Miguel Molina-Solana

This research analyses the text of the complete set of job descriptions for a large corporation to produce a census of tasks useful for modelling likely technology-enabled changes to work. After briefly explaining the method for producing the task census, we describe a theme of tasks that appear widely in jobs not only across units, but also up and down the hierarchy. To summarize this finding, we call it social glue because the recurring tasks tend social ties that facilitate information exchange essential to performance of both individual jobs and the organization overall. In discussion of what social glue means for the future of work in a post-COVID world, we suggest the current rapid adoption of video-calling technologies and collaboration tools has already laid a foundation for new approaches to social glue that will have profound and lasting implications for job design, organization structure, and commuting patterns.

@inproceedings{nfw2020,
  title = {Social Glue and Post-COVID Labour Markets: Evidence from a Task Census of a Large Corporation},
  author = {Kennedy, Mark~T. and Molina-Solana, Miguel},
  booktitle = {New Future of Work 2020},
  year = {2020},
  month = aug,
  timestamp = {132},
  doi = {},
  url = {https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/social-glue-and-post-covid-labour-markets-evidence-from-a-task-census-of-a-large-corporation/}
}