Information Systems And Employment: From Idealization To Understanding As Stepping Stone To Action

Digitization and its effect on employment has been discussed within the discipline of Information Systems (IS) for a long time. The net effect of digitization on job creation and job loss has never been clear. However, it seems obvious that today's IS and the accompanying digitization of data and processes may destroy jobs among knowledge workers just as automation replaced the need for manufacturing workers. In this position paper, we outline the effects and mechanisms underlying digitization-driven job destruction and propose a research program which addresses and prepares for the detrimental side of digitization.

[1]  David Autor,et al.  Skills, Tasks and Technologies: Implications for Employment and Earnings , 2010 .

[2]  Brian Kahin,et al.  Speculative Microeconomics for Tomorrow's Economy , 2000 .

[3]  Stanley Shostak.  Smart Machines: IBM’s Watson and the Era of Cognitive Computing , 2016 .

[4]  Wanda J. Orlikowski,et al.  Technology and Institutions: What Can Research on Information Technology and Research on Organizations Learn from Each Other? , 2001, MIS Q..

[5]  Steve Guerin.  Organizing Business Knowledge: The MIT Process Handbook , 2005 .

[6]  Hal R. Varian,et al.  Information rules - a strategic guide to the network economy , 1999 .

[7]  Philip J. Cook,et al.  The Winner-Take-All Society: Why the Few at the Top Get So Much More Than the Rest of Us , 1996 .

[8]  Mark J. Safferstone.  Information Rules: A Strategic Guide to the Network Economy , 1999 .

[9]  Michael S. Scott Morton.  In the age of the smart machine: The future of work and power, by Shoshana Zuboff. New York, NY: Basic Books, 1988, 400 pp. $19.95 , 1989 .

[10]  Dorothy E. Leidner,et al.  Bridging the work/social divide: the emotional response to organizational social networking sites , 2012, Eur. J. Inf. Syst..

[11]  Erik Brynjolfsson,et al.  Big data: the management revolution. , 2012, Harvard business review.

[12]  Clay Shirky,et al.  Here comes everybody , 2009 .

[13]  Kevin Crowston,et al.  Organizing Business Knowledge: The MIT Process Handbook , 2003 .

[14]  Alf Chattell.  Creating Value in the Digital Era , 1998 .

[15]  Eric K. Clemons,et al.  Impactful Research on Transformational Information Technology: An Opportunity to Inform New Audiences , 2013, MIS Q..

[16]  Martin Ford,et al.  The Lights in the Tunnel: Automation, Accelerating Technology and the Economy of the Future , 2009 .

[17]  Gerardo A. Okhuysen,et al.  Theories of Work and Working Today , 2011 .

[18]  R. Coase.  The Nature of the Firm , 1937 .

[19]  David Autor,et al.  The Growth of Low Skill Service Jobs and the Polarization of the U.S. Labor Market , 2009, SSRN Electronic Journal.

[20]  G. Stigler.  The Economics of Information , 1961, Journal of Political Economy.