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On the Impact of Digitalization and Artificial Intelligence on Employers' Flexibility Requirements in Occupations—Empirical Evidence for Germany

Artificial intelligence (AI) has a high application potential in many areas of the economy, and its use is expected to accelerate strongly in the coming years. This is linked with changes in working conditions that may be substantial and entail serious health risks for employees. With our paper we a...

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Autores principales: Warning, Anja, Weber, Enzo, Püffel, Anouk
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9111009/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35592650
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/frai.2022.868789
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author Warning, Anja
Weber, Enzo
Püffel, Anouk
author_facet Warning, Anja
Weber, Enzo
Püffel, Anouk
author_sort Warning, Anja
collection PubMed
description Artificial intelligence (AI) has a high application potential in many areas of the economy, and its use is expected to accelerate strongly in the coming years. This is linked with changes in working conditions that may be substantial and entail serious health risks for employees. With our paper we are the first to conduct an empirical analysis of employers' increasing flexibility requirements in the course of advancing digitalization, based on a representative business survey, the IAB Job Vacancy Survey. We combine establishment-level data from the survey and occupation-specific characteristics from other sources and apply non-linear random effects estimations. According to employers' assessments, office and secretarial occupations are undergoing the largest changes in terms of flexibility requirements, followed by other occupations that are highly relevant in the context of AI: occupations in company organization and strategy, vehicle/aerospace/shipbuilding technicians and occupations in insurance and financial services. The increasing requirements we observe most frequently are those concerning demands on employees' self-organization, although short-term working-time flexibility and workplace flexibility also play an important role. The estimation results show that the occupational characteristics, independently of the individual employer, play a major role for increasing flexibility requirements. For example, occupations with a larger share of routine cognitive activities (which in the literature are usually more closely associated with artificial intelligence than others) reveal a significantly higher probability of increasing flexibility demands, specifically with regard to the employees' self-organization. This supports the argument that AI changes above all work content and work processes. For the average age of the workforce and the unemployment rate in an occupation we find significantly negative effects. At the establishment level the share of female employees plays a significant negative role. Our findings provide clear indications for targeted action in labor market and education policy in order to minimize the risks and to strengthen the chances of an increasing application of AI technologies.
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spelling pubmed-91110092022-05-18 On the Impact of Digitalization and Artificial Intelligence on Employers' Flexibility Requirements in Occupations—Empirical Evidence for Germany Warning, Anja Weber, Enzo Püffel, Anouk Front Artif Intell Artificial Intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) has a high application potential in many areas of the economy, and its use is expected to accelerate strongly in the coming years. This is linked with changes in working conditions that may be substantial and entail serious health risks for employees. With our paper we are the first to conduct an empirical analysis of employers' increasing flexibility requirements in the course of advancing digitalization, based on a representative business survey, the IAB Job Vacancy Survey. We combine establishment-level data from the survey and occupation-specific characteristics from other sources and apply non-linear random effects estimations. According to employers' assessments, office and secretarial occupations are undergoing the largest changes in terms of flexibility requirements, followed by other occupations that are highly relevant in the context of AI: occupations in company organization and strategy, vehicle/aerospace/shipbuilding technicians and occupations in insurance and financial services. The increasing requirements we observe most frequently are those concerning demands on employees' self-organization, although short-term working-time flexibility and workplace flexibility also play an important role. The estimation results show that the occupational characteristics, independently of the individual employer, play a major role for increasing flexibility requirements. For example, occupations with a larger share of routine cognitive activities (which in the literature are usually more closely associated with artificial intelligence than others) reveal a significantly higher probability of increasing flexibility demands, specifically with regard to the employees' self-organization. This supports the argument that AI changes above all work content and work processes. For the average age of the workforce and the unemployment rate in an occupation we find significantly negative effects. At the establishment level the share of female employees plays a significant negative role. Our findings provide clear indications for targeted action in labor market and education policy in order to minimize the risks and to strengthen the chances of an increasing application of AI technologies. Frontiers Media S.A. 2022-05-03 /pmc/articles/PMC9111009/ /pubmed/35592650 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/frai.2022.868789 Text en Copyright © 2022 Warning, Weber and Püffel. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Artificial Intelligence
Warning, Anja
Weber, Enzo
Püffel, Anouk
On the Impact of Digitalization and Artificial Intelligence on Employers' Flexibility Requirements in Occupations—Empirical Evidence for Germany
title On the Impact of Digitalization and Artificial Intelligence on Employers' Flexibility Requirements in Occupations—Empirical Evidence for Germany
title_full On the Impact of Digitalization and Artificial Intelligence on Employers' Flexibility Requirements in Occupations—Empirical Evidence for Germany
title_fullStr On the Impact of Digitalization and Artificial Intelligence on Employers' Flexibility Requirements in Occupations—Empirical Evidence for Germany
title_full_unstemmed On the Impact of Digitalization and Artificial Intelligence on Employers' Flexibility Requirements in Occupations—Empirical Evidence for Germany
title_short On the Impact of Digitalization and Artificial Intelligence on Employers' Flexibility Requirements in Occupations—Empirical Evidence for Germany
title_sort on the impact of digitalization and artificial intelligence on employers' flexibility requirements in occupations—empirical evidence for germany
topic Artificial Intelligence
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9111009/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35592650
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/frai.2022.868789
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