Strategy & Leadership

Labour pains: Coming shifts in the world of work

November 15, 2017

Global

November 15, 2017

Global
Naka Kondo

Manager, Policy and insights

Naka is an editorial manager at Economist Impact, based in Tokyo. As the project lead of the Back to Blue initiative, her focus coverage range from sustainability, ocean health, and longevity, among other issues. Before joining The Economist Group, after a brief period sitting in the advisory committee for the Japan Cabinet Office, Naka dedicated seven years in the Japanese Equities business where she communicated closely with Japanese companies and institutional investors around the world. As a journalist, Naka's work appears in The Bungei Shunju, one of the largest publications in Japan, with more than 80 pieces published on topics ranging from economics, politics and culture. Naka's work has been featured in 3 Japanese national newspapers in 2021. Naka has studied at the London School of Economics and Political Science (BSc Maths&Philosophy transferring to BSc Sociology) and the University of Tokyo (BA Social Psychology). She is also a journalism graduate of the Undergraduate Research Program at the Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Information Studies at the University of Tokyo.

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The media and popular literature abound with visions of work in the future. Some are dystopian, foreseeing a workplace where software and machines perform most tasks and humans are thin on the ground. Others are benign, anticipating that current modes of work will survive well into the future, and that new technologies will make work and the workplace a more enjoyable experience than today. However, even those of the latter, more optimistic bent acknowledge that the path to the work future will be strewn with difficult realities that employers and employees will need to face up to.

Does the inexorable expansion of the digital economy portend a shift of the balance of power in the workplace? Will the rise of an on-demand workforce further upset this balance? And how will the relentless march of today’s emergent technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI) and others impact the work environment?

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