The work landscape is evolving with the advent of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), potentially rendering current jobs obsolete and necessitating new skills or retraining of existing occupations for future employment. This revolution is disrupting nearly every sector, including education, highlighting the need for education to address issues…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the literature on issues regarding the influence of skill-polarized workplace on jobs, human capital and organization from human resource development's (HRD's) perspective, this research identified 30 displaceable skills from endangered jobs and examined 423 adult employees' awareness and…

In November 2018 the European Training Foundation (ETF) launched an international reflection to investigate how global trends impact developing and transition economies and to discuss what actions need to be taken to prepare people for a changing world and manage their transitions towards uncertain futures. This study on the future of skills in…

This paper discusses the impact of medical technology on health care in light of the fact that doctors are becoming more reliant on technology for obtaining patient information, making diagnoses and in carrying out treatments. Evidence has shown that technology can negatively affect doctor-patient communications, physical examination skills, and…

Technology shifts gears. The workers who control it need to learn how to shift gears, too. Workers brought up with universal schooling would respect authority, learn enough "geometry and mechanics" to use in their trades, keep invention alive, and finally see through "the interested complaints of faction and sedition." In other…

The abundance of leisure time which superior technology has afforded industrial societies threatens to become a curse. (Editors)

The author reports on a survey of 64 human resources managers. Forty-eight percent of the respondents indicated that their organizations had some type of retraining program. Topics covered include (1) retraining topics, (2) employee types, (3) program content, (4) trainee scheduling, (5) completion rates, (6) payment, and (7) program success. (CH)

To provide information on the relationship of automation to changing occupational patterns and related worker displacements, examples of automation and technological change in industry are given. Some summary findings are: (1) Technological advancements cause some jobs to disappear and also cause some new jobs to appear, (2) Many workers dispaced…

Research on the effects of numerical control (NC) machining on the skills of machinists presents mixed results. Interviews with a small group of machinists experienced in both conventional and NC matching suggest seven major factors that affect whether NC automation changes the overall skill level. The deskilling hypothesis is not supported by…

The authors critically examine the analysis by Hull, Friedman, and Roger finding that deskilling and heightened alienation are not necessarily the outcomes of increased technology. The authors suggest that the outcome of technological change be approached as an indeterminate process shaped by prevailing relations between workers and management.…

This report covers the second annual conference at which educators and members of the industrial world met to discuss needs, programs, new developments, and other matters on which continuing engineering studies (CES) should be based. The first address describes problems that often beset professionals in continuing education and suggests the…

Braverman and others argue that capitalism continues to degrade and deskill work. The author presents theoretical, empirical, and methodological criticisms that highlight methodological weaknesses in the deskilling approach. (SK)