Shiyan Zhang
Lecturer (Assistant Professor) at Lancaster University Management School
My research explores the dynamics between technology, digital skills, work and labor outcomes. I'm passionate about investigating the broader societal impacts of technology using techniques and theories from the fields of Information Systems, Business Analytics, and Data Science.
Research Interests
My research is primarily rooted in the field of the future of work, where I view the space of work as a complex ecosystem with interconnected subsystems coevolving together. This work can potentially lead to further examination of how technology skill clusters foster knowledge transfer in a network, which can in turn inform decisions on the creation, adoption, and diffusion of technologies.
My ongoing work uses graph neural network techniques to understand the intricate relationships between occupations and skills and to eventually predict the importance of skills for emerging occupations. This work is becoming increasingly relevant given the recent advancement in generative AI technologies and the changes they are bringing to many occupations as well as the new occupations that may emerge from it.
In addition to my current research, one of the areas that interest me for my future research is workplace creativity and innovation. I’m part of the research project the Future of News Work, a multidisciplinary collaboration with Stevens, Columbia, and Syracuse University funded by the National Science Foundation. It examines how computational tools, including AI-powered tools
can assist journalists in research and narrative discovery.
Publications
Zhang, S., Yan, B., Hervé, J., and Nickerson, J.V. The Work Ecosystem: Software Technology Diversity and the Value of Occupations, Academy of Management Proceedings (2023).
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Best Paper
Zhang, S. and Nickerson, J.V. The Coevolution of Tasks and Technologies. Academy of
Management Annual Meeting (2022).
Zhang, S. and Nickerson, J.V. 2021. Occupation Modularity and the Work Ecosystem. Forty- Second International Conference on Information Systems (2021).