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The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of biased technology on employment distribution and labor status in income distribution of China. It also testifies a threshold effect of the capital per labor and employment distribution on labor status from biased technology.

This paper presents a normalized supply-side system of three equations to measure the bias of technology in China. Linear and threshold regressions approaches are applied over cross-province panel data to investigate the influence which biased technology has on labor status under different capital per labor and employment distribution regimes.

This paper empirically shows that technology has been mostly capital-biased in China. The regression results indicate that capital-biased technology impairs labor income status and tend to modify employment distribution and labor income between industries. Furthermore, it reveals the threshold effect of capital per labor and employment distribution on the relationship between biased technology and labor status.

This paper extends the literature by explaining labor status from the perspective of biased technology and the effect of inter-industry employment distribution in China. It further explores the asymmetric effect of biased technology on labor productivity and income, which promotes inter-industry labor mobility and modifies employment distribution. This paper highlights the implications of this explanation for labor relations and human resource management.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate skilled labor demand determinants in Brazil, considering alternatives explanations: changes in relative wages, non-homothetic technology output growth and skill-biased technical change.

This study relies on a rich and unique matched employer-employee data set for manufacturing sector, from 1996 to 2003. The analysis considers a translog functional form labor demand system estimated using seemingly unrelated regression and instrumental variables to control for possible measurement errors and wages and output endogeneity.

The demand function estimates suggest that: labor demand underlying technology is non-homothetic, research and development investment is biased toward skilled workers, the non-homothetic technology is not skill biased so output changes contributed positively for skilled labor increase, relative wages played a significant role and international trade has little explanatory power explaining labor demand shifts.

This is the first paper that considers alternative explanations for the increase in the demand of skilled workers for manufacturing in Brazil simultaneously: changes in relative wages, output changes with non-homothetic technology, skill-biased technical change and, to a lesser extent, international trade. The study challenges current empirical evidence that considers trade and trade liberalization as the main factor explaining labor demand shifts.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on the impact of trade openness and technology import on the change in demand structure of employment toward skilled workers. Because of the limited number of empirical papers done in the case of Tunisia, this research investigates whether these factors had similar effects on relative labor demand in Tunisia to those observed in the international literature.

For this purpose, the paper uses a manufacturing industries database provided by the Tunisian National Institute, the Quantitative Economic Institute and Comtrade of United Nations for six manufacturing industries. The methodology used here is a panel data technique, and consists of estimating a dynamic relative employment equation.

Empirical results show that trade liberalization and technology change positively affect relative employment of Tunisian manufacturing industries which confirms the existence of skill biased technological change that contributes to increase the relative demand for skilled workers.

The paper adds to existing literature by studying for the first time the case of Tunisian manufacturing industries by using dynamic model. The paper deals also with an econometrics issues related to the use of suitable estimation methodology in the case of dynamic panel data at macroeconomics level.

Computing technology is becoming ubiquitous within modern society and youth use technology regularly for school, entertainment and socializing. Yet, despite societal belief that computing technology is neutral, the technologies of today’s society are rife with biases that harm and oppress populations that experience marginalization. While previous research has explored children’s values and perceptions of computing technology, few studies have focused on youth conceptualizations of this technological bias and their understandings of how computing technology discriminates against them and their communities. This paper aims to examine youth conceptualizations of inequities in computing technology.

This study analyzes a series of codesign sessions and artifacts partnering with eight black youth to learn about their conceptualizations of technology bias.

Without introduction, the youth demonstrated an awareness of visible negative impacts of technology and provided examples of this bias within their lives, but they did not have a formal vocabulary to discuss said bias or knowledge of biased technologies less visible to the naked eye. Once presented with common technological biases, the youth expanded their conceptualizations to include both visible and invisible biases.

This paper builds on the current body of literature around how youth view computing technology and provides a foundation to ground future pedagogical work around technological bias for youth.

Purpose – This chapter analyzes the effects that the international integration of product markets induced by globalization exerts on the direction of technological change at the industry level.

Methodology/approach – In order to do so it elaborates an interpretative framework that complements the classical inducement hypotheses with the Schumpeterian literature and the localized technological change approach, putting forward the hypothesis that technological change is biased by the dynamics of both factor and product markets. We argue and show that not only the changing levels of input costs but also the changing prevalence of product and process innovations affect the direction of technological change: specifically when product innovations prevail technological change is skill-biased, while when process innovations play a major role innovation is capital intensive.

Findings – Following this perspective we analyze the interindustrial variance of the output elasticities of labor of the main advanced economies in recent years and claim that such heterogeneity can be understood as the result of differentiated innovative reactions of firms to changes induced by the globalization of the markets: fast-growing sectors innovate mainly through (skilled) labor-augmenting technological change, while mature industries rely more on capital-enhancing innovations. The empirical evidence supports our hypotheses and shows that the variance of the output elasticity of labor in a panel data estimate across 17 manufacturing sectors in 16 OECD countries from 1995 to 2006, is significantly and positively associated with the rates of growth of employment, wage levels and their rates of increase, and R&D intensity.

Originality/value of paper – By investigating the variance of output elasticities at the industry level the chapter provides new insights within the literature focused on the bias of technological change.

Metaverse, that is extended reality (XR)-based technologies such as augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR), are increasingly believed to facilitate fundamental human practice in the future. One of the vanguards of this development has been the consumption domain, where the multi-modal and multi-sensory technology-mediated immersion is expected to enrich consumers' experience. However, it remains unclear whether these expectations have been warranted in reality and whether, rather than enhancing the experience, metaverse technologies inhibit the functioning and experience, such as cognitive functioning and experience.

This study utilizes a 2 (VR: yes vs no) × 2 (AR: yes vs no) between-subjects laboratory experiment. A total of 159 student participants are randomly assigned to one condition — a brick-and-mortar store, a VR store, an AR store and an augmented virtuality (AV) store — to complete a typical shopping task. Four spatial attention indicators — visit shift, duration shift, visit variation and duration variation — are compared based on attention allocation data converted from head movements extracted from recorded videos during the experiments.

This study identifies three essential effects of XR technologies on consumers' spatial attention allocation: the inattention effect, acceleration effect and imbalance effect. Specifically, the inattention effect (the attentional visit shift from showcased products to the environmental periphery) appears when VR or AR technology is applied to virtualize the store and disappears when AR and VR are used together. The acceleration effect (the attentional duration shift from showcased products to the environmental periphery) exists in the VR store. Additionally, AR causes an imbalance effect (the attentional duration variation increases horizontally among the showcased products).

This study provides valuable empirical evidence of how VR and AR influence consumers' spatial bias in attention allocation, filling the research gap on cognitive function in the metaverse. This study also provides practical guidelines for retailers and XR designers and developers.

This paper aims to center the experiences of three cohorts (n = 40) of Black high school students who participated in a critical race technology course that exposed anti-blackness as the organizing logic and default setting of digital and artificially intelligent technology. This paper centers the voices, experiences and technological innovations of the students, and in doing so, introduces a new type of digital literacy: critical race algorithmic literacy.

Data for this study include student interviews (called “talk backs”), journal reflections and final technology presentations.

Broadly, the data suggests that critical race algorithmic literacies prepare Black students to critically read the algorithmic word (e.g. data, code, machine learning models, etc.) so that they can not only resist and survive, but also rebuild and reimagine the algorithmic world.

While critical race media literacy draws upon critical race theory in education – a theorization of race, and a critique of white supremacy and multiculturalism in schools – critical race algorithmic literacy is rooted in critical race technology theory, which is a theorization of blackness as a technology and a critique of algorithmic anti-blackness as the organizing logic of schools and AI systems.

This study aims to theoretically discuss and empirically investigate to what extent the interplay between the domains of knowledge complexity (managerial, strategic and operational) facilitates firm performance and the role of organizational resilience in this relationship.

This paper uses primary data collected from 102 European small and medium-sized firms (SMEs) in Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark, Spain and the UK during 2012–2015 and 2010–2020. This study corrects for potential data disclosure and technology adoption bias in two survey ways.

First, compared to other acumens of knowledge complexity, managerial and operational acumens contribute most the most to a firm’s performance (sales and productivity). Firm resilience positively moderates managerial skills and negatively moderates inter-organizational collaborations. Taking SMEs and their inter-organizational relationships, skills and resilience in focus, considering that they are transitive organizations whose business model is based on innovation and productivity to outcompete larger counterparts it is found that resilience and agility in SMEs are important to leverage the effect of knowledge complexity on firm performance.

One of the limitations of this study is that SMEs are expected to face more problems in achieving organizational ambidexterity with all three acumens, as they have restricted managerial expertise, less structured procedures and fewer resources than larger firms. In addition to regression analysis which is limited in answering “how” and “why” knowledge complexity is managed within and outside a firm, future research will consider a mixed-method approach of both interviews with high growth SMEs and online surveys. To unveil the role that firm resilience in SMEs and in the volatile environment, future research may focus specifically on firms that lack resources, skills and time, however, continue innovating, commercializing new knowledge and create new jobs.

One of the most important mechanisms which facilitate the managerial acumen was found to be information technology (IT) investment and management decision-making, exploitation of new information and communication technology trends and markets, innovating business models and driving change management, innovating new mobility and digital technologies, as well as use inter-disciplinary staff and knowledge to influence external stakeholders. The most relevant elements of the operational acumen of knowledge for performance in SMEs are various mechanisms and forms of inter-organizational collaboration such as collaboration on business and IT applications and infrastructure, administration and operations with data and information exchange, collaboration on data availability, accumulation and exchange.

The findings call for innovation policy to account for the need for interactions between various elements of strategic, managerial and operational acumens of knowledge complexity in SMEs. Prime support should be focused on facilitating inter-organizational collaboration and providing “soft support” in the time of agility and adversity. This paper founds that lack of budget, skills and resources would significantly affect a firm’s resilience, potentially “locking in” within an organization.

First, it emphasizes that the returns from inter-organizational collaboration as part of the operational acumen of knowledge complexity depend upon the firm’s ability to manage infrastructure, mobility and data. The relationship is negatively moderated by firm resilience, which means that the most resilient firms may focus on the exploitation of internal resources and substitute it for inter-organizational collaboration. Second, this study demonstrates that SMEs’ growth and productivity strategy should be management skills and competencies driven, rather than strategy-driven, with strategy facilitating managerial decision-making on business and IT.

This chapter suggests that enhancing sustainable development in the age of technologies requires reflection about the relationship between business practice and sustainable development, as well as clarification of the relationship between sustainability and sustainable development. At the core of business activity is the definition of sustainable development defined by Brundtland (1987) as ‘meet[ing] the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’. Although that captures only one aspect of the sustainability story and its relationship to sustainable development, it nonetheless shapes business approach in research and in sustainability practices. To illustrate the contradictions and tensions in practice so far, this chapter uses three lenses: measurement in environmental, social and governance (ESG) investment, the problem of scalability and the challenge of bias in artificial intelligence (AI). It is not clear that we need a paradigm shift, but a shift in mindsets around sustainability business practice will be needed if sustainable development is to be enhanced in the age of technologies.

Environmental regulation policy and cleaner production technology innovation are the key links to achieve sustainable economic development. This paper tests the impact of Two Control Zone (TCZ) environmental regulation policy on cleaner production technology innovation and explains the heterogeneity effect between them from the perspective of regional pollution intensity and R&D investment scale.

This paper takes TCZ policy as an environmental regulation policy and collects the patent data related to coal desulfurization cleaner production technology innovation in prefecture-level cities from 1994 to 2002 in China. This paper also tests the relationship between TCZ environmental regulation policy and cleaner production technology innovation based on difference in difference (DID) model. Take regional R&D investment scale and pollution intensity as category variables and analyze the heterogeneity effect of TCZ environmental regulation policy on cleaner production technology innovation based on difference-in-difference-in-difference (DDD) model.

TCZ environmental regulation policy effectively promotes China's cleaner production technology innovation, but it is more conducive to cleaner production technology innovation in heavy pollution areas. With the increasing of R&D investment scale, the positive effect of TCZ environmental regulation policy on cleaner production technology innovation is stronger.

On the basis of this study, the authors should further explore the regulatory factors of the relationship between TCZ environmental regulation policy and cleaner production technology innovation and further expand the research object, so as to make the research conclusions more practical and instructive.

This paper tests the impact of TCZ environmental regulation policy on cleaner production technology innovation based on the prefecture city level data and DID model, and it handles the endogenous problem caused by the missing variables and provides the accurate conclusions. Moreover, this paper examines the heterogeneity effect of TCZ environmental regulation policy on cleaner production innovation from regional R&D investment scale and pollution intensity two hands and expands the existing theoretical research.