Alan

The emergence of a globalised, knowledge and service intensive economy, fuelled by advances in information systems and technologies is well attested to in the literature. Recent advances in robotics, A1, and related fields are predicted to accelerate these trends, creating new industries, new jobs, and increasing remuneration for the higher skilled while destroying old industries and promising casualization or unemployment for the lower skilled. Work previously conducted in the firm is being increasingly automated and externalised and new forms of organization emerging based on platform technologies. In the medium term, the future of work appears uncertain even for the higher skilled, as medical, legal, accounting, and other ‘professional’ knowledge starts to be supplied more efficiently using smart machines rather than smart people. This presentation will examine the forces driving these trends, the challenges they pose for stakeholders and the need for a closer integration of IT and HR management in organizations.

Biography:

Dr Alan Burton-Jones is a senior lecturer in the Department of Employment Relations and Human Resources at Griffith University. Formerly a director of British Oxygen’s computer services business in Europe, he moved to Australia, where he developed a management consultancy business advising organizations on strategies for IT-business integration. Following completion of his doctoral studies at Canberra University, he taught at New South Wales University and Bond University. He has contributed articles to a number of leading journals and is the author of Knowledge Capitalism: Business, Work and Learning in the New Economy (Oxford University Press, 1999, 2005) (Nikkei 2002) and co-editor of the Oxford Handbook of Human Capital, (Oxford University Press, 2011).