Technology and the Changing Nature of Work: Special Issue of the Journal of Vocational Behavior

Guest Editors: Daniel Ravid, Cort Rudolph, Tara Behrend

Advances in technology and computing power have profoundly affected how individuals approach, evaluate, and manage careers and have also led to novel kinds of work and new forms of employment. These drastic changes merit novel examination of the interplay among technology, careers, and the future of work. In this Special Issue of the Journal of Vocational Behavior, we seek papers that advance our understanding of the intersections between technology and careers, broadly defined.

Investigations of technology’s effects on the following phenomena are of interest:

• Access to work (reducing inequality, successful aging, sustainable work)

• Career development (technology-based training, training for continuous change)

• Automation expectations and experiences and career change

• The changing makeup of the workforce in particular industries (e.g., cybersecurity, gig work/app-based careers, technical and professional occupations)

• The effects of remote work on career perceptions and behaviors

• Surveillance and technology-based performance management

• AI-based career feedback

We will consider a variety of submission types, including literature reviews, conceptual papers, and methodological articles. We will prioritize research that thoughtfully adopts open science practices, including (but not limited to) the pre-registration of hypotheses and the open sharing of materials, data, and analysis code. We also invite the re-analysis of large, representative, and publicly available datasets and conceptual and constructive replications of existing works. We encourage the submission of studies with high statistical power (where applicable) and will consider studies reporting null findings that have demonstrably adequate a priori statistical power and appropriate study design features. We seek papers representing a variety of populations, including students, workers in all sectors of the economy, self-employed, unemployed, managerial, and/or entrepreneurial samples.

Manuscript submission information

Prospective authors should submit a 1,000-1,500 word proposal that outlines the proposed study context, methods, analyses, and research questions to the Editors at tsb@msu.edu or dmr@unm.edu with the subject heading “JVB SI Proposal” by September 1, 2023.

Selected proposals will be notified on October 1, 2023, and invited to submit full papers, which should be submitted by January 1, 2024.

Additional information about the journal is available in the Journal of Vocational Behavior Call for Papers: https://0-www-sciencedirect-com.library.alliant.edu/journal/journal-of-vocational-behavior/about/call-for-papers#technology-and-the-changing-nature-of-work