THE RESEARCH PAPER
Order Description
Over 30 years ago, a number of scholars predicted a trend towards deskilling due to the use of technology, while other authors predicted a trend toward upskilling when technology is in place. Review at least four empirical studies on skill trends and provide your own analysis of the technology profile (you may focus on statistical analyses of economy as whole or on qualitative research on particular industries and/or occupations).
• This assignment requires independent library research. You will have to find business journal articles and/or books that have conducted an empirical research study. That is, at least four of the articles you cite must be based on an empirical analysis of qualitative data (interviews or direct observations, including ethnography) or quantitative data (survey data or other statistics). This means you cannot use a textbook or purely theoretical or a literature review-based article or book for your four sources. You can use such articles in addition to your four sources, but you must have four sources that analyse data. If you have any questions about whether an article is an empirical analysis or not, please contact me to ask, either in person (office hours or after class) or via email.
• Please note that your minimum of four sources need to be academic sources – that is, journal articles or books. You can cite reports from think tanks and the like, but you should not cite Wikipedia, blogs, or web pages (e.g., notes from a professor or on a particular topic do not count as a source). Encyclopaedia articles (excluding user-generated sources like Wikipedia), newspaper and magazine articles are fine to cite, but they do not count as academic references for purposes of your assignment.
• This is broad question that does not necessarily have a single correct answer. The point is for you to do independent research on the topic and to develop your own understanding, which will be deeper than you can get from simply doing the readings on the syllabus.