Technological Change and Employment: Creative Destruction

Dev Nathan () and Neetu Ahmed
Additional contact information
Dev Nathan: Institute for Human Development
Neetu Ahmed: Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU)

The Indian Journal of Labour Economics, 2018, vol. 61, issue 2, No 4, 298 pages

Abstract: Abstract In dealing with the consequences of technological change, a lot of attention is given to the destruction of jobs and of old types of livelihoods, while the simultaneous or sequential creation of new jobs and livelihoods is often not given as much attention. This paper is based on the understanding that the process of technological change is one of creative destruction, and not just one of unmitigated destruction alone. Of course, the losers and gainers are often not the same people, which is a feature of technological change that must be kept in mind while fashioning policies to deal with technological change. The paper looks at different notions of technology and the appearance of anxiety caused by technological change, particularly in times of changes in core technology, like the current period. The effects of automation on job destruction, changing requirements from workers, the flexibility of working, and the development of digital Taylorism are dealt with in this study. This is followed by considering the development of Internet-based platforms such as Amazon, Uber, Airbnb, and Ola in e-commerce and transport services, all of which have created new kinds of jobs and challenge established notions of the nature of work. The paper ends by considering some of the implications of the analysis of technological change as creative destruction for economic methodology.

Keywords: Creative destruction; Technological change; Reorganization of production; Employment; General-purpose technology (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s41027-018-0137-0 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:ijlaec:v:61:y:2018:i:2:d:10.1007_s41027-018-0137-0

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/journal/41027

DOI: 10.1007/s41027-018-0137-0

Access Statistics for this article

The Indian Journal of Labour Economics is currently edited by Alakh Sharma

More articles in The Indian Journal of Labour Economics from Springer, The Indian Society of Labour Economics (ISLE) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().