ILRHR 2685 - Building Better Jobs: Organizational Levers for Improving Job Quality

Spring. 3 credits. Letter grades only (no audit).

Enrollment limited to: ILR sophomores or others with permission of the instructor who have not satisfied their ILR sophomore writing requirement. Satisfies the ILR sophomore writing requirement.

A. Kowalski.

New technologies promise to change the ways we work, prompting the question: which jobs are worth working and which jobs might be better left to the past? This class explores the dirty, dull, and dangerous jobs that many science and technology experts believe can and should be replaced by robots, algorithms, artificial intelligence, and other recent innovations. Rather than accept that certain jobs are inherently bad, we will critically examine what can make even the toughest work rewarding and the most prestigious career unfulfilling. We will use our insights to sketch out the key determinants of a good quality job and then learn about evidence-based policies and practices that organizations can use to evaluate and improve the jobs they offer. Ultimately, we will probe whether it is possible to make any job a good one. Students will interrogate these topics and develop their own opinions through various writing exercises, including memos, op-eds, speaking presentations, and a longer paper.