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The main aim of this paper is to test the ways in which the role of high‐technology services (HTS) in the economy of European Union (EU) member countries changes and the extent to which the development of HTS depends on the quality of human resources.

The paper adopts comparative and cluster analysis of statistical data published by Eurostat.

The empirical analysis approved the growing proportion of HTS in both employment and gross value added in the EU as a whole. However, there are great differences among individual member states that can be grouped into four clusters. HTS have a significantly higher proportion of tertiary educated employees, belong to young sectors and show a higher rate of participation in continuing education. HTS development is closely related to information communications technology (ICT) literacy of the population of the country, on the one hand, and on its economic standards, on the other.

The major findings constitute a starting‐point for more thorough national analysis and for setting measures supporting HTS development, especially through the availability of an appropriately educated labour force.

The growing proportion of HTS in the economy is an important feature of knowledge economies; therefore it is necessary for politicians to have information about the development of this sector.

HTS has been little researched in a detailed way to date. This paper tries to indicate all the important features that should be further and more deeply analysed.

This article addresses social dimensions and implications of the rise of the information, skill‐intensive economy based on self‐managing teams. The basis of the paper is an historical analysis of how “Taylorist” industrialization suppressed the self‐directing, team‐based labour process which had characterized pre‐industrial America, in the process inflicting deep long‐term economic and social costs even as it helped produced unprecedented prosperity. Extrapolating from the historical analysis, in the second section of the paper social trends are discussed which seem likely to emerge in the future with the establishment of an information‐ and skill‐intensive economic organization based on self‐managing teams.

The purpose of this paper is to estimate the extent of “over‐qualification” (i.e. holding a qualification which is above that required to gain entry to the job being done) and “skills under‐utilisation” (i.e. being in a job which does not make use of the knowledge and skills possessed) in the United Kingdom and to examine whether these conditions are correlated with age.

The paper makes use of the 2006 Skills Survey. Cross tabulations of both conditions with age are produced and binomial probit estimates of both conditions are reported.

It is estimated that 38 per cent are over qualified; 15 per cent are in jobs which do not make use of the knowledge and skills they possess; and age is correlated with the probability of being over qualified but not with the condition of under‐utilising the knowledge and skills possessed.

Skills policy in the United Kingdom focuses almost exclusively upon increasing the supply of more highly qualified individuals. Given the extent of over‐qualification and skills under‐utilisation demonstrated in the paper, more effort should be made by policy makers to design and implement policies which increase the demand for highly skilled labour.

The paper answers three questions: How prevalent are qualification mismatches? How prevalent are skills mismatches? To what extent are the two conditions of being over‐qualified and being in a job which does not offer scope to make use of the knowledge and skills possessed correlated with age?

This paper describes the ways automation and artificial intelligence are shifting the business landscape and how learning professionals can use curiosity to enhance their own and their organizations' success.

A review of theory and research on automation and artificial intelligence, curiosity, and learning and development challenges was conducted.

Although technological advancements are already transforming the workplace, the optimal benefits of these technologies will be realized only in collaboration with human capital. In particular, as certain manual and technical skills are replaced by automation, the jobs that remain will require more highly developed social and cognitive skills such as creative problem solving, interpersonal skills and empathy, and adaptability and continuous learning.

Learning professionals are encouraged to use strategies that leverage the power of curiosity to cultivate the soft skills critical for success in technologically advanced workplaces.

Technological advancement creates an ever-changing organizational and learning landscape for employees and development professionals. Cost-effective strategies are needed to close the growing skill gaps that result. Curiosity is a helpful tool for growing needed competencies.

Empowering the American economy requires creating a world‐class K‐12 (primary and secondary) education system, because K‐12 is where youth learn the skills essential to empowered work. However, the USA must not just equal the K‐12 standards set by Germany and Japan. Because 70 percent of future jobs will not require a four‐year college degree, the USA must remake its economic‐occupational structure to create a “technician class” offering high‐skill, high‐wage, socially esteemed jobs that operate in close conjunction with college‐educated professional‐managerial workers. A technician class will provide a focus for K‐12 reform that does not presently exist in the USA.

Improving employees’ change-oriented organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) is important because of the work content and service nature of the National Immigration Agency (NIA). The purpose of this paper, which targeted immigration workers using the work design model (knowledge oriented), leadership types and organizational climate as perspectives, is to study immigration workers’ change-oriented OCB. Inspecting the knowledge-oriented work characteristics (KOWCs) of the NIA of Taiwan to find ways of stimulating change-oriented OCB through employees’ high self-efficacy is also critical. The investigators also explored how transformational leadership and organizational climate directly affect employees’ change-oriented OCB in a cross-level organization.

The subject of this research is the frontline immigration workers of Taiwan’s NIA, with its entire staff on duty at the country’s airports and ports as targets of the research. This study used a total of 312 questionnaires.

At the group level, transformational leadership shows significant positive influence on organizational climate. KOWCs can positively influence self-efficacy and affect change-oriented OCB on an individual basis; similarly, self-efficacy can also positively impact the individual’s change-oriented OCB. In addition, transformational leadership and organizational climate have a contextual effect on the outcome variable on an individual basis.

This finding is helpful for researching and practicing implications of HRM, such as in further understanding how the motivation from work characteristics, organization’s environment and interpersonal networks can increase employees’ change-oriented OCB.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how small manufacturing firms can leverage their Information Technology (IT) resources to develop the lean-digitized manufacturing system that offers sustained competitiveness in the Industry 4.0 era.

The study performs an in-depth five years case study of a manufacturing firm, and reports its journey from failure in the implementation of enterprise resource planning to its success in integrating IT-based technology trends of Industry 4.0 with the firm’s core capabilities and competencies while pursuing manufacturing digitization.

Industry 4.0 transition requires the organizational integration of many IT-based modern technologies and the digitization of entire value chains. However, Industry 4.0 transition for smaller manufacturers can begin with digitization of certain areas of operations in support of organizational core strategies. The development of lean-digitized manufacturing system is a viable business strategy for corporate survivability in the Industry 4.0 setting.

Although the implementation of lean-digitized manufacturing system is costly and challenging, this manufacturing strategy offers superior corporate competitiveness in the long run. Since this finding is rather limited to the present case study, assessing the business value of lean-digitized manufacturing system in a larger scale research context would be an interesting avenue for future research.

Industry 4.0 transition for typical manufacturers should commensurate with their organizational, operational and technical particularities. Digitization of certain operations and processes, when aligned with the firm’s core strategies, capabilities and procedures, can offer superior competitiveness even in Industry 4.0 era, meaning that the strategic plan for successful Industry 4.0 transition is idiosyncratic to each particular manufacturer.

Manufacturing digitization can have deep social implications as it alters inter- and intra-organizational relationships, causes unemployment among low-skilled workforce, and raises data security and privacy concerns. Manufacturers should take responsibility for their digitization process and steer it in a direction that simultaneously safeguards economic, social and environmental sustainability.

The strategic roadmap devised and employed by the case company for managing its digitization process can better reveal what manufacturing digitization, mandated by Industry 4.0, might require of typical manufacturers, and further enable them to better facilitate their digital transformation process.

Describes the author′s concept of 20/20 vision in business and the practice of “20/20 Realities” as a means of anticipating coming changes in the information economy.

Increasing regional wealth disparities have been explained by the role of agglomeration economies and the concentration of skilled mobile human capital. This paper aims to draw out the role of the housing market by considering the differential experience of Germany and the UK.

The empirical analysis is based on the comparison of regional house price trends in Germany and UK-based annual data from 1991 to 2015.

Regional house price inequality is found to have increased in both countries with the spatial concentration of skilled human capital. However, the main conclusion is that there are differential paths to regional house price inequality explained by the parameters of each country’s housing market.

The research is the first to compare and explain differential regional house price trends across countries.