Home > Media Coverage > Metro, December 11, 2002

Employment Study gets boost
Researcher gets $3 million to put toward study on IT workplace

A researcher at the University of Western Ontario now has 2 million more reasons to pursue a study on the employment landscape of the information technology (IT) sector.

Julie McMullin, a professor in Western’s Department of Sociology, received $3 million from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), the largest grant ever from the federal agency, the SSHRC announced yesterday.

The money will be put toward a study called “Workforce Aging in the New Economy”, which will look at employment growth in the IT sector, aging and discrimination in the workforce, and the transformation of employment relations in the new economy.

The project is of special interest to McMullin who is the principal investigator of the project.

“Both of my brothers, aged 34 and 30 years, are involved in IT businesses,” McMullin said. “What struck me is that there were mostly young, white males (in their work environments).”

She added that the atmosphere in IT work environments seemed casual, yet the employee turnover for the sector is high.

“There was a fun kind of atmosphere – most of these workplaces have pool tables and bars,” she said, wondering how such a setting would affect “other life course transitions such as becoming a parent or retirement.”

The four-year study will involve 23 partners in eight universities from around the world, and will entail 16 different case-studies – four each in the U.S., European Union, Australia and Canada.

Original Citation Information:

Kong, Ben. (2002, December 11). Employment study gets boost. Metro, pp. 27.