AI-enabled integrated employment ecosystem for socially vulnerable groups: a multiple case study and design-research...

Population aging and digital transformation are intersecting forces that intensify the structural exclusion of older adults and persons with disabilities from contemporary labor markets. Welfare systems and scholarly literature alike remain fragmented along single-group axes, leaving this compounded inequality without an integrative response. Drawing on a multiple case study of Testworks, Kakao, and Microsoft, combined with a design-research approach, this study identifies three mechanisms through which artificial intelligence enables inclusive employment: strength matching, education-to-employment pathways, and multi-stakeholder collaboration. Cross-case analysis reveals that although all three organizations deploy AI to widen labor-market access, none integrates both vulnerable groups within a single sociotechnical system. From this shared gap, the study develops a three-stage circular ecosystem model (Education-Matching-Sustainability) anchored by a triple-layered revenue architecture. The model is presented as a conceptual and theoretical framework grounded in cross-case analysis; its practical effectiveness remains to be tested through subsequent pilot implementations and primary empirical research. The contributions are threefold. First, it specifies a sustainability architecture that transcends the mission-market dichotomy long debated in research on hybrid organizing. Second, it reframes AI as an instrument of social inclusion rather than displacement, reconnecting technology to the sociology of work and inequality. Third, it offers a transferable template for societies facing parallel demographic and digital transitions. The model thus contributes both a theoretical advance and a practical roadmap for confronting compounded forms of labor-market exclusion.