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In the first few chapters of Stanford's book - Economics is for Everyone - he speaks to how Economic Impact is measured in both the private and non-profit sectors in different ways. Having worked for non-profit organizations for a number of years, I was especially curious about how the economic impact of the non-profit sector is measured and found this great resource put together by the Ontario Trillium Foundation. Especially enlightening is the PowerPoint presentation of International best practices for Tracking Economic Impact. Enjoy!

I've included this discussion paper with an international flavour that shows the impact of climate change on various sectors across the globe. As stated in unit one, climate change will affect every part of our lives and have an impact on employment in many sectors. The aim of the paper is actually to create employment standards; the most important part is the first ten pages when it describes the potential impact on work. It will help provide a better understanding of the far reaching impact of climate change in the upcoming years and how we can best adapt ourselves.

Interesting article supported by Microsoft about the economic impact of cloud computing. I wanted to learn more about the Cloud following my review of "dropbox."

This article discusses the challenges and impacts to the labour and career markets, and provides some techniques and strategies for Human Resource departments within organizations to use to combat and diffuse the impact of global competition. These techniques are crafted for each actor involved within the global issue, and provides advice for the HR departments, as well as managers and individual employees to attempt in order to diminish the outcomes. The article not only emphasizes the importance of managing the organizational structures and its employees, but also highlights the significance of career development to the future of work. The idea that HR departments not only need to manage their current employees, but also must take developmental steps towards implementing a recruiting system that seeks the most talented workers from a global labour pool. The future of work relies on the combined efforts of individuals seeking to become self-aware and pursue their aspirations, with the supportive and developmental efforts of the HR department, to ensure that the future of the workforce is positive and continues to innovate and create new opportunities for employment and employee satisfaction/fulfillment.

An interesting current community and university partnership research project on precarious work and its impact on poverty in Ontario.

For this weeks last posting I decided to put up something on how how technology is changing people's work lives. This article talks about changing work rules, such as working from home or virtually. It also talks about how in the future computer science and information technology will rapidly grow.

In writing my paper on Shift I reflected a lot how technology globalization and fragmentation are impact the stress felt at work. This in an interesting article burnout norms of Western work culture.

This is a really interesting talk on why so many people struggle to be productive at work and how it impacts our lives; this connects well with Gratton's comments on fragmentation in the workplace.

In the Shift it is outlined working from home and the impact on one's daily lifestyle and social functioning. The HuffPost article is a very light hearted "poke" at the challenges of working from home and highlights the impact of taking out the "social" from working in an office environment. Although light, it does bring forth some serious transitions from working in a traditional work environment.

Salman Sakir's article is relevant to the issues raised in Friedman's book The World is Flat in which Friedman in a sense laments over the impact of globalization upon the developed countries, the USA for him, because the developing countries like Brazil and Asian countries like China and India have a massive work labour influence upon the West. Sakir focuses on both the positive and negative aspects of globalization, one of the five forces in Gratton's The Shift and a form of global economy as discussed by Stanford in his Economics for Everyone. Because of low wage and easy availability of experts/labour in the developing countries, foreign investments have been attracted by those Asian and developing countries where the jobs have been created for the locals. On the other hand, the citizens of the developed counters of the West and the North America have consumed the products from the developing countries in a reasonably lower price. Poverty ratio has been decreased in the developing countries which have also been integrated by the phenomenon of globalization. These are positive impacts. But in the developed countries, manufacturing industries have been moved out. so unemployment rate is ever increasing, Sakir highlights these aspects of globalization in this article.

Theodre Lewis shows his relevant concern with the impacts of technology on work and jobs which Gratton and Fiedman have elaborated in their books The Shift and The World is Flat respectively. Lewis's imperative voice is that the vocational institutions have to incorporate the technological trends to the traditional concepts of education system in order to make students adaptable to current job market. He pinpoints that those whose who are engaged in career designing or teaching now require to focus "on changing skill needs, changing work, changing jobs, and the role that technology plays in such change, there is need for an ongoing related discourse." This information is relevant to the course contents we dealt with.

Friedman describes three convergences that have changed the playing field. The second one describes new technologies combined with new ways of doing business and how it creates a bigger impact. Friedman uses SouthWest Airlines as an example and this article is about five businesses that have changed because of technology - travel being one of them.

Written by Patrick Dixon Futurist Keynote Speaker: Posts, Slides, Videos - Future Emerging Markets, BRICS, Strategy Keynotes Growth of India and China, emerging markets threat and opportunities The truth about the speed, scale and unstoppable momentum of business process outsourcing and offshoring. What will be the net impact of outsourcing on American and European economies? What I found interesting was that the speaker/writer points out that the cost savings of outsourcing diminish constantly due to salary inflation, and companies will have to continue to look for cheaper labour (eg Pakistan). My question is what happens to the people and infrastructure created in one country when a company decides to move operation to another cheaper country? Will they be worse-off or better?

A recent survey on millenials - another name given to Generation Y - conducted by the Pew Research Center, explains how major events such as wars, social movements, economic downturns, and medical, scientific or technological breakthroughs affect all age groups simultaneously, but the degree of impact differs according to where people are located in their life cycle.

I found this article to be very interesting to read. It truly captures the idea that Generation Y is now having to reverse the impacts of capitalist greed on both the global community, as well as the global environment.

This article discusses the impacts of unionized jobs, the loss of unions, and the economy.

An article reviewing the economic effects of outsourcing, measuring both goods and services, since 1963. It also discusses the impact on wages and the employment rate. I chose this article for this week based on the list of "Flatteners" Freidman described, both because they were included in his list and because it seems to me to be an important feature of globalization--that in the ruthless competition of capitalism, there will always be a value in inequality to create the cheapest sources of labour. This is something mentioned very early in the chapter (as related to the moderate poverty of the Soviet system) but I believe it's also important to think about when picturing a world that is increasingly connected and a playing field that seems equally leveled.

Advances in technology are causing job destruction at a rate quicker than ever before. Late last year, an essay called Oxford Martin Programme on the Impacts of Future Technology estimated that 45% of all current American jobs will be lost to technology within the next two decades.

The China Price is still largely influential, but its impact and existence is slowly eroding, which may lead to its disappearance in the medium-term. That being said, the author of this article indicates that China still has and will continue to have long-term, cost saving advantages encouraging foreign investors to "off-shore" their manufacturing to China.

After finishing up my shift paper this week I thought I'd find a resource that focuses on the future of work and what it holds. This two page article is available in PDF and looks at some issues that Gratton discussed. How technology, demographics and globalization will all impact the working world.