complex challenges, but they too reach out to people beyond the boundaries of traditionally assigned job roles. And, although contest-based systems such as Innocentive support the outsourcing of work, such outsourcing is not necessarily inherent to this technological form.
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From page 84... ...
. Contingent workers may be independent contractors or employees of staffing agencies that act as the worker's employer of record for tax purposes.19 According to a recent report of the Government Accountability Office (GAO)
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From page 85... ...
In fact, some argue that a new social class has risen from this trend, "the precariat," made up of individuals facing insecurity, poverty, and a work life with no significance.23 In addition to gaining attention from the popular press, the rise of precarious work has led to a research stream investigating the consequences of temporary work. For example, in a review of studies on precarious employment conducted between 1984 and 2001, Quinlan, Mayhew, and Bohle found a negative relationship between precarious employment and occupational health and safety, concluding that it leads to a stressful and disorganized work environment.24 Contingent work relationships come in a variety of forms, involving various types of employment relationships and various types of worker benefits.
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From page 86... ...
To make a living, gig workers require a steady stream of gigs. Despite their diversity and the great variation in the duration of their projects, contingent workers often share a number of characteristics that place them outside the traditional system of employment relations in the United States, which assumes a long-term relationship with a single, stable employer.
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Regulations could also be shaped to better enable contingent workers who have been traditionally categorized as independent contractors to access benefits and protections through their employer, ensuring protection of their rights under U.S. employment law.
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Haltiwanger, 2014, Labor Market Fluidity and Economic Performance, No. w20479, National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, Mass.
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From page 89... ...
Moreover, dynamism and flexibility have arguably facilitated the ability of the United States to adapt to past periods of rapid technological change. Davis and Haltiwanger provide evidence that the decline in labor market fluidity has had an adverse effect on labor force participation, especially among the young and less educated.
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From page 90... ...
Author's calculations using Compusat and Longitudinal Business Database data. These findings seem inconsistent with an increase in contingent workers engaged in short-duration gig jobs.
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firms in the United States, European Economic Review 86:4-23, copyright 2016, with permission from Elsevier. are both more productive and stable than the small, single-unit establishment firms that have been displaced.
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Overall, the organizational structure and incentives of start-ups may underlie these changes, which are also driven by changes in IT. CHANGING WORKER DEMOGRAPHICS AND JOB SATISFACTION While considering the role of information technologies in the changing nature of work, it is important to keep concurrent social changes in mind.
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From page 93... ...
Fry, 2014,"Wealth Inequality Has Widened Along Racial, Ethnic Lines Since End of Great Recession," Pew Research Center, http://www.pewresearch.org/ fact-tank/2014/12/12/racial-wealth-gaps-great-recession/. 44 Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce, Analysis of Current Population Survey, March Supplement, 1980.
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From page 94... ...
and the contingent nature of parts of the current workforce may be correlated with the continued decline in reported employee job satisfaction. According to one study, job satisfaction was at 61.1 percent in 1983, and this number has steadily decreased over time.49 A recent Conference Board report50 indicated that a majority of Americans (52.3 percent)
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From page 95... ...
The auto industry, surrounded by its various suppliers within the Detroit area, is a prime example of this structure. Over time, integrated functional organizations developed a distinct system of employment relations, distinguished by long job tenure, internal promotion structures, and an acceptance of trade and industrial unions as the main vehicle for worker voice and protection.56 This system of organizing began to change significantly in the late 1970s.
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60 W.F. Cascio, 1998, The future world of work: Implications for human resource costing and accounting, Journal of Human Resource Costing and Accounting 3(2)
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Roots, 2013, Ten principles of good interdisciplinary team work, Human Resource Health 11(19)
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Changing Employment Relationships In addition to the changes described above, advances in IT have also helped unravel the foundation of traditional employment relationships. Beginning with Henry Ford's car factories, during the 20th century many firms made a concerted effort to pay relatively high wages to their employees as a way of creating relationships of mutual loyalty.
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77 Z Ton, 2014, The Good Jobs Strategy: How the Smartest Companies Invest in Employees to Lower Costs and Boost Profits, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Boston, Mass.
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Simply recommending that more young people attend college may not be sufficient.78 Second, as traditional employment relationships decrease, it is unclear how workers will secure the benefits, security, and voice that organizations provided during the mid-20th century. The result of the New Deal was a series of laws that tied permanent employment to having good health-care benefits and pension funds.
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Making health insurance and pension benefits more portable within the economy is not something that individual firms can achieve. Nor can local communities independently provide a modern social safety net; this requires appropriate tax and redistribution policies from state and federal governments.
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Following the spread of these technologies, work hours became partially decoupled from nature's cycles. Stints of work grew increasingly longer until, after decades of union agitation, Congress eventually passed the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, which limited the standard work week to a maximum of 40 hours and mandated premium pay for additional hours.82 The 8-hour day, coupled with the routine and repetitive nature of many jobs (such as typing, data entry, and operating machine tools on assembly lines)
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Over the last several decades, researchers have accumulated a large body of research on work-family balance, and most of the evidence points toward a single conclusion: work has begun to infiltrate times and places it previously did not (and vice versa) , potentially leading to an increase in work-family conflict.84 Although the rise of dual-career families has contributed strongly to these developments, the use of IT is also strongly implicated.85 When workers are linked on distributed teams, the ability to hold meetings and send 83 For excellent account of the role of work and leisure among blue collar factory workers of the 1940s and 1950s, see C.R.
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Batt and L Moynihan, 2002, The viability of alternative call center production models, Human Resource Management Journal 12(4)
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Communication technologies shape many aspects of when, where, and how social interactions occur and the tenor of their experience. If work becomes less centered on a specific geographic locality, this will fundamentally transform the nature of the social interactions around work.
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But, coupled with the previously discussed precariousness of making a living in contingent labor markets, the committee suspects that these changing employment relations will alter the role work has played in how people assess their sense of value and self-worth. Gender is yet another aspect of the interplay between technology and work.
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From page 107... ...
However, earnings can vary greatly from field to field, so skills and field of training are an important currency in job markets.98 If workers take on a larger variety of jobs over their career, or if skills requirements shift (whether due to technology or other economic factors) , they will need to learn a more diverse set of 95 The Bureau of Labor Statistics has projected roughly 3.8 million new health care and social assistance jobs between 2014 and 2024, nearly 40% of all new jobs; see Bureau of Labor Statistics, "Table 2, Employment by Major Industry Sector," Economic News Release, last modified December 8, 2015, http://www.bls.gov/news.release/ecopro.t02.htm.
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From page 108... ...
Furthermore, as discussed in Chapter 2, there is evidence that online courses benefit most those students who already have well-developed learning skills and a strong educational background, and may leave students already behind in education even further behind. It should be noted, however, that a large number of "traditional" universities also provide a wide range of online education programs leading to undergraduate and graduate degrees, and these programs have a separate set of rankings within the US News and World Report ranking system.99 Students enrolled in online degree programs may complete some or all of their courses online, resulting in degrees with identical designations and transcript notations as campus-only students.
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105 Higher-education institutions can be separated into four general emphases, based on four distinct historical contexts. The "liberal arts college" model derives from a European tradition, where general knowledge and intellectual refinement, rather than specific job skills development, were the primary goals.
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capacity for lifelong learning;108 and, as mentioned previously, (3) social skills.109 For decades, American companies have sent manufacturing work overseas to places with significantly lower wages, such as China, Vietnam, India, and the Philippines.
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However, as automation of manufacturing processes continues, there may be lower overall demand for manufacturing workers, whether abroad or reshored.111 The impact of this trend on jobs in the developing world may be substantial; however, this topic is beyond the scope of this report. A number of discussions regarding an increasing emphasis on certifications and "badges" have attempted to clarify the ability of employers to evaluate "what one knows about" and "what one knows how to do" in rapidly changing organizational contexts and technological environments.
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And though college attendance has increased, for African Americans and Hispanics, participation is lower for these students compared to white students, and they have lower completion rates and less favorable post-graduation outcomes largely because they are more likely to attend open-access or less-selective colleges. African Americans and Hispanics who attend a selective college exhibit 50% higher completion rates and earn 21 percent more than those who attend open-access schools.115 In today's information-based economy that favors skills, this means that many low-income and minority groups lack access to many of the skills and opportunities higher education provides.116 Regardless of reason, it has been suggested that many community college students are unprepared to move into the realms of advanced liberal arts tion for Educational Communications and Technology, http://www.lrdc.pitt.edu/schunn/ research/papers/Abramovich-Schunn-Higashi.pdf; R
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From page 113... ...
Technical change and evolving work models are leading to new demands for a more flexible and lifelong educational system, while at the same time providing the basis for new kinds of broadly accessible online education. Primary, secondary, and postsecondary educational institutions, including the liberal arts, practical arts, and vocational schools and research universities, attempt to offer different types of education.
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From page 114... ...
1. In the judgment of the committee, contingent work will expand as a result of the continued use and development of computer-based information technologies and business models based on web-based matching algorithms.
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