https://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/downloads/academic/The_Future_of_Employment.pdf

The future of employment: How susceptible are jobs to computerisation?

Despite the importance to researchers, managers, and policy makers of how information technology (IT) contributes to organizational performance, there is uncertainty and debate about what we know and don't know. A review of the literature reveals that studies examining the association between information technology and organizational performance are divergent in how they conceptualize key constructs and their interrelationships. We develop a model of IT business value based on the resource-based view of the firm that integrates the various strands of research into a single framework. We apply the integrative model to synthesize what is known about IT business value and guide future research by developing propositions and suggesting a research agenda. A principal finding is that IT is valuable, but the extent and dimensions are dependent upon internal and external factors, including complementary organizational resources of the firm and its trading partners, as well as the competitive and macro environment. Our analysis provides a blueprint to guide future research and facilitate knowledge accumulation and creation concerning the organizational performance impacts of information technology.

Review: information technology and organizational performance: an integrative model of it business value

Economists have shown that large and persistent differences in productivity levels across businesses are ubiquitous. This finding has shaped research agendas in a number of fields, including (but not limited to) macroeconomics, industrial organization, labor, and trade. This paper surveys and evaluates recent empirical work addressing the question of why businesses differ in their measured productivity levels. The causes are manifold, and differ depending on the particular setting. They include elements sourced in production practices -- and therefore over which producers have some direct control, at least in theory -- as well as from producers' external operating environments. After evaluating the current state of knowledge, I lay out what I see are the major questions that research in the area should address going forward. (JEL D24, G31, L11, M10, O30, O47)

/pdf/what-determines-productivity-2hh0dpac5x.pdf

What Determines Productivity

In February 2013, Google Flu Trends (GFT) made headlines but not for a reason that Google executives or the creators of the flu tracking system would have hoped. Nature reported that GFT was predicting more than double the proportion of doctor visits for influenza-like illness (ILI) than the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which bases its estimates on surveillance reports from laboratories across the United States ( 1 , 2 ). This happened despite the fact that GFT was built to predict CDC reports. Given that GFT is often held up as an exemplary use of big data ( 3 , 4 ), what lessons can we draw from this error?

/pdf/the-parable-of-google-flu-traps-in-big-data-analysis-52z3z6f7bu.pdf

The Parable of Google Flu: Traps in Big Data Analysis

https://iris.polito.it/bitstream/11583/2522888/1/SmartCity_Trends_%20paper.pdf

Current trends in Smart City initiatives: some stylised facts

Big data, the authors write, is far more powerful than the analytics of the past. Executives can measure and therefore manage more precisely than ever before. They can make better predictions and smarter decisions. They can target more-effective interventions in areas that so far have been dominated by gut and intuition rather than by data and rigor. The differences between big data and analytics are a matter of volume, velocity, and variety: More data now cross the internet every second than were stored in the entire internet 20 years ago. Nearly real-time information makes it possible for a company to be much more agile than its competitors. And that information can come from social networks, images, sensors, the web, or other unstructured sources. The managerial challenges, however, are very real. Senior decision makers have to learn to ask the right questions and embrace evidence-based decision making. Organizations must hire scientists who can find patterns in very large data sets and translate them into useful business information. IT departments have to work hard to integrate all the relevant internal and external sources of data. The authors offer two success stories to illustrate how companies are using big data: PASSUR Aerospace enables airlines to match their actual and estimated arrival times. Sears Holdings directly analyzes its incoming store data to make promotions much more precise and faster.

Big data: the management revolution.

A New York Times Bestseller A revolution is under way In recent years, Googles autonomous cars have logged thousands of miles on American highways and IBMs Watson trounced the best human Jeopardy! players Digital technologieswith hardware, software, and networks at their corewill in the near future diagnose diseases more accurately than doctors can, apply enormous data sets to transform retailing, and accomplish many tasks once considered uniquely human In The Second Machine Age MITs Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfeetwo thinkers at the forefront of their fieldreveal the forces driving the reinvention of our lives and our economy As the full impact of digital technologies is felt, we will realize immense bounty in the form of dazzling personal technology, advanced infrastructure, and near-boundless access to the cultural items that enrich our lives Amid this bounty will also be wrenching change Professions of all kindsfrom lawyers to truck driverswill be forever upended Companies will be forced to transform or die Recent economic indicators reflect this shift: fewer people are working, and wages are falling even as productivity and profits soar Drawing on years of research and up-to-the-minute trends, Brynjolfsson and McAfee identify the best strategies for survival and offer a new path to prosperity These include revamping education so that it prepares people for the next economy instead of the last one, designing new collaborations that pair brute processing power with human ingenuity, and embracing policies that make sense in a radically transformed landscape A fundamentally optimistic book, The Second Machine Age will alter how we think about issues of technological, societal, and economic progress

The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies

There is a new wave of business communication tools including blogs, wikis and group messaging software ? which the author has dubbed, collectively, Enterprise 2.0 ? that allow for more spontaneous, knowledge-based collaboration. These new tools, the author contends, may well supplant other communication and knowledge management systems with their superior ability to capture tacit knowledge, best practices and relevant experiences from throughout a company and make them readily available to more users. This article offers a paradigm that highlights the salient characteristics of these new technologies, which the author refers to as SLATES (search, links, authoring, tags, extensions, signals). The resulting organizational communication patterns can lead to highly productive and highly collaborative environments by making both the practices of knowledge work and its outputs more visible. Drawing on case studies and survey data, the article offers managers a set of ground rules for implementing the new technologies. First, it is necessary to create a receptive culture in order to prepare the way for new practices. Second, a common platform must be created to allow for a collaboration infrastructure. Third, an informal rollout of the technologies may be preferred to a more formal procedural change. And fourth, managerial support and leadership is crucial. Even when implanted and implemented well, these new technologies will certainly bring with them new challenges. These tools may well reduce management?s ability to exert unilateral control and to express some level of negativity. Whether a company?s leaders really want this to happen and will be able to resist the temptation to silence dissent is an open question. Leaders will have to play a delicate role if they want Enterprise 2.0 technologies to succeed.

Enterprise 2.0: the dawn of emergent collaboration

Race Against the Machine: How the Digital Revolution is Accelerating Innovation, Driving Productivity, and Irreversibly Transforming Employment and the Economy

"Web 2.0" is the portion of the Internet that's interactively produced by many people; it includes Wikipedia, Facebook, Twitter, Delicious, and prediction markets. In just a few years, Web 2.0 communities have demonstrated astonishing levels of innovation, knowledge accumulation, collaboration, and collective intelligence. Now, leading organizations are bringing the Web's novel tools and philosophies inside, creating Enterprise 2.0. In this book, Andrew McAfee shows how they're doing this, and why it's benefiting them. Enterprise 2.0 makes clear that the new technologies are good for much more than just socializing-when properly applied, they help businesses solve pressing problems, capture dispersed and fast-changing knowledge, highlight and leverage expertise, generate and refine ideas, and harness the wisdom of crowds. Most organizations, however, don't find it easy or natural to use these new tools initially. And executives see many possible pitfalls associated with them. Enterprise 2.0 explores these concerns, and shows how business leaders can overcome them. McAfee brings together case studies and examples with key concepts from economics, sociology, computer science, consumer psychology, and management studies and presents them all in a clear, accessible, and entertaining style. Enterprise 2.0 is a must-have resource for all C-suite executives seeking to make technology decisions that are simultaneously powerful, popular, and pragmatic.

Andrew McAfee

Papers

Big data: the management revolution.

The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies

Enterprise 2.0: the dawn of emergent collaboration

Race Against the Machine: How the Digital Revolution is Accelerating Innovation, Driving Productivity, and Irreversibly Transforming Employment and the Economy

Enterprise 2.0: New Collaborative Tools for Your Organization's Toughest Challenges