ROBOTS ARE AS LIKELY TO CREATE JOBS AS DESTROY THEM COUNTRY: UK SCHOOL: University of Sussex Business School
TURNING AWAY UNWANTED DONATIONS WITHOUT SACRIFICING SUPPORT COUNTRY: USA SCHOOL: Olin Business School, Washington University in St Louis Not all donations are useful to a non-profit organisation. In 2018, for example, Australian charities are estimated to have spent $13 million AUD disposing of unwanted clothing donations. A non-profit can take steps to avoid the costs of unwanted donations – a food bank can reject certain items, for instance – but there are risks attached. Turning away a donation could deter people from making donations in future. One study showed that blood donors whose donations were rejected were found to be 29% less likely to donate again within 4.25 years than donors whose blood was accepted. These risks are supported in a study of donor responses to rejection from Kaitlin Daniels, Assistant Professor of Supply Chain, Operations and Technology at Olin Business School, in conjunction with the University of Pittsburgh’s León Valdés. Participants in the study repeatedly chose whether to complete a typing task that generated a donation which was subject to the possibility of rejection at an unknown probability. After experiencing a rejection, the number of instances in which participants completed the typing task (hence, donations) fell, with the conclusion drawn that this is because optimism in their success fell. Yet, when the typing task was instead linked to personal profit, the effect of a rejection on the subsequent number of completed typing tasks was less pronounced – indicating a level of self-serving bias. The results could help non-profits formulate the right approach towards unwanted donations and help them make better use of their resources. Ultimately, as Daniels explained, this can ‘ensure that waste is truly reduced—not transferred to downstream partners in the donations’ supply chain.’ Making donations easier is one recommendation, as is offering rejected donors an on-the-spot alternative, such as the ability to join a mailing list or to contribute in another way. ‘We show that offering rejected donors the opportunity to make a small monetary contribution mitigates biased response to rejection,’ said the Olin Professor. / TBD
The introduction of AI is just as likely to create jobs for humans as it is to take them away, according to the results of a survey of 759 UK employers led by the University of Sussex Business School and the University of Warwick. When firms implementing AI were asked how job numbers had been affected by the new technology over the past five years, less than a quarter thought that there had been a net job loss, with a similar number reporting a net job increase. Roughly half of firms felt that there had been no overall change in job numbers. Yet, introducing AI was found to have a bigger impact on job numbers than the introduction of any other new technology. Among respondents, AI was 28.4 percentage points more likely to be associated with job creation and 26.6 percentage points more likely to be associated with job destruction than other technologies. ‘While we can’t say for sure from the research how many jobs will be created or destroyed, it is likely that the automation of some tasks may mean fewer people are needed to perform some jobs, but that increased productivity may reduce costs stimulating sales and demand for workers overall. This, of course, is likely to depend on the specific AI-technology used and what employers hope to achieve by using it,’ said Wil Hunt, Research Fellow at the University of Sussex Business School. By focusing on what has been happening to firms introducing AI, rather than what might happen, the study aims to fill a perceived gap in our current understanding of AI’s impact. ‘There is very little analysis of what actually happens in organisations introducing AI-enabled technologies,’ explained Sudipa Sarkar, Senior Research Fellow in the Institute for Employment Research at the University of Warwick (Warwick IER). Chris Warhurst, Director of Warwick IER, added that the study represents ‘a step towards understanding how the introduction of AI-enabled technology can have different implications for organisations compared to other technologies.’ / Tim Banerjee Dhoul (TBD)
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