涩里番

Pedro Seguel Varas, a doctoral student at 涩里番 in the Information Systems area will be presenting his thesis defense entitled:

Analyzing Discourse Dynamics in Labor Markets: Explaining Changes in IT Occupations, Skills, and Technology with Job Vacancy Data

Friday, November 21, 2025, at 10:00 a.m.
(The defense will be conducted on Zoom)

Student Committee Co-chairs: Professor Emmanuelle Vaast

Please note that the Defence will be conducted on Zoom, and only the student and the committee members may participate.

Abstract

In the contemporary landscape of rapid technological evolution, understanding occupational changes and the emergence of new technical skill requirements is a pivotal concern. To understand how work is changing, we need to understand how companies structure their work needs. Using discourse to assess how collective understandings of work prevail or change, this dissertation examines the dynamics of discourse within labor markets, utilizing job vacancy data from 2010 to 2023 as a lens to scrutinize the evolving nature of work. Through three interconnected studies, the thesis examines the symbiotic relationship between organizations and the structure of information technology (IT) occupations and skills, thereby contributing to the cumulative tradition in information systems literature regarding IT work.

The first study takes a novel approach by examining the internal shifts within the changing skill demand and the internal shifts within IT occupations. Introducing the unique concept of 鈥淚T Occupational Vision鈥�, this study investigates how employers collectively shape the structure of IT occupations in response to evolving environments and individual needs. Leveraging longitudinal job description data and text analysis, it reveals two enduring profiles that stabilized despite the rapid diversification of skills, challenging prevailing notions of occupational fluidity. This research aligns with the IS diffusion literature and problematizes stable classifications in IT occupations, offering nuanced insights into job design challenges in the digital age.

The second study examines the evolution of vocabularies surrounding artificial intelligence (AI) skills. Rather than treating skills as static proxies, it conceptualizes skill vocabularies as infrastructures of legitimacy. Using co-occurrence networks and semantic drift analysis, the study shows how some skills (e.g., 鈥渕achine learning鈥�) persist as anchors by remaining embedded in dense semantic neighborhoods, while others fade as meanings drift. This dynamic account extends theories of category evolution and legitimation, explaining how vocabularies themselves stabilize or erode over time.

The final theoretical study develops a framework for the concept of IT Occupational Visions, extending the Organizing Vision tradition from technologies to occupations. Taking a sociocognitive perspective, it conceptualizes labor markets as socially constructed knowledge structures shaped by employer discourse. While occupational identity research has emphasized the employee (supply-side), this framework highlights the demand-side processes through which firms stabilize and redefine IT occupations. The study shows why existing labor classification and occupational identity approaches cannot fully explain the dynamics of occupational change, and instead draws on diffusion and institutional literatures to theorize how societal norms and organizational fields influence employer practices. This framework establishes IT Occupational Visions as a new construct for understanding how IT labor markets are continuously reshaped.

In summary, this dissertation provides insights into the evolving landscape of IT labor, shared IT Occupational Visions, and language shifts that are shaping technology adoption within organizations. This work emphasizes the socially constructed nature of labor markets from an employer perspective and provides ways to interrogate its dynamics at scale. By elucidating the mechanisms underlying firms' categorization of labor, such as IT Occupational Visions or anchoring skill vocabularies, the thesis advances theoretical, methodological, and practical understanding of how firms categorize and structure IT work. These findings open new directions for research on labor categories, technological disruption, and organizational adaptation in dynamic market environments.