Future skills and key competencies and their use in employee development, considering new technological developments world-wide, including the most recent developments around machine production capabilities and AI technology, and added challenges in work environments, such as VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity), will define the workplaces of the future. Hence, employees could be facing a possible skill-gap and therefore need to become skilled in ways that help them to remain competitive and to be able to work with the new technologies that will continue to be introduced.

We invite submissions about Future Skills and Global Trends for the 2nd issue of JAIR to be published in the spring of 2024. Interdisciplinary research in this area is accepted from all areas of research with an interdisciplinary focus, or which have an interdisciplinary research design in Future Skills, Key Competencies, Global Trends, Human Resource Development, Psychological Aspects of Future Skills, and International Management. This issue will also feature a special focus on the development of skilled employees and entrepreneurship in rural areas, when faced with the changing global business environment. 

The following questions might be adressed:

Are technological skills and digital key qualifications, including classic and transformative skills, such as entrepreneurial action and own initiative, as well as innovation skills and mission skills becoming increasingly important in future working life?
Is the possible skill-gap exacerbated in rural areas?
Are the possible access issues in rural areas a hindrance for employees to receive proper training, both for re-skilling and up-skilling the current workforce, as well as finding qualified personnel to hire in markets that have less available skilled workers affecting hiring policies, and if so, what are the solutions?
Is this a typical Global North vs. Global South issue, where one part of the World has to deal with the implications more than the other, or are these challenges a global trend?
How can entrepreneurship ideas be introduced into areas and regions that may not have previously had access to the global market?
Are global trends pushing the need for future skills and key competencies beyond the capabilities of today’s workforce? And how could this be solved?

Please consider the authors guidelines of JAIR and citation styles. Please don't hestitate to contact us if you have further questions. The deadline for submission is October 31st, 2023.

We are looking forward to receiving your submissions.

Yours principal editors

Michelle Cummings-Koether and Kristin Seffer