"This volume presents eleven case studies, conducted in 2021 and 2022 in the UNTANGLED project, of companies and (sub-)sectors in manufacturing, financial services, and business services in various countries in the EU and South Africa. Each case study investigates the interplay between globalisation, digitalisation and demographic change, and the impacts of these megatrends on employment, skills, job quality and inequality in the respective field.

The conclusions show that megatrends manifest themselves as soon as they are filtered by institutional regimes of employment, industrial relations, market regulation and industrial and labour market policies, as well as by the actual and expected developments of markets for products and services. Collective actors such as companies, social partners and business associations also play an active and strategic part in shaping these regimes and policies.

Empirically, path dependencies of sectors and national production and employment regimes are rarely disrupted by technology, globalisation or changing workforce demographics, although some erosions are observed, for example in vocational and educational training (VET) systems and social partnership. In some cases, at the company and sectoral level, workplace innovations offer possible pathways for companies and sectors to move towards ‘better jobs' that improve both economic performance and job quality."

Support: Digital