Tags: Workplaces, Business science, Technology, Networked environment, Swarm work, Career management, Outsourcing, Social polarization, Inequality, Education systems

Historically, the pace of change has been fairly incremental, which has partially masked the depth of transformation underway. In recent years, however, the metabolism of change has accelerated. Novel media platforms and new efficiencies introduced by a convergence of technologies—computing, telecommunications, wireless systems, mobile devices and more—are sending shockwaves across society. The worlds of work, the marketplace, organizations of all sorts, personal life and global commerce are being transformed as systems from Facebook to Twitter and smart phones to e-readers give rise to a strange new socialeconomic-political ecosystem. Some things are clear. The networked environment is rapidly changing employment relationships while offering new opportunities for boosting productivity and competing more effectively. It is also disrupting centralized organizations and fuelling the rise of flexible work teams and dynamic, niche markets. It is less clear how employers, individual workers and governments should respond to these changes, or how these changes will play out over the long term. Any map of the emerging landscape still has numerous blank spots bearing the warning, “Here be dragons!”

The_Future_of_Work.pdf