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CASE STUDY: WILL AUTOMATION KILL JOBS? How does automating jobs pose an ethical dilemma? Who are the stakeholders? Identify the options that can be taken and the potential consequences of each? It is not a secret that automating jobs are causing one of the biggest ethical dilemmas of the 21st century by making people lose their jobs. By switching to robots, people who lose their jobs unable to find new ones as they do not have a skill, mobility, or required level of education. As the textbook indicates, with help of innovative technology and automation productivity increases and at the same time people cannot find new jobs and support their families. These factors show the negative side of innovation in technology industry and it is not easy to define of what is right and wrong. Obviously, automation already created a huge social change and it will keep growing. As mentioned in the textbook, it is challenging today to find a right ethical and socially responsible path of actions. In current case stakeholders are workers and their families who got impacted the most. They lost their jobs, unable to keep their careers and, most importantly, are challenged to find a job in any other field since they do not have necessary education. While workers do not have much choice that are forced to choose another career and get a required education. This situation gives an opportunity to switch careers, get education and find a better and safer job. Talking about companies who must fire all employees, it is reasonable action as they try to reduce any expenses and costs associated with salary, insurance, retirement plans and be profitable while using automation. If you were the owner of a factory deciding on whether to acquire robots to perform certain tasks, what people, organization, and technology factors would you consider?

As an owner of a factory person has a lot of responsibilities and requires making a lot of important decisions. As an owner I would be highly focused on increasing productivity, reducing expense costs, following the last innovations in the relevant industry. All these actions would lead factory to being much more profitable with help of automated robots that perform basic tasks. I would not be afraid relying on robots because they are efficient, accurate, dynamic, and become well-developed overall. I would not fire all employees whose responsibilities were automated as company needs more human resources if company keeps growing. Automation would bring a lot of opportunities for growth and people can be retrained and be provided a position in management, marketing, accounting, or administrative departments. Obviously, with automation transition organization and daily tasks of workers in the company would change as robots will be taking care of repetitive and manual tasks when workers will focus on management tasks. I also would make sure I update the IT system of the factory on time, so company is not experiencing various issues and creates a competitive advantage. I also would try to do my best to save my workers who are familiar with culture of the company by retraining them and providing job opportunities in HR department. All in all, automation transition is not preferable it is almost mandatory for every single huge business in order to survive in todays’ business world....