Technology,Competition,and Employment

Abstract

Technology makes possible the production of existing goods and services with fewer input resources and the creation of new products and services fulfilling hitherto unmet or unrealized social needs. The accomplishment of both of these functions is difficult to estimate quantitatively, and it is thus hard to say anything definitive about the effects of technology on employment or on the quality of jobs, especially since technology is only one among several factors that influence this. Forecasts of future technological trends and their social impacts tend to overestimate changes in the short term, and underestimate them in the long term. This article stresses the key role of social and organizational learning, and the necessity for a higher level of cooperation among labor, management, and government in the selection and introduction of new technology and its accommodation to society. In the future the factory and the office must become more like a research laboratory or an advanced school where cooperative learning is the norm.

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

1. Kathleen Newland , Productivity: The New Economic Context, Worldwatch Paper no. 49 (Washington, DC: Worldwatch Institute, 1982).

2. Harvey Brooks , “Technology, Evolution, and Purpose,” in Modern Technology, Problem or Opportunity? ed. S. R. Graubard , Daedalus, Winter 1980.

3. OECD , Science and Technology Policy for the 1980's (Paris: OECD, 1981), esp. pt. 3, “Science, Technology, and Society in the 1980's.”

4. “Impacts of Rapid Technological Change in the U.S. Business Economy and in the Communications, Electronic Equipment and Semiconductor Industry Groups,” in Microelectronics, Productivity, and Employment, ICCP report no. 5 (Paris: OECD, 1981).

5. Telesis Consultancy Group , A Review of Industrial Policy, National Economic and Social Council, no. 64 (Dublin: NESC, 1982), esp. p. 44.

6. The discussion in this section draws heavily on ibid., chap. 1, pp. 44-63.

7. Nancy S. Dorfman , Massachusetts' High Technology Boom in Perspective, report 82-2 (Cambridge, MA: Center for Policy Alternatives, MIT, 1982).

8. Joel A. Fadem , “Automation and Work Design in the Unites States,” in International Comparative Study on Automation and Work Design, ed. F. Butera and J. Thurman (New York: North-Holland, forthcoming).

9. R. Rosenbloom and W. Abernathy , “The Climate for Innovation in Industry: The Role of Management Attitudes and Practices in Consumer Electronics,” Research Policy, 11:209-225 (Nov. 1982).

10.

10. National Academy of Sciences , Technology: Processes of Assessment and Choice, (Washington, DC: Committee on Science and Astronautics, U.S. House of Representatives, July 1969).

11.

11. Charles Sabel , Work and Politics (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1982), esp. chap. 5.