Introduction
MacJob is a loose term used to refer to the low paying as well as low prestige jobs that do not demand high skills and has little chance of career growth and advancement. Notably, the term was coined from the fast food giant MacDonald. As such, the term does not take into account the type of employer but the fact that the job is low paying and requires little-specialized skills. Owing to the emergence of technology, these types of jobs are highly growing and replacing the skilled labor across all the industries due to low costs involved in hiring the MacJobs employees. Additionally, there is a lot that can be achieved within a short duration since the workers activities are tightly scheduled. However, these types of jobs have some shortcomings to both the employer and the employees. In the case of the employer, the rate of workers’ turnover is overly highly since the employees seek better terms and there are few obligations to the employer in comparison to the highly skilled workers. On the other hand, the employees are lowly paid, incur lack or low job security and career development. Still, the workers have few benefits and lack job motivation and satisfaction. As such the study will analyze the Technology Acceptance Model to determine the motives behind the use of technology in an organization, the model's limitations and application. Afterward, the paper will look at the extent to which technology is replacing the skilled labor with ‘MacJobs’ across all the industries. In the last part, the discussion will look at the impacts of the MacJobs trend to the employers and the employees.
Technology Acceptance Model
Davis developed this model in 1986 (Information Resources Management Association, & Khosrow-Pour 2004). It is used in predicting the level of technology adoption as well as in the identification of the modifications required to improve the users’ acceptability. The model is based on two assumptions;
I. Perceived usefulness (PU)
II. Perceived ease of use (PEOU)
The perceived usefulness is a term referring to the extent to which the person using the technology believes it will boost his or her performance while perceived ease of use entails the perception that the user will encounter no difficulty when using the technology (Hung 2009). Therefore, one of the factors that increase the perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use is the behavioral intention that is in turn determined by such factors as the attitude, perception, and beliefs among other factors. Notably, when the two assumptions coincide, there are higher chances that employees will embrace the new technologies in the organization they work for. Davis also notes that the perceived ease of use affects the users' attitude through the self-efficacy and the instrumentality. In the case of self-efficacy, the perceived ease of use has to be higher for it to increase; likewise, the ease of use boosts the instrumentality since the person will do more with less effort (Trauth 2006). The studies done after 1986 have continually improved the model to a more simplified and understandable concept. Indeed, these studies have shown that such social factors as the image, norm as well as the ‘voluntarity' have a sizable influence on both the perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness. Additionally, the cognitive aspects associated with instrumentality, the like of the work relevance, the quality of output and the extent of result demonstrability influence the perceived usefulness and the person’s intention to use the technology (Hiraoka 2009). Later investigation shows that there are factors that mediate the computer efficacy, PU, and the PEOU; they include the earlier experience, other employees’ use and the task structure among other factors. In the final analysis, the external factors and the system usage were found to incur direct relationship with the PU and the PEOU
Limitation of the model
The analysis of the model indicates that it has been successful in predicting both the PU and the PEOU. However, the model has major shortcomings; for instance, the adoption of technology shows great variance in different organizations and across the industries (Pande and Weide 2012). Additionally, it is difficult to determine the two assumptions with precision since the perception of technology, and its application varies even within an organization.
Application of the model
The adoption of technology across the all the industries emanate from the two factors, PU, and the PEOU. Thus, despite that the adoption deskills the qualified employees their intention of use is higher since they will use less effort in operating the machines. Additionally, the demonstrability and the quality of results in medical diagnosis, automobile plants, accounting departments and in investment analysis among other areas will improve. Consequently, the less effort required and improved quality of the result replaces the highly skilled labor with the MacJobs in these organizations. This is because technology improves the performance and productivity of the labor at lower costs in the long run.
Ways through which technology is replacing the skilled labor with the ‘MacJobs.'
The section discusses the ways that technology has facilitated the usefulness of the MacJobs at the expense of highly qualified staffs.
Software and applications
Virtually, all the key areas of an organization that requires highly skilled expertise is going through a wave of deskilling across the industry. Indeed, the functions that can be automated have been greatly affected. For instance, there are open-ended software and applications that can be institutionalized to meet the needs of the organizations. As such, the labor force that was previously performing these tasks has been replaced by the software and applications. In other instances, the highly demanded tasks such as restructuring and ‘refactoring' in the field of programming have not been spared. Consequently, these skilled workers are replaced by the machine operators who require little training to fit in; for instance, there are accounting and statistical packages such as the QuickBooks and the statistical packages for the social scientists (SPSS) that perform the computations in the organization (Jellison 2010). Besides, in the programming sectors, there is the Integrated Development Environments (IDEs) such as the Visual Studio that has replaced the skilled and overqualified programmers (Steiner 2005). Particularly, these programs give the programmers lead on ways to make the software and the programs better. Therefore, one does not need to be highly qualified to write codes. These factors have drastically reduced the need for the having highly qualified staff that need high remuneration; hence, promoting the MacJobs.
Internet
The internet entails the global communication network that facilitates the connection of computers around the world for the purpose of information exchange. This is the most viral factor in the labor displacement and deskilling in many ways (Eriksson-Zetterquist, MüLlern and Styhre 2011). Firstly, it has replaced the data collection responsibilities among the researchers and the statisticians across the globe. Indeed, such companies as the Google, Amazon and Facebook store a lot of information about the users that can be used in advertisement design among other strategic plans in corporations. This replaces the jobs of data collecting with a lowly skilled freelancer who provides information to these companies riding on the internet. Additionally, social media marketing that uses the internet has also replaced the qualified markers and product promoters with designers who use the internet and other online tools to target the potential customers (Hajli 2015). Still, the corporations can source for freelancers from any part of the world to do some tasks such as editing, proofreading and designing logos among other jobs. This cuts the remuneration that would otherwise be paid to the skilled labor to do these tasks. Clearly, the internet increases the rate of MacJobs use in the corporations.
Artificial Intelligence (A.I)
This is a body of technologies that focus on executing the tasks that are only limited to human being owing to their intelligence in the task that need visual roles, recognition of speech, making critical decisions as well as multilingual skills (Cheng and Day 2014). As such, there has been a trend of using the robotics and advanced computers high precision tasks. In fact, these tools exhibit higher accuracy, capacity and functions speed in comparison to humans. For instance, the expert systems and the neural networks are widely used in making complicated decisions and evaluating the viability, return on investment as well as product development and improvement (British Computer Society, Graham and Milne 1991). This has deskilled the work of the financial experts and the investments analysts by replacing it with machine operators and other semiskilled labor force that feed the application with the required data. Additionally, the robotics are used in the automobile plants and electrical appliances; this reduces the roles performed by the qualified engineers. Evidently, this replaces the skilled labor with the MacJobs that deals with machine operations and reporting the analysis and trends in companies.
Advanced medical diagnostic technology
There is a range of technological products in the field of medicine that has reduced the role of doctors in the diagnostic roles. Here, some medical technologies technicians operate and provide the information on the health status of the patients. For instance, there is the Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) that is used in providing the visuals on internal structure and organs as well as their functioning without using the radiation (Tamraz, Outin, Secca and Soussi 2003). This technology has resolutions and thus is applied to the imaging of the brain tissues and the spine problems. Additionally, in medicine, there is wide usage of the Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scanning. This aids in the simultaneous results, organ functioning and structure scanning (Workman and Coleman 2007). For instance, it can provide information on the blood flow; test the functioning of the brain as well as detection and staging of tumors in the brain among other parts. This increases the precision of diagnosis and cuts the lead time. Despite that it improves the patients satisfaction and other health performance index, it deskills the medical professionals and replaces them with technology technicians and machine operators. This has changed the patient-doctor relationship in the modern medicine practice.
Impacts of technology in the labor and work
The relationship between the technology and the job market is overly volatile and unpredictable. As such, both the employees and the employers have to observe carefullyobserve the trends to cut the rate of skills and formal education obsoleteness. This has lead to the adoption of the ‘on-to-the’ job skills to meet the demand of the employers and cut the rate of deskilling. Additionally, there have emerged courses tailored to adjust and make optimal benefits from the innovation. Still, the companies have resulted in the online training of their employees to make sure their skills are on par with the changes in the technology. Owing to the application of technology in diverse activities and the continuous revolution of these technologies, the companies experience a high rate of turnover. Customarily, high turnover increases the operation costs and loss of production brought by recruitment costs and the loss of experienced workers respectively (Moschandreas 2000). However, the sizable corporations have bypassed this effect by outsourcing the technological responsibilities to the specific companies. In turn, these technology companies post the jobs online to the freelancers, which cuts the operation costs and gives them competitive advantages since they pick the best in the MacJobs. Therefore, technology has disorganized the labor market to many independent suppliers and customers across the globe. Therefore, the labor market is not limited to physical boundaries and the regulations that were experienced in the past. Clearly, technology creates a lift between the employees and the job performed since they do not have the independence and autonomy in making decisions. Thus, there is a loss of power on their areas of specialization (Brigham and Corbett 1997). As such, it may act as the de-motivating factor and lowers the level of job satisfaction and fulfillment. This results from the fact that most of the basic functions are automated, and there is little interaction between the employees in solving problems. Finally, it disrupts the employees' engagement since the workers use the technology in communications and not one-on-one discussion. This deprives the workers many benefits that result from the engagements such as sharing of views that improves their performance.
References
Brigham, M. and Corbett, J.M. (1997) 'E-mail, power and the constitution of organizational reality'. New Technology, Work and Employment.12, pp. 25-35.
British Computer Society, Graham, I., & Milne, R. (1991). Research and development in expert systems VIII: Proceedings of Expert Systems 91, the Eleventh Annual Technical Conference of the British Computer Society Specialist Group on Expert Systems, London, September 1991. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press on behalf of the British Computer Society.
Cheng, S.-M., & Day, M.-Y. (2014). Technologies and Applications of Artificial Intelligence 19th International Conference, TAAI 2014, Taipei, Taiwan, November 21-23, 2014. Proceedings. Cham, Springer.
Eriksson-Zetterquist, U., MüLlern, T., & Styhre, A. (2011). Organization theory: a practice-based approach. Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Hajli, N. (2015). Handbooks of Research on integrating' social media into strategic marketing'. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&scope=site&db=nlebk&db=nlabk&AN=1006626.
Hiraoka, C. (2009). Technology acceptance of connected services in the automotive industry. Wiesbaden, Gabler Research. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-8349-8309-1.
Hung, P. C. K. (2009). Services and business computing solutions with XML: Applications for quality management and best processes. Hershey, PA, Information Science Reference.
Information Resources Management Association, & Khosrow-Pour, M. (2004). Innovations in information technology. Hershey, PA, Idea Group Publishing. http://www.infosci-online.com/content/tocVolumes.asp?ID=408.
Jellison, J. M. (2010). Life after grad school. New York, Oxford University Press. http://public.,eblib.com/choice/publicfullrecord.aspx?'p=497585.
Moschandreas, M. (2000). Business economics. London [u.a.], Business Press.
Pande, R., & Weide, T. V. D. (2012). Globalization, technology diffusion, and gender disparity: social impacts of ICTs. Hershey, PA, Information Science Reference.
Steiner, C. (2005). The 8051/8052 Microcontroller: architecture, assembly language, and hardware interfacing. Boca Raton, Fla, Universal Publishers.
Tamraz, J. C., Outin, C., Secca, M. F., & Soussi, B. (2003). MRI Principles of the Head, Skull Base and Spine a Clinical Approach. Paris, Springer Paris. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-2-8178-0754-6.
Trauth, E. M. (2006). Encyclopedia of gender and information technology. Hershey, PA, Idea Group Reference. http://ezproxy.usherbrooke.ca/login?url=http://reference.igi-online.com/content/.
Workman, R. B., & Coleman, R. E. (2007). PET/CT essentials for clinical practice. Palo Alto, Calif, Ebrary. http://site.ebrary.com/id/10151910.
