The Future of Work: Challenges and Strategies for Emerging and Developing Economies

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Future of work
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The City and State
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Introduction
Productivity, job creation, and economic growth have historically emanated from technology
and industrial revolutions though there a number of challenges that it brings about such as
manual labor replacement, competencies, and up scaling skills needs among others (Shahid
2017). The number of skills once performed by labor is increasing being carried out by various
technologies rendering the importance of human resources less important in most economies.
The discovery of new technologies has a strong multiplier effect in increasing the level of
unemployment in emerging and developing economies. It is clear that emerging economies will
adversely suffer from automation (Moretti 2011). Automation is deemed as strategically
relevant in cutting the operation costs and encouraging efficiency and effectiveness.
Though there various substantial improvements caused by automation, various challenges are
evident in the transitional stages. Wages and employment growth have been subdued by
automation. This is clearly evident in the People’s Republic of China. Moreover, the idea of
automation by its very nature is an unstoppable and deep force. Emerging and developing
economies are likely to be adversely hurt by automation in the long run if they don’t re-skill
their workforce (Blinder 2009). Cases of displacement or structural changes will be inevitable.
Therefore much focus needs to be put on strategies that will enable the workforce to be
effectively prepared for transitional changes caused by automation (Shafquat 2018).
Social unrest, unemployment and slow levels of growth are likely to affect economies like India
and China grossly given that much of its growth has been facilitated by off shoring and
outsourcing programs.

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The need to enhance and put across opportunities aimed at re-skilling the workforce is deemed
necessary for purposes of counteracting such challenges. It is clear that China and India have to
some extent neglected vocational programs that skill the workforce and adequately have it
prepared for any market change. In simple terms, the relocation of specific services or activities
abroad is known as off shoring. Off shoring has been in existence as early as the period of
1950's-1970 where there existed classic multi-nationalization. Under this, location advantage
together with the features of host economies guided the entry of Foreign Direct investments
(Stephen 2018). The third world countries in Asia and Latin America during this period had
some of the production stages such as processing and assembly relocated to them (Randy
2018). For the purpose of this paper, the focus will be on emerging countries like China and
India and developing economies such as Bangladesh and the Philippines to understand the
effect of automation, off-shoring and how re-skilling and up skilling the population of the
economies can help eliminate or minimize the effects of automation.
Thesis statement
The Government and Business sector of emerging and developing countries have a huge role to
play in re-skilling and up-skilling their populations to avoid the economic and social impacts of
automation.
Research studies show that the concepts of off shoring are likely to be displaced by business
models that have associations with automation. It is clear; a number of developed economies
are now considering automation such as the use of Robotic as an alternative to off shoring in
order to limit the costs of operations and at the same time produce high-quality products and

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services (Joseph 2019). A number of organizations are now returning to their home countries
due to the increasing challenges associated with off shoring and enjoy the benefits of
automation. It can be clearly seen that there is an approaching wave of change in artificial
intelligence and intelligent automation (Accenture 2017). Meaning that there is uncoupling of
the human workforce in the business sectors like financial analysis, law, accounting, software
programming, and others. More each and every industry is likely to be affected by the new
automation era. There are high chances that the current jobs will be destroyed and new ones
created
Nations with a skilled and educated workforce and relatively lower labor costs have a natural
comparative advantage in off shoring given that it is a labor intensive activity. Off shoring may
involve the transfer of part or all the work in another country. Other companies engage in joint
ventures in the other country to effectively maximize profits by cutting down the cost levels. It
is clear captive facilities and in housework is the most popular and common nature of sixty to
seventy percent of the outsourced tasks(Bowles 2014). Off shoring survives in these economies
have been facilitated by the It revolution which made a world a global village. Meaning that
large amounts of information and data can be transferred from one country to another
(Deming 2015). Thus the technology has resulted in the international division of labor which has
eased offshoring activities.
The other drive off shoring is the 1990's reengineering movements, standardized software
platforms increased recognition and acceptance among others. It is clear that business process
outsourcing from developed countries like UK, USA, Canada, Australia, and others has been at