THE WORLD OF WORK CAREERS AND THE FUTURE

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THE
WORLD
WORK
Careers and the Future
Edited by Howard F. Didsbury, Jr.
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THE WORLD OF WORK
CAREERS AND THE FUTURE
Edited by
Howard F. Didsbury, Jr.
WORLD FUTURE SOCIETY
Bethesda, MD eN U.S.A.
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Editor: Howard F. Didsbury, Jr.
Editorial Review Board: Deirdre H. Banks, James J. Crider, Howard F. Didsbury,
Jr. (Chairman), Theodore J. Maziarski, Andrew A. Spekke,
Stephen H. Van Dyke
Staff Editors: Edward Cornish, Jerry Richardson
Production Manager: Jefferson Cornish'
Editorial Coordinator: Sarah Warner
Editorial Consultants: David G. Cox, Mary Ann Madison, Veronica Perry, Michael
Warner
Cover Art: Cynthia Fowler
Typesetting: Harper Graphics
Published by:
World Future Society
4916 St. Elmo Avenue
Bethesda, Maryland 20814-5089 ? U.S.A.
Copyright ? 1983 World Future Society
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced by any means, nor transmitted, nor translated
into machine language without the written permission of the copyright holder.
Library of Congress Catalog Number: 83-50328
International Standard Book Number: 0-930242-21-1
Printed in the United States or-America
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Contents
Preface vii
Introduction
Finding Solutions to the Real Problems
Howard F. Didsbury, Jr. I x
STRUCTURAL CHANGES IN THE ECONOMY
Changes in the World of Work: Some Implications for the Future
David Macarov 3
The Changing Nature of Work
Joseph F. Coates 25
Robots and the Future of Work
Edmund Byrne 30
Nine Paradoxes for the 1990s
Robert M. Fulmer 39
Toward Full Unemployment
Robert Theobald 49
MANAGING TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE
Computer-Integrated Manufacturing: The Human Factors
Ross Bishop 61
The Future of Management
William Exton, Jr. 84
Education for Managers of Accelerating Change
George Korey 91
Assessing Preferred Job Attributes for the New Manager of the
1980s
David Hopkins and Sandra LaMarre with Jerry Thurber 103
Making Technology Work: A Report from the Battlefield
James L. Horton 116
The Segmented Work Force
Matthew J. Puleo 123
Computer Technology and Employee Resistance in Future Work
Environments
Alan W. Ewert and Alison E. Voight 128
Tomorrow's Work Dilemma: Security vs. Access
Sanford B. Weinberg 138
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INNOVATION AND ECONOMIC STRATEGY
Innovation and New Institutional Structures
John Diebold 145
An Economic Strategy for the 1980s
Gary Hart r 151
Technological Innovation and Economic Development
Fred Best 155
INCENTIVES AND MOTIVATION
Autonomy, Control, and the Office of the Future: Personal and
Social Implications
Don Mankin 165
Tomorrow's Technical/Communications Labor Force
Arthur B. Shostak 171
Industrial Democracy
Edward Cohen-Rosenthal 177
CAREERS AND WORK TRENDS
Jobs with a Future
Marvin J. Cetron 187
Knowledge, Technology, and Professional Motives for the Future
M. Kent Mayfield 200
EDUCATION: WHAT DO WE DO?
The Reindustrialization of Vocational Education
Amitai Etzioni 209
New Work and Education: Socio-Technical Work Theory and School
Learning
Arthur G. Wirth 219
Getting Ready for the Next Industrial Revolution
James O'Toole 232
Current Models for the Future Education of Workers
Sharon Rubin and Amy Thomas 237
The Future Impact of Technology on Work Skills
Henry M. Levin and Russell W. Rumberger 247
Human Capital: A High-Yield Corporate Investment
Anthony Patrick Carnevale 254
Needed: New Model Adult Universities
Gerard G. Gold and Nancy B. Blackman 263
Preparing California' s Work Force for the Jobs of the Future
The California Commission on Industrial Innovation 270
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WORK, LIFE-STYLE, AND LEISURE
Telecommuting: Its Impact on the Home
Jane Kingston 287
Work/Family Policies: An Innovation Theory Approach
Lillian Little 301
Work, Leisure, and Culture
Vukan Kuic 310
ADDITIONAL READING
An Overview of Work Issues: A Selected Bibliography from
FUTURE SURVEY
Michael Marien
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Note
This volume was prepared in conjunction with the World Future So-
ciety's special conference, "Working Now and in the Future," held in
Washington, D.C., August 11 and 12, 1983. Kenneth W. Hunter served
as general chairman of the conference. The staff coordinator was David
A. Smith.
The papers presented here were selected from the very large number
submitted to the Editorial Review Committee. The committee regrets that
space limitations permitted only a small number of papers to be published
in this volume. In addition, many papers had to be cut substantially.
Footnotes and other scholarly paraphernalia were minimized, so that as
wide a selection of thoughts as possible could be presented.
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Preface
The papers in this volume offer insights into the problems associated
with work and careers, employment and unemployment in a world that
is being rapidly transformed by accelerating technological innovations.
The authors examine, from a wide variety of perspectives, the likely
impacts of the multi-faceted changes now under way. As is the usual case
with a volume in which there are a large number of contributors, a sharp
delineation of topics is difficult, if not impossible.
We hope the arrangement that has been adopted will be helpful to the
reader. The introduction, "Finding Solutions to the Real Problems," is
designed to serve as a general orientation. Following this, the book is
organized into eight sections. These sections are: Structural Changes in
the Economy; Managing Technological Change; Innovation and Economic
Strategy; Incentives and Motivation; Careers and Work Trends; Education:
What Do We Do?; Work, Life-style, and Leisure; and Additional Reading.
Two additional brief comments:
The reader will find that the section entitled "Education: What Do We
Do?" offers a number of radically different views of the role and need
for education in the emerging electronic age. Some views appear to be
contradictory. Confronted with such contradictory assertions, one can
sympathize with policy-makers' dilemmas.
Lastly, the eighth section consists of a brief, selective bibliography of
additional sources for further reading.
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Introduction
Finding Solutions to the Real
Problems
by
Howard F. Didsbury, Jr.
The United States?once without peer?faces serious and far-reaching
economic and technological challenges of both international and national
consequence. On this there is general agreement.
In retrospect, the Pax Americana, the United States Century, was ac-
celerated and compressed into the period of 1945 to 1975 or thereabouts.
The first Arab oil embargo occurred in the fall of 1973; 1975 marked the
end of the Vietnamese War. Massive United States productivity, economic
growth, general prosperity (albeit with periodic recessions), and rising
expectations characterized those years when both the vanquished and vic-
torious of World War II recuperated and rebuilt. In terms of sheer geo-
political and military power, two giants stood astride the globe, the United
States and the Soviet Union.
Today these two giants find themselves handicapped?perhaps pro-
foundly?by their own enormous destructive technology. As the twenty-
first century approaches, there is every indication that it will be charac-
terized by an even greater tendency toward polycentrism, that is, a mul-
tipolar political world. In addition, it is reasonable to anticipate many new
members joining the ranks of the advanced and technologically sophis-
ticated nations. The economic and political implications of humanity's
novel state of affairs are immense.
Is such an eventuality a cause for alarm, fear, or despair? Sober re-
flection suggests that it is not. The vast economic and technological trans-
formation in which more and more nations are involved means that the
United States may no longer be the first of two great powers. From here
on, we and the Soviet Union?excluding nuclear madness, of course?
will be but two of an increasing number of advanced technological nations.
This newly emerging arrangement may, in fact, foreshadow the evolution
of a planetary system only vaguely perceived at this time. Such a devel-
opment should not be alien to Americans. The Great Seal of the United
States itself announces the expectation of "Novus Ordo Seclorum," the
advent of "New Order for the Ages."
Howard F. Didsbuty, Jr., is professor of history and executive director, Program for
the Study of the Future, Kean College of New Jersey, Union, New Jersey. He is also
director of media projects for the World Future Society.
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Consider the national dimension of the economic and technological
challenges we face. One hears much about the lack of worker incentive
and morale, productivity decline, excessive taxation, governmental med-
dling and regulations, etc., as the causes (one or all in concert) of the
national economic malaise. Such myths and misconceptions tend to cloud
our thinking and distract us from a pursuit of the truly novel insights
required for imaginative, effective planning.
Is excessive taxation destroying initiative and discouraging investment?
The United States has lower tax rates than 16 other industrialized nations.
We hear that the power of unionized labor inhibits economic progress.
But U.S. workers are the least unionized of advanced industrial nations.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of
Labor, in 1980 only 20.8% of the U.S. labor force was unionized. Amer-
ican workers, it is asserted, have too much time off, yet German workers
as well as others have more holidays. Another notion alleges U.S. workers
to be overly concerned with job security. This may well be?and for very
good reason. The American worker can be fired more easily than a worker
in most other industrial nations?job insecurity is a reality. Do inordinate
social-service expenditures hobble investment and drag the economy down?
Other industrial nations spend more proportionately on such services. In
fact, "Alone of all industrial countries, the U.S. lacks a national health
insurance system."'
Governmental interference and regulations, especially environmental
regulations, are also cited as causes of poor economic performance. Yet,
other industrial nations, such as West Germany and Japan, have much
more governmental interference and more stringent environmental regu-
lations. Finally, "Few truisms are so firmly implanted in the American
consciousness as the notion that our economy is a private-enterprise one.
The fact is that it is not. It is private and public, profit-making and not-
for-profit: a pluralistic economy." "The important distinction is between
the private, profit-seeking sector and the total not-for-profit sector."2 The
not-for-profit sector employs one worker out of three. The structural changes
taking place in our economy become clearer when such myths are dis-
pelled, and solutions to genuine problems can then be sought.
The transformation of the economy was described by Eli Ginzberg and
George J. Vojta in a recent article:
Four mutually reinforcing changes?the displacement of goods by services at
the cutting edge of economic growth, the growth of the not-for-profit sector,
the increasing importance of human capital and the internationalization of the
business system?have transformed the U.S. economy over the past 30 years.3
Are we not-an information economy-when-one-half of the gross national--
cproduct is concerned with the.pro-duction, processing-, and handling of
_ information? When-one-half -of-the U.S.- labor face' is So employed? We
must not assume these fundamental changes to be mere departures or
aberrations from the "normal" course of events. To do so would be folly.
A microelectronics revolution is occurring and we can forecast some
of its likely effects. Changes in the twentieth century, especially in the
latter half, appear to be accelerating. Technological innovation and ap-
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plication, encompassing robotics, is everywhere evident. With such changes,
technological unemployment and underemployment may well prove to be
a permanent, nontransitional phenomenon. As refutation, past historical
examples of such fears and their final banishment with the creation of
greater employment could be cited. It is the fable of the boy crying wolf,
we are reminded. But in the fable the wolf finally appears. Can we be
sure that this wolf, permanent unemployment, has not at last arrived?
In a provocative book review article in two parts entitled "Management
and the Microelectronic Revolution,"4 Brian C. Twiss discussed a grow-
ing consensus among experts that microelectronics would eliminate more
jobs than it created. They foresee a decline in the number of skilled workers
because of the computer's speed, accuracy, memory capacity, and pro-
cessing capability. Before long, robots will combine decision-making with
manual dexterity. "Whereas previous technologies such as the car industry
created multiplier effects which stimulated the growth of new labour em-
ploying activities, for example car repair and garage's] . . . the reverse
is the case with microelectronics. Amongst the reasons for this are the
long life, reliability, small size, low material usage, low power con-
sumption and high speed of operation of microelectronic circuits." These
experts feel that microelectronics will decimate office jobs. Overall, im-
proved production techniques will allow marked increases in productivity
without corresponding increases in the work force in the microelectronics
industry. Such effects weaken the view that the microelectronics revolution
is just another technological revolution. Ultimately, workers may become
superfluous by "design." The objective is to increase productivity and
cut costs. Why redesign a job in order to "enrich" it for the worker if
the worker himself can be eliminated by redesign?
In the past, it is true, a new technology led to increased employment?
ultimately. It should be noted, though all too frequently it is not, that that
"ultimately" signified considerable interim anxiety, hardship, and tragedy
for many people. Whenever someone glibly declares that things will be
fine in the long run, one is reminded of a remark attributed to John Maynard
Keynes to the effect that in the long run we are all dead. It all depends
upon how long the run is, and who is forced to do the running. What is
to be done with the many while they await the happy day of new em-
ployment alternatives?
The previous historical trend may not be duplicated.C.Theabs--->
_cLeate-cl ftlay,not be_greaterthan-the-numbereliminateth-Equallrimportan
qh ou gtraterrobs c u rut byial I ..th-Efalrofth-TITEe-d for-increase-di-6Tel s:of
eL__lues-ation=and_training_and_retrainfill the new more-chal---Th?
lenpng_or-less-challenging-thth-FJObs--Theing elfthinated?-for-all?7E61-277--,
A dark side of the glamorous picture of the need for "advanced"
education and/or retraining lies in the fact that much of the new technology
demands great mental powers for its creation, but for its operation or,
more properly, "tending," it requires much lower mental abilities than
the tasks it replaces or eliminates. dn---other-words7thei-cf?eatTrr_Of-the-------1
syst y.:ctin-itilYIWIREnteraCers'I-Tor-The-syster
me n s el y--borat._
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Anothet problem .s women in the work force today and tomorrow. In
the course Mlle-development of industrial civilization, few thinkers ever
contemplated women permanently in the work force seeking their own
personal career and talent development. Full employment, when dis-
cussed, was assumed to mean full male employment.
Technological unemployment and women permanently in the work force
are factors in the crucial question: Will there be jobs for all who want
jobs? This question posed today means something very different than it
did when posed 30 or 40 years ago. Today, it must be considered in a
totally new cultural milieu. Failure to do so may lead to great social unrest.
In a world of pervasive mass communication media that create and
perpetuate insatiable wants and extravagant life expectations, who will
take jobs that are dull or unpleasant, however euphemistically they may
be described? If the financial rewards for doing such tasks are raised
dramatically to attract takers, the incentive on the part of employers to
substitute robots, etc., becomes increasingly attractive, if not compelling
for economic survival.
Unwillingness to accept just any job on the part of the jobless, though
widely denounced in terms approaching moral condemnation, is a logical
result of people living immersed in a world of communication media that
inculcate an ethos of personal gratification and individual self-fulfillment.
There is little, if any, esteem for the performance of dull or unpleasant
jobs. We are victims of our own success. We have succeeded remarkably
in communicating the easy, selfish, hedonistic life-style so well that few
will accept anything less. Time and again, in discussions of jobs, there
seems to be a failure to appreciate sufficiently the cultural milieu created
by the media and how this milieu affects attitudes toward work and worker
expectations. One wonders how long the misery and suffering associated
with the rise of industrial civilization would have been quietly endured if
mass communication media had existed at the time. Not long, one sus-
pects.
Contrary to a widespread current view that sees a lessening role for
government in the future as a desired goal or inevitable trend, the com-
plexity, interrelatedness, and extensiveness of such problems as the struc-
tural transformation of the economy and the microelectronics revolution
suggest that such a view may be illusory. Does it seem likely that the
private, for-profit sector can possibly respond adequately to the multi-
plicity of complex challenges that must be dealt with simultaneously? The
private sector cannot meet these momentous challenges?not because of
ignorance or indifference but from incapacity.
The challenges we face and the passage of time will make it clear that
extravagant faith in the dynamics of untrammelled self-interest is becoming
increasingly unproductive, if not positively detrimental to national sur-
vival. There is beginning to appear a recognition of the limitations of the
"adversarial syndrome" that has been so characteristic of the United
States. More and more, people are discovering the necessity of having a
genuine sense of cooperation among industry, labor, and government.
Effective, productive cooperation will be the result of responsible lead-
ership, vision, and dedication on the part of each.
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Notes
I. Ira C. Magaziner and Robert B. Reich, Minding America's Business: The De-
cline and Rise of the American Economy. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich,
1982, p. 19. See chapter 1 (The American Standard of Living, pp. 11-27) and chapter
3 (Common Explanations for the Productivity Decline in the United States, pp. 41-
59).
2. Eli Ginzberg, "The Pluralistic Economy of the U.S." in Scientific American,
December 1976, Vol. 235, No. 6, p. 25.
3. "The Service Sector of the U.S. Economy" in Scientific American, March
1981, Vol. 244, No. 3, pp. 52-53.
4. "Management and the Microelectronics Revolution?Part I?Book Review
Article," Long Range Planning, 1981, Vol. 14, No. 5, pp. 101-105. "Management
and the Microelectronics Revolution?Part II?Book Review Article," Long Range
Planning, 1981, Vol. 14, No. 6, pp. 83-89.
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Structural Changes
in the Economy
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Changes in the World of Work:
Some Implications for the Future
by
David Macarov
There are certain changes in society that can be likened to an incoming
tide?slowly, inexorably, and quietly they make their way over a long
period of time until one day the results become clearly discernible. There
are other changes that are more like a tidal wave?suddenly, within a
relatively short time, immense changes take place. There are still other
changes that are like underground water?unless and until searched for,
they remain mostly invisible. In this paper, three changes in the world of
work and some of their implications for the future will be discussed: the
ongoing shift from industrial to service employment; the impact of tech-
nology; and changing worker attitudes, each of which is a change of a
different kind. Each of these changes influences the others, and is, in
turn, influenced by them. They are discussed separately here purely for
heuristic purposes.
There are, to be sure, important changes taking place in the world of
work in addition to these three, such as the entry of more women into the
workplace; the role of minority groups; the use of migrant and immigrant
labor; the aging of work populations; higher levels of education among
workers; and others. However, the three changes mentioned above seem
more overarching, affecting more societal aspects, and of greater portent
than any others, and hence make up the subject of this article.
The data and trends used herein are mainly taken from American sources,
unless otherwise noted. The time-frame, forward and backward, is middle-
range?about 50 years. Work is used to mean that which people do to
acquire the material necessities and luxuries of life and the services that
they need and want.
The Shift to Service Employment
The shift from manufacturing or industrial employment to employment
in the services can best be likened to an incoming tide. It has been growing
slowly but continually for at least the last 50 years?so slowly that the
implications of this basic shift in one of the most important bases of
David Macarov is associate professor, Paul Baerwald School of Social Work, The
Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Mt. Scopus, Jerusalem, Israel.
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society has not yet resulted in the public attention, the research, the
adoption of new policies, and modifications in attitudes that themagnitude
of the shift requires.
In 1929, 40% of the jobs in the United States were in the service sector
(Gershuny and Rosengren). In 1950, the United States moved into that
which has been termed "the service society," with 51% of the jobs in
the services (Gershuny and Rosengren; Gartner and Reissman). This grew
to 55% in 1967, and by 1980 was estimated at 80% (Thurow). In fact,
of all the new jobs created between 1973 and 1980, 70% were in the
services (Bolan), and almost 50% of total job growth in the 1970s came
from the white collar and service sectors (Leon). In addition, two-thirds
of the self-employed in the United States produce services (Newland).
And there are forecasts that service employment will constitute 95% of
all employment by the end of this century (Stellman), and even that it
will reach 97% as early as 1990 (Best).
Most of the studies and projections listed above simply distinguish
between people who create or change physical objects, and those who do
not. However, an understanding of the extent of the shift and its impli-
cations demands more precise definitions. Unfortunately, it is not easy to
arrive at a satisfactory definition of the services. A Bureau of Labor report
on productivity in the services says: "There are severe conceptual as well
as data problems in measuring productivity in such industries as education
and social services, and in the important field of medical services" (Mark).
Some of these difficulties can be understood when it is recognized that
in Britain, for example, half of the people who are said to be engaged in
services perform functions that are in direct support of production activities
(Gershuny). Or, looked at another way, about a third of the people who
work in goods-producing activities have service jobs (Newland). These
are the people who type the letters, move the goods, keep the books,
solicit sales, prepare advertising, and clean the offices and plants. Without
them, production would be neither possible nor useful; without production,
these workers would have no function. In these cases, the relationship
between services and production is symbiotic.
There is no generally accepted way of defining services. Definitions
tend to be operational, i.e., depending on the purpose of the research or
the thrust of the article. For example, the Bureau of Labor Statistics
distinguished between four categories of white-collar workers; four cat-
egories of blue-collar workers; service workers; and farm workers. Howe
would add "pink-collar" workers, and discussants of robots sometimes
refer to them as "steel-collar" workers. The Occupation Code used by
the InterUniversity Consortium for Political Research (Robinson, et al.)
lists social workers as professional and technical, as are accountants and
funeral directors, whereas army officers are listed as service workers.
Other studies use other bases for grouping jobs (Morris and Murphy; Roe;
Super). Some equate social class with types of jobs (Freeman and Lam-
bert), and even the term "working class" is defined differently in many
investigations (Miller, 1964).
The definitional differences within the services are no less formidable.
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Miller (1978), for example, divides services between those that contribute
to labor power and those that contribute to well-being. However, between
these two (and ignoring the overlap among them) there are services that
contribute to well-being directly and indirectly; personally and anony-
mously; greatly or marginally; by performing a service or by delivering
a service; and even by making it possible for the person to serve himself
or herself.
For example, nurses generally perform services directly for patients,
while the fruits of medical researchers' work is an indirect service. The
social worker may deal with an individual on a personal and caring basis,
whereas the ticket-seller at the theatre neither knows nor cares about the
purchaser as an individual. The policeman who thwarts a crime contributes
greatly to the well-being of the intended victim, while the giving of parking
tickets contributes only marginally to the well-being of most people. Sim-
ilarly, peacetime soldiers are rarely seen as performing as direct a personal
service as are firemen fighting a blaze. The hairdresser, the plumber, the
electrician may be seen as performing a service, while the fastfood counter
person, the bank teller, or the postman may be seen as delivering a service.
Finally, the person who installs the vending machine or the bankomat
makes it possible for the client to serve himself or herself. Even within
the so-called "human services," usually thought of as consisting of ed-
ucation, nursing, and social work, but actually including institutional care,
probation officers, guidance counselors, etc., there are those who distin-
guish between "general" and "personal" services (Kamerman and Kahn),
and?within the personal services?between working with individuals,
families, groups, neighborhoods, and communities.
These definitional and taxonomic distinctions and confusions are not
simply pedantic?they mask real differences in the demands and rewards
of various jobs, and must be taken into account when attempting to un-
derstand patterns, attitudes, and trends in the world of work. Unfortu-
nately, the differences between productive and service jobs, no matter
how fuzzily defined, and the differences between various types of service
jobs are rarely taken into consideration in research on or discussions of
work and workers. Indeed, the great bulk of research done in, and attention
paid to, the world of work continues to take place within the manufacturing
sector and among industrial workers, despite the fact that only a small
minority of jobs are actually goods-producing today.
And yet the service society in which we live may be different from the
industrial society of the past in many ways, with differences between the
various types of services equally great. In light of the research-lag that
exists?and even the lack of an adequate taxonomy of services?some
of these differences can only be identified through tangential evidence,
and others through anecdotal, impressionistic, and logical means. Some
of these changes, and their implications, follow.
Prestige. In the past, working in the services has generally been con-
sidered more prestigeful than engaging in factory work (Caplow), when
the level and conditions of the job are held constant. Under the same
circumstances, women were found to prefer clerical work to factory work,
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even when the former paid less (Caplow). Among all service workers,
performing personal services under the aegis of an organization was pre-
ferred to doing the same work for an individual. These findings, however,
are now 30 years old. Beaumont, among others, feels that service jobs?
or, more precisely, public service jobs?have fallen into comparative
disrepute in the intervening period, due to increased personal financial
security, the difficulty of measuring results in the services, increasing
affluence, and budget-cutting measures that posit public services as "fat"
that can be reduced without damaging anyone. There is also the possibility
that services in many areas, having been taken over by new immigrants,
are no longer seen as prestigious. It is equally possible that such jobs have
been relegated to new immigrants precisely because they lack status. In
any case, the extent to which working in the services?or in certain
services?is seen as more or less prestigious may have growing impli-
cations for the recruitment and retention of workers in such positions.
Salaries and productivity. It is difficult to find aggregate figures that
compare salaries in industry with those in service, due to the definitional
problems mentioned previously. However, if one accepts the Bureau of
Labor Statistics' taxonomy, then it is clear that the services?widely
defined?pay less than other sectors. In 1980 the average gross weekly
wage in the private sector of the United States, excluding agriculture as
an area and supervisory/managerial personnel as a category, was $235.
Workers in mining, construction, manufacturing, transportation, and pub-
lic utilities earned more than the average; persons in wholesale and retail
trade, finance, insurance, real estate, and the services earned less. For
example, mine workers earned $396; wholesale and retail workers, $176;
and service workers, $190. How the addition of supervisory and mana-
gerial services in the various sectors would affect these relationships is
not clear, but to the extent that these figures affect reality on the non-
managerial level, then the shift from manufacturing to service occupations
will result in lower incomes from most workers, unless the wage structure
is adjusted to match the new reality.
A continuing problem in the determination of wages in the service sector
is the measurement of productivity (Miller). Even if one considers units
of service, instead of individuals, there is general agreement that results
are difficult to measure, as are the problems in simply determining costs.
A Steelcase-sponsored study called the measurement of white-collar pro-
ductivity "the most perplexing and troublesome issue" in the area (World
of Work Report, January, 1983).
Because of such difficulties?and adding to them?most measures of
productivity in the services use the methods and instruments of industry,
and thus tend toward the quantitative. In a productivity drive in the New
York City social welfare department, for example, results were cited in
the number of cases cut from the rolls. There was no attempt to measure
the quality of the service, or even the number of people entitled to services
and not receiving them (Katzell). Amitai Etzioni has pointed out the service
implications of such measurements?when there is an emphasis on count-
ing, there is a tendency to do the things most easily counted, regardless
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of their effectiveness. It is for this reason that Peter Drucker holds that
service organizations cannot perform: since there is no "bottom line"
indicating profit or loss, they have no real criterion for success. Services
for the aged, for example, suffer in comparison with rehabilitation ser-
vices, for the former are clearly an expense, while the latter can be seen
as an investment (Black).
The inability to measure the productivity of the services, particularly
in qualitative terms, has obvious implications for the growth of the service
society. Less obvious is the fact that salaries thus become based on sen-
iority, if not longevity, with raises coming automatically rather than on
merit. The meaning of this factor for the quality of services has not yet
been explored in any meaningful way.
Education and training. Among the many instruments of socialization
that prepare people for the world of work, the educational system is among
the most important. The toddler on the see-saw in nursery school is taught
to sing that when Jack gets a new master, he shall get but a penny a day
because he can't work any faster. Caplow points out that the potato race
in kindergarten is conducted along more competitive lines than is the
insurance business. Official British reports criticize the educational system
as not preparing people sufficiently for work (Anthony), while an official
American report says that "the market value of education has driven out
its other values" (Work in America.) Such socialization, however, usually
views work within the industrial context, and the qualities that it seeks to
implant arise from that sector. Emphasis is usually on punctuality, be-
havior, and following the rules; on competition, precision, and seeking
pragmatic or measurable results.
It is possible, however, that successful work in the service sector re-
quires different emphases?on creativity, feelings, creating good rela-
tionships, cooperation, neighborliness, and (that oft-misunderstood word)
empathy. That the socialization undergone in the educational system is
still based on industrial rather than service employment is understandable,
given the lag between the recognition of a need and its incorporation into
formal educational structures, which?according to Marland?may be as
great as 50 years.
Another aspect of the educational area has to do with training and re-
training courses. Many of these are given in order to make possible a job
transition from no-longer-available jobs to new, or other, jobs. Again,
most of this training is for industrial or, at best, indirect-service jobs. This
may explain, in part, the poor track record of many such training programs.
The number of people who do not complete such programs is high, while?
as Somers found?drop-outs have a higher job-placement rate than do
those who complete such courses. Those who do graduate tend to find
jobs in areas other than those for which they were trained (Goldstein). In
Israel, only 44% of lightly injured employees who underwent training
courses got work in the fields for which they were trained (Rehabilitation
of the Work Injured). When they get jobs in the field for which they were
trained, the job or the pay is usually not as good as in the previous job.
Finally, it is not at all clear the extent to which, or in what areas, training
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or experience in industrial settings is directly transferable to service job
needs.
Personal characteristics. It seems entirely possible, if not prima facie
evident, that the personal characteristics necessary to succeed in service
jobs, and particularly in the so-called "hands-on" services, may be dif-
ferent from those necessary in the industrial world. Neff, for one, has
called attention to the possibility of a "work personality"?a relatively
enduring set of characteristics, derived from lifelong socialization, that
marks the attitude of the individual toward work. Others have sought the
developmental factors that lead to differential attitudes toward work (Ma-
carov, 1982). There are also some studies that attempt to correlate per-
sonality characteristics with attitudes toward work, but these, inevitably,
are done only within the industrial sector.
What is not clear is the extent to which certain personality characteristics
are necessary for, or contribute to success in, service jobs. Levinson and
associates, discussing service workers, say "These people needed to be
loved. And they were loved. That's what giving service gets you." But
beyond this, do service workers need to be flexible rather than rigid;
outgoing, not introverted? And would these differences be equally im-
portant on a production line, for example? Professional schools do some-
times seek evidence of certain characteristics among candidates. In Israel,
the desire for medical students who would become family doctors rather
than specialists led, at one time, to a search for tests for altruism. Schools
of social work sometimes interview candidates for their emotional char-
acteristics as much as for their intellectual level. There are calls for altruism
(Lubove), empathy (Keefe), and self-awareness (Brill), among other char-
acteristics. To work successfully in the human services, one may need to
be able to live comfortably with uncertainty, since in few services are the
results immediately observable and in many of them even the action
indicated is a choice among equals. Further, Shamir has pointed out the
necessity for social workers to live with the constant role strain of being
between "service and servility." Others have discussed "burn-out" in
the services in terms of the constant "giving" of oneself that is inherent
in the helping professions (Cherviss). There is also the frustration present
in not being able to do the job for which one has trained due to lack of
resources, lack of time, inadequate arrangements, and bureaucratic reg-
ulations (Fisch). An unpublished report of the Ministry of Work and
Welfare in Israel speaks of the tendency of experienced social workers to
develop hostility toward their clients, due to the abovementioned strains.
Consequently, many professional schools, including nursing and social
work, either seek empathic candidates, or attempt to teach/instill empathy
in students, despite many questions concerning the concept itself (Ma-
carov, 1978). Pearson even questions whether unskilled male workers,
presently unemployed, are suitable recruits for the service sector or the
new technologies.
Satisfactions. The sources of satisfaction in the services may be quite
different from those in industry. In Herzberg's well-known studies, in
which sources of satisfaction and dissatisfaction were found to be dissim-
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ilar, relationships with others was considered an aspect of work conditions,
rather than the work itself, and therefore a dissatisfier. In a study conducted
in an Israeli kibbutz, interpersonal relationships were almost evenly di-
vided between satisfiers and dissatisfiers. Further examination revealed
that this study included child-care workers and teachers, for whom, in
general, relations with pupils resulted in satisfactions, while relations with
students' parents had the opposite effect (Macarov, 1971). Thits, satis-
factions at work within the services might contain different and/or addi-
tional items than satisfaction in industry.
This possibility is fraught with immense importance. Although 50 years
of searching has begun to result in the conclusion that there is no reliable,
replicable, generalizable relationship between satisfactions and work pat-
terns in industry (Strauss; Locke; Lawler and Porter), the possible influence
of workers' feelings on the services they render has hardly been examined.
Dyer and Schwab say that "During the (past) decade . . . researchers
continued to find no consistent causal or correlational relationship between
satisfaction and performance." However, although an assembly-line worker
who is highly dissatisfied with some aspect of his or her job might not
be inclined or able to vent these feelings on the product?or might be
able to do so in a visible, and therefore repairable, manner?the quality
of the service worker's "product," be it nursing, social work, or teaching,
might suffer in a manner that is not immediately discernible, but which
might be counter-indicated, or even damaging. On the other hand, sat-
isfactions from contact with others might be so helpful that they lead to
absence of alienation, stress, absenteeism, and the other ills to which job
malaise in industry is related.
Again, there is little research in this area, but there is logic in believing
that sources of worker satisfaction are different in the services, and that
there is a possibility that this has a differential impact on productivity,
however measured.
Societal implications. In addition to these differences in individuals
that might demarcate the services from industry, there are also societal
implications. Self-help groups of various kinds, from recreational to sub-
stance-abusers, long presaged the new Quality Circles and similar phe-
nomena in industry, in which meeting together in search of satisfaction
and results are of the essence. Many of these groups provide members
with services of various kinds, and are characteristic of what Riessman
terms the "self-help ethos." He identifies 15 million people in half-a-
million such groups. In addition, there is the entire volunteer network in
society, which operates almost entirely outside the industrial complex.
Gidron indicates that one out of every four Americans over the age of 14
is doing some form of volunteer work, and that the dollar value of this
contribution to society is somewhere between $34 billion and $68 billion
annually. Indeed, such groups may even reduce the need for service
workers. Gershuny postulates that the do-it-yourself movement, as well
as those appliances that take the place of workers or service-providers?
washing machines, dryers, dishwashers, rug-shampooers, adhesive-backed
wallpaper, and similar devices?will lead to the "self-service" society,
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in which the need for outside services will be minimized. Glazer sees the
same general result from the decentralization of services now taking place.
Further, the societal implications of the shift to services should include
the fact that the service sector has proved more recession-proof than has
the industrial sector, in terms of jobs maintained and created (Urquhart),
a fact that also has great implications for the future as society becomes
increasingly service-oriented.
Shifting from industry to services. Finally, a word needs to be said
about the much-discussed manpower shortage in the services, which the
fallout from industry is postulated as filling in. On the one hand, the so-
called need is rarely viewed in terms of needing more persons in the
indirect services?more ticket sellers, night watchmen, or insurance sales-
men, for example?but rather in the human services. Here, too, the need
is not seen for more highly trained technicians in the medical field, or
even for more teachers. In most cases, there are enough people available,
or ready to become available. The shortage is in jobs; or, more precisely,
in jobs that will attract workers through good conditions, which Rubin
lists as pay, permanence, and perquisites, but which also include status,
hours, and the actual work performed. It is doubtful, for example, if there
is an actual shortage of nurses in the United States, despite understaffed
institutions. One-third of the nurses in the United States are not working
in their profession, while another third work only part-time (Rowland).
The problems are shift-work, night work, low pay, and little opportunity
for advancement. In Israel, where it is officially estimated that another
8,000 nurses are needed, 41% of those trained work only part-time (Hand-
less). Shortages in hospitals are described as lack of job-slots, not of
personnel. Training more people, who will also not work or work only
part-time, is not an answer.
The actual shortage of service personnel, although rarely defined so
openly, is for the lowest levels of the occupations?those who will push
the wheelchairs, empty the bedpans, change the linens, do the laundry,
serve the food, clean the floors?in short, that which Gans has called the
dirty, dead-end jobs of society. In addition to undertaking these tasks,
such personnel are called upon to hold the client's hand; listen to com-
plaints, histories, and stories (perhaps many times over); be supportive,
cheerful, warm, and helpful; and to maintain high morale among them-
selves and clients. In return, they will receive the lowest wages, the least
job security, the worst conditions, and the lowest status. Mildred Rein
points out that only a quarter to a third of the AFDC caseload has em-
ployment potential?and then only if the jobs pay more than the minimum
wage, and have stability and good fringe benefits. In short, the jobs that
society expects the unemployed to take are those that can be filled only
through absolute absence of alternatives. To get those jobs filled requires
a punitive attitude on the part of society regarding unemployment com-
pensation, social welfare, or other means of sustenance. As McKinlay
points out, one should not overestimate the extent to which the service
sector can absorb workers who are otherwise unable to find employment.
The shift from skilled, semi-skilled, or even unskilled industrial jobs will
not ensure enlargement of this area of the service sector.
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The Impact of Technology
Whereas the shift to services has been going on for a relatively long
time without being given the attention it deserves, the impact of technology
on many phases of human life is constantly in the news and often in the
headlines. The changes that are taking place are constant, visible, and
meaningful?in short, a tidal wave. Technology has a major impact on
productivity, production, jobs, and social systems, among other things.
Productivity. Despite fluctuations from year to year, and from country
to country, the long-term and middle-term effect of technology on pro-
ductivity?person/hours output?has been constantly upwards for at least
the last 50 years or so. From 1956 to 1964, productivity rose by 41%;
from 1966 to 1975, another 27%. According to the International Labor
Office, productivity increases, on the average, about 2.7% per year. Since
each year's increase is measured by the previous year, there is a com-
pounding effect; in 10 years, individual worker productivity grows by
almost 35%.
Although many factors contribute to changes in productivity, the most
important factor is that of technological progress, which is often considered
a function of investment in research and development. Wilson points out
that technology accounted for 54.5% of growth in national income per
employed person from 1948 through 1969. As a factor in the postwar
growth of the Amsrican economy, technology was four times greater than
business capital investment; 2.8 times greater than investment in educa-
tion, and 3.8 times higher than the improvements from more efficient use
of resources. "Without technology the growth rate of the postwar economy
would have been cut in half" (Wilson).
The role of technology in increasing productivity becomes more evident
when compared to human work. Rosow estimates that only 10-25% of
the changes in productivity are caused by human labor. In other words,
reliance on people working harder, longer, or better as a method of in-
creasing productivity may be badly misplaced. If the goal is productivity,
rather than keeping people busy or in income, then efforts to change human
work patterns may be very inefficient. The major changes in productivity
come about through new methods, new machines, and new materials,
including energy. The assembly line and interchangeable parts are ex-
amples of new methods; robots and microprocessors are today's new
machines; and new materials range from synthetics to tailor-made metals
to the results of genetic splicing. Indeed, the constant rise in productivity,
over long periods, is hardly attributable to human effort at all?very few
people today work as long or as hard as their grandparents did.
In the eighteenth century, a bill was offered in the British House of
Parliament to abolish the patent office, since everything possible had
already been invented. There is no more probability that technology will
cease to advance today than there was then. Indeed, in many respects
modern technology is autonomous, each change or invention calling for,
making possible, and involving still further inventions. Mensch points out
that oversupply of some types of technology results in even stronger
demands for technology. The growth of technology and its concomitant,
productivity, must have great influence not only on the production of more
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goods and services at cheaper prices, and on the development of new
goods and services, but on other fundamental aspects of society as well.
Work and non-work patterns. The constant growth in productivity
has made possible a proliferation of various kinds of material goods.
Indeed, there is hardly an item in the Western world that is in short supply
due to production difficulties. Most goods are produced in expectation of
consumer demand, and could be made available in much greater quantities
without straining production capacities. Increased productivity has also
made possible the invention and introduction of new items, as well as an
expansion in services and the invention of (and requirement for) new
services. In fact, the above-mentioned shift from production to services
is almost completely a function of growing technology.
Three important changes that have been brought about by technology
include the impact on work times, on the number of jobs available, and
on the content of the jobs.
Work times. One overall figure typifies the situation: In 1900, the
average workweek in the United States was 53 hours; in 1980, 35.5 hours.
In addition, vacations are longer, there are more workless holidays, entry
into the work force is later, and retirement is earlier. These figures, which
are from the International Labour Organization, include part-time workers
and take into account overtime work. Insofar as workers holding second
jobs is concerned, this has been constant at about 5% of the work force
for many years (Michelotti: Rees; Taylor and Sekscenski). There are many
predictions that work times will continue to decrease, and there is no
reason to believe that the trend will cease or reverse itself. On the contrary,
Bell predicts a 30-hour week and 13 weeks of vacation a year by the year
2000. Emery foresees a week of four 8-hour days, with summer and winter
vacations, while Albus predicts a 10-hour week. Others use different
figures and different time-frames, but no one predicts stabilization of hours
at present levels, much less a return to longer work hours.
This is not to say, however, that within these hours people work hard,
or to their full capacity. Increasing productivity, which can be translated
into less demand for human labor, runs head-on into society's need to
provide members with income via jobs, as well as societal values that
equate working with worth. Hence, many jobs continue to be maintained
despite the fact that changes in machines or methods could eliminate many,
if not almost all, the human workers. And in some cases, the jobs are
maintained together with the introduction of machinery that makes the job
all but useless. Thus, as in the case of the New York Times change in
printing methods in 1974, 630 people were given lifetime contracts for
work that only required 350 people (Zimbalist). Seen on a large scale,
the introduction of labor-saving machinery almost always results in some
unnecessary jobs being maintained as the cost of labor peace.
Not only as a result of such Luddism, but as a consequence of increasing
productivity, most people with jobs that are not at the upper levels of the
organizational hierarchy are not called upon to use all their energy, or
their full potential. Walbank found that people use about 44% of their
ability in their jobs, and Berg and Associates found that 54% of the people
could work harder than they do. In this author's research, when kibbutz
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members were asked why they did not work to their full ability, the
response almost invariably was that the job did not require it (Macarov,
1971).
As a consequence of holding jobs that do not require working at full
capacity, the phenomenon known scientifically as "unproductive work
time," and more familiarly as "loafing" (Schrank), seems to be growing
(Kendrick). In addition to anecdotal material of workers gossiping, hang-
ing around, making personal phone calls, and leaving the worksite for
personal errands, Cherrington reports tracking workers on a construction
job for over two years, finding that only 49% of the time used was related
to the job. A study of managers' time use found that only 55% of the
time was used for managing (World of Work Report, June, 1982). That
this is a general phenomenon is supported by a report from Moscow that
shop hours in the Soviet Union are being changed to keep workers from
"slipping away from their jobs to shop and run errands," and that raiding
parties visit bars, restaurants, barber shops, and stores looking for workers
who have "ducked out of the office" (Jerusalem Post, January 16, 1983).
As technology continues to make inroads on the areas that once required
human labor, work times will continue to decrease, but since that decrease
will lag behind the actual needed changes, the amount of unproductive
time on the job will probably continue to grow.
Impact on the number of jobs. In addition to impacting on the content
of jobs, technology will also affect the number of jobs available. The
extent of this change, and even its direction, are still hotly debated, in
terms of whether technology creates new industries and thus new jobs;
whether it replaces old industries with new ones, and thus has a negligible
effect; or whether it wipes out more jobs than it creates. Hull and associates
hold that technology decreases jobs in manufacturing by about 3% a year,
but whether this is made up by increases in service jobs is not clear. One
must look at the aggregate figures for employment, while holding constant
many other factors such as the price of energy, to arrive at a reasonably
educated guess.
What does seem to be clear, however, is that, except tor times ot war,
no industrialized country has had full employment, whether this is defined
simply as more jobs than workers available; or jobs of some kind for
everyone who wants one; or decent jobs, paying a living wage, offering
a good or a service that is socially desirable, through a process that does
not damage the ecology. Official unemployment rates throughout the West
have been generally rising since World War II, with the "acceptable"
rate of unemployment having risen from 4% after the War to 6-7%
today?rates that have not been achieved. And the official rate must be
seen as one-half to one-third of the actual rate, due to definitional artifacts
(Field) and hidden unemployment in terms of part-time jobs, discouraged
workers, persons on training stipends, etc. (Macarov, 1980). Together
with the classic definitions of frictional, structural, and cyclic unemploy-
ment, there seems to exist in most countries that which can best be de-
scribed as "permanent" unemployment?a situation that training programs,
job creation, public service employment, subsidies, and so forth seem
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unable to eliminate (Taggart; Rein). Indeed, intensified technological com-
petition is the reason for many bankruptcies (Mensch), which adds to
unemployment. 4
It would be a mistake to assume that the impact of technology is confined
to the industrial sector. Despite the previously-mentioned difficulties in
defining and measuring productivity in the services, such efforts continue
(Carnes; Carey and Otto; Carnes and Band) and indicate a growth not less
than that in maufacturing?about 2.5% annually. It has been estimated,
for example, that automation in offices could easily result in 15% more
productivity within five years (World of Work Report, November 1980).
Even at present, over 30% of middle-management positions in banks could
be eliminated without any appreciable effect on service (World of Work
Report, June 1982). In short, the service sector is no less vulnerable to
the inroads of automation than is the manufacturing sector.
Constantly reduced work times, maintenance of unneeded jobs, growing
unproductive work time, and increasing unemployment may arise from
reasons other than the advance of technology, but the latter has certainly
been an important component in the mixture, and one whose impact must
be taken into account by all social planners.
Job content. As in other areas of the technology discussion, there is
no agreement as to whether technology turns interesting jobs into dull,
routine ones ("gauge guarding"); or whether it tends to take over the
latter. Insofar as robots are concerned, it seems reasonably clear that they
are first introduced to do the difficult, dangerous, undesirable jobs?
welding hard-to-get-at spots, spraying paint, etc. As they have become
more sophisticated, overriding humanlike shapes, only two arms, and such
restrictions, they have moved further and further into tasks that require
discrimination, decisions, and the use of humanlike senses. With these
advances, a number of researchers have concluded that robots tend to
wipe out the dirty, difficult, disagreeable jobs (Glenn and Fielding; Zim-
balist; Kraft), thus making life better for workers. On the other hand,
there are those who see technology as removing the interesting aspects of
work, thereby increasing worker alienation (Richardson). Gable and Meers
studied mechanization in a bank setting, and found that one-quarter of the
workers seemed to have limited capabilities and/or ambition, and were
neutral regarding the change; one-quarter were unsatisfied by the content
of their work, but compensated by other elements; and fully one-half of
the workers wanted more enriching work.
Regardless of their effect on work or workers, robots seem destined to
play an increasingly large role in the future of work. Cassier-Lotto points
out that a robot costing $45,000, amortized over eight years, will cost $5
an hour as compared to $15 an hour now paid a human worker in industry.
Schrank half-facetiously suggests that it would be well for workers to buy
robots to do their own jobs and then lease them to the employers, while
living on the differential. Albus seriously discusses changes that will be
needed to avoid societal dysfunctions, and dislocations in the event of
broadened use of robots, and suggest, inter alia, "if all humans could
own the equivalent of one or two robots, they would be financially in-
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dependent regardless of whether they were employed or not." In any case,
much of Japan's successful competition with other industrial countries has
been attributed to the policy of using robots in place of humans wherever
possible (New York Times, March 21, 1982).
It is possible that technology actually polarizes the job situation, re-
moving whatever interest there was in low-level jobs, in terms of inter-
personal contacts, control, and interest; while adding interest to upper-
level jobs through ability to get more done, to do new things, to solve
problems, etc. However, even at this level, there is evidence of an erosion
of interest as technology takes over. Computer programmers, for example,
who were once thought to have been awarded interesting careers, are now
being phased out by computers that program themselves.
Again, changes in the content of jobs are not confined to the industrial
sector. The nurse who monitors a computer screen indicating the condition
of each patient on the ward may be more efficient than one who makes
regular rounds, but may miss the contact, the excitement, and even the
exercise. An Israeli study of nurses' satisfactions, for example, indicated
that satisfactions from contact with patients far outweighed satisfactions
from contact with other nurses, charge nurses, or doctors (Handless).
Heller's study of automated office equipment indicated a number of phys-
ical and emotional problems as a result. Bairn says that growing numbers
of service or clerical workers experience the same feelings of alienation
as do factory workers.
System changes. Technological changes should not be viewed only
within the context of specific machines taking over certain human tasks.
The more pervasive impact of technology is on total systems. Gabor, for
example, writing in 1964, foresaw wide advances for technology, but
confessed that he could not conceive of a machine that would deliver milk
to his porch every morning. In the relatively short period since, milkmen
have become extinct, because the method of distributing and buying milk,
involving supermarkets, cars, deep freezers, throw-away containers, etc.,
has changed completely. Similarly, if flexitime and flexiplace continue
to grow, making it possible to do one's work at home at one's own
convenience, this will not only have enormous implications for physical
planning, architecture, traffic, and pollution control, but will also impact
heavily on the services. The changes possible in child-care patterns and
services for the elderly alone are staggering, since many of the current
facilities for such people arise due to inability of parents or adult children
to be home with the person needing care, due to work commitments.
Although, as the Solomons point out, there are people who prefer not to
be home with their dependents, or not to be home at all, there are un-
doubtedly many parents and adult children who would prefer home care
for their dependents rather than institutionalization. The same magnitude
of change, based on new systems, can be anticipated in leisure-time pat-
terns, among others.
Rate and possibilities of change. Although technological change prob-
ably started before the invention of the wheel, the essential difference
today is in the rate of change, which seems to be accelerating greatly.
Insofar as information is concerned, an Organization for Economic and
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Cultural Development report says that information processing capacity is
increasing tenfold in capability per unit cost every five years, and this
makes information technology qualitatively different from past technical
changes (Science and Technology Policy for the I980s).
Insofar as knowledge, as distinct from information, is concerned, by
the time the child born today graduates from college, the amount of
knowledge in the world will be four times as great. By the time that same
child is 50 years old, it will be 32 times as great, and 97% of everything
known in the world will have been learned since the child was born
(Hillard). In general, there have been more profound changes in the past
four decades than there were in the previous six centuries (Shane and
Sojka). Mensch holds that 80% of the industrial products and processes
now sold in the markets will be phased out by 1990 and replaced by some
alternatives; further, about 60% of the present industrial produce will be
replaced during this decade by something still to be developed or to be
specified. He predicts that the next new cluster of basic innovations will
arrive about 1989. On a more piquant note, of the 136 inventions foreseen
by George Orwell over 30 years ago, over a hundred are now practical?
and 1984 has not yet arrived (Rada).
Of course, such progress is uneven. Airplane travel and automobiles
have hardly improved over the last 50 years. Except for some increase in
speed, the former is less convenient and more expensive now than in the
past; and the latter have only changed cosmetically. As compared to
developments in computers, for example, planes and cars have practically
stood still. If automobiles had developed at the same rate and distance as
computers, you could buy a Rolls Royce for $2.75, get 3 million miles
to the gallon, and have enough power to drive the Queen Elizabeth II
(Evans).
Finally, a word must be said about the "wolf" theory; that is, that
immense changes have been predicted for the progress of technology and
have not?as in the case of a workless world?come to pass. First, many
of the changes have actually outdistanced previous predictions. Secondly,
it is salutary to remember the end of the story of the boy who cried,
"Wolf!" The wolf actually came (and the society was unprepared). Rada
points out that to hold that because something has not happened it will
never happen is analogous to saying that a natural resource cannot be
depleted because it has not yet become so. Indeed, one can imagine one
dinosaur reassuring another that there is nothing to worry about?there
have always been predictions of their extinction, and they continue to
exist.
Changing Attitudes
If the shift to services is like a tide, and the growth in productivity like
a tidal wave, then changing attitudes toward work are like underground
water?rarely seen, unless searched for with the proper instruments. In
examining this area, one must distinguish between attitudes actually held,
attitudes expressed, and attitudes assumed by others.
It is possible that attitudes toward work have always been negative,
else there would have been no need for the admonitions, demands, fables,
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proverbs, and parables used to coerce people into working since Biblical
times, at least. Diocletian had to require youngsters to continue in their
fathers' occupations, since they were found to be looking for easier work
(Kranzberg and Gies). Certainly in ancient agricultural societies there was
no profit to be gained from producing a surplus, which would only rot
(Macarov and Fradkin). Indeed, the desire to make work easier was the
beginning of all technology, and the desire to work less the root of many
social reforms.
Luther's postulation that one served God by working hard placed a
religious value on what had been an instrumental activity. Adam Smith's
"invisible hand," which required each person to compete with all others
in order to arrive at high quality and low prices for all, made non-working,
or not working hard, an injury to one's fellows, and thus non-neighborly.
Mercantilist philosophy, which put national wealth ahead of individual
welfare, made working a patriotic duty. Finally, Freud's prescription for
happiness?to love and to work?added an element of mental normality
to the reasons for working. In every case, the belief that people should
work hard arose from those other than the workers themselves. The so-
cialization that ensued involved all the power of the family, the educational
system, the church, the welfare system (Macarov, 1980), and?of course?
the economic system. Hence, people have been taught (and often really
believe) that not to work is to be immoral, a bad neighbor, unpatriotic,
and somehow mentally disturbed.
Consequently, it is no surprise that much survey research finds people
reporting themselves as satisfied with their work-90% in Quinn and
Staines' study, for example. But both Gutek and Haavio-Mannila warn
that, in surveys, most people report themselves as satisfied with every
aspect of their lives, even when subsequent probing or behavior indicate
that this is probably not true. Deeper probing has led a number of re-
searchers to the conclusion that attitudes toward work are best described
as "resigned acceptance" or "fatalistic contentment" (Lasson), arrived
at by a surrender process (Robinson), in which expectations from work
are lowered. Garde11 finds that "the psychological rewards of work, in
the form of fellowship and self-realization . . . can be considered satis-
factory for no more than a minority of people." Bargal and Shamir,
attempting to increase workers' satisfactions through the provision of
occupational welfare workers, conclude that in many production and ser-
vice organizations technological and economic considerations simply do
not enable the levels of autonomy, variety, meaningfulness and signifi-
cance of jobs to be enhanced.
Workers' behavior supports the thesis of growing dissatisfaction at
work. Although the reduced work time discussed above does not spring
simply from workers's desires, it has certainly not come about over their
objections. With the exception of some workaholics (Macholowitz), no
one works more than they are paid for. In addition, about five million
American workers are absent every working day (Bain; Leon). Finally,
given the choice of three additional years of pay and full benefits if they
retire at age 65, over 70% of American workers opt for retirement at 62,
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on 70% benefits (Social Security Bulletin). This behavior does not add
up to happiness at or with work.
Efforts to humanize work (Macarov, 1981), as typified in the quality
of Working Life movement, succeed at most in removing dissatisfactions
(Bar-Gal), which?as Herzberg has pointed out? is not the same thing
as adding satisfactions. Schrank has pointed out that most job redesign
programs usually mean that the worker takes on additional tasks or re-
sponsibilities without additional compensation?a dubious method of in-
creasing satisfactions. Even Maslow's highest order motivation?self-
actualization?has been called into question insofar as work is concerned
(Macarov, 1976) and Fein holds that "It is only because workers choose
not to find fulfillment in their work that they are able to function as healthy
human beings . . . By rejecting involvement in work which cannot be
fulfilling, workers save their sanity."
Insofar as changing attitudes are concerned, there is both survey and
behavioral evidence that workers are beginning to view their work as
mainly instrumental, and no longer as moral, religious, patriotic, nor
enriching. Yankelovich, who has been tracking worker attitudes for years,
speaks of a "new breed" of worker, who demands intrinsic satisfactions.
The Lordstown strike is often considered typical of young workers' re-
jection of purely banal work. The student riots in Paris in 1964 included
a poster reading: "Work makes you ugly." A T-shirt seen on an Atlanta
street reads: "I've been working hard all my life, but somehow it seems
longer." Numerous bumper stickers proclaim, "I'd rather be fishing (or
golfing, skiing, or whatever)." Leficowitz has written about people who
simply decided to stop working. The Institute for Social Research found
that, between 1973 and 1977, reported work satisfactions dropped by large
percentages?ranging from 11.3% to 43%?in all occupational groups
studied. The National Opinion Research Center reports that during the
past 20 years employee satisfaction in general has been decreasing. In
addition, there has been a significant drop in the satisfaction of managers,
once the most satisfied of all groups. Among managers, clerical employ-
ees, and hourly workers, job satisfaction had declined to its lowest point
ever. In a number of current studies of work patterns, younger workers
do not work as hard as older workers do (Macarov, 1982). Finally, there
is the growing amount of loafing on the job mentioned previously, which
indicates that the work ethic is more often a statement of belief than a
code of behavior.
Cotter attributes changes in work attitudes to 12 sources, including rising
expectations as encouraged by the media; distrust of those in power; the
weakening of traditional institutions; and changing values, among others.
Most of the research on worker satisfactions and their changes has been
done in industrial settings, however. Very little is yet known concerning
satisfactions in the services generally, or in specific services. Similarly,
there has not yet been very much research on changes in satisfaction
brought about by the introduction of technology, except concerning initial
resistance to new methods, and worker/union reactions to methods of
mechanization (Emspak). It is possible, as noted above, that contact with
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customers, clients, or patients might have a considerable impact on sat-
isfactions in either direction. Similarly, technology might make some jobs
more interesting, while wiping out the interesting features of others, both
in industry and in services.
Much more research is needed in this whole area, including its wider
implications. Varga, for example, found that amounts of free time are
positively correlated with marital cohesion, while Solomon found that
working at home, a la flexiplace, results in more intra-family tensions.
Such areas of present attitudes and attitude changes require much more
investigation.
Changes in the World of Work
The three changes in the world of work discussed here?the shift to
services, the impact of technology, and changing attitudes?interact with
each other, and with other changes, in a dynamic and unceasing manner.
Each change reverberates throughout the others, resulting in further changes.
Unfortunately, the implications of such changes, not only for the world
of work, but for society as a whole, have not yet been given the study
and emphasis that they deserve.
As these trends continue?and there is little reason to believe that they
will not?they will call for sweeping changes in both the value system
and the structure-of present society. Insofar as jobs continue to be necessary
or important, they will have to be accommodated more and more to the
demands of nonwork activities in contrast to the past when nonwork
activities were subordinated to the demands of work (Jamal, et al.). Insofar
as human labor becomes unimportant and increasingly redundant, Western
society will enter a transition period containing pain and grief for indi-
viduals, families, communities, and regions, if they are not managed with
foresight and judgement (Coates). As Hart says, "We must find a way
to shift from the economy of the past to the economy of the future with
as little pain and as much excitement as possible." This is the most
compelling problem before social planners, economists, and everyone else
concerned with the future of human society.
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Somers, G.G., "Retraining the Unemployed: A Preliminary Survey," in S. Lebergott
(ed.), Men Without Work: The Economics of Unemployment. Englewood Cliffs:
Prentice-Hall, 1964.
Stellman, J., Human and Public Health Aspects of Telecommunications. Paper deliv-
ered at Fourth General Assembly, World Future Society, Washington, 1982.
Strauss, G., "Job Satisfaction, Motivation, and Job Redesign," in Organizational
Behavior: Research and Issues. Madison: Industrial Relations Research Association,
1974.
Super, D., The Psychology of Careers. New York: Harper, 1957.
Taggart, R., Job Creation: What Works? Salt Lake City: Olympus, 1977.
Taylor, D.E., and E.S. Sekscenski, "Workers on Long Schedules, Single and Multiple
Jobholders," Monthly Labor Review, I05(May 1982):47-53.
Thurow, L.C., The Zero-Sum Society: Distribution and the Possibilities for Economic
Change. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1981.
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Urquhart, M., "The Services Industry: Is It Recession-Proof?" Monthly Labor Review,
104(October, I981):12? 18 .
Varga, K., "Marital Cohesion as Reflected in Time-Budgets," in A. Szalai (ed.),
The Use of Time. The Hague: Mouton, 1972.
Walbank, M., "Effort in Motivated Work Behavior," in K.D. Duncan, M.M. Gru-
, neberg and D. Wallis (eds.), Changes in Working Life. Chichester: Wiley, 1980.
Wilson, J.0., After Affluence: Economics to Meet Human Needs. New York: Harper
and Row, 1980.
Work in America. Cambridge: Mass.: MIT Press, 1973.
World of Work Report. Scarsdale: Work in America Institute, various issues.
Yankelovich, D. New Rules: Searching for Fulfillment in a World Turned Upside
Down. New York: Random House, 1981.
Yearbook of Labor Statistics: Sixteenth Edition: Twenty-Sixth Edition: Thirty-Sixth
Edition. Geneva: International Labour Organization, 1956, 1966, 1976, 1978.
Zimbalist, A., "Technology and the Labor Process in the Printing Industry," in A.
Zimbalist (ed.), Case Studies on the Labor Process. New York: Monthly Review
Press, 1979.
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The Changing Nature of Work
by
Joseph F. Coates
"What are you going to be when you grow up?" must stand high on
the list of dumb questions asked of a child. The child cannot answer, for
the three bases of a stable national pattern of work?technology, the work
force, and social conditions?are all in flux.
Information has become the dominant commodity in American society,
making telecommunications and computer technologies the primary phys-
ical instruments of fundamental social change. Since the changing tech-
nological base drives the economy, it is the most unequivocally radicalizing
element in the future of work. Today roughly 55% of the work force is
in the business of generating, producing, storing, handling, transmitting,
or regurgitating knowledge and information. Those involved include ev-
eryone from researchers to clerks, from school teachers to white-collar
workers, from lawyers, architects, or medical specialists to key-punch
operators and word-processing technicians.
Preparation for work in the information society must be different from
what has gone before, for the new information technologies are not mere
analogs of the carpenter's plane and the mechanic's wrench. The new
vocations will not be limited to the physical manipulation of natural and
synthetic substances, but will extend to the manipulation of man's own
creations?of data, theory, and knowledge. The work world will change
accordingly.
The physical requirements of the workplace are already changing as
we become captivated and even captured by electronic devices. We are
finding, for instance, that people who work all day with CRTs (cathode
ray tubes) may experience unpleasant side effects. Adapting the workplace
to the worker needs more attention than it did in the industrial area. Work
is moving to smaller locations, suburban locations, even to the home.
Robotics and automation make it practical for a worker to move from the
office to the factory floor and back.
Robotics and automation are creating new occupations and new jobs in
Joseph F. Coates is president of J.F. Coates, Inc., a futures research and policy
analysis group located in Washington, D.C. This article was originally published in
VocED, the journal of the American Vocational Association, and is reprinted here
with their permission.
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maintenance and manufacturing, but are eliminating many at the same
time. Supply and demand imbalances are occurring in industries affected
by telecommunications, increasing the need for training, retraining, and
on-the-job training of the work force. These imbalances will also be felt
in other sectors of the economy as the applications of new technologies
spread.
For the rise of telecommunications is not the only major technological
upheaval shaping our future. New biotechnology and accommodations to
the irreversible increase in the cost of petroleum will affect the when,
where, and who of industrial processes, mining, and manufacturing. There
will be new occupations in the fields of energy, materials, and genetics,
altering the credentials and qualifications required of the work force.
The biotechnological revolution springs from fundamental new under-
standing of the genetic code that determines the inherited characteristics
of microorganisms, plants, animals, and people. We are rapidly devel-
oping the technology for manipulating genes. While the most obvious and
urgent short-term effects of the genetic revolution will be in human health
and disease, applied genetics will eventually transform forestry and ag-
riculture and make substantial inroads into the manufacturing of chemicals
and foods.
There are already factories producing tens of thousands of tons of so-
called "single-cell protein," which compares well in nutritive value with
soybean and fish meal. The industrialization of microorganisms promises
to produce many widely used industrial chemicals under milder conditions,
with less waste and fewer dangerous by-products, and opens up the pos-
U S. Labor Force in the Information Sector
PERCENT OF U.S. LABOR FORCE
60
55
50
45
40
35
30
25
20
15
10
0
?
? ?
00 ?
? ?
?
?
?
?
?
?
1860 1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980
U.S. LABOR FORCE
Agriculture Services: Information Occupations
Industry Other Service Occupations
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sibility of new bases for the chemical industry. Raw material could very
well shift from petroleum to wood or other biomass. Such changes could
alter the physical and chemical characteristics and hence the industrial
handling of plastics, dyes, resins, and the myriad organic chemicals that
are so central to the commerce of our civilization.
Great change is also likely to occur in energy technology. The movement
toward conservation is already having a wide and visible impact on the
work force, with innovation in insulation and the application of passive
solar energy. We can expect to see continuing development of modifi-
cations in the design and operation of structures, instruments, devices,
household goods, and all other things in our society that consume energy.
Another broad flow of innovation will accompany the exploiting of new
and unconventional energy sources. Getting usable energy from the wind
and the sun, the oceans and the tides is, without question, workable.
However, the extent to which the technology becomes practical and dots
our countryside and coastlines with mechanisms to capture and use solar
energy remains to be seen. Less speculative are vast new open-pit mines,
coal gasification, and synthetic crude oil facilities. These changes in the
fuel of our social metabolism are going to create new demands on and
for skilled and professional workers, stimulate growth in many regions of
the country, and create a wave of innovation only rivaled in history during
the last quarter of the nineteenth century.
Demography?the study of births, deaths, marriages, divorces, and
other vital statistics?gives us additional valuable clues to the future of
work. Such information reflects forces operating in society that will be
felt throughout the economy, such as the size of the work force in a given
decade. The baby-boom cohort is now contributing to the relative scarcity
of available entry-level jobs. By the year 2000, however, as the baby-
bust cohort grows up, there will be a shortage of entry-level workers.
Meanwhile, the baby-boom cohort will be caught in an upward crush in
middle management. There will be a surfeit of workers with the skills to
move ahead who are thwarted by limited opportunities.
This dark prospect assumes no change in the industrial and organiza-
tional structure of work. But other social factors are of equal or greater
salience. It appears that the inexorable tide of population changes will be
accompanied by other tides of change that affect labor supply.
Women's entry into the labor force on a parity with men?not as mere
sources of secondary income, as ancillary workers or casual respondents
to the shifts in the labor market?will increasingly change the makeup of
the work force and materially alter our social ambience and expectations
about work. Women are, of course, joined by blacks, browns, and the
handicapped in a major workplace revolution?equality of access. That
movement will be reinforced by robotization and the use of computers
and telecommunications, all of which are indifferent to race, religion,
national origin, or any other personal attributes. To an unprecedented
degree, egalitarianism will enter the work site.
Other changes in attitude will occur in response to the steady supply
of new workers provided by immigration, which now accounts for 25%
of the net population growth. Because the new immigrants are by and
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large from non-European cultures, we can expect to see new expectations
about work and new mores where people work.
An unprecedented degree of independence among workers will be stim-
ulated by the rise of the dual-income family. This independence will show
up in pressure for improved quality of work life, worksite amenities,
shifting work schedules, different management styles, and wider worker
participation in decisions. The prevalence of the dual-income family will
promote job-sharing and off-and-on work. It may tend to stabilize pop-
ulation in cities and reduce migration. With greater discretionary income
and less time, the dual-income family will demand more services or tech-
nological solutions to service needs. Children in such families will become
more valuable commodities simply by being fewer in number, and will
be members of smaller, more prosperous households. (On the other hand,
the increasing numbers of single-parent families will be economically and
socially stressed. Business and industry will have to respond to these
stresses.)
The continuing flow of survey research on work and workers suggests
two things of central importance. First, the desire to work is not dying,
fading, or in any sense being rejected. Second, workers' aspirations are
shifting. The growth of participation, the need for autonomy, the interest
of labor and management in higher quality, the search for satisfaction in
work?these are symptoms of a deep-seated change in public attitudes
throughout American society.
In 1979, a Gallup poll found some 61% of male workers reporting that
they would continue to work even if they did not have to, although 21%
would only work part-time. Only 10% of the male workers surveyed said
they would stop working if they could. Of equal interest, 81% said they
would prefer a difficult job to an unchallenging job. The Gallup polls and
many other sources show that new workers want interesting jobs, they
want opportunity, they want fair treatment, and they want their work to
fit a total life pattern. According to one survey, 68% of workers want
interesting jobs, 45% want higher salaries, 42% want security, and 20%
want work with a sense of social mission.
Michael Maccoby, in a ground-breaking work on the value system in
corporate America, has highlighted the likelihood that workers of the future
will demand of business and industry jobs that not only lead to career
advancement, but provide work that is personally satisfying. Lester Thu-
row, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, devas-
tatingly analyzes and deplores today's commonly accepted value system,
which sees work as a series of challenges oriented around a zero-sum
mentality?I win, you lose; you win, I lose. Other thinkers, among them
Clare Graves, have pointed out that new values in American society are
creating legions of workers who reject the materialistic, independent,
conquest model of the world and tend to focus on love, affection, com-
munity, and cooperation. A smaller but perhaps more important group in
the long run is concerned with understanding the world, with existence,
and with acceptance.
These indications of changing values interact with our changing tech-
nological base. Recent research on why people buy microcomputers for
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use at home shows that they do so for reasons that have surprisingly little
relationship to keeping bank records and kitchen recipes. People buy
microcomputers to achieve a sense of autonomy and control. They want
this same sense at work.
The American worker is striving to increase opportunities for personal
autonomy and work-related decision-making. One sees this in the attempt
of many companies to introduce the quality circle and the work team. It
is also visible in the growth of the "appropriate technology" movement,
which favors simple technologies that employ human labor rather than
capital equipment. Technological advance is taking place in concert with
these new developments and with the lively current interest in social
independence and local governance. One consequence is that traditional
social and work-related distinctions are rapidly blurring. Among these are
the distinctions between work and leisure, between white-collar and blue-
collar workers, between vocational and non-vocational education, and
between professional and sub-professional work.
We are witnessing a rapid technological transformation that contributes
to the growing complexity of society at large. With literally tens of thou-
sands of discrete occupations possible, youth coming on the work scene
can have only an extremely limited perception of what work is like. The
new terms sound like magic; they have few connotations. What does it
mean to work as a fiber optics technician, a robot attendant, an electro-
myography technician, or a gene splicer? Surely few children today can
specify what they are going to be when they grow up.
The dominant message of the changing nature of work is that an in-
creasingly greater percentage of Americans will, over a lifetime, hold a
succession of different jobs, even different careers, many flowing one into
the other, but others involving substantial disruption and change. Old
technologies will become obsolete and new ones will have to be mastered.
Old skills will be dropped and new ones learned. Old attitudes will yield
to new ones.
Resources
Bell, Daniel. The Coming of Post-Industrial Society: A Venture in Social Forecasting.
New York: Basic Books, 1973.
Graves, Clare W. "Human Nature Prepares for a Momentous Leap." THE FUTURIST
(April 1974), pp. 72-85.
Maccoby, Michael. The Gamesman: The New Corporate Leaders. New York: Simon
and Schuster, 1976.
Thurow, Lester C. The Zero-Sum Society: Distribution and the Possibilities for Eco-
nomic Change. New York: Penguin, 1981.
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Robots and the Future of Work
by
Edmund Byrne
The Automation Revolution, prophesied from the outset of the Industrial
Revolution' and prematurely announced following development of the
computer after World War 11,2 is now on the verge of realization, thanks
to the discovery and inexpensive mass production of compact and versatile
microprocessors that make possible so-called "smart" robots and other
components of automated assembly systems. First exploited by the Jap-
anese, robotization is likely to be (perhaps along with biotechnology) the
single most significant characteristic of technological history in the 1980s.
And when the decade is over, the configuration of human work will have
been radically transformed, along with the technology that undergirds and
now increasingly is replacing it.
In a word, many humans are going to lose their jobs. Whether they
will find others that need doing or that they are qualified to do is a very
hard question to answer. But it is one that society will be required to
answer; and the answer that society comes up with will determine in a
very fundamental way the future of the human condition.3 As of now,
however, there is no adequate plan for a social equivalent of Isaac Asi-
mov's third law of robotics, namely, that a robot should never harm a
human. Robots will harm humans. They are doing so already. Not by
crudely striking a blow to the head, but just by being able to do better
what humans have been doing poorly by default. In the process, of course,
robots will be sparing humans a lot of pain, but the pain associated with
sweat on the brow is as nothing compared to the pain of being unemployed
and unemployable. And that, quite clearly, is just what lies ahead for
people in all parts of the world, especially in developed nations.
Questions to be considered, then, are the following. What is a robot?
What can robots do? What impact will robots have on human work? And
what, if anything, should humans do about "keeping robots in their place"?
What Is a Robot
There are three definitions of the word robot, only two of which are
Edmund Byrne is professor and chairman of the Department of Philosophy, Indiana
University, Indianapolis, Indiana.
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relevant here. The most common (in popular usage as well as in science
fiction) is that of a manufactured apparatus that has a humanoid appearance
and exercises humanlike functions well enough to be considered human
in a given context. There are, in fact, robots of this type in use, e.g., to
direct pedestrian and/or vehicular traffic.4 But the presence or absence of
humanlike features is of no importance in the discussion that follows.
A second definition of the word robot is a programmable manipulator
of versatile automation components. This is the usage generally accepted
by industry people. A third and considerably narrower definition, favored
by research and development people, is an artificial intelligence machine
with humanlike functions. Programmable automation manipulators have
been around for decades. "AI" machines are only now beginning to make
their appearance but are expected to mushroom in the decade ahead. It is
important but not always easy to determine which definition is being
invoked by a writer or speaker on the subject, especially when one is
trying to count the number of robots in a plant or industry, in a particular
country (e.g., Japan), or in the world. Unless noted otherwise, I shall
take "robot" in the broader sense as including all programmable auto-
mation manipulators.
Robots are distinguishable with regard to degrees of freedom, method
of articulation, control of motion, or method of actuation. Three degrees
of freedom are required to position an object in space, three more to orient
the object in any direction (a minimum for a "general-purpose manipu-
lator"). Robot joints may swivel ("polar"), slide ("cartesian"), or com-
bine these two methods ("cylindrical"). Only a terminal point is specified
in point-to-point control; the precise path and the velocity of the entire
movement are determined by continuous-path control. Pneumatic actuation
of a robot is cheap and simple but adequate only for point-to-point op-
erations. Electric actuation is simple to install and easy to maintain; a
hydraulic system yields better dynamic performance and power-to-weight
ratio.
Jasia Reichardt identifies nine levels of automation (she calls them
"stages, or degrees"), with robots entering the scene on the fifth level.
If the task to be performed is bending a pipe and some tool is employed
in the process, the pre-robotic tool might be (1) a hand tool, (2) a power
tool, (3) power machinery under human control, (4) powered machinery
executing a programmed sequence of operations without variation. A
robotic tool bending a pipe might be (5) pre-programmed only for that
task as to sequence of and length of time between operations; (6) provided
with several programs stored and selected automatically (a variable se-
quence robot), (7) controlled by means of programs stored in a large
memory device and subject to change automatically (continuous-path ro-
bots with servomechanisms), (8) a computer-aided manufacturing system
that activates the motors of numerically controlled robots by means of
programs stored on punched paper tape, or (9) "blue collar" or "smart"
or "intelligent" robots with tactile and visual capabilities. Only the latter,
which utilize only recently feasible "artificial intelligence," are consid-
ered true robots by experts in this field.
According to one estimate, there are some 15,000 robots installed around
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the world, about half of which are in Japan and a fourth in the United
States.5 In second place is the Soviet Union, where there are now some
6-7,000 units, but most of these are technologically retarded, having only
3-4 axes of movement.6
Far more important for the future of work in the world are projections
for the growth of robot usage in the decades ahead. In the next five years
the Russians plan to add 40,000 additional units, and during the five years
thereafter they will be installing sensory robots. One hundred and fifty
companies in Japan produced robots (five times as many as in the United
States) at a level of $400 million in 1980, and expect to be producing at
a level of $2.2 billion in 1985, $4.5 billion in 1990.7 In the United States,
robot production was at a level of $50 million/year in 1981, but may
expand to $250 billion over the next 20 years.8
The key factor in the upcoming expansion of robot production and use
is not the quantity of dollars or units but the quality, that is, the capabilities,
of the units to be produced. As Reichardt observes, "One has to prepare
and present data in a way in which a robot can use them, which means
that the cost of equipping a factory for robot operation may be ten times
the cost of the robots themselves. The need exists, therefore, to design
robots capable of working in moderate disorder, with some ability to
recognize colors, shadows, markings, and textures.'9
This challenge is now beginning to be met by artificial intelligence,
which utilizes increasingly sophisticated microelectronic technology to
solve problems heuristically. To this end, robots must have "sensory"
capability, in varying degrees depending on the task, both in regard to
"touch" and in regard to "vision," and both are now becoming tech-
nologically and economically feasible. A Mitsubishi robot, for example,
"knows" when it has reached the correct object on a workbench by
comparing images of it in two television cameras, one mounted on the
robot's hand and the other overlooking the workbench. A Hitachi robot
is so touch-sensitive that it can insert a piston into a cylinder with a
clearance of 20 microns in three seconds. Selective choice and evaluation
of parts will be coming soon. Still in the future is a "thinking" robot that
when shown what to do will establish the most efficient way of doing
it.
What Impact Will Robots Have on the Work Force?
What impact is all this likely to have on the human work force? The
answer to this question is all too simple: humans will be rendered super-
fluous and displaced. This much is fairly certain. All that remains uncertain
is the scope of the displacement. But there are already indications that it
will soon be extensive and will eventually be massive.
In the period 1990-2000, according to one projection, robots and au-
tomated systems will be producing half of all manufactured goods and,
as a result, up to one-quarter of the factory work force may be dislodged.''
That this will come about seems an inevitable outcome of the belief
common among industrialists that it will be cost effective in the long run
and for that very reason is a necessary condition for staying competitive
in the industries affected. Estimates vary as to just how much less ex-
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pensive it may be to use robots rather than humans. As one writer puts
it, a Japanese robot in automotive production can do at $5.50/hr. what a
UAW worker does for $18.10/hr. (wages and fringes).12
Other factors, including not only OPEC but also the almost total un-
willingness of U.S. auto manufacturers to deviate from 60-year-old pro-
duction methods, have helped bring about the current disarray, if not
imminent disappearance, of the U.S. auto industry. But robotics, if ever
really taken seriously, might make a difference. At least, such is the
impression of those who still believe that an old dinosaur can be taught
new tricks. And this belief is quite enough to put the automotive work
force on notice.
Fiat's Robogate system boosted production 15% in 1978, we are re-
minded, but replaced few workers. But with sensory robots the Italian
manufacturer could, it is estimated, cut manpower 90% before 1990.13
This lesson has not been lost on General Motors, which will be spending
$200 million by 1983 to install 800 robots on 14 assembly lines in 7 of
its plants in Italy. And by 1990, GM will have invested $1 billion in
13,000 robots to paint, load/unload machines, and assemble components,
with the help of Robogate, thereby cutting labor costs by an estimated
70% and the labor force by 50% just in the next nine years.14 However
impressive these numbers may be in a vacuum, they may well be too little
too late: from its present total of 450 robots, GM hopes to expand to 5,000
by 1985 and to 13,000 by 1990?but the Japanese already have 7,000 in
place! And they have no more intention of yielding the lead in robotics
than in electronics in general. MITI, the quasi-governmental research arm
of Japanese industry, plans to spend $140 million over a seven-year period
to develop smart robots to assemble an entire product, such as an auto-
mobile, beginning as early as 1983. With this new system, one could
effect changeover simply by changing the system's software. By 1985,
Hitachi hopes to be using robots with visual and tactile sensors for 60%
of its assembly operations. And three major Japanese companies are work-
ing on a robot that will be able to position a component within four-
hundredths of an inch. One of these companies, Fujitsu Fanuc Ltd., has
opened a $38 million plant to produce other robots and computerized tools
automatically, using robots, numerically controlled machine tools, and
only one shift of 100 human workers to assemble robot-made parts (until,
that is, robots start doing even that).15
By comparison to the Japanese commitment to robotics, American auto
makers are in a technological feudal age. But even belatedly introduced
technology is having an effect on the work force. Take the example of
the PUMA (programmable universal machine for assembly), a $20,000
robot arm developed by GM and Unimation. By 1990, GM expects to be
using 5,000 of these in assembly work and 4,000 to load/unload machines,
thereby bumping 50% of assembly-line laborers.16
Another industry on the verge of transformation by robotics is that of
consumer appliances, which in the United States is dominated by General
Electric. GE had two robots in 1978, added 26 more in 1979, and may
be using 1,000 by the end of this decade. The company spent over $15
million in 1980 for 47 new robots expected to save $2.6 million/year in
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labor and materials. So far, displaced assembly workers have been trans-
ferred, e.g., to robot maintenance, with work-force reduction being limited
to attrition. 17 For example, GE's dishwasher plant in Louisville, Kentucky,
is 60% automated, but workers are free to stop the line at key points to
prevent defects from being built in. But the technology for full-scale
automation, including a robotic "eye" and a CAD/CAM (computer-aided
design and manufacture) system, has been under development.18 And once
this is in place, reduction in work force will follow. In fact, GE plans to
robotize as many as half of its 37,000 assembly-line jobs to achieve 6%
per year improvement in productivity.I9 Nor does the company really have
much choice in the matter because of new competition from Japanese
manufacturers such as Sanyo, which has opened an automated refrigerator
plant on the West Coast and others in Tennessee, Arkansas, and other
states.
GE's in-house robotization agenda is, however, only the tip of the
iceberg. GE is now bent on supplying robots and other automation equip-
ment to other manufacturers. To this end, the company has acquired
licenses to use robotics technology developed by Italy's Digital Electronic
Automation, Japan's Hitachi, and most recently, Volkswagenwerk. Ac-
cording to reports, the arrangement with VW will authorize GE to build
five of that company's robot models and sell them worldwide. These
additions will give GE a total of 12 models, including one capable of
handling components weighing more than 200 pounds, which will be of
interest to the automotive, aerospace, and heavy equipment industries.20
Nor is GE going to be lonesome in the robot marketplace. In addition
to smaller companies such as Cincinnati Milacron and Unimation, which
turn out $30-40 million worth of robots a year, and Automatrix, the race
for what could be a $25 billion market by 1990 has been joined by such
giants as Digital Equipment, IBM, and Texas Instruments. One result of
this expanded interest is that the cost of a $50,000 robot is expected to
drop to $10,000 by the end of the decade. And the result of all these
factors may be, according to one projection, that "smart robots could
displace 65% to 75% or more of today's factory work force."
Be that as it may, there are customers for robots almost literally waiting
in line for delivery. A new Robotics Division at Westinghouse, for ex-
ample, has a mandate to robotize "any and all manufacturing areas."
And toward this end the company, like others around the country, has
been doing a feasibility study (on NSF money) of automated batch-as-
sembly of 450 different versions of eight different fractional-horsepower
motors at a rate of 1 million units/year. Cybotech, a joint venture between
Renault and Ransberg Corporation, an Indianapolis-based company, has
been providing robots on a turnkey basis, if desired, to such diverse
companies as General Motors, Jeep Corporation, Lockheed, and Cater-
pillar Tractor, with Renault spending $6.2 million/year on visual R&D
and Cybotech $2.5 million/year on sensile/tactile technology.2I More gen-
erally, it is estimated that U.S. industry will more than triple its 1981
automation investments to $5 billion in 1985, this amount to be divided
about equally between computer-aided design (CAD) and such devices as
minicomputers, numerical controls, programmable controls, and robots.22
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Thanks to this new technology, especially microcomputers and so-called
"friendly" (ordinary language) software, production programs can be
changed right on the factory floor for customized batch production in runs
of less than 50 units. And this, in turn, means perhaps a 30% decrease
in use of workers, commonly by introducing an unmanned third shift?
what in German is called the ghost shift ("die Geisterschicht"). The
Japanese, however, are prepared to go this stunt one better: flexible man-
ufacturing complex (FMC), a $60 million prototype of which is now in
place, with the expectation that 20% of Japan's total factory output will
be FMC'd by 1985. What FMC involves is five fully automatic manu-
facturing operations all interconnected and controlled by a hierarchy of
computers, with humans on hand only as safety overseers of lasers used
for treating and machining.
As these examples have suggested, the impact of the "new wave" of
automation on blue-collar unions may turn out to be absolutely devastating.
The United Auto Workers expect to lose 200,000 of their 1 million mem-
bers between 1978 and 1990. The IUE, the International Association of
Machinists, and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers will
also be hard hit. But so also will white-collar personnel?possibly as
many as 38 million of the present 50 million white-collar jobs may be
affected, just as automation has already reduced employment in the U.S.
Postal Service from 744,000 in 1970 to 677,000 in 1981: a 10% reduction.
At racetracks, window betting is being taken over by an automated "sell-
pay" system that shortens line, saves 10-50% on costs of operation, and
eliminates jobs. Similarly, when U.S. air traffic controllers went on strike
in 1981, their complaint about job stress was, if anything, counterprod-
uctive. For the U.S. government is engaged in a 10-year $8.5 billion
project to reduce the need for technicians and controllers by one-third with
an automated ATC system that would require only one rather than three
humans per display screen, thus allegedly saving $6.7 billion in the 1980s
and over $17 billion in the 1990s.23
Examples such as these could be multiplied, but the point is clear: a
very significant number of jobs are on the block in the decade ahead, not
only in the United States but in other countries as well. If it is any
consolation, the traumas of transition are at least as likely in Western
Europe.24 And in Japan, the world's leader in automation, it may well
prove to be catastrophic. In that country, workers in manufacturing dropped
from 14.4 million in 1973 to 13.7 million in 1980. Six million workers
in cottage industries still represent 81% of Japan's 55.4 million workers,
but these are being replaced by more reliable robots. The country has need
of 745,000 computer software engineers, but it now has less than 100,000.
Even jobs available as robot tenders are difficult to fill because the Japanese
are not accustomed to working on any but the normal daytime shift. The
conclusion of a government study that the impact of microelectronics on
employment is not serious is much criticized; but the government is doing
little to create new jobs.' Nor is this a problem only in developed coun-
tries. As is well known, electronics manufacturers have in years past gone
to places such as South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore for
low-level assembly operations. But computer-controlled assembly in the
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United States and Japan is now competitive with labor-intensive production
elsewhere, and the result may be the end of an era for these developing
Asian countries.
What is suggested by all these details is that, as has occurred before in
history, the human cost of progress may be excruciatingly high. That there
will in time be protests and demonstrations, if not worse, seems inevitable.
But in this instance, unlike that of popular protest against nuclear power
plants, the economics (if the "experts" can be believed) would oppose
rather than support the sentiments of the protesters. However, as is com-
monly the case, only internal costs are being figured, not the external
costs, direct and indirect, that spill over onto society in the wake of a
technological upheaval of the magnitude that lies ahead. So, as our own
federal government prepares to abandon CETA and other relevant and
timely social service programs, and state governments do little to fill the
vacuum, we in the United States are left with little reason to gloat over
the plight of the Japanese worker.
What Can We Do About Displaced Workers?
What possible remedies are there for the severe dislocations that this
inevitable revolution is bringing over the horizon? The obvious answer,
namely, that anyone laid off should get another job, seems especially
cynical at a time of high unemployment. In addition, the factor of high
interest rates intensifies the trauma of relocation, if that is required. Nor
can an unskilled laborer count on finding employment even if willing to
move. Even those who are still at work on assembly lines may find that
computers are being used to subject them to time-study; and should they
decide to strike in protest, they may become the victims of what one UAW
official calls "technological scabbing." A short-term solution, of course,
is to find ways to pace the introduction of automation, regulate the use
of time-study, and participate in decision-making with regard to new
technological systems on the basis of appropriate and adequate data.
Moreover, if unions want to protect their members, they need to have
more control over job skills required by the new computer-based tech-
nology, e.g., diagnosis of problems by an electrician; programming and
editing of numerical control tapes, robots, and all other "programmable
automation," including work on machines that are leased or under war-
ranty; and, by way of corollary, adequate training for performance of such
jobs.
Unfortunately, outside of a few countries, notably in Scandanavia,
presently available retraining programs are neither adequate nor effective
to deal with the anticipated impact of robotics.
Above and beyond the comparatively short-term needs for programs to
assist displaced workers, there is an endemic long-term need to rethink
and restructure our educational system to provide the next generation of
workers with the kinds of skills they must have to find employment in
the decades ahead. Not that every student needs to become adept at mi-
croelectronics or biogenetics or whatever. But the socioeconomic con-
sequences of the coming shift in technology require us to anticipate and
prepare for a radically different society that we dare not approach behind
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a veil of ignorance.
As we contemplate this profound challenge, we will look in vain for
ethical theories that can guide our search for responsible decisions?unless
one is prepared to admit that "might makes right" is an ethical theory.
A duty-based search for the absolutely right course of action to pursue
disintegrates in the presence of complexities beyond the reach of assertions
about duty. In a word, the standard objections on the basis of competing
claims and correlative duties simply apply a fortiori.
Which workers should be given preference when layoffs are required?
Those with seniority or those with protected group status, e.g., women
or minorities? To whom are persons on various levels of management
more responsible?investors, customers, suppliers, employers, or the
community or communities in which their plants are located? Or perhaps
the governmental entities that have favored the company with direct or
indirect subsidies? What import should or can be given to individuals who
would be seriously affected by a given decision but who are represented
by no organizational structure that has direct input into or on the level of
the relevant decision-making process? Even assuming the existence of an
effective world government, which part of the world's population should
be favored, and on the basis of what considerations? Developed or de-
veloping nations? One developed nation more than another? The country
with the largest percentage of unemployed, or the largest number of un-
employed, or the fewest robots? Or, just to make the madness complete,
might robots themselves have rights, or even rights prior to those of
humans?some humans, or all humans?
What is lacking is nothing less than the Marxist ideal of an international
proletariat. Language barriers aside, this sort of shared community of
interest is not likely to come about until the plight of the economically
dispensable electronics worker in Asia and that of the robot-replaced
automotive worker in Detroit are seen to be interrelated and equally im-
portant. Avowed Communists have failed to show that such solidarity is
attainable without exploitation. But non-Communists, or capitalists, have
done little better. That does not mean, however, that it is an ideal beyond
human capability.
Notes
I. See Langdon B. Winner, Autonomous Technology, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT
Press, 1977; John Cohen, Human Robots in Myth and Science, New York: Allen &
Unwin, 1967.
2. See George Terborgh, Automation Hysteria, New York: Norton, 1966; Henry
Elsner, Jr., Technocrats: Prophets of Automation, New York: Syracuse Univ. Press,
1967.
3. See Alvin Toffler, The Third Wave, New York: Morrow, 1980; G. Harry Stine,
The Third Industrial Revolution, New York: Putnam, 1975.
4. Jasia Reichardt, Robots: Fact, Fiction, and Prediction, New York: Penguin,
1978, p. 120 (see also for discussion of the definition of a robot).
5. Desmond Smith, "The Robots (Beep, Click) Are Coming," Pan Am Clipper,
April 1981; Ed Janicki, "Is There a Robot in Your Future?" The Indianapolis Star
Magazine, Nov. 22, 1981.
6. "Russian Robots Run to Catch Up," Business Week, August 17, 1981.
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7. "The Push for Dominance in Robotics Gains Momentum," Business Week,
December 14, 1981.
8. Smith, op cit. See also Metalworkers and New Technology: Results of IMF
Questionnaire on Industrial Robots, Geneva, Switzerland: IMF Document 81-13,
1981, pp. 37-38.
9. Reichardt, op cit. p. 138.
10. "Racing to Breed the Next Generation," Business Week, June 9, 1980.
11. "High Technology: Wave of the future or a market flash in the pan?" Business
Week, November 10, 1980 (chart on "The Coming Impact of Microelectronics").
12. Responding to a survey conducted by Carnegie-Mellon University graduate
students, users and prospective users of robots "overwhelmingly ranked efforts to
reduce labor cost as their main motivation for installing robots. Current trade journal
articles also give this as the primary motivation." The Impacts of Robotics on the
Workforce and Workplace, Department of Engineering and Public Policy and De-
partment of Humanities and Social Science, Carnegie-Mellon University, Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania, 1981.
13. "Racing to Breed the Next Generation," op. cit., 76.
14. "GM's Ambitious Plan to Employ Robots," Business Week, March 16, 1981.
15. "Fanuc Edges Closer to a Robot-Run Plant," Business Week, November 24,
1980. See also David Fleischer, "Robot-Built Robots," Science Digest, Dec. 1981.
16. GM's Ambitious Plan . . . ," op. cit.; Harley Shaiken, "The Brave New
World of Work in Auto," In These Times, September 19-25, 1979.
17. "How Robots are Cutting Costs for GE," Business Week, June 9, 1980.
18. "General Electric: The Financial Wizards Switch Back to Technology," Busi-
ness Week, March 16, 1981.
19. "Rotots Join the Labor Force," Business Week, June 9, 1980.
20. "GE Is About to Take a Big Step in Robotics," Business Week, March 8,
1982.
21. Personal communication, Geary Soska, Director of Application Engineering,
Cybotech, Indianapolis, Indiana.
22. "The Speedup in Automation," Business Week, August 3, 1981.
23. "Revamping Air Traffic Control," Business Week, January 18, 1982.
24. Habib Boulares and Francoise Hubscher, "La Technologie et Nous," Jeune
Afrigue, August 13 and 20, 1980.
25. "A Changing Work Force Poses Challenges," Business Week Special Issue:
Japan's Strategy for the 80's, December 14, 1981.
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Nine Paradoxes for the 1990s
by
Robert M. Fulmer
Futurists come in varying degrees of optimism and pessimism. One
group, known as the "Neo-Malthusians," anticipates a world that is grow-
ing dirtier, drier, more crowded, and more quarrelsome. They see the
stark realities of famine, poverty, totalitarianism, and terrorism becoming
a daily reality for billions of people.
On the other hand, the "Super Optimists" see astonishing advances in
medicine, agriculture, information technology, and space exploration that
may be able to delay the aging process, forestall death, overcome cancer,
provide food from the oceans, and transport large loads of passengers in
space vehicles to all corners of the earth and beyond.
As the world grows in size and complexity, it becomes more and more
difficult for a single individual to assimilate all of the changes that are
confronting us. A natural reaction is to focus on one single mind-set and
use that as a reference point for the changes that occur. The focus of this
article is to suggest that managers assess both sides of contrasting trends
that seem to be emerging. With particular emphasis on changes that will
be affecting the world of work and workers, I will identify and discuss
nine paradoxes of the 1990s.
Paradox I. The Decline of Traditional Incentives, with
Increased Popularity of Financially Rewarding
Careers
Many managers complain, "People just aren't willing to work as hard
as they used to. The work ethic no longer exists." In reality, the incentives
that have traditionally encouraged people to work hard have become less
effective. These inducements include money, fear, and other techniques
that don't depend on motivation for productivity. According to Daniel
Yankelovich, these traditional incentives still work for 56% of the U.S.
work force. They mean nothing, however, to the other (primarily younger)
44% of contemporary workers. Basically, the work force can be divided
into the following groups:
? 19%?older dedicated workers who want to make a contribution.
Robert M. Fulmer is director of management programs, Graduate School of Business
Administration, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia.
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? 22%?habitual workers who are older, in lower-level jobs, and who
want job security.
? 15%?young, ambitious go-getters who are motivated by money and
the opportunity to get ahead.
? 17%?young, middle-managers, highly educated professionals who
are more interested in challenge and responsibility than traditional
incentives.
? 27%?alienated, turned off, poorly educated, low-income workers
who are not motivated at all. Unfortunately, this group seems to be
growing.
While traditional incentives seem to be losing some of their clout,
financially-oriented professions are increasing in popularity. College en-
rollments in liberal arts and humanities are declining dramatically. Con-
currently, enrollments in business, engineering, and preprofessional programs
are experiencing record growth. Since 1964, the number of MBA graduates
produced annually has risen by 900%. Since 1971, the number of indi-
viduals taking the Test for Advanced Study in Management has risen from
83,915 to 212,500.
Clearly, the prospect of a financially rewarding career is a stimulus to
many individuals who are currently enrolled in colleges. In some instances,
these "practical-minded" students would have preferred to major in En-
glish, history, or sociology, but their assessment of the marketplace in-
dicates that this could be a pleasant but unproductive choice. This may
also suggest that the value systems of the emerging college graduate may
allow for more flexibility than was true in the past. Idealism is tempered
with a sense of practical reality. Challenge and responsibility will continue
to be key watchwords, but money is important too. These "new workers"
will be dissatisfied if financial rewards are not forthcoming; however,
they will probably not stay in a dead-end job or accept arbitrary transfers
unless there is more than money to lure them to new assignments.
Paradox II. Increased Competition for Promotions,
But More Flexibility in Work Positions
By 1990, more than half of the labor force will be between the ages of
25 and 44. By 2000, the baby-boom generation will be between 35 and
55. This means increased competition for available promotions. In the
1960s, there were about 10 workers who competed for each middle-
management position. By the end of this decade, the ratio will have
doubled.
The reasons for this promotion crunch are quite simple. First and
foremost is the maturing of the baby-boom group (born between 1945 and
1965) as candidates for management positions. This will be compounded
by deferred retirement of present managers who will stay on their jobs
longer because of a persistent inflation problem. These two factors will
be further aggravated by a generally slow economic growth rate throughout
this decade (probably two to three percent per year), which will limit the
creation of new management positions. Roy Amara, president of the In-
stitute for the Future, predicts that new management structures will be
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required to accommodate this unprecedented number of potential man-
agers. "A flattening of organizational pyramids, creation of smaller, au-
tonomous work groups, development of "working manager" positions,
job design and restructuring . . . these are some of the ways to ease the
expected crunch."
With this kind of competition for advancement, we might conclude that
organizations will be less accommodating of special employee interests
or demands than has been true in the past. Just the opposite will actually
occur. At the lower end of the organizational pyramid, there will be a
shrinking supply of entry-level workers. This group will grow during the
1980s at less than one-half the rate of the 1970s. A potential shortfall of
entry-level applicants will probably begin in the late 1980s.
The impact of a rapid decline in fertility rates since the mid 1960s will
be the major contributing factor. Because so many women are already
working, labor-force participation among female workers will not continue
to grow as dramatically. Finally, the rising expectations of entry-level
workers will contribute to the need for greater flexibility. In order to meet
the demand for entry-level positions, organizations will allow more work-
ers to schedule their own hours under flextime. Many workers will prob-
ably hold two jobs or go to college on a part-time basis. Already the need
for lifetime learning is a generally accepted principle. Moreover, the
number of moonlighters increased almost 20% during the 1970s, and the
number of women holding multiple jobs doubled.
In The Third Wave, Alvin Toffler describes the emerging trend of the
"cottage office." Increasing numbers of people will be contracting with
organizations to complete work in their own homes. It could be artwork
for an advertising campaign, instructional materials for a training program,
or software packages. The worker gains the advantage of flexibility and
reduced commuting expenses while the company eliminates the overhead
commitment, fringe benefits, and additional "extras" associated with full-
time employees.
This work "decentralization" will continue to pick up momentum
throughout the decade. The growth of portable computers, which can be
hooked up to telephone lines and television sets to retrieve data and file
reports, will hasten this move. Demand for "office space" in future houses
and apartments will experience significant growth. Corporations will not
eliminate their headquarters locations, but the need for them to "ware-
house" large groups of workers in a single building will decline. In
Megatrends, John Naisbitt argues that the "High Touch" corollary of
High Tech will keep the electronic cottage from gaining widespread ac-
ceptance. Yet, what could be higher touch than parents being able to work
in close proximity to their young children. And, of course, the stimulation
of being around co-workers can be achieved by a couple of days per week
in the office rather than a daily commute.
Over all, companies will become even more accommodating to elim-
inate the regimentation and boredom associated with entry-level positions.
At the same time, increased competition for managerial promotions will
be quite intense. Although these jobs will be more demanding than those
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at the lower levels of an organization, they will be in great demand because
of their scarcity and the economic rewards associated with promotions.
Paradox Ill. Increased Financial Pressures, Yet More
Superaffluent Families
In the 1970s energy prices rose 165%, shelter 160%, medical care
111%, and food 115% in the United States. During the same period,
median family income grew only 107%. The Labor Department reported
that real hourly compensation for 1980 was at the same level as in the
third quarter of 1972. Not much real progress has been made since. In
summary, during the remainder of this century, real-income growth will
probably exceed the 1970s, but it will not grow as fast as it did during
the 1950s and 1960s. An increase of about 50% in real family income
between 1980 and 2000 seems likely. In 1980, the price of the average
house on today's market was $77,600. If inflation averages 10% in this
decade, by 1995 the average house will cost $314,000.
Coping with inflation became a national pastime during the late 1970s.
It will doubtless enjoy a comeback in popularity. The four major strategies
that have been used to meet the challenge are more workers per family,
lower savings, increasing debt, and home equity.
Moonlighting, exhaustion, persistent worry, and fighting over money
share the spotlight that shines through the picture window of many middle-
American homes. Workers dream of upper mobility, affluence, and getting
ahead but, in reality, find themselves skipping their annual physical checkup,
cashing in insurance policies, and quibbling with children about allow-
ances. Epidemic advances in alcoholism, drug addiction, divorce, and
early heart attack are not unrelated to financial pressures created by this
desperate race to hold on to the good life.
Yet, the picture is not totally bleak. Currently, every 30 minutes, another
dozen people will enter the 50% tax bracket. In 1980, over 2.3 million
Americans discovered the good news and the bad news associated with
qualifying for this painful honor. By 1995, approximately 40% of all
families will be earning more than $32,500 in 1983 dollars; about 8% will
be "superaffluent"?earning more than $65,000 per year.
As suggested above, the two-income household, along with an emphasis
on fewer children, has been one of the most effective ways of preserving
living standards. Demand is still high for luxury items such as expensive
cars, European vacations, and costly jewelry.
In addition to the extremes of large groups of individuals struggling to
make ends meet and the rapid growth of the superaffluents, there may
also be an acceleration of the "rags-to-riches rollercoaster." The same
individual may go through several stages of relative poverty and affluence.
For example, young people today typically come from families that are
wealthier than was true a generation ago. When they leave home and
establish their own independence, the high cost of housing and energy
often forces them into a period of relative poverty. When they join forces
to create a two-income family, both living standards rise dramatically. If
that relationship fails to survive (which is the case with about 40%), both
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partners are reduced to another round of struggle. This struggle can also
come about merely because of the high cost of educating and caring for
children. Eventually, however, most people will rear their children, work
out living arrangements, and enjoy advanced middle-age with a rediscov-
ered joy of discretionary income.
Paradox IV: The Increased Importance of Family, Yet
More Marriage Failures
The trends that will mark the change in the family emphasis are already
apparent. During the past decade, the number of marriages increased 7.3%.
The number of divorces increased 65.3%, and the number of unmarried
couples living together increased 157.4%. The number of children living
with one parent grew by 40.1%.
As has already been indicated, families are assuming greater importance
as far as financial security is concerned. Sociologist Charles Westoff
predicts an expansion of communal living as unrelated people of all age
levels band together to reduce housing costs. By the year 2000, almost
75% of married people will have both parties working. By the end of this
decade, women will contribute 40% of family incomes. This compares
with about 30% today.
Families also play a greater role in the pressure to create more flexible
working hours and working relationships, as well as day-care facilities.
The impact is just beginning to surface as more individuals decline pro-
motion opportunities because it would involve relocating a working spouse.
A rapidly growing number of companies are providing job-finding assis-
tance for spouses of transferring managers.
While families are making themselves heard as an active constituency
in job-related decisions, they are also being subjected to an increasing
number of pressures. Most individuals who are currently in management
positions have not totally resolved their ambivalence about the changing
stereotypes of sex roles. Despite the increased representation of women
in the work force, most two-income families report that women are ex-
pected to assume more responsibility for meal preparation and house-
keeping. Clearly, if the two-career family is to succeed, men must take
a more active role in child-rearing as well as household tasks.
No one yet knows the long-range impact of the "latch-key children"
approach to parenting. The Work in America Institute, Inc., a research
organization based in Scarsdale, New York, estimates that more than 30
million American children have working mothers. They further estimate
that at least 5 million of these children may be receiving inadequate care
during their parents' working hours. The Urban Institute predicts that by
1990 there will be a 64% jump in the number of working mothers with
children under 6. Almost half of the children in the country will spend
part of their childhood in a single-family situation.
The divorce rate, which currently runs around 40% of the number of
marriages performed in a given year, will probably remain high but not
increase dramatically. Marriage is still an important institution: about 90%
of U.S. citizens will eventually marry. In 1982, one-third of all weddings
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were a second marriage for at least one of the participants. People are,
however, waiting longer before remarrying.
Paradox V. More Ability and Need to Centralize
Decisions, But More Pressure to Decentralize
Computers, television, and satellites are already cutting down on the
need for travel, allowing people access to information and communication
from their homes or offices. By 1990, many experts believe that home
computers will be in 80% of U.S. dwellings and will offer assistance with
everything from office and school work to balancing the family checkbook.
A more direct involvement in the democratic process will shortly be
possible via electronic referendums. Within five years, Japan will initiate
voting and census taking through video centers within the home. Unfor-
tunately, access to tremendous amounts of data does not necessarily create
more information or knowledge. Electronics may be able to bring in a
vast variety of entertainment and data into homes, but it will be increas-
ingly difficult for people to comprehend what it all means. The increasing
sophistication of electronics in the home may also discourage them from
moving out of their "hibernated existence" at home.
Just as technology is making it possible for more individuals to have
access to information and to participate in decision-making, the same kind
of high-quality information is making it possible for centralized decisions
to be made with more efficiency. Despite the sad record of government
planning, the future offers the potential of much more efficient, intelligent
approaches to predicting and controlling the future. Even the optimistic
head of the Hudson Institute, Herman Kahn, admits that progress during
the last fifth of this century is dependent upon a combination of "good
luck and good management." It might appear that there is a greater need
for efficiency in decision-making than participation. At present, the eco-
nomic decisions that need to be made are extremely difficult because of
political implications. Would it not be more reasonable for someone to
make the decisions based on more input and better analysis than the average
citizen can muster?
Regardless of the efficiency of centralized decision-making, SRI In-
ternational (formerly Stanford Research Institute) has concluded that the
move for more participation in decision-making will affect all aspects of
life during this decade. Many of the decisions made in this manner may
not be optimal, but they will benefit from the motivation associated with
taking part in the process.
Paradox VI: More People Working, Yet Higher
Unemployment
One of the complex issues of the 1980 U.S. presidential election was
the convincing argument of the incumbent president that more Americans
were at work and earning more money than had been true at any other
point in the history of the country. Conversely, the challenging candidate
was citing impressive figures to prove that there were more people un-
employed than had ever been out of work in the past. Despite the apparent
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contradiction, both sets of facts were absolutely true. Moreover, both of
these trends will probably continue.
Labor economists will remember the 1970s for its unprecedented growth
in new workers, primarily fueled by the maturation of babies born after
World War II and the rapid influx of women. During the same period,
"acceptable" unemployment increased from about 4% to 6% and, of
course, is even higher now.
While the work force will not continue to grow at the same rate as has
been true in the past, there will probably be 16.4 million more people at
work in 1990 than now. Technical areas such as computers and electronics
will create increased employment opportunities along with such profes-
sions as accounting, nursing, and engineering. Certain industries such as
aerospace, communication, electronics, broadcasting, health care, and
energy will experience dramatic increases.
The Center for the Study of Social Policy in Menlo Park, California,
portrays chronic unemployment and underemployment as fundamental
concerns of the post-industrial society. This concern rests on the propo-
sition that economic growth may not continue to generate enough jobs to
accommodate even a slowly expanding work force and the quality of
available jobs may not be compatible with the rising expectations asso-
ciated with the higher educational levels of the population. The U.S.
Chamber of Commerce believes that rising unemployment can be ex-
plained by the following three trends:
? Increased benefits offered by unemployment compensation, welfare,
and food stamp programs provide less incentive for people to find
jobs.
? Dramatic increases in the number of women and teenagers in the
work force lead to higher unemployment since these two groups tend
to quit or change jobs more often than other workers.
? Because of the existence of two full-time workers in families, if one
person becomes temporarily unemployed, the other affords a buffer
against hardship that was not available before.
In addition to unemployment, Herbert Greenberg, president of Mar-
keting Survey and Research Corporation, believes that 80% of American
workers are doing jobs for which they are not suited. This figure applies
to "every job category . . . every educational group . . . every part of
the country." It, of course, involves people who have stumbled into jobs
for which they have little training or aptitude as well as individuals who
are highly trained but unable to find employment in their own fields.
Of course, unemployment figures only reflect those individuals who
are currently actively seeking employment. When those who no longer
seek work, those who are in featherbedding or make-work situations,
drop-outs, or those in holding institutions such as reform schools and
mental institutions are taken into account, real unemployment may be 20
to 25% of the potential work force. We will probably have to learn to
live with a large number of underemployed and unemployed workers even
when there is a tight labor market for entry-level jobs.
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Paradox VII. Dramatic Progress for Women, But
Continued Inequality
According to the National Commission on Working Women, 80% of
the working women in the United States are concentrated in the low-
paying, low-status jobs. Most are in "pink-collar" jobs such as waitress,
beautician, and clerical positions. Another large concentration of working
women may be found in blue-collar jobs (skilled and union trades).
Surprisingly, there has been little progress in closing the gap between
earnings for men and women. Since 1967, women have consistently earned
about two-thirds of what their male counterparts do. Even in the female
ghetto of clerical work, where salaries are extremely low, women's wages
are only 63% of those paid for the few men in this field. The Labor
Department reports that women who support their families earn less than
half (46.9%) the amount earned by male breadwinners. The median income
of female-headed families is only $10,400. In families where only the
husband works, the median income is just under $21,000. When both
husband and wife are employed, the family income averages almost $28,000.
There have been important areas of progress during the past 20 years.
Female banking and financial officers have increased from 2,100 to 122,000.
Female sales management positions have increased from 200 to 12,000.
According to the U.S. News Washington Letter, the 1980s will see dra-
matic strides made by women in obtaining more equality in the U.S. work
force. Within the next 20 years, females may hold the top spots in 10%
of the nation's 500 largest companies. That's progress, but hardly equality.
SRI International predicts that one of the most significant changes of
the 1980s will be the impact of women making key management decisions.
The backhanded compliment that "you think like a man" will give way
to women making decisions as women. In other words, instead of being
forced into a masculine mode, women will gain more freedom to make
decisions in their own way. Women do make decisions differently from
men. They generally utilize the right hemisphere of their brain in thinking
more than men. This means that they are more likely to be creative or
intuitive than relying totally upon logic. Your reaction to the foregoing
statement may be a test of your own adaptability. Some readers will view
the statement that "women make decisions differently" as a sexist com-
ment. But there are obvious, important differences between men and
women. Women will have achieved a degree of progress when they are
not forced to compete with men by duplicating the male behavior pattern.
When they can approach problems and challenges in their own individual
manner, there may be some surprising but productive approaches to or-
ganizational lives. In summary, there will be more progress than equality.
Paradox VIII. Shorter Working Hours, with Less
Leisure
Time spent away from the job is generally expected to expand. Amer-
icans will probably be willing to trade some income for added leisure
time?especially where people are faced with the pressures of a two-
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career family. The emergence of a larger number of affluent families will
place a greater premium on leisure time. Labor Department projections
suggest that annual work hours will drop from 1,900 today to about 1,775
in 2000. This translates to a move from 36.5 to 34.1 hours per week.
William Lazer, past president of the American Marketing Association,
believes that the 41/2-day workweek will become quite common.
While more time that might be referred to as "discretionary" will be
available, time demands for other life-style activities are also likely to
expand. This will probably result in even less free time than is currently
available. Lazer also estimates that "a full-time working housewife may
well average over 60 hours at work, both at home and on the job." The
same is probably true of a male who is actively involved in a career and
family responsibilities. These time demands affect life-style, purchase
behavior, and other product/service needs.
Two-career families affect the demands for such categories of needs as
one-stop shopping, repair service on weekends and nights, flexible work-
ing arrangements, Sunday and evening store hours, family restaurants,
fast-food chains, foods that can be prepared quickly at home, convenience
items, products that require little service, summer school programs and
extensive camps for children, products that stress usefulness and individ-
ualism, and any item that will help save time on household tasks. Leisure,
when it is actually available, will become more important. Individuals
pressured with the demands of expanded responsibilities will treasure the
time that they can be away from the demands of their day-to-day respon-
sibilities. Balancing the demands of careers, families, and self-improve-
ment will reduce the amount of true leisure that is available, even though
the number of hours that must be spent at the office will decline.
Paradox IX. The Triumph of Worker Participation, Yet
a Revival of Scientific Management
I've already documented the move toward greater decentralization of
decision-making. This trend will be particularly important in organiza-
tions. In business, it will be accentuated by the results of a quarter century
of research in the field of human relations, as well as the example of
Japanese management and the successes of a few U.S. pioneers. We can
anticipate that industrial workers will be involved in autonomous work
teams where they make many of their own production decisions. This
"uni-management" is already occurring in a few companies as a result
of agreements with the United Auto Workers in such firms as Dana Cor-
poration, Rockwell, and Harman. At the Edgerton, Wisconsin, Dana fac-
tory, production committees of workers and supervisors elect a union-
management screening committee that sifts suggestions as to how the
factors of production should be organized. At Harman Industries in Bo-
livar, Tennessee, Worker-Supervisor Core Committees plan production
within each department. Their decisions are subject to review by a plant-
wide union-management work committee.
In Europe, co-determination has made rapid strides. Swedish law puts
union representatives on corporate boards. In 1976, West Germany gave
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workers the right to elect half of the directors of firms employing over
2,000 people. Andre Thiria, international secretary of the Swedish Con-
federation of Trade Unions, explains, "Demands are being raised for a
better work environment and more satisfaction on the job, while at the
same time mechanization and streamlining of production make it more
difficult to meet these demands." Joint efforts by workers and management
constitute one attempt to solve this dilemma.
Because of the widespread recognition of America's problem of pro-
ductivity, there will be a concurrent return to some of the basics of sci-
entific management and production efficiency. Unlike the scientific-
management movement that emerged around the turn of the century,
workers will no longer be viewed as minor cogs in the production process.
Productivity and efficiency are two themes that will increase dramatically
in their popularity during the 1980s. At the beginning of this decade,
productivity growth was less than 1% per year. This compares unfavorably
with countries like Japan (6.8%), West Germany (5.3%), and even Great
Britain (2.5%). Already, however, improved production technology (with
greater emphasis on computer-assisted manufacturing and robots), an older
and more experienced work force, economic pressures on workers, and
greater involvement of workers in decisions that affect them are leading
to productivity increases.
Conclusion
The observation that "We live in an age of transition" may have been
first spoken by Adam as he escorted Eve from the Garden of Eden. It
certainly is an appropriate description of the period that lies before us. In
the midst of dramatic and sometimes conflicting trends, the astute manager
must be able to read the ebb and flow of tides that affect his or her
operation. Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, "A foolish consistency is
the hobgoblin of little minds." The challenge of the 1980s is to unravel
the inconsistencies and to understand the paradoxes that confront us. It
will not be a time for "little minds."
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Toward Full Unemployment
by
Robert Theobald
The goal of full employment has been put forward as the centerpiece
of the good society for at least two generations. It is now so fully accepted
that very few people stop to examine its changing implications given the
new technologies that are developing so rapidly.
In industrial societies, jobs are essential for the survival of almost all
citizens: they provide income, enable people to claim a viable position in
the society, determine status. Those without a job, whether by choice or
by inability to find employment, usually feel out of the mainstream. This
reality is shown by the deep depression that hits those who lose their jobs
and also by the often expressed feeling: "I'm just a housewife."
Movies and books have explored this trauma. It has even been suggested
that people may well feel a right to rob banks and other organizations
because society has failed them. To make the point clearly, the industrial-
era social contract demands that we find jobs for everybody who wants
them.
This statement may appear exaggerated because less than half of the
American population is employed. However, the vast majority of those
who do not hold jobs at any particular time still obtain their rights to
resources through their own past job-holding or their relationship to a job-
holder. The unemployed, the sick, and the retired usually have income
rights because of previous employment. The young and spouses and most
of the old who do not hold jobs are normally supported by those who do.
The job is the cornerstone of today's socio-economic order. The main-
tenance of relatively full employment for over 35 years, since the Second
World War, has provided opportunities for people to enter the labor force
who would previously have stayed in the home. The increase in the
percentage of women employed has been dramatic and has indeed changed
societal functioning in ways that are still largely misunderstood. In the
United States in April 1947, 29.8% of females aged 15 and over were in
the labor force; in 1977, 48% were holding jobs. In the seventies, three
out of five people entering the labor force were women. Well over 50%
of married women between the ages of 20 and 44, living with their
Robert Theobald is president of Participation Publishers, Wickenburg, Arizona. This
paper is drawn from a forthcoming book entitled Social Economics.
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husbands, were holding jobs as opposed to under a third in 1947.
Nevertheless, despite the apparent priority given to job-holding, society
today discourages many people from holding jobs who would have done
so in the past. Children must stay in school until they are 16 or more in
most rich countries, and they are encouraged to gain even more education.
Retirement is possible at 65, or even 60, when many people are still
healthy and strong.
The central thesis of this paper is that the industrial-era social contract
is now obsolete. It is inevitable that unemployment will rise in the eighties
because of the impact of computers and robots. It is already possible to
use a computer for less than the cost of the minimum wage, and costs
will continue to fall. The development of the voice-actuated typewriter
and computer during the eighties, to choose only one emerging example
of technological change, will have a further dramatic impact on white-
collar employment.
As it becomes clear that we cannot usefully employ everybody, the
contradictions in our present attitudes toward employment will lead to
major conflicts. If we are to avoid the most dangerous possibilities, we
must look behind the current academic and political smokescreens.Before
we can begin to sort out the apparent contradictions in policy and actions,
we must recognize the dramatic drop in the percentage of the average
individual's life spent on the job. In the mid-nineteenth century, the av-
erage male spent about 40% of his total hours of life on the job, leaving
a maximum of 60% for sleep, meals, education, church, early childhood,
etc. The pattern of the eighties requires the average individual to spend
not more than 14% of his life on the job and the percentage is dropping.
The early industrial era had an insatiable need for hands and bodies.
Machinery was, to use today's jargon, labor-intensive. Given the need
for hands and bodies, societies accepted the intolerable. People were torn
from rural societies, moved into towns and cities, and coerced to work
outrageous hours. Cheap labor was seen as essential and the consequent
social and personal costs were hidden behind sentiments such as those
taken from an 1848 Economist article: "Suffering and evil are nature's
admonitions: they cannot be got rid of and the impatient attempts of
benevolence to banish them from the world by legislation, before benev-
olence has learned their object and their end, is more productive of evil
than of good."
In the first half of the nineteenth-century, therefore, children in many
mills in Britain were working 14 hours a day and were being subjected
to brutal ill-treatment. Others were working in mines pulling heavy carts
in place of donkeys, going underground before daybreak and emerging
after the sun set. As late as 1833, it was considered a significant reform
when the employment of children under 9 was prohibited in all textile
mills except silk, and the working hours of a young person were limited
to 12 a day and 69 a week.
Not surprisingly, workers accustomed to rural rhythms found factory
conditions unacceptable. They often worked at their jobs, therefore, until
they had earned enough to get drunk at the ubiquitous gin mills?only
coming back when their money had run out. Trying to run efficient fac-
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tories under these conditions was impossible. Efforts were therefore made,
both consciously and unconsciously, to lead people to get satisfaction
from their jobs.
Listen to this paean of praise for the work ethic:
"Work is a grand cure for all the maladies and miseries that ever beset
mankind?honest work which you intend getting done." (Thomas Car-
lyle)
"Honor lies in honest toil." (Grover Cleveland)
"There is no substitute for hard work." (Thomas A. Edison)
"Any man who has a job has a chance." (Elbert Hubbard)
"Work is the inevitable condition of human life, the true source of
human welfare." (Leo Tolstoy)
This cultural graft took. People came to believe that hard work was
required to support their self-image. Hard work became the god of the
secular society and of the church. Leaders were therefore slowly freed
from a Middle-Ages personal and social framework in which change was
considered threatening?and in many senses impossible?because one
would be tampering with the divine will. Societies were increasingly
challenged to believe that there were no limits to their capabilities. The
capacity of technology, coupled with personal commitment to jobs, created
a mighty engine for growth and the improvement of material conditions.
The Impact of Industrial-Era Technology
Almost as soon as the industrializing societies managed to convince
people that hard work was good in and of itself, the impacts of industrial-
era technology began to produce a new set of conditions. The number of
hours of work required from each individual began to decline significantly.
Societies adapted. They cut out Sunday working where it existed and
went to half-days on Saturdays and eventually eliminated Saturday work-
ing for many people. Vacations were lengthened. New public holidays
were invented. Periods of education were lengthened. The concept of
retirement was created and then ages of retirement were maintained even
though life-spans got longer and longer.
These steps were not enough, even when combined with longer periods
of schooling, to cope with the capacity of industrial-era systems to produce
more and more goods. The thirties slump overwhelmed the effect of
previously adopted measures for balancing the socio-economy. Fortu-
nately, John Maynard Keynes provided at this time a new solution for
coping with surplus. He argued that the amount of effort required from
people could be maintained if people and societies were enabled to con-
sume more, for then additional jobs would be required to produce all that
people wanted to consume. A full-employment system, based on balancing
ever-increasing consumption desires with ever-rising productive abilities,
therefore became the norm after the Second World War.
Keynes knew, however, that this situation was temporary?even though
his disciples missed this critical point. In an essay entitled "Economic
Possibilities for Our Grandchildren," he argued that we would have to
come to recognize for the vices they actually are those behaviors we now
proclaim as the highest virtues. He saw clearly that the encouragement of
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consumption would move us into a profoundly new context and that we
should then need to change fundamentally our life-styles and life cycles
in ways that would seem surprising and shocking to many. Unfortunately,
societies have ignored his insights and failed to use the last 50 years to
think through the needed changes; instead, they have strengthened and
maintained Keynes's temporary solution.
It is not difficult to understand why we have largely failed to perceive
the new realities. Part of the resistance comes from the normal unwill-
ingness to admit the reality of any change in conditions. In addition, we
should recognize that the failure has to some extent been inevitable because
those who sell ideas and make policy today have less leisure time than
the typical job-holder: a total reversal of the nineteenth-century pattern.
People with high-level skills usually work excessive hours?and are often
workaholics. They assume?all too often?that most of the population
shares their ideas and attitudes. One critical, and central, idea of Rea-
ganomics?that most people are committed to their jobs but are discour-
aged from further work by high tax rates?emerges from this elitist group.
This belief is untrue, as more and more surveys have shown. In reality,
the job is no longer the center of life for most people.
Although most people do not value jobs themselves, they are still com-
mitted to maintaining?and, if possible, improving?their standard of
living. This remains true even though there is a significant and increasing
group, members of which have decided to opt for voluntary simplicity?
a life-style that limits consumption to real needs. The majority of the
population, however, still feels that it is justified in fighting back if its
real income erodes. The general decline in levels of income in recent
years?except for those people who have been able to send an additional
family member out to work?has led to widespread frustration. This, in
turn, is resulting in considerable tax evasion as wage-earners feel they are
being deprived of their fair share of the production of the society.
Some workers evade taxes by hiding second jobs at which they earn
additional income. Tax evasion can also develop within jobs. Thomas
Brom, writing in the Los Angeles Times of November 28, 1980, states:
Jerry is a house framer working in an exclusive suburban development near
San Francisco Bay. He works under union contract, which requires a short
work week as an incentive for builders to hire more carpenters. So once every
two weeks, Jerry has what carpenters call a Black Friday: no work, no pay.
But Jerry and his mates come to work anyway. They are paid "off the books"
in cash, and spend much of their time hiding from the business representative
of their own union. The framers don't declare the income, the contractor doesn't
declare wages and, so, if the union doesn't find out, everybody but Uncle Sam
is happy.
Jerry is a microcosm of the societal problem we must unravel. We are
caught in a situation where jobs are the key to survival but enough jobs
are not, and will not, be available. Indeed, as we have already seen, the
problem is going to worsen rapidly. Fortunately, the fact that a growing
number of people see jobs as a way to get income, rather than as being
valuable in themselves, could provide flexibility in the culture if leaders
were prepared to face reality.
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There is a positive mythology around the full-employment ethic that
must be broken before we can hope to make intelligent new policies. We
must ask, as Keynes did, whether full employment is a desirable and
effective way to mobilize the energies of human beings, and we must ask
this question based on emerging communications-era realities rather than
on obsolete industrial-era models. We must recognize that today's society
simply cannot function without the maintenance of full employment but
that we do have a choice whether we shall continue to perpetuate present
socio-economic models through the eighties.
In order to understand this point, we must understand that any func-
tioning socio-economic system must necessarily be logical and coherent
so long as its basic premises are not challenged. To break out of current
norms, we must re-examine the fetters imposed on us by the full-em-
ployment model in the same way as slavery was challenged in the nine-
teenth century. It is obvious that comparing a full-employment system to
slavery will seem shocking to many, but we must recognize that the ethical
contrast between slavery and employment was less clear to those involved
in nineteenth-century debates than it is now. William Wilberforce, the
great British anti-slavery figure, was widely criticized for his patterns of
child employment, which were argued by many to be equally as inhumane
as the slavery he so vigorously attacked.
Similarly, some of the more intellectual Southerners raised fundamental
questions at the time of the Civil War that have been ignored since. They
argued that the conflict was not, basically, a moral one but emerged rather
from the fact that different styles of employment were effective for dif-
ferent patterns of production. They pointed out that the South needed a
stable labor force and had met its needs through slavery. They argued
that the North wanted a labor force that it could hire and fire according
to the needs of the trade cycle because Northern industrialists could not
afford to hold onto their labor in times of slump. Their arguments were
shown to have considerable validity, as the great novels written by the
late-nineteenth-century muckrakers made abundantly clear.
It is time to break out of the pieties that surround the job issue and face
up to the real and fundamental nature of the contract between the employer
and the employee, who must strike a bargain in terms of wages and
conditions of work. Given a full-employment situation, the worker?
particularly when supported by trade unions?can strike a decent deal.
Indeed, the power of workers almost overwhelmed employers at certain
points in the last 30 years.
These days, however, are gone forever. Full employment in the current
sense of 'a job for all those who might want one will not be restored, and
more and more people are aware of this reality. In these circumstances,
the worker inevitably serves at the pleasure of the employer and must
always worry about the impact of his or her behavior on job tenure.
Such a system destroys morale and human dignity when jobs are scarce,
for the worker must increasingly pander to the prejudices of the employer
to survive. Nor can labor unions be effective, given their present percep-
tions of their roles. They can protect some workers some of the time. But
the more effective they are, in these limited activities, the worse the overall
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situation will become, because an ever-larger proportion of the available
jobs will be monopolized and those outside the system will have even less
chance of entering it.
In his book Player Piano, Kurt Vonnegut explores the dangers of trying
to maintain the myth of a full-employment system, once the reality of
unemployment becomes dominant. He shows how we shall be forced
toward a serf society. The patterns of workfare, or compulsory activity
required by the state in order to obtain welfare payments, which are
developing already in many states, show how his fears could be easily
realized in the immediate future.
It might seem that we are caught in an insoluble bind. But this is because
we insist on looking at too narrow a picture. One overwhelming reality
of today is the amount of work that needs to be done and that cannot be
structured into jobs for which wages and salaries can be paid. Cities are
run-down, human services are increasingly inadequate, education is less
good than in the past. The other overwhelming reality is that people are
crying out for meaningful challenges that move beyond the economic into
improving personal and societal functioning.
In order to get a sense of the implications of the necessary shifts in
direction, I have developed definitions of various work-related terms as
they might appear in a twenty-first century dictionary:
Work: Activity that provides a sense of self-worth to the individual;
previously linked to economic reward but not in present conditions.
Toil: Activity that nobody would choose to do. Greatly reduced by the
microelectronic revolution, but today each person is expected to do some
of the necessary toil as part of his obligations as a citizen; failure to do
this toil typically incurs significant social penalties.
Job (Obsolete): An individual was paid by an employer who controlled
his or her activities through fear of dismissal and prospects of promotion.
Leisure (Obsolete): The division between job and leisure was central to
twentieth-century thinking: people "bought" pleasant activities to coun-
teract the unsatisfactory nature of their jobs. The late-twentieth-century
turbulence was caused, in part, by leisure becoming more important than
the jobs that supported it.
Unemployment (Obsolete): People who could not get jobs were paid to
support their idleness; meanwhile, both work and toil went undone, with
a consequent worsening of the quality of life.
In this context, the words full employment are seen to be inadequate.
It becomes clear that we need to break out of an employment and un-
employment ethic into a new world in which work, prestige, and income
are allocated according to totally new patterns.
With these changes in mind, then, what are the primary alterations that
can be expected in patterns of work and activity? The word primary must
be stressed, of course, because as work patterns change so will the whole
pattern of the society and there is no space here to detail the full impli-
cations of such shifts.
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Flexible Work and Learning Patterns
There is a dominant style to the late industrial era: People prepare for
jobs, work at jobs, and retire from jobs. As the number of hours it is
necessary to spend at jobs has declined, this system has begun to fray at
the edges. For example, community colleges now spend much of their
time teaching older students and recycling them back into the economic
system in new opportunities. This pattern will continue to develop.
In the work world, there are the beginnings of job-sharing?with two
people each taking half of the work and the responsibilities that would
previously have been carried out by one. More and more people are being
given time off to renew themselves and to develop further skills.Flextime,
where people have the right to choose starting and quitting times, is
becoming a conventional management tool.
The number of workers with "floating" starting and quitting times has
risen substantially from 1977's three million, says Georgetown Univer-
sity's Stanley Nolan, according to a December 2, 1980, Wall Street Jour-
nal report. "New York City plans to adopt flextime to enhance productivity
and expand services. More concerns extend the benefits to production or
technical workers. Among them: Digital Equipment Corp., Corning Glass
Works, and Sercel Industries Inc., a seismic equipment assembler."
Older workers will also spend part of their time passing on their skills
to younger ones in one-on-one or one-on-many real situations. The Cal-
ifornia State Department of Education is seeking to legitimate, through
legislation, the apprentice process so that it may be considered the equiv-
alent of more formal education. If this should occur, we shall recognize
that skilled older workers can usually spend years introducing young
people to their crafts and to a responsible method of working. This will
allow us to relate young people to old in effective and challenging patterns.
But the most profound and critical change will be in the way we think
about life cycles and the way we plan our passages through life. Once we
accept the reality of this change, we shall be able to perceive how much
alteration there has already been from the classic industrial-era models.
For example, the goal of lifetime learning is rapidly being institutionalized
in our culture. One force driving this change is that people cannot function
effectively with what they learned in school or college one or more decades
ago. Another is that educational institutions cannot survive without finding
different groups of people to attend college?and older citizens are the
largest untapped market.
Another area where profound change is taking place is that more and
more of the critical work in the culture demands total attention and total
commitment: it cannot be accomplished in 40 hours or 5 days a week.
This type of work is highly exciting and challenging and people are pleased
to do it. However, individuals need to concentrate completely on this type
of work and they must have all the support systems they require to be
effective.
Few people can, or should, however, continue to work intensively for
a lengthy period, for they lose their perspective on the overall reality of
the society. Burnout occurs and people want and need to renew themselves.
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This reality is already being recognized in the political arena, where we
know that the mental maps of politicians often freeze soon after they enter
Congress because of their overloads. Shorter terms are therefore being
proposed for politicians: Indeed the concept of single nonrenewable terms
for all those involved in legislation is now being proposed in order to
avoid the pathologies that emerge as people look toward ensuring their
re-election rather than meeting the fundamental needs of the society.
This suggestion for movement into and out of work activities rests on
a key assumption: that an individual can learn to learn. In other words,
many of the myths about the difficulty of learning to perform effectively
in various jobs are related primarily to the desire to maintain power,
prestige, and authority structures rather than to the actual problems of
learning new types of activity; this is increasingly true given the devel-
opment of computer knowledge systems. One of the more depressing
aspects of the present culture is that the ever-rising tide of credentialization
prevents us from challenging most people to use their brains more effec-
tively.
We hear from time to time about the maverick who has failed to follow
the credentializing route but has nevertheless held a variety of jobs that
are believed to require very lengthy periods of education: doctors, air
pilots, etc. The inevitable lesson is that skills could be effectively learned
more rapidly by many, but this is prevented by the desire of the society
to maintain a scarcity of qualified persons in various professions because
this ensures higher incomes for them.
While we do not need untrained people in high-risk professions, the
future will require flexibility and freedom, particularly in movement along
one's chosen life-path. Unfortunately, freedom is frightening to many.
We shall therefore need to preserve, for a substantial number of years,
structures and jobs for those who have built cages for themselves or have
been built into cages by their experiences, from which they are now unable
to escape. Contrary to the normal prescriptions, we should now be en-
couraging most young people to find their own work so that the remaining
conventional jobs can be preserved for older people who require structures
because their life experience limited their capacity to deal with choices.
One fascinating aspect of this change in experience patterns was expressed
by a banker who said: "The most positive thing you can do for an older
man is to offer him overtime. It is the most negative possibility for most
younger people."
Today's real failure with the young is not our inability to provide them
with jobs, for the evolution of the socio-economy makes this inevitable.
Our true catastrophe is that we have not educated people to grasp oppor-
tunities outside the conventional job market or to make choices among
the wide range of options available within the communications era.
Toil As a Responsibility for All
One primary, and urgently needed, change is for young people to rec-
ognize that the unplanned "invention" of adolescence was one of the
worst mistakes made by a society. The period of schooling was extended
further and further and children were deprived of the possibility of taking
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responsibility for their decisions. This pattern was recognized as dangerous
in early Greece, when Plato argued that teenagers needed to be challenged
physically rather than to sit down passively and learn ideas.
Fortunately, a concept has been developed over recent years that could,
with some modification, serve the needs of the young and the urgent
requirements of the culture. It has been suggested that everybody should
do work that would benefit the society during their teenage years. This
time now needs to be placed, however, in a new developmental context.
Young people should continue to be educated within their home com-
munities from kindergarten through eighth grade. The learning pattern
would be revised, however, to encourage values learning and the devel-
opment of personal responsibility within the home, the school, and the
community. The timing of various types of learning would also be changed
to fit what we have learned from childhood development studies.
Young people would then be encouraged to spend the next four years
(largely outside their own home communities) doing the heavy challenging
work that older people would rather not do, or will not do at all. Included
in these activities would be the renewal of cities, care of the sick and the
elderly, stoop agriculture, reforestation, and a multitude of societally nec-
essary tasks that are today not being done or only being accomplished by
coercion based on poverty and the consequent need for people to take any
available job.
There would be no compulsion to engage in this type of activity, but
there should be substantial rewards in terms of future educational entitle-
ments. In addition, as this type of activity becomes built into the culture,
those who choose to avoid it will inevitably find themselves disadvantaged
in both obvious and subtle ways.
The most dramatic, and exciting, implication of such a shift will be a
new way of getting the toil of the culture accomplished. We have always
needed poverty to guarantee that dirty work is done in our type of culture.
If we have a large-scale labor force available for these purposes, then we
can for the first time imagine a society in which extremes of wealth and
poverty are abolished.
Such a suggestion for new socialization processes, with their overtones
of cultural coercion, may be rejected by those who have failed to examine
the ways in which societies are held together. We shall have to recognize
that freedom is only possible within synergetic societal structures. En-
couraging young people to engage in activities where they will be chal-
lenged to accept responsibility is a valid way to provide them with the
ability to cope with freedom later in their lives.
At the age of 18, most people will have a better sense of what they
want to achieve. Some will be ready for more academic education. Some
will want to move toward technical skills. Some will move into appren-
ticeship patterns. Some will marry and raise families.
The new society we are entering will tolerate, and indeed encourage,
a far wider diversity of life-styles. But as already suggested, there will
be one fairly common pattern: Many people will tend to work intensively
for a period of time and then need to re-create and re-educate themselves.
We shall extend rapidly the concept of sabbaticals in terms of the number
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of people involved, the number of occupations for which they are con-
sidered relevant, and the length of time for which people can free them-
selves up from responsibilities. Societies will be able to make free time
available because of the impacts of computers and robots, which will limit
the amount of human energy needed for industrial-era jobs.
During the industrial era, the job has been the primary way in which
we have got the work of the culture done. It has also been the method of
allocating income. In addition, it has been used to allocate prestige and
position.
The job will not be effective for these purposes in the communications
era since we can no longer afford to devalue the contributions made by
parents in the home and volunteers in the community. In the communi-
cations era, we shall come to recognize parenting as a full-time paid career
for as much as 20-25 years of one's life: this will be seen as one of the
options for personal development. We shall also support, both socially
and financially, the community volunteer.
More and more people have been attracted to these options for more
than a decade. But it has been impossible to achieve the necessary changes
because of our patterns of income distribution. One of the most urgent
tasks is to change these in the light of the ways in which wealth is created
in the communications era.
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Managing
Technological
Change
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Computer Integrated
Manufacturing:
The Human Factors
by
Ross Bishop
There is a good deal of discussion today about the coming transformation
called the "Information Age." Futurists tend to wax poetic about ap-
proaching periods of great transformation. I am certain that every age has
something to be excited about, but I have to admit that, as I look into
this new age, I cannot help but be impressed by the enormity of the change
that is being spread before us. It is an incredible smorgasbord. Although
the Information Age will produce dramatic changes in all aspects of so-
ciety, the most significant transformations may be those which occur in
industry. Computer-integrated manufacturing (CIM) is the embodiment
of machine intelligence in manufacturing. By creating intelligent machines
and tying them into a highly sophisticated manufacturing system, man
will make a quantum leap in his ability to produce goods. He will dra-
matically alter the economics of manufacturing and provide society with
the means to grow and expand, transcending its present values and struc-
ture.
We have made enormous strides in manufacturing over the last century,
but we are still dependent upon human labor to produce our goods. Most
manufacturing (60%) is in batches too small to be automated at present.
In addition to the obvious economic considerations, workers must be
subjected to heat, noise, fumes, and the risk of injury in a boring and
often mindless environment. Computer-integrated manufacturing with its
robots, intelligent machines, and sophisticated information technologies
will permanently change that.
Response to these new technologies has been somewhat erratic. The
Japanese have embraced them eagerly and have become one of the most
advanced and productive manufacturers in the world. They utilize half
the world's robots and a tremendous amount of semi-robotic equipment.
In the West, attitudes toward these new technologies have been much
more conservative. We have been reluctant to assume the lead in CIM.
Ironically, it is in the West that these technologies have been developed.
Ross Bishop is a futurist who specializes in the areas of organizational changes created
by social and technological changes. He is a consultant for corporations and gov-
ernment agencies.
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Western businessmen point to the cost and shortage of capital as the
culprit restricting the use of these new technologies. Not only is this
explanation simplistic, it does not speak, I believe, to the real issue. The
problem goes much deeper than that. As an example, American auto
makers, faced with enormous losses and significant erosion of market
share, would have allocated the capital if all they had needed was some
new hardware. Unfortunately, it was not that simple. The automakers
were locked into a system of technology and management that was de-
signed for another age. Even if they could have read the Japanese hand-
writing on the wall, I am not at all certain that there was much they could
have done about it.
Any society, especially a business, must adapt its values, organizatipn,
and management style to maximize significant technological development.
If not, it runs the risk of impeding its own growth and development. I do
not speak of change for the sake of fashion, but rather for survival in a
competitive environment. Samuel Lilley, in his profound Men, Machines
and History, points to the necessity for this parallel development:
". . . at each level of technological development certain social conditions must
be satisfied if the technology is to advance yet farther. And as a result, amid
all the variety of history one basic pattern is repeated time and time again. Each
form of society is at first well adapted to encourage technological advance. In
these conditions, the technological level rises more or less rapidly, and even-
tually reaches a point at which yet further progress requires a different form of
social organization. Then progress is slowed down?until the required social
change is made."'
We stand at a most unique time in human history. Within our lifetimes
we shall witness the end of one age and the birth of another. We are
experiencing the end of a great industrial cycle?the end of the Age of
Steel and the technologies and social structure associated with it; and we
will bear witness to the development of the Age of Information. Computer-
Integrated Manufacturing (CIM) will require a substantial restructuring of
the corporate organization, both functionally and philosophically. The
system will require a good deal of decentralized autonomy, accelerating
the current shift from the traditional authoritarian hierarchy to more egal-
itarian forms of decision-making.
CIM will spark a redefinition, perhaps for the second time in man's
history, of the nature of work. Blue-collar values that have been established
over a century of factory labor will be transformed by the conditions of
the new system. A new stratum of workers will be institutionalized be-
tween blue- and white-collar groups?I call them "grays." They are the
myriad of technical support people essential to the success of the computer-
integrated system. Job-security issues and new standards of compensation
will present themselves for resolution as CIM evolves. Retraining, job
fracturing, leapfrogging, and outsourcing will take on new importance.
There will also be mobility issues to be resolved. Manufacturing could
become highly portable. Experts predict the development of general-pur-
pose manufacturing equipment that will perform a wide range of tasks.
With this programmable equipment in place, a plant could produce a wide
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variety of products. Thus, a firm will be able to relocate to another facility
by simply transferring its software. This will exacerbate job migration,
regional economies, and a host of other issues. Smaller batch breakevens
and the ease of "retooling" may make contracted manufacturing the
prevalent method of production. It will also bring new competitors.
It is always difficult to see transitions from the inside, "through a glass
darkly," as it were. Changes of this kind are evolutionary. A little happens
every day until the world is different, but often only a historical comparison
illustrates the extent of the shift. Transitions of this magnitude are fre-
quently punctuated by loud and boisterous conflicts as contending forces
jostle for position. We would be naive not to expect them.
Technology
In the workplace as elsewhere, technology is the great amplifier. It
expands the resources available to society by creating a reservoir of knowl-
edge and power. Technology not only allows us to do more and do it
better, but also gives us the power to use energies totally beyond the range
of our natural senses. Consider that without technology you would be a
subsistence farmer.
If technology did not advance, half the population would be employed
as telephone operators?placing calls for the other half. "Ridiculous,"
you say, "we'd never do that." And you would be correct. With a static
technology, we would never have allocated that much of our human
resources to expand the communications system that has played such an
important role in our social and economic development. It is through the
expansion of resources such as this that civilizations grow. Whether you
like technology or not, the fact is that without it we would have developed
little beyond feudalism. Each technological step allows fewer people to
do more than before, expanding society's resource base and freeing us to
pursue other goals.
The effect of an earlier technologically based social transformation is
illustrated in Figure 1. Two to three million years ago, human society
consisted mostly of hunters and gatherers. Then, about 10,000 years ago,
a transformation occurred as man developed the technologies of agricul-
ture. By 1500 A.D., most of human society had given up hunting for
farming. Agriculture had become the dominant mode of living. Not only
did agriculture allow man to live more successfully, it gave impetus to a
new and much more effective social structure. Human civilization was
able to transcend nomadic life and to develop civilizations and cultures
that were impossible before. An anthropologist once said, "It was the
success of the simplest tools that started the whole trend of human evo-
lution and led to the civilizations of today." In response, Arthur Clarke
commented, "Note the phrase, 'the whole trend of human evolution.' The
old idea that we invented tools is a misleading half-truth; it would be more
accurate to say that tools invented man."
Agrarian man lived on the strength of his back; his tools were simple
and dictated that he focus his energies on survival. The guild craftsman
was a specialist, but he was limited by his own strength, speed, and
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Figure 1
Transition from Hunting to Agriculture
POPULATION
Agriculture
2-3 Million B.C.
10,000 B.C.
1500 A.D.
precision. The goods that he made were of exceptional workmanship,
quite expensive, and produced in very limited quantities. The machines
of the period were beginning to free man from the limits of his hands;
they pioneered industrial society.
As we study the industrial period (Figure 2), we see an evolution very
similar to the agrarian transformation thousands of years before. Remem-
ber that in 1500 we were all subsistence farmers. There was little else
one could do. The industrial transformation once again expanded the pool
of resources available to society and allowed the social order to completely
transcend the limitations of agrarian feudalism. The growth of society
during this time?absolutely in terms of population and relatively as re-
gards social development?was simply phenomenal. Every aspect of the
society was dramatically affected. Those that would not change were
broken. It is not coincidental that the American and French Revolutions
and a series of revolts in Britain occurred during the period.
Early industrial man still depended upon his brawn, but machines freed
him from the limitations of his body. Although in the 1700s 90% of the
work force of the United States was engaged in agriculture, the mechanized
farmer was much more productive than his predecessor. As Figure 3
illustrates, the percentage of the work force necessary to feed the popu-
lation has declined steadily since 1790. (Actual farm employment [Figure
41 did increase until just after the turn of the century when tractors and
other powered implements began to appear [Figure 51. But as the work
force grew, it moved into the industrial sectors.) Although the data is
from a more contemporary period, Figures 6-9 vividly illustrate the effects
of technological change on farming. While farm production has simply
rocketed, the amount of human resources required per unit of production
has steadily declined. There are those who decry the loss of our bucolic
farming society, but I have worked on farms and I am certainly glad there
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Figure 2
Transition from Agriculture to Industrialism
POPULATION
Information
Industrialism
1709
1800
1900
1982
are other options. Incidentally, one of the reasons I use agriculture as an
example is that it is one of the few industries whose products have not
been completely transformed by technological development, allowing for
historical comparisons.
The new technologies reduced the farming population?as, in a limited
sense, robots and other intelligent machines will affect the "hands on"
manufacturing work force. But the reason the farmer (or, most likely, his
children) could make the transition was that there were factory jobs avail-
able. Had industrialization not occurred, the workers would simply have
remained farmers and society would have continued the more limited
growth of medieval agrarianism. It is important to remember that one
would not have occurred without the other.
The transition from farm life to factory regimentation was not easy. It
was filled with all the soul-wrenching discontinuities of rapid transition.
Workers were asked to trade the values of agricultural society for those
of the factory. As Charles Dickens so aptly noted, the early factories were
snake pits of abuse and inhumanity. The factories' redeeming quality was
that they were an improvement over the poverty, famine, misery, and
disease common to rural society at the time. The social fabric was even-
tually reforged to accommodate and benefit from the shift to industriali-
zation. But as with other transitions, it took time and conflict to develop
a new set of social values compatible with the changes in technology.
Technology, for all its wonder and power, is nothing more than an
extension of the human condition. Man is a technological creature; it is
his nature. There is no dualism between man and machine. If technology
brings about good, it is because man has directed it so. If it is used for
evil, it is because there is also a dark side to man. It is not mere coincidence
that man's greatest technological achievements have come at the same
time as his greatest atrocities.
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Farm Employment as a Percent of the Work Force
1790-1970
90-
80-
70-
60 ?
50 ?
cc
111
o_ 40 ?
30 ?
20 ?
10 ?
0 1 III I I I I I I III I I I I. I I
1790 1880 1920 1970
YEAR
Figure 4
Farm Employment
1836-1980
15
9
3
36
50
64
78
92
6
YEAR
20
34
48 62
76
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Farm Tractors in Use
1910-1981
NUMBER OF TRACTOR
5000
4000
3000
2000
1000
0
10
17
24
31
38
45
YEAR
52
59
66
73
80
Figure 6
Index of Farm Output
1910-1980
10
17 24 31 ? 38 45 52 59 66 73 80
YEAR
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Figure 7
Index of Farm Production per Worker Hour
1910-1980
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Figure 8
Farm Inputs?Indexed 1910
A?Labor 93%
B?Machinery 6%
C?Chemicals 1%
Figure 9
Farm Inputs?Indexed 1980
A?Labor 18%
B?Machinery 35%
C?Chemicals 47%
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The fact that it is in man's nature to develop technology does not mitigate
the concerns expressed by its critics. We have developed a great society,
but have paid little attention to the human values for which it was ostensibly
created. We have many things, and much anxiety. We are, as Robert
Heilbroner has commented, "of high capitalism and low socialism." Our
industry is not guided by codes of morality, only by laws against pollution.
The anxiety of those who oppose technology is the concern that we all
must share about dehumanization, pollution, the invasion of privacy, cold
bureaucracy, and mass destruction.
Predictions
It would be easier if we could peer into the future and ordain what is
to come, but we cannot. Seers will make predictions, but predicting is a
tricky business, and prophesying technological impacts presents some
special problems. As a result, technologists and their critics have a fairly
poor record of accurately predicting the effects of new developments.
Remember the nuclear power that was going to be too cheap to meter?
Or the private airplane that would replace the family car? In 1948, Norbert
Wiener predicted that we would all be unemployed in 10 years because
of automation. Later, computers were going to take over management,
eliminating the need for millions of white-collar workers. There is an
important lesson to be learned from these experiences. Images of the future
must be built by imagination. The visions created by supporters and critics,
fueled by their passions, become larger than life and present a distorted
image of what will likely occur. Our recent experiences should teach us
to take most of these predictions with a grain, or perhaps a good deal, of
salt. Personally, I'm still waiting for my picturephone.
The section that follows is a scenario of the future computer-integrated
factory. I have tried to posture it so that it is within the realm of what is
probable with present technology. Other developments I leave to your
imagination.
Factory Scenario
The high-tech factory is not an entity, at least not yet. It is only a
representation of the manufacturing system that will supersede our present
production methods. Although the changes will be substantial, they may
not be convulsive. Transformations of this kind tend to be evolutionary
rather than revolutionary, but what they lack in speed they make up in
momentum. They have enormous inertia.
The high-tech firm is an octopus with the computer at its heart. In the
old industrial system, an army of people performed boring and repetitive
jobs both on the line and in the office. The production line was an inhumane
and unforgiving taskmaster that was much better suited to the machine.
A very sophisticated computer system and intelligent manufacturing equip-
ment have taken over many of the routine functions, freeing people to
make decisions and create.
Product design and development was always an art, but now the com-
puter performs the mundane tasks, freeing designers and engineers to
make better use of their talents. Computer-aided design (CAD) has re-
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placed the need for endless rows of drafting tables and erasers. Designers
work with light pens at consoles. The computer makes detailed drawings,
debugs designs, and offers alternate suggestions. It also performs stress
and reliability testing, minimizing design problems and reducing lead
times.
The computer is the master production organizer and coordinator. Com-
puter-aided manufacturing (CAM) has meant tying all the various parts
of the production process together to take advantage of the computer's
speed and accuracy. Design and scheduling changes are quickly coordi-
nated with the entire organization and its outside contacts. Computers
facilitate coordination of the entire manufacturing matrix as has never
been possible through the human planners, coordinators, managers, pro-
grammers, and other support people. The fine-tuned precision of the op-
eration is well beyond the efficiencies of the old hard-tooled line. The
high-tech factory has changed the way products are made, introducing
many exotic materials and fostering the reconceptualization of virtually
every product we use.
A visit to a high-tech facility is strange for people accustomed to the
traditional factory. "Intelligent" machines perform most of the assembly
work once done by people. Machines move and whir, products move
through the assembly area, the whole thing orchestrated as if by magic.
Factories run continuously, producing a variety of high-quality products
at greater volume and lower cost.
The manufacturing process is organized around "cells" of general-
purpose machines and support equipment. Dedicated tooling is rarely
necessary or economical. Reprogrammable general-purpose equipment is
made to perform a wide range of functions and is itself mass produced,
drastically reducing its effective cost. It has significantly reduced batch
breakeven costs. In 1980, 60% of our manufacturing was in batches too
small for mass production. Now almost everything fits. This has allowed
many new companies to compete successfully with established firms who
were committed to the older technologies and fixed production systems.
Only infrequently does one see a human directly involved in production,
an oddly soft enigma to all this hard machinery. Irrespective of all the
publicity, people and robots perform very different functions. In the old
days, people were the only resource available to perform the monotonous
and mindless repetitive production line work. The significant advances in
robotic and other production technologies have eliminated the need for
people to function like well-oiled machines. Now most workers are op-
erators, controlling sophisticated systems, using their heads instead of
their hands. Operations are very decentralized, with most of the operating
and planning decisions made on the shop floor.
The other workers perform an array of servicing, monitoring, and plan-
ning tasks that keep the incredible pace of the factory operating smoothly.
Mental stress is higher, as an error at this pace means a lot of wasted
product or some very expensive down-time. Each cell has a host of support
people who attend to various units throughout the facility. Quite a few
skilled trades people are employed maintaining machines, modifying the
lines, and installing new equipment. The people who control and support
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the high-tech system comprise a new strata of "gray collar" workers.
There are many data entry people, systems analysts, schedulers, computer
techs of all kinds, planners, and coordinators. They are not blue-collar,
but they really are not management either.
One of the lingering problems of old industrialism was the conflict
between labor and management over the nature of work. The workplace
was never designed for humans in the first place. Management really
wanted something that didn't mind boring repetition and noise, didn't get
sick, and didn't have an ego. Workers, on the other hand, sought some
outlet for the basic human need to make a creative contribution, to mentally
"own" what they made. Neither had a choice; the human was the best
machine that management could get, and the worker needed to eat. It was
an uncomfortable accommodation.
The solution came in robotics and computer-integrated machines. They
operate tirelessly, with "up" time around 95%?a 20% improvement
over human labor. They do not get bored, take vacations, or require
pensions?and are not sensitive to heat and noise. They can easily be
reprogrammed, so a line can be "retooled" quickly. Down-time is min-
imized and quality control held tight by the equipment's ability to monitor
its own performance. It can tell if it is nearing tolerance limits and will
either self-correct or notify the operator. Waste is minimized and critical
shutdowns are avoided.
As we move back into today, the question most frequently asked is
"When will all this happen?" The answer is that it already is happening.
The industrial process is being transformed a little every day. Some in-
dustries, like some countries, are moving more quickly than others, but
each trade show brings new developments in computer-integrated tech-
nology and moves us a step closer.
Jobs
It is not surprising that today's workers?already restive from massive
unemployment and a sluggish economy?view the computer-integrated
factory with its robots, automated manufacturing, and sophisticated in-
formation technology somewhat anxiously. Open a newspaper or magazine
today and you are likely to find an article about a "revolution" called
the information society or, alternately, the post-industrial society. These
articles often express concern for large-scale technological unemployment
as machines replace people on production lines, reviving old arguments
about jobs and technology.
History teaches us that economies remain viable and that jobs are created
through the development of new products and new technologies. It has
also demonstrated that although the workplace gets stirred up by tech-
nological change and the social changes that accompany it, most workers
remain employed. The simple fact is that during the last 150 years of
enormous technological change, with only rare exceptions, 95% or more
of the work force has remained employed (Figures 10-11). Certainly if
technological employment were a macro problem we would have wit-
nessed it by now.
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Employment as a Percentage of the Population
1870-1980
100
75
25
0
1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
1870
1930
YEAR
1980
Figure 11
Unemployment as a Percentage of the Labor Force
1890-1980
75
50
25
0
90
99
8
17
26
35
YEAR
44
53
62
71 ao
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Sizable employment discontinuities have more to do with matters eco-
nomic than technological. During the 1960s there was a great deal of
concern about technological unemployment. Research had exonerated
technology, but so deep was the conviction (or so strong the politics) that
in 1964 Congress created the National Commission on Technology, Au-
tomation, and Economic Progress to "identify and describe the impact of
technological and economic change on production and employment, in-
cluding the major types of worker displacement." Louis Rader noted that,
"It is accurate to say that the major concern?the one most responsible
for the establishment of the Commission?arose from the belief that tech-
nological change was the major source of unemployment . . ." When the
Commission's report was issued in 1966, it completely absolved tech-
nology. The large-scale unemployment that many critics had predicted
never materialized.2 In fact, quite the opposite occurred. The new tech-
nologies had created millions of jobs and entire new industries.
Unemployment from technological change does not come from its pres-
ence but rather from its absence. When a firm does not invest in new
technology either because of short-term management thinking or prohib-
itive capital markets, then it sets in motion a downward spiral from which
recovery is very difficult. The company's older equipment usually means
higher production costs. It is frequently unable to maintain competitive
quality standards, and product improvements cannot be matched. For these
and other reasons, sales begin to slip, production is cut, and unit production
costs rise, eroding profits. Layoffs begin. Investment confidence slips.
Plants are closed. If the new factories are overseas, so are the jobs,
stranding the work force. It is not a pretty sight, nor is it a hypothetical
one. Look around you.
Misunderstandings also arise from the failure to distinguish between
what is technologically possible and what is economically sound. Studies
of technological implementation indicate an average diffusion rate of a
decade from the first industrial use to widespread adoption. The imple-
mentation of a new technology will depend upon its long-run advantages,
its transitional costs and aggravations, and the ease with which it dispels
its skeptics. Then, too, it will hang on such matters as politics, sociology,
economics, and military strategy.'
Some workers do get caught in the transition between waves ot tech-
nological change as the old gives way to the new. Their numbers are not
large, but that does not detract from their individual pain and anxiety. We
have not developed an effective mechanism to help workers with this
transition. It is a condition that in the words of one research report is
"pretty shameful."
Faced with the abyss of job loss and few viable alternatives, workers
have fought to maintain the status quo. The fear of job losses to new
technology has permeated the history of the industrial revolution. In the
1700s, French weavers threw their wooden shoes (sabots) into the mech-
anized looms that they feared would take their jobs (giving rise to the
term saboteur). The Luddites of England (branded as anti-technologists)
selectively smashed weaving looms of unscrupulous employers who were
producing inferior goods or using the new technologies to circumvent
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existing labor agreements. In the early 1960s, Walter Reuther, president
of the United Auto Workers, and Luther Hodges, U.S. Secretary of Labor,
opposed automation because they believed it caused unemployment. George
Meany told his AFL-CIO convention in 1963 that automation was "rapidly
becoming a curse to this society."
Although history notes many worker revolts and uprisings, workers do
not seem inherently opposed to new technology. They are however, op-
posed to losing their jobs?a very important distinction. The utilitarian
attitude toward employees propogated early in the industrial revolution
by Jeremy Bentham and the Fabians has endured because it gives license
to short-term gain. It is little wonder that job security has been such a
large issue in the history of industrial society. Someday we will learn that
a good employee is worth more than the wage costs of replacement. It
also illustrates why workers with secure employment, such as in Japan or
at IBM, are much more receptive to new technology.
In the next few years, we are going to hear a great deal about machines
replacing people at work. Journalists and science-fiction writers can dream
up mechanical replacements for man, but as the people who make robots
will tell you, it is a lot easier to talk about than to do. Taking nothing
away from the significant advances we have made in robotic technology,
we are still light years from creating the fanciful R2D2 and C3P0 of
"Star Wars." The human system is extremely subtle and complex; it has
evolved over several million years. lam reminded of Wernher von Braun's
comment about astronauts. He said, "Man is still the best computer we
can put aboard a spacecraft?and the only one that can be mass produced
with unskilled labor."
Nonetheless, intelligent technology is already impacting the workplace.
Initially it has taken the dangerous and unpleasant jobs. As the technology
improves and its costs become more competitive, it will assume the mind-
less and repetitive tasks. It is no longer a question of if, but when. The
transfer of work from man to machine is what the industrial revolution
has been all about. The transplantation of intelligence to machines will
redefine, for the second time in man's history, the concept of work. In
reality, the movement of work off the shop floor began long ago. In 1899,
non-production workers accounted for 7% of the manufacturing work
force. By 1950, they represented 18% and in 1978, 28%. The trend since
1919 is illustrated in Figure 12. Blue-collar employment leveled off in
1960 and has been on a plateau since then (Figures 13-14). In 1900, the
white-collar segment was 10% of the work force. Today it is 65%. Clerical
occupations alone will increase 46% between 1970 and 1985 and will
represent 20% of the work force by then.4
There will be few jobs unaffected by the high-tech system. Work will
bear little resemblance to the sweat and muscle jobs of present factories.
The United States will cease to be a nation of tool workers and will become
a nation of knowledge workers. Operating automated assembly equipment
is a good deal different then assembling pieces by hand. You have to use
your head a lot more. Brawn doesn't mean a great deal in a world where
robots do most of the heavy work. Interpersonal relationships will become
more important in the high-tech environment. Work will become a team
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Figure 12
Ratio of Non-production Employment in Manufacturing
1919-1981
19 25
31
37
43
49 55
YEAR
81
87
73
79
Figure 13
Manufacturing Employment
1919-1981
20
18
16
14
12
0
=e 10
4
2
19
25
31 37
43 49 55 61 67 73 79
YEAR
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Figure 14
Ratio of Manufacturing to Total Employment
1939-1981
50
40
30
20
39
43
I I I I
47 51 55 59 63
YEAR
67
71
75
79
exercise. The old jobs discouraged thinking, but the complexity of the
high-tech system will demand contribution from everyone. With expensive
equipment, mistakes are costly, so job tension will be higher. Computers
will provide performance data for each work station. In an environment
where the worker already feels powerless, there is a high risk that "big
brotherism," perceived or real, will be an issue of friction. The proximity
to 1984 is somewhat ironic. The sexes will be much more equal, but the
minority kids with no experience, inferior educations, and who are socially
maladjusted?"the underclass"?will be at a great disadvantage.
Gray-Collar Workers
Today a gap (some would describe it as a gulf) exists between blue-
and white-collar ranks. The high-tech factory will obliterate that distinction
forever. This gap will be filled with clerical, scheduling, coordinating,
engineering, and maintenance personnel plus computer technicians, sys-
tems analysts, programmers, and jobs we don't have names for yet. These
people will be specialists?staff support for the system. They are not blue-
collar and really are not management; they are the ones I call grays. In
order to be successful, work groups will have to be integrated teams in
which each person contributes. There will not be room for arbitrary dis-
tinctions based on rank. Work groups will not be regular. Assignments
will vary with task and technical requirements, making conventional or-
ganization impractical.
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Former blue-collar workers should, with retraining, be qualified for
many of these new jobs. The knowledge they have gained working on
the line will be invaluable. Compensation standards will change. Present
jobs are paid on the basis of seniority, skill, or sweat. Workers will expect
to be compensated for their contribution, not unlike salaried employees
who are also required to think. The shift in values will doubtless provide
some lively bargaining.
In the 1960s, the computer added a new dimension to business man-
agement. In many regards it created middle management. The high-tech
system will create the gray collar and alter every job in the system. That
is a great deal of change.
There will, of course, be new jobs requiring new skills and specialized
training. These specialists are already in short supply. Computer pro-
gramming and systems application job opportunities are growing at 25%
a year. Skilled tradesmen such as electricians are in demand. Young people
will migrate to these jobs. Many of them shy away from the personal
sacrificies demanded by the old production line and they are more com-
fortable with the new technologies. There is little reason that experienced
workers cannot be trained for these jobs as well. The issue, as always, is
who will pay for it.
Workers will become concerned about skill obsolescence. The functions
that people perform will change more frequently as the rate of techno-
logical change increases. Thus workers will need to be retrained more
often. Although some jobs are "leapfrogged" and others are "fractured"
as technology advances, there is little evidence that there are large dis-
locations. It would seem beneficial for firms to consider a more permanent
work force, selected for its ability to adapt to these changes. The turnover
discontinuities we presently endure will be very disruptive to a trained
and integrated work group.
Increasing technological complexity does not necessarily increase worker
skill requirements. In fact, it is usually just the opposite. We incorporate
those complexities into our equipment and processes, making their op-
eration, in most cases, more simple. Research conducted during the tech-
nological changes of the 1950s and 1960s determined that technological
change actually lowered skill requirements. James Bright reported in 1958:
During the several years which I spent in the field research in so-called auto-
mated plants . . . I did not find that the upgrading effect had occurred to
anywhere near the extent that is often assumed . . . .
On the contrary, there was more evidence that automation had reduced
the skill requirements of the operating work force, and occasionally of
the entire factory force including the maintenance organization . . . .
In sum, I see little justification for the popular belief that present labor
is employable in automated plants only with extensive retraining . . . .5
Fred Best wrote in 1973:
The debate stems from the popular assumption during the 1950s and 1960s that
technological advances would raise the skill requirements of future jobs and
require the cultivation of a highly educated labor force. Today this assumption
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is being challenged. It is true that new and highly complex forms of work are
evolving. However, hard data gathered during the last two decades present
strong arguments that with most work, skill requirements are remaining at the
same level or even declining.'
Management and Organization
The substantial technological changes made by the computer-integrated
factory will necessitate organizational and management adjustments in
order to maximize its effectiveness. The most significant of these will be
a reordering of the basic values and structure that have brought industrial
society to its present position of power and success. The technological
complexity of the new system, its sophisticated networking and overlap-
ping functional responsibilities, in addition to its pace and need for flex-
ibility, will be seriously crippled by a rigid decision-making hierarchy.
With many interdisciplinary considerations involved in each decision,
consensus-based systems are proving to be far more effective. In a system
where each individual has a critical role, personal commitment and mo-
tivation become crucial to the success of the group.
The business community has survived and prospered for several cen-
turies using an authoritarian hierarchy. Centralized authority and decision-
making were manageable under the old linear production line; information
theoretically flowed up and decisions and direction flowed down. Every-
one did his job and did not worry a great deal about the next person. That
concept has been modified, as we have realized the need for increased
networking as manufacturing systems grew in complexity. The high-tech
system will require a structure that is highly integrated and flexible. Each
production cell will be a matrix of overlapping responsibilities as a myriad
of operators, schedulers, maintenance people, programmers, etc., try to
do their jobs. Each has a perspective that must be considered. This com-
plexity, in addition to the pace of the operation, will simply not permit
the one-person bottlenecks and bureaucratic barriers common in today's
organizations.
Most management people want better communication, and they work
hard to get it. That is why management philosophy has been evolving
away from authoritarianism. Virtually every management book written in
the last 20 years has extolled the virtues of non-authoritarian management
and correctly pointed out that the most effective leaders are noted for their
ability to create and maintain conditions of consensus. Today even theory
"Y" is being succeeded by more egalitarian concepts. Although we have
not changed the vestiges of authority, our operating modes have been
evolving in that direction.
In an environment of rapid change, consensus organizations demonstrate
greater effectiveness. A hierarchical pyramid does not adapt quickly. In
fact, one of the strengths of the hierarchy is its ability to endure without
changing. It can make decisions quickly, but deciding and doing are very
different processes. The isolation of the decision-maker, the layers of
bureaucracy, and the sheer size of organization combine to give the hi-
erarchy enormous resistance to capricious influence. Unfortunately, they
also serve to create institutional rigidity and a reluctance to change, often
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in the face of obvious advantage. As Bennis and Slater, in their insightful
assessment of organizational democracy, point out, ". . . it is only when
the society reaches a level of technological development in which survival
is dependent on the institutionalization of perpetual change that democracy
becomes necessary . . . .7 Note their choice of the word necessary. The
change from authoritarian hierarchy to an egalitarian form will not come
from an idealistic desire for higher good but simply because the traditional
structure, with its centralized decision-making, will be unable to remain
competitive.
Geographic decentralization will further deconcentrate decision-mak-
ing. Without the need for expensive retooling and immense fixed pro-
duction lines, facilities can be dispersed to reduce transport costs and
inventories, access labor pools, and more directly serve regional markets.
This speaks to a further decentralization of responsibility. Also, the more
universal nature of general-purpose manufacturing cells means that the
factory travels literally with its software. It seems a bit preposterous, but
"manufacturing" could take on a briefcase portability. Certainly it will
be more mobile. In a very simplified sense, the geographic dispersion of
manufacturing need be limited only by product and raw material trans-
portation. There is every reason to expect that these new technologies will
make it easier for our growing list of foreign competitors, and thus for
the continued outflow of American manufacturing.
Another variation is the concept of contract manufacturing. Using pro-
grammable technology, independent manufacturing organizations could
contract their services to marketing firms much as we do now in the
computer business for private-label manufacture. This could become the
operating norm for manufacturing. In any case, producers will be anxious
to contract out unused production time to help amortize capital costs.
Although production may be decentralized, other functions may not.
These new technologies will be expensive. The corporate conglomerate,
with its ability to generate large blocks of capital, may be necessary to
finance ventures of this kind. The fast pace and marketplace complexity
that computer-integrated manufacturing could generate will call for some
very sophisticated marketing and planning.
Smaller firms may be able to compete with the large producers by
carefully selecting a range of products or markets. Most of the advantage
the large firm has today is in the power of its mass production and its
ability to command market share. With significantly reduced production
break-even costs, a smaller firm could market regionally and be price
competitive.
It will be necessary to move real decision-making "down" the orga-
nization. One of the ironies of our present management system is that we
have employees with high-quality information and no authority; and bosses
with little good information and all the authority. Preempted from partic-
ipation, subordinates are quick to criticize an erring management and feel
little compulsion to shoulder the problem. Business people talk a lot about
the delegation of authority, but as long as "the buck" stops somewhere
upstairs, the people on the bottom are not going to take responsibility for
it. A decentralized, highly integrated system moves decision-making closer
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to the source of information. Managers and workers have finely tuned
skills; each brings different information and a unique perspective to a
problem. We need to get them together instead of erecting barriers between
them. We need to learn to trust and respect our employees.
The "glue" that can hold a decentralized organization together is a
firmly held common purpose. The discussion of Japanese management is
becoming a cliche, but there are some things that we can learn from their
success. There is probably no more powerful?or more efficient?force
on earth than a group of people who hold the same goals and ideals and
who are willing to work for them. In an environment of rapid change
there is nothing more adaptable. The most significant task a senior man-
agement group could undertake would be the development of a corporate
philosophy that would guide the entire organization in its efforts. This is
the most powerful way in which a senior group can impact the organi-
zation. In ancient Japan, the Hagakure was the bible of the Samurai
warrior. I have always been impressed by one of its basic precepts: "It
is because preparation has been long that a decision may be quickly
reached."
Management will be more important than it is today, but it will be
different. Managing a consensus-based system requires different skills and
a different approach to people than is commonly practiced in the West. I
offer the following as desirable attributes for the manager of the not too
distant future:
1. The patience to work in a context of complexity and pluralism.
2. The intellectual clarity to conceptualize a workable consensus.
3. The flexibility to revise conceptions.
4. The integrity to win the trust of contending forces.
5. The sensitivity to subtle variations in human attitudes and their
changes.
6. The self-confidence to risk and to be spontaneous.
7. The persuasiveness to mobilize a constituency of willing allies in
pursuit of goals that are tolerable for al1.8
The other critical management component of the future is employee
commitment. The computer-integrated system makes each individual's
contribution much more important. We can no longer afford the atmos-
phere of ambivalence, sabotage, high turnover, and distrust that so often
characterizes the manufacturing climate. Surveys point to the fear and
powerlessness felt by today's employees. Feelings of this kind generate
low aspirations, make them hostile, cause them to behave ineffectively,
and encourage them not to risk.9 It troubles me to hear executives speak
of the need for greater employee loyalty. Loyalty and allegiance are con-
cepts whose roots originate in the obligations of a feudal vassal to his
liege lord. It is this kind of power relationship that has created the barriers
that exist today. The computer-integrated system needs grass-roots com-
mitment?not just support.
Man is an animal of both passion and intellect. We need to care about
the things we do, else we become robots ourselves. And yet, we have
created this compartmentalized, Taylorized, impersonal business hierarchy
that robs employees of any real opportunity to possess their work and to
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be responsible for its outcome. Mills wrote about the need for a craftsman
to psychologically own his work in order to accept responsibility for its
quality. This principle holds true for all of us. I recommend Frederick
Herzberg's concept: "The employer's task is not to motivate his people
to get them to achieve; he should provide opportunities for people to
achieve, so they will become motivated." I?
In 1980, General Motors received fewer than one suggestion per em-
ployee per year. Toyota got 18. At GM, 22% of the employee suggestions
were accepted; at Toyota, 90% were put to use. There is a considerable
difference between the two systems concerning respect for the individual.
It is a fundamental part of the Oriental culture, and their management
practices demonstrate it. It is evidenced by their product quality, low
absenteeism, and low turnover. They don't have unions because they don't
need them.
Management is going to have to become much more flexible in thinking
as well as in organization. We often operate with what has made us
successful rather than what is needed. The ability to adapt to an uncertain
environment has always been important in competitive athletics and chess;
it is becoming a critical necessity for business. Along with flexibility,
management will have to be much more future oriented. We will have to
raise our sights. Many business decisions are made today with a limited
view toward year-end performance and return on investment, and the long-
term consequences go unheeded. Short-term thinking is already a burden,
and I believe it will become an onerous one in the future. We will have
to be much more risk oriented, less hobbled by the restrictions of con-
servative financial management. The future rewards those who move with
it, as long as they do so prudently. Prudence, however, under the limiting
influence of current philosophies, is proving to be far too conservative in
a highly competitive, rapidly changing environment. The West is lagging
in its adoption of computer-integrated technology. If a firm does not
innovate, does not take the short-term risk, it runs the greatest risk of all,
i.e., that of long-term obsolescence. We have some industries that are
belatedly learning that lesson, and there isn't much they can do about it
now.
Conclusion
George Bernard Shaw said, "The only thing men learn from history is
that men learn absolutely nothing from history." Arguments are made
during each period of technological change that it differs from the others,
and yet, when it is over, we find that the pattern has remained intact. The
vast majority of workers remain employed and skill requirements, if any-
thing, are reduced. There are workers who get caught between the heaving
tectonic plates of technological change. Their numbers are not large, but
we have not provided the assistance they need in order to develop new
skills.
New technology creates jobs in numbers beyond anything previously
experienced. New companies spring up utilizing the newly developed
technologies and provide an economic and technological transformation
to the entire economy. The social structure of the business community is
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rewoven to manage these new developments. Society catapults to levels
of consciousness, freedom, and social development previously unattain-
able. Unfortunately, most of these changes are not readily discernible until
they occur. There is a strong historical pattern of this societal growth, but
it requires a leap of faith in humanity and a certain willingness to risk in
order to accept its continuation without guarantees. The history of man's
development has been far from perfect, and it is certainly open to criticism,
as much contemporary literature will attest; but for all its flaws, it has
been an amazingly successful process.
The new robotic and computer technologies are simply another chapter
in the ancient relationship between man and machine?freeing us from
the limitations of our bodies, performing the routine and precise tasks for
which we are ill equipped, and permitting us the freedom to pursue our
unique human nature. Man and machine make far better companions than
competitors. Economist Leo Cherne has said, "The computer is incredibly
fast, accurate and stupid. Man is unbelievably slow, inaccurate and bril-
liant. The marriage of the two is a force beyond calculation."
? Notes
1. Samuel Lilley, Men, Machines, and History, (New York: International Pub-
lishing, 1965), pp. 320-322.
2. Louis T. Rader, "Automation Over The Years," Vital Speeches, No. 6, Vol.
XLVII, 1981.
3. Charles E. Silberman & The Editors of Fortune, The Myths of Automation,
(N.Y.: Harper & Row, 1966); Richard Nelson, Merton J. Peck, and Edward D.
Kalachek, Technology, Economic Growth, and Public Policy, (The Brookings Insti-
tution, 1967), pp. 99-100; John L. Enos, "Invention and Innovation in the Petroleum
Refining Industry," in The Rate and Direction of Inventive Activity, (Princeton: Univ.
Press, 1962).
4. U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics.
5. James R. Bright, "Does Automation Raise Skill Requirements?" Harvard
Business Review, (July/Aug. 1958).
6. Fred Best, The Future of Work (NY: Prentice-Hall, 1973), p. 101.
7. Warren Bennis and Phillip Slater, "Organizational Democracy: Towards Work
by Consent of the Employed," in Fred Best, The Future of Work (New York: Prentice-
Hall, 1973), pp. 73-85.
8. Adapted from a letter from John Gardner to Joseph Slater, 3/23/78.
9. Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Men and Women of the Corporation, (NY: Basic
Books, 1977).
10. Frederick Herzberg, "Putting People Back Together," Industry Week ,(July
24, 1979), p. 49.
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The Future of Management
by
William Exton, Jr.
No aspects of the future can be of greater importance than the nature
of and the requirements for management. As that class or form of behavior
which affects, in one way or another, the interests and lives of all of us?
as well as the utilization of most of the resources upon which we all
depend?it must continue to play a critical part in determining the char-
acter and patterns of work; the kind and availability and distribution of
goods and services; and the nature of the tangible and intangible incentives
that motivate contribution to the general economy.
Only governments, natural or man-made catastrophes, or major alter-
ations in the environment can exert more potent effects than does?and
will?the practice of management: the performance of those who manage
others?at any level, and for any purpose.
All organizations may be regarded as in some degree productive of
goods and/or services; but it is logical to regard management as classifiable
according to whether it operates in an economically oriented environment,
or within some form of governmental activity, or in a "non-profit" or-
ganization. Such distinctions may be blurred under conditions other than
those fostering or permitting "free enterprise"; but the managers in so-
cialist environments are still constrained to apply generally recognized
principles of management, so far as feasible, to the extent that their goals
parallel those of the managers of and in organizations operating for the
usual capitalist objectives of maximizing productivity and optimizing profit
through market-oriented strategies and policies.
This paper considers the future of management in terms of the probable
adaptation and development of currently effective practices in view of
known or detectable trends, and of the anticipated effects of the current
or predictable availability of new or imminent technological resources. It
does not consider the possible effects of major political or sociological
change, or of basic modifications in the organization of the economy as
a whole.
Management has been changing in so many different ways, and in
William Exton, Jr., is the principal of William Exton, Jr., and Associates, Management
Consultants, in New York City.
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response to so many different conditions, factors, and influences, that any
responsible attempt at prediction must aim at presenting the resultant of
many diverse forces. Even such an extremely complex undertaking is
further complicated by such considerations as these:
? The functions of management are increasingly numerous and com-
plex.
? There are many "theories" of management.
? The size, scope, and actual or potential geographical dispersion of
many organizations impose new or extended managerial requirements.
? The diversity of products, services and markets makes special de-
mands on the management of many companies.
? The acceleration of technological innovation imposes a growing need
for creativity, alertness, sophistication of competition, and efficient con-
duct and exploitation of research and development.
? Persistent enlargement of scale and great?even exponential?in-
crements in complexity and diversity affect most considerations confront-
ing management.
One way to organize an attempt to project management into the future
is to consider?more or less separately, though they are functionally
interrelated?what are generally regarded as major functions of manage-
ment. These are commonly listed as planning, organizing, leading (co-
ordinating), and controlling. Let us then look at what the future holds for
these basic managerial functions.
Planning
It is easy to foresee that the planning function of management will
involve increasing exploitation of computer capabilities. The two primary
effects will be the increase in and approved availability of information;
and a quantum advance in the techniques of and resources for mathematical
modeling.
These areas of progress will be further enhanced by ever more helpful
computer graphics, both for the more effective display of information,
and for visual demonstration of?and, often, replacing the need to cal-
culate?the effects of various factors on mathematically modeled situa-
tions.
None of this, of course, will totally eliminate the necessity for the
application of personal values and judgment and for the making of many
decisions. And it will require greatly increased capabilities for the creation
of ever more sophisticated software and programming. It will also demand
a very high degree of sophistication and perceptiveness on the part of the
users of such resources and techniques, especially to identify, recognize,
and allow for the dissimilarities between models and reality.
There are those who are troubled by the assumption that "everything
is quantifiable" and who believe that intangibles and unrecognized, un-
allowed-for variables will continue to assert themselves in the real world?
confounding and frustrating those who rely too completely on the rigidities
often characteristic of the so-called "management sciences." To the de-
gree that mathematical models fail to parallel, significantly and relevantly,
the reality they are intended to represent, the results and derivatives of
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such modeling must also diverge from reality?possibly, even, to a much
greater degree.
As for the fundamental dimension of all planning?time?it is likely
that the future will see progress in several directions, each of which will
involve changes (adjustment, adaptation, or basically different evalua-
tions) in the perception of time and of its effect on planning and on
activities planned for. In these developments, a certain paradox will appear
as many activities and operations, now quite time consuming, will be
accomplished with far greater rapidity?many of them virtually instan-
taneously. And some functions that have had to be exercised sequentially
or alternatively will be carried out simultaneously?and also integratedly,
if appropriate.
At the same time, planning will be based on broader and longer per-
spectives. Despite the generally accelerating rate of change, computer-
based analyses working on greatly expanded data banks?and with pro-
gramming that represents both factually detected trends, anticipated de-
velopments, and/or meticulously delineated potential contingencies?will
provide more valid projections over longer ranges. And these, processed
against carefully defined assumptions, will contribute to the formulation
of strategies, policies, programs, project designs, and many other products
of managerial functioning.
Organizing
The nature of all organizations, and perhaps especially of business
organizations, will change in the future as the result of both technological
and sociological change?and probably also as the nature of work, specific
tasks, and working relationships also change.
1. Technological change will have many different kinds of effects.
Among them:
? Larger capital investment in facilities, per individual worker.
? Closer integration of work and working relationships?especially
vertically (between higher and lower levels) and horizontally (between
remote and differentiated but interacting functions) as a result of ever more
elaborate electronic interconnections and computer tie-ins, and extended
systematization.
? Shared experience in training for and utilization of advanced equip-
ment, even when functions and responsibilities differ and participants may
be some levels apart.
? Shift of worker evaluation from previously valued attributes to those
applicable to tasks of the future?primarily utilization of computers, ro-
bots, and related equipment.
2. Sociological changes will also affect personnel in many ways.
? Impersonality of many working and selling relationships will result
increasingly from greater use of electronic interfacing, teleconferencing,
elaborated telephonic capabilities, electronic mail, etc.
? Individuals will increasingly identify with the elaborate equipment
that makes their functioning possible. They will tend to feel lost, pow-
erless, and inadequate without it. This will be enhanced when "cause and
effect" are not as obviously related, in the working situation, as they are
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now with most mechanical and even most electrically operated equipment.
? Organizational structure will change, adapting to the processes and
systems developed to exploit technological advances. Organizations will
have fewer hierarchical levels, though perhaps more horizontally func-
tioning components with differentiated functions. Intermediate and directly
supervisory levels will need greater appreciation of overall organizational
functioning; they will have to evaluate the effectiveness of integration of
their contributions in relation to the organization as a whole, rather than
merely conform to the standards imposed on their output. "Span of con-
trol" potentials will be enlarged.
? In many situations, qualifying for specific positions will be subject
to exacting tests. Such considerations as seniority will tend to become
obsolete, as age and sex become irrelevant; and demonstrated capability
(innate, or acquired by special education, or by training and/or experience),
adaptability, and motivation will become the governing criteria for per-
sonnel selection and assignment.
? The prospective (and incipient) changes in working hours (decreases,
flexibility) and in place of work (own home, etc.) will also require or-
ganizational changes?especially in delegation, in the nature and authority
of supervision, and in the evaluation and the control of work performed.
? Meanwhile, the innovative trends toward work redesign, team pro-
duction, and the involvement of worker initiatives in the enhancement of
productivity and quality will exert substantial, and probably synergistic,
effects on organizational character.
Leading
This term is such a "high-order abstraction" that it symbolizes many
quite different forms of activity?from personal command of troops in
battle to the creation of exemplary (or popular, commercially successful)
works of art.
In the future it is likely that, in the context of management, the term
"leadership" will be applied to:
? Effective, successful innovation in hardware, software, applications,
techniques, design, services, or other aspects of high-technology opera-
tions.
? Predominance in any significant field?as signified by size, sales
volume, profitability, "style," "class," "status," distinctive marketing,
or other characteristics of a favorable organizational "image."
? Individuals, groups, or firms that manifest (in the context of contri-
bution to or management of high technology) the "old-fashioned virtues"
that traditionally won the accolade of "leadership." Such leadership will
be increasingly difficult to assert and make apparent, in the impersonal
context of electronically interconnected working relationships.
It was easy?though risky?for King Henry of Navarre to demonstrate
leadership directly and personally, by inviting his retainers to follow the
white plume on his helmet into the thickest of the fight. And his dem-
onstration of courage in daring that risk, as well as his potent fighting
ability, set an example that so motivated his men?and so intimidated his
enemies?as to ensure his victory. But it is difficult to find a real parallel
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for such direct, personal, and dramatic leadership by example in busi-
ness?past, present, or future.
The growing impersonality of electronically mediated interaction and
the context of tasks focused on electronic or electronically controlled
processes will minimize the opportunity for the exercise of leadership
above that required for appropriate but routine management. However, in
that same context, the manifestation of admirable personal characteristics,
the demonstration of competence to meet emergencies and to relate con-
structively to subordinates and leaders, will all amount to the kind of
leadership that can exert positive, optimizing effects upon the operations
involved.
Furthermore, it is foreseeable that most workers will be performing
their duties in a relatively dull, symbol-dominated, remote-from-the-action
environment. The display of attractive, interesting, and admirable personal
characteristics in such an environment?so long as it is not distracting,
disturbing, or disruptive?may be an important psychological "plus" for
the routine-ridden workers. The "humanizing" of management may well
become a major requirement for success in many future activities and
operations.
Coordination has generally been regarded as a major aspect of lead-
ership, and coordination will be increasingly required by the increasing
complexity of operations and activities to be foreseen. But computers,
programs, and perhaps mathematical modeling can greatly facilitate at
least the specification (and?usually?the execution) of who, what, where,
when, how, with what, etc.
Communication is the most essential tool of management?and there
can be no leadership without it. Future managements will have far superior
high-technology facilities for communication. The future may also reveal
the extent to which and the ways in which management can satisfactorily
supersede the unique and natural face-to-face mode of communication
without a serious?if intangible?loss.
Controlling
The term "control" has been grossly abused. At one extreme?that of
corporate cost controllers, accountants, and financial executives?it refers
to the availability of data purportedly representative of certain quantitative
aspects of ongoing activities and of corporate operations generally. But
such "controls" are mere numerical symbols?cues for action, but not,
by themselves, capable of effecting change, or of any other initiative.
At the other extreme, "control'Ldenotes actual exertion of the capability
to direct and to change an ongoing situation (being "in control"?whether
or not this involves the use of or reference to data).
And, in between, the same term refers to the physical means or the
intermediary agencies whereby or through which direction and change are
effectuated.
In the future, management will benefit by important advances in all
three of these aspects of control.
Advances in computerization are already providing the means for re-
cording, storing, processing, and retrieving data essential to knowledge
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of ongoing operations and significant situations?and can do so on a
current, "real time" basis. Advances in the means of communication and
in the interconnection of communication facilities and systems will render
the input and reporting of data ever more timely. Advances in the pro-
duction and transmission of graphics (process generated, operator guided,
or combinations of these) will make transmissions increasingly meaningful
and more easily and rapidly evaluated.
Improved instrumentation and the further development of automatically
functioning control mechanisms?with applications not now feasible, and
with the potential for reacting to phenomena, conditions, or computerized
interventions not now feasible?will relieve managers (as well as non-
managerial operations) of more and more elements of their responsibilities,
leaving only those diminishing but ultimately irreducible matters involving
value judgments and discretionary decisions.
And, finally, the specific exertions of control by managerial intervention
will be far better informed?not only as to relevant current detail, but
also via projections of alternative courses?based on far more elaborate
and complex models, and more probably programmed modifications thereof,
than any available today.
The composite result of this threefold advance will be to provide greatly
enhanced assurance that plans will be carried out far more faithfully than
at present. But this advantage should necessitate not only the fullest and
most detailed care in planning but also the recognition that the planners
must rely less on adaptation, adjustment, trial-and-error, and other mod-
ifications in the implementation of plans, since it will be easier to automate'
controlling factors than to provide the evaluative and discretionary sen-
sitivity necessary to maintain the flexibility now both usual and essential.
Another way to organize the development of ideas about the future of
management is to consider the various theories of management and the
related sciences, disciplines, or fields of knowledge associated with them.
Harold Koontz in "The Managerial Jungle Revisited" (Academy of
Management Review) identifies and comments on 13 differentiated the-
ories of management (including one, Operational, which purports to com-
bine all others). Certain academic disciplines?more or less well-defined
fields of knowledge, scholarship, and research?are associated with these
theories. And it is reasonable to assume that the theories of management
will gain or lose influence?and consequent effect upon the performance
of managers?as the related disciplines develop or regress and as they are
determined to be more or less relevant to and supportive of actual man-
agerial processes.
Accordingly, some indications of the future of management can prob-
ably be gained by projecting the future of these several identified academic
disciplines, and deducing from such projections the effects upon man-
agement?or at least on the current theories of management, and thus
upon the exercise of management guided by such theories.
Here is a listing (derived from Koontz) of the major academic disciplines
generally considered to be more or less relevant to the exercise of man-
agement, together with those theories of management to which they are
especially related:
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Field of Knowledge
Decision Theory
Economic Theory
General Systems Theory
Mathematics
Political Science
Sociology
Social Psychology
Cultural Anthropology
Psychology
Industrial Engineering
Theory of Management
Rational Choice
Rational Choice
Applied Systems
Management Sciences
Cooperative Social Systems
Group Behavior
Group Behavior
Group Behavior
Interpersonal Behavior
Socio-Technical Systems
In addition, there is, of course, that special field of knowledge concerned
with actual situations and contingencies experienced by various enter-
prises, and with the study of the roles of individual managers, or groups
of managers, under various conditions. This, together with applicable
elements of all the fields listed above, relates to the so-called Operational
approach to a theory of management?obviously a theory that purports
to be virtually comprehensive.
It seems impracticable to project realistically what the future may bring
in each of these fields of knowledge; to foresee how all such developments
may impinge upon and interact with one another; and to anticipate ade-
quately the resulting effects upon the practice of management. But, to the
degree that such projections may be feasible, competent, and valid, they
may be applied?at least hypothetically?to the managerial functions
discussed above.
In this way, it should be possible to arrive at some degree of prevision
of what may characterize at least some aspects of management and of
what may be required of managers in the future.
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Education for Managers of
Accelerating Change
by
George Korey
We are now living in an era of very profound and fast changes, when
the computer is a link between human expertise and the advanced world
of mechanical and electronic technology. We are witnessing many changes
that will transform our world during our lifetime in a dramatic way that
cannot be compared to revolutions of the past. All of the previous revo-
lutions of mankind have involved mainly changes in the distribution of
power and property within a society. The approaching technological rev-
olution will affect us in this way, too, but it will also affect the essence
of our individual and social existence. It will have tremendous conse-
quences for the way and the meaning of our life.
It is far easier to speak of the past than the future; we have no experience
of the future. Nevertheless, we must speculate about it and try to visualize
the changes it will bring, as we are educating a new generation that will
live in a completely different world.
In North America, more than in any other part of the world, we live
today in a society that is shaped?from the cultural, social, psychological,
and economic points of view?by the far-reaching impact of science and,
technology. The computer has become a major force behind the accel-
eration of knowledge acquisition and the storage of this knowledge. There
are clear indications that, during the next few decades, the human brain
will become more and more powerful. Through the use of computers,
people will also acquire additional powers that will expand the boundaries
of human reasoning and potential. Man will have the capacity to determine
the sex of his children. Through the use of new pharmaceutical products,
he will have the capacity to influence and expand memory potential and
the intelligence of his children. To meet the challenge of the approaching
change, businessmen will have to forget about the "trial and error" ap-
proach. They will have to learn to use all possible and available man-
agement devices and scientific tools, thereby improving their process of
decision-making and permitting a greater degree of precision.
Alvin Toffler, in his book Future Shock, said:
George Korey is president of the Canadian School of Management in Toronto, Ontario,
Canada.
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In the technological systems of tomorrow?fast, fluid and self-regulating?
machines will deal with the flow of physical materials; men with the flow of
information and insight. Machines will increasingly perform the routine tasks;
men the intellectual and creative tasks.
The technology of tomorrow requires not millions of lightly lettered men,
ready to work in unison at endlessly repetitive jobs; it requires not men who
take orders in unblinking fashion, aware that the price of bread is mechanical
submission to authority, but men who can make critical judgements, who can
weave their way through novel environments, who are quick to spot new re-
lationships in the rapidly changing reality.
In just a few years, we will be facing a world quite different from the
one in which we live today. As a result of changes that will come, we
must strive to make life better from the environmental, social, and eco-
nomic point of view. There is no question that, as a result of technological
progress, we can claim beneficial results, such as:
? improved health care
? the ability to harness and use energy
? a longer life-span (primarily in developed countries)
? replacement of manual labor by machines
? advances in mass audio-video and satellite communications
? progress in transportation and methods of travel on land, sea, and in
the air
? improved production techniques and systems
? vastly improved access to knowledge and a generally better educated
population
? the ability to manage complex physical and social systems
? increased per capita income.
But resulting from these achievements are certain accompanying prob-
lems, or "mixed blessings," that progress brings. These include:
? a certain loss of privacy
? erosion of traditional values
? dehumanization of ordinary work
? centralization of technological systems
? proliferation of weapons
? air, noise, land, and water pollution
? accelerated depletion of the earth's resources.
It seems that the abundance of material goods in technologically de-
veloped countries may have contributed to the growing scarcity of non-
material goods?such as time, wisdom, stability, ethical values, and the
influence that people exercise over certain areas:
We have a lot less time than people who lived before us.
While we are bombarded with a lot of irrelevant information, the wis-
dom to make right decisions is not increasing.
Stability is decreasing, with very quick changes in the character of
whole communities.
Ethical values are often neglected by contemporary society.
Influence and impact that people could have on social systems is
decreasing.
The challenge for educators and for managers of future change is to
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make technology more responsive to our needs?so that it will provide
us with solutions to social problems as well. We have to balance our
increased capacity to use knowledge for practical purposes with a sensi-
tivity to human needs, an increase in human concern and ethical values
to serve mankind.
An analysis of historical and current trends will help us master the
future. Certain trends will probably continue (e.g., the overall growth of
world population; the growth of human knowledge; the democratization
of education; a trend toward further industrialization, specialization, and
professionalization; the growth of leisure time; and cultural homogeni-
zation.
While technological progress may have some unpleasant side-effects,
it is nevertheless essential for us to maintain the human side of this process,
a high quality of life, by developing a matching change mechanism in the
evaluation of concurrent human progress.
In order to accommodate business and industry to the needs of evolving
society, we need people who will know what must be done and who will
plan and think about how it should be done.
Obviously, managers in the future must assume a more active and
creative role in attacking the ills afflicting the business world and the
whole of society in general.
What this means, of course, is: (1) industrialists and businessmen must
recognize the world outside their offices and respond to the challenges
presented to them; (2) in order to master change, we have to understand
the long-range goals of society and the mechanisms of control over the
forces of change; (3) we have to educate managers of accelerating change.
Linkage must be found between business and higher education through
an acceptance of the industry's needs, an assessment approach, and the
acknowledgement by universities of the lifelong learning concept and the
idea of experiential learning.
The role of our generation will be to find an intellectual depth and a
philosophical meaning in the technological age. The success of this search
is vital?so that man and science may co-exist, so that man may still be
happy, and so that society may adapt itself to the requirements of a
changing age and to the social needs of the future world.
These changes of the new technological age?changes that will affect
all of us personally?are already affecting, in a different way, the world
of business and of industry.
There are already certain signs indicating that the role of executives in
North American business is being altered by these revolutionary forces
that have had an unprecedented impact on methods of business manage-
ment.
The first of these trends has been the rapidly accelerating democrati-
zation of society that has opened opportunities of advancement for people
of ability, people who increasingly insist on and enjoy the right of par-
ticipation in basic decision-making. The result has been a demand, voiced
loud and clear by middle management, for a meaningful role in company
planning and a real opportunity to contribute importantly to that decision-
making.
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The second revolutionary force reshaping management practices is the
information explosion, which forces the senior executive to rely more and
more on his subordinates. Faced with today's new technology, every
executive must learn to know what he does not know, and be prepared
to curb his natural self-assertiveness.
A third force modifying the present-day style of executive leadership
is the sheer bigness of business. Mass marketing has contributed to an
enormous growth of business, not only in sales and income but also in
the kinds of business activities, because of the diversification of compa-
nies. This diversification on top of growth will unavoidably broaden mid-
dle management's powers of decision-making. Similarly, it will further
reduce the number of decisions the president of the company alone can
reach in any one of the many businesses in which his corporation competes.
The fourth trend that has altered techniques of business management
in recent years is the worldwide expansion of business opportunity, based
in large measure on an insatiable demand for consumer goods among all
income groups. The global approach to business forces executives to direct
operations that may take place in several different industries or markets,
each with its own unique requirements for success.
These new forces I have cited combine to limit the old-fashioned style
of business leadership and to put stress not only on the senior executive's
decision-making power, but on his ability to unleash the decision-making
power of the company's middle management personnel.
In view ?)f the changes that have already occurred and the rapid accel-
eration of new changes and demands that management will face during
this and the next decade, how are business schools responding to the
challenge to educate future managers who will be able to manage the
change?
The answer to this question requires a closer look at both traditional
and alternative approaches to management education in our universities
and colleges.
From the point of view of adult professional men and women, education
is often seen as the acquisition of the art of the utilization of knowledge.
As such, it constitutes a vital and necessary element in an individual's
life. Educational programs recognizing prior learning and work experience
provide an answer to the needs of mature students who already know what
they wish to make of their lives and who are looking for the best, most
direct way of equipping themselves for it.
As a proponent of managerial andragogy, I see that pioneering schools
which think in terms of preparing managers for the future are starting now
to play an essential role in this process by:
? Offering alternative educational programs based on the recognition
that practical experience has a definite educational value that can be
awarded credit in the pursuit of higher education, and that experiential
learning in the form of past and current work experience can be
assessed for academic credit toward a diploma or degree when doc-
umented.
? Preparing adults who already have considerable business and profes-
sional experience for managerial positions in their own field through
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career-oriented degree, diploma, or certificate programs that combine
specific educational objectives with academic excellence and integ-
rity.
? Providing opportunities, through seminars and intensive continuing
education, for the upgrading of professional qualifications and keep-
ing up with the "state of the art" of management and to meet the
accreditation needs of the growing professional credentialing move-
ment.
? Undertaking and supporting research activities in the areas of busi-
ness, industry, public, and health sector.
They see education as a lifelong process that must be related to the
varied needs of people at different stages of their lives. They recognize
that adults who know what they want to learn can learn what they need
effectively and quickly.
Many adults, who have extensive practical work experience and had
no opportunity to complete their university education, are now demanding
that their managerial experience be validated and that they be allowed to
complete their work toward a degree in a non-traditional way by combining
a credit for prior learning, both formal and informal (management de-
velopment, continuing education, professional association, industrial and
government programs), and credits for practical managerial work expe-
rience.
Traditional post-secondary education has been based on certain key
assumptions that do not appear to be universally applicable today, espe-
cially to many businessmen and other working professionals who wish to
continue their education:
1. It was assumed that post-secondary education followed immediately
on completion of secondary school program. Consequently, an over-
whelming majority of students were young, with very little or no practical
experience in any aspect of business or professional life.
2. It was thought that the main function of post-secondary education
was to develop mainly general skills and approaches, to provide the student
with a theoretical background that, it was presumed, he would then be
able to utilize in business and the professions. In this way the school was
believed to prepare the student for life and career.
3. Programs, curricula, and admission procedures all reflected this basic
educational philosophy. They were based largely on clearly defined subject
areas and curriculum units. Students proceeded in a definite order from
one unit to another, and completed one educational level before being
admitted to another.
These basic trends in educational theory and practice were so prevalent,
so entrenched, that to most people they seemed based on age-old traditions,
representing the only "natural" way of acquiring an education. But, in
fact, as any student of the history of education knows, this is a mistaken
view. Education over many centuries took many forms, most of them
based on principles other than the ones that we have learned to accept as
nearly "self-evident."
It might be argued that many of the "new" trends in post-secondary
education represent in fact a revival of some very ancient insights and
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approaches. We might even say that we are experiencing a renaissance
of the truly traditional, practitioner-oriented approach to education that
was prevalent before comparatively modern times in most areas of the
world.
Whatever the case may be, the merit of these new, or not so new,
trends lies in the fact that they reflect the changing needs and patterns of
our own time. They are characterized by breaking away from the high
school-to-university-to-career model by the introduction of new ap-
proaches to assessment and evaluation of educational achievement, by the
recognition of the value of experiential learning, by the tendency to com-
bine theoretical, classroom learning with actual professional practice, and
to look at the actual learning process less from the point of view of
compartmentalized subject areas and more in terms of the total situation
confronting the student in his professional work as well as in other areas
of his life.
These new ways of looking at educational theory and practices received
much of their initial impetus from the changes that have occurred in the
last 25 years or so within the student population and especially the growing
number of adult students attending centers of post-secondary education.
In view of the complexity of today's business and approaching change,
increasing numbers of adults find it not only helpful but even necessary
to go back to school to provide an essential step to further professional
development and success and to be able to manage the approaching change.
Education in business management still occurs, for the most part, within
the framework of the traditional approach to education. This entails class-
room instruction in which the instructor plays the leading role and scope
for discussion is limited. The emphasis is on teaching theory. While such
an approach might be sufficient for young students without significant
work experience who are looking for entry-level positions, it is not good
enough for people already in management positions. Little concerted effort
is made to make the program more useful to these students with practical
experience. Whatever the work experience, it is never counted towards
credit. Instead, the mature professional must successfully complete a pre-
scribed number of courses to obtain a degree in management.
When in 1964 the Union for Experimenting Colleges and Universities
was established in the United States, it marked the beginning of an al-
ternative approach to education in North America as these colleges and
universities began offering what were termed "nontraditional" courses.
Nontraditional or alternative educational programs are characterized by
the belief that credit should be granted for documented, relevant work
experience and learning acquired outside the college setting. Instruction
is given in tutorials scheduled on Saturdays or evenings so that students
in the work force do not have to sacrifice work and earnings to continue
their education. The faculty, committed to the view that theory should be
combined with practice, promotes the participation of students in the
learning process by having them relate theoretical principles to their work
experiences.
In Canada, an alternative approach to management education is offered
by the Canadian School of Management. Founded in Toronto in 1976,
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and affiliated with Northland Open University, the school offers bachelor
degree programs in business management and health administration and
an Executive M.B.A. program. In all its programs, the emphasis is on
meeting the needs of mature students by combining theoretical knowledge
with practical experience, and in meeting the needs of the business, in-
dustry, public, and health sectors in preparing a cadre of experienced
managers who will be able to manage accelerating change.
In Europe and the United States, considerable effort has been expended
on the education of managers, and companies have developed in-house
training programs for their managers. In the past, successful completion
of such programs was not considered to be credit-worthy by universities
and colleges. This situation has changed with the advent of the U.S.
Program on Noncollegiate Sponsored Instruction. The program shows how
colleges may grant credit towards a degree to persons who have success-
fully completed "educational programs and courses sponsored by non-
collegiate organizations, including business and industry, government, and
labor unions." Thus, this program makes post-secondary education more
accessible to persons of all ages, and allows managers to validate their
experience obtained outside of the traditional college classroom.
By making higher learning more accessible to working managers and
by combining theory with practice in instruction, the nontraditional ap-
proach offers a means of increasing the flexibility of managers, individ-
ually and collectively. Thus, in the modern business environment, where
the ability to adapt to changing conditions is crucial, the nontraditional
approach harmonizes well with the needs of the business community for
management education.
A growing percentage of the student population today is composed of
working adults who wish and often have to continue their education, but
who only rarely can afford to interrupt their careers to go back to school
as full-time students.
In response to ever increasing knowledge specialization and organiza-
tional complexity, as well as the need to upgrade the competency of
managers, it makes obvious sense to continue one's professional career
while studying, not only for financial reasons, but also from the point of
view of making one's education truly relevant to one's professional and
other needs. But in order to accommodate and truly serve this type of
student, some basic changes must be introduced into the traditional post-
secondary educational system. New programs, new procedures, and new
emphases are needed. They mean a departure from the concepts of pe-
dagogy?or teaching of young people?and acceptance of the concept of
andragogy?development of adults.
The following changes and new approaches seem most essential in this
modern, alternative approach to management education, if we seriously
think of preparing and educating managers for the accelerating change:
1. Traditional admission procedures and requirements must be
modified. Evaluation of students' achievements should not be limited to
formal courses taken at academic institutions and credits granted for largely
classroom learning. Professional experience should also be given formal
credit recognition. In other words, a student who has had an opportunity
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of developing skills and acquiring knowledge in any given field should
be able to translate that achievement into credits if he applies to an ed-
ucational institution for admission. This seems to be a minimum require-
ment.
Traditional educational institutions cannot be blamed for being suspi-
cious of some of these new trends in credit-granting and pointing out
possibilities of abuse. Nevertheless, some acceptance of experiential learn-
ing seems inevitable and necessary. It is incumbent on schools with non-
traditional approaches to explore these new admission procedures, while
at the same time making absolutely sure that high educational standards
are maintained.
2. Changes are needed in the curriculum planning and educational
requirements in academic institutions, especially those whose student
populations contain a considerable percentage of adult professionals.
Actual professional and other relevant experiences of every student should
be given full weight and academic credit. Many skills assumed completely
in young high school graduates should be recognized in more experienced
adult students. The principle, therefore, must be to add to, to build upon,
already existing skills and learning experiences, to organize and sort out
the student's knowledge and to provide the means of developing it further.
Curriculum planning should be flexible enough to reflect the individual
student's needs and background. Proven and obvious competence should
be viewed as equivalent to some course work. For example, it would
make little sense to require an experienced accountant to take a course in
basic accounting just because a curriculum set up for mainly inexperienced
students prescribes it, or for the same reason, to ask a personnel manager
in charge of a large department to take an introductory course in personnel
administration. This may seem obvious, and yet there are still very few
academic institutions, at least in Canada, that are willing to grant academic
recognition to experiential learning. In fact, this feature of the Canadian
School of Management program and the keystone of its educational ap-
proach still raises quite a few academic eyebrows and causes much mis-
understanding of its policies. The point is not to give credit away, but to
give it where it is due.
3. Another very important feature of adult professional education
should be to allow the student to set up his own goals and his own
timetable whenever possible. As mentioned above, a program of studies
can, and often should, be combined with a full-time professional career,
and it should in fact take advantage of the learning possibilities offered
by a day-to-day pursuit of a profession. Curricula should be structured
around experiential learning wherever possible, rather than in competition
or conflict with it.
4. Credentialing of professionals (or certifying an individual's level
of competence, knowledge, skills, and professional experience) is a
new and growing force of change. The credentialing process, often
administered by professional societies, government agencies, and other
organizations, presents a tremendous opportunity to progressively
oriented post-secondary educational institutions as they face the ap-
proaching change. Licensing and regulation by governments concerning
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such professions as engineering, medicine, management consulting, nurs-
ing, or accounting have been instituted for public protection. The newly
developing credentialing movement?a growing force for change?occurs
not only for legal, health, liability, or safety reasons. As a result of
competition and complexity in business, as well as the desire to better
manage technological change, new professional groups and organized
associations have emerged and will continue to grow (groups such as
financial or economic analysts, computer programmers, strategic planners,
insurance consultants, fellows in banking, real estate, profit planners,
social economists, human resources managers, business presenters, health
service executives, career planners, social work executives, organization
development managers, manpower forecasters, environment engineers,
etc.).
The scope of the credentialing movement currently exceeds 50 creden-
tialing groups. As the awareness, knowledge, and commitment to the
professional credentialing idea grows, continuing professional education
will be the direction of many schools of management to assist such groups
in upgrading qualifications, testing, and maintenance of established cre-
dentials?as many professional organizations will regard credentialing not
only as a tool for the advancement of their membership, but also as a
gauge of higher reputation of their organizations in the eyes of the public.
These are the basic changes of approach to post-secondary professional
education that some of us are trying to explore and introduce. Some
traditional educators view these trends with suspicion, fearing that they
might lead to lowering of educational standards and goals. Yet it seems
to us that these fears, however understandable, are not well founded. An
experienced adult student, actively engaged in professional work, is surely
less likely to accept poor teaching and lower standards than a young,
inexperienced student, used to being a passive recipient of a product to
which he is in many cases quite indifferent.
There are, of course, certain difficulties that many adult students face
to a greater degree perhaps than young high school graduates. Some adults
have been away from any kind of formal education for a considerable
number of years and may lack certain skills and techniques of learning
generally available to younger students.
They also have a tendency to underestimate their ability to cope with
educational procedures and requirements. Some?very few?tend to ov-
erestimate it. But it seems to me that these difficulties are more than
compensated for by the adult student's motivation, maturity of judgment,
and ability for independent effort; furthermore, his professional and gen-
eral life experience is an extremely important and largely untapped edu-
cational resource. It is the primary function of progressive educational
institutions, fully aware of the demands that the accelerating change makes
on us, the management educators, to give experiential education full weight
and to utilize it in their educational policies and practice.
In the time of change that we are facing, a manager whose sole claim
to his position is technical competence will become obsolete. He will be
replaced by a new type of manager who combines excellent technical
background with good business practices and a profit-oriented approach.
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He must also understand the problems of ecology and the growing demands
of the environment.
The new type of manager will understand computers and the benefits
of scientific management, but he will also have to concentrate more on
the problems of human-resource management. It is not enough nowadays
to produce profits for the corporation and, at the same time, to disregard
social problems, conservation, environmental pollution, the problems of
inefficiency in government bureaucracy, or blatant incompetence all around
us.
The manager of the future will be aware that his leadership qualities
contribute to the community and country, and to his ability to produce
profits. These criteria will, in turn, be used to measure his own overall
performance.
The manager who develops the motivated team of people in the orga-
nization of tomorrow will reconcile the requirements of the company with
the needs of its individual members.
The manager of the future will have an array of devices, techniques,
and tools available to him to assist in the decision-making process and he
will be proficient in their use.
Computers, which have scarcely begun to reveal their potential, will
be developed to an extent that will permit future managers to couple human
expertise in the most advanced mechanical and electronic technology with
our rather limited knowledge of our highest capability?that of thinking.
Only in this way can we learn the extent of the computer's flexibility and
evaluative powers in order to make far better use of it.
To meet the challenge of the future, a new discipline or field of study
has to be introduced. I am now working on introducing such a program
at the Canadian School of Management. I call it Managerial Futuristics.
I would like to share with you the proposed definition of this program,
as it is pertinent to the topic we are discussing.
Managerial futuristics is a future-oriented discipline and activity based
on the philosophy of futurism and the intellectual exploration of a future
that seeks to identify, analyze, and evaluate possible changes and devel-
opments in human life and the world from the point of view of managerial
leadership.
The basic assumption of the proposed course is that people can make
meaningful forecasts about the future, if they take the trouble to understand
fully the present conditions and trends in business, life, society, and the
world in general. It is the objective of the proposed course to assist them
in the process.
We are aware of the importance of the future. The past is gone; the
present exists only as a short moment. Traditionally, scholars study the
past and are not interested in the future. The crises of today have resulted
from past failures to deal with emerging problems. We can do very little
to improve the present world, because basic changes require time. We do
have, however, the power to influence the future. By their very nature,
managers are future-oriented, because management decisions of today
affect the future. The important role of managerial futuristics is to provide
a useful framework for decision-making and planning by developing rea-
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sonable assumptions about the future (expressed in terms -of probability
or possibility rather than certainty), based on an assessment of present
conditions, the identification of future dangers and opportunities, sug-
gesting alternative approaches to issues and evaluating alternative policies
and actions?thus realizing that new future possibilities are open to us
and increase the extent of our choice.
I see the need for the study and research of the possible impact of future
technological, economic, and social developments and an assessment of
their consequences for management people. Such a course would prepare
management leaders to live in a changing technological, economic, and
social world; it would develop their understanding of man's environment,
the fundamentals of modern technology, genetics, evolution, and popu-
lation dynamics; it would provide a better understanding of man and
society, human progress, ecology, social psychology, changing occupa-
tional patterns, education, and employment; it would increase personal
competence, develop access to information, and encourage independent
learning styles. It would also assist in developing more effective com-
munication for better management and an enhanced understanding of man-
agement strategic planning as a tool for dealing with the problematique
of future change in all its dimensions (composite strategic planning, op-
erational management planning, and tactical planning), seen through the
prism of social responsibility of managerial leadership of the future.
I hope that a Managerial Futuristics program will play an important
role in preparing managers of the accelerating change.
I would unhesitatingly list the following basic rules:
I. Understanding people.
2. Need for vision, courage, and creativity.
3. Ability to delegate properly.
4. Ability to make sound decisions.
An understanding of people is one of the most vital attributes to man-
agerial success, and will not lose its importance in times of change.
Instead, it will become more and more important in the management of
future change.
Executives must understand why people act and react as they do; they
must provide positive motivation for employees, derived from the higher
needs and aspirations of human beings to develop. On the contrary, per-
formance that arises from fear or insecurity is a result of negative moti-
vation that should be eliminated completely from the sphere of industrial
relations. Such performance, based on negative motivation, vanishes im-
mediately anyway as soon as the threat disappears.
The manager of tomorrow will have to learn to identify drive as the
highest priority for each of his employees, drive that can contribute most
to the well-being of both the individual and the company. Thus, short-
term and long-term positive motivation can be developed, and so lead to
the identification of employees' personal ambitions with those of the
organization.
A second vital attribute is the need for vision, courage, and creativity
to make changes and to meet requirements imposed by changing times.
Progress is the law of economic life. If a company ceases to progress in
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a changing world, it starts to fall back. We must be willing to make
changes (not for the sake of change but when necessary and indicated),
and to contribute new ideas and sell these ideas to our colleagues and
superiors.
The third ingredient necessary for success is the ability to delegate
properly. We have to learn that delegation of authority is an extension of
our own achievement. At the same time, it improves the morale of the
staff by giving them the feeling of sharing responsibility. This is what
makes work interesting.
Finally, a few words about the ability to make sound decisions. As
technological change and business grow more intricate and as constant
requirements are being imposed on executives by changing conditions, a
proper process of decision-making enables management to set its objec-
tives in time and to determine its plans and strategies.
A good leader can face a crisis without panic, because he knows how
to meet a problem; he knows that he has first to meet the problem, define
it, put it in an organized shape, seek information that is necessary for its
solution, analyze all the elements of the problem, and test in his mind all
possible alternative solutions before reaching a final decision.
In conclusion, the future executive, in order to face and manage change,
will have to be competent in a way that present managers are not. He will
be aware of the most advanced technological and managerial tools that
can help him in the complicated process of managing change. But above
all, he will be able to apply his own knowledge to the analytical process
required, and he will be able to motivate his staff in a positive sense
through better understanding of the complexities of human personality.
Will the business leaders of tomorrow be able to meet the challenge of
the changing times? It seems that the answer to this question rests with
future managers, business leaders, and management educators. I think
that the challenge to business leaders will be accepted, and that it will
result in a major triumph for the manager of tomorrow. He will build on
what exists; he will motivate people to improve; he will unite employees
in constructive cooperation. He will do this because he is aware that the
biggest challenge confronting the world today is to use the advances in
research and technology to solve man's economic and social problems.
We must solve these problems in order to narrow the gap between rich
and poor nations. It is in this endeavor that managers of tomorrow will
have a tremendous role to play.
While the industrial revolution of the nineteenth century can be said to
have developed through a struggle for survival of the fittest, the techno-
logical age, in order to prosper, requires the effective mobilization of the
most able and the most knowledgeable to manage the change.
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Assessing Preferred Job Attributes
for the New Manager of the 1980s
by
David Hopkins and Sandra LaMarre
with Jerry Thurber
I. Purpose and Importance of the Study
It is doubtful that any other "theory" has received as much attention
in the literature regarding employee motivation as the "Hierarchy of Needs"
proposed by Abraham Maslow (9). It is in many ways simplistic: it is
ethnocentric in that it fails to account for cultural determinants that might
alter the basic hierarchy; it is static in that it fails to account for changes
in the hierarchy due to short-run situational changes; it is rigid in that it
does not adequately account for the often observed non-sequential adher-
ence to the categories of needs in the hierarchy; and it is perhaps incom-
plete in that it does not exhaust the kinds of needs that motivate human
beings. Despite its shortcomings, it is nevertheless useful in describing
the various needs that motivate human behavior. The purpose of this paper
is to utilize the basic taxonomy presented by Maslow to describe the
perceived job-related needs of the recent group of college graduates.
Why is it important to continually describe the "needs" of various
occupational groups? As one author states, "If you want worker produc-
tivity, you must satisfy worker needs" (5:56). Concern for the continual
decline in productivity in the United States relative to the Japanese and
others is at the forefront of domestic concerns.
Secondly, understanding job-related needs is important due to the rel-
atively high rates of absenteeism and turnover. Losing people who have
been highly trained is very costly. Turnover at the managerial level mul-
tiplies this cost significantly and yet it has been increasingly characteristic
for new college graduates to have several different employers in the first
few years of their careers. Management turnover in 1960 among graduates
out of college less than five years was 10%. Today the average corporation
loses 50% of its college recruits within five years, according to the Sterling
Institute, a Washington, D.C., management consulting firm (12). What
appears to be happening in the American work force is a growing mismatch
between company incentives and employee motivation. Today's employ-
ees simply are not responding to traditional rewards as they once did. Our
own study indicates that over 70% of the new college graduates expect
to work for at least two different employers in the first five years after
graduation; nearly one in five expects to have three or more employers
David Hopkins is associate professor of management and public administration, School
of Business and Public Management, University of Denver, Denver, Colorado.
Sandra LaMarre is assistant professor of management, School of Business and Public
Management, University of Denver, Denver, Colorado. Jerry Thurber is a graduate
assistant at the School of Business and Public Management, University of Denver,
Denver, Colorado.
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in five years. As the chief psychologist for the Personnel Sciences Center
in New York City commented in an interview for U.S. News and World
Report, "younger workers feel they can pretty much call their own tune
on a job; if they don't like what they see, they'll pick up their marbles
and walk away" (15:63-4). For both productivity and turnover reasons,
it is important to understand what people want from their jobs. As Karlins
notes, "many contemporary managers can't satisfy worker needs because
they don't know what they are" (5:56).
Finally, the purpose of this study is to provide descriptive base-line
data from which to measure future changes in job-related needs. Our intent
is to follow a significant sub-sample of our respondents during the first
10 years following graduation in order to document how and why their
perceived job needs change. Armed with this knowledge, we believe
management will be much better equipped to experiment with and design
new types of incentive schemes. In the late 1960s almost half of all
employed Americans viewed their work as a major source of personal
fulfillment. Today that number has dropped to less than one out of four
according to a recent survey by Yankelovich, Skelly and White (16).
II. Review of the Literature
There is a growing interest, among businesses and those involved in
preparing individuals for the job market, in evaluating the value systems
of current employees with hopes of developing more effective motivation
techniques and job definitions. In reviewing the literature in this area,
there is a consistent reference to a change in value systems. However,
consensus does not exist in delineating the nature of the change. Yan-
kelovich (16) suggests that:
I) fear is no longer a primary motivating factor?job security is very important
but is considered a right rather than a goal; 2) money as an incentive remains
crucial but is more difficult to use and is not in itself sufficient; and 3) the
"work ethic" is no longer a predominant value brought to the job.
The U.S. Department of Labor (16) says in contradiction that "there
appears to be an emerging work ethic which places a greater demand upon
work. Work is viewed as an integral part of one's life." Further, they
find American college seniors of 1972 in all academic areas to expect a
resurgence of the importance of family life, and to be less concerned with
money than their fathers and much more concerned about the nature and
purpose of work. They appear to have a strong desire for career security
and stability, put less emphasis on social status and teamwork, less em-
phasis also on the need to be original and creative, more emphasis on
utilization of special skills and abilities.
Several empirically based studies have been conducted in this area.
Again consensus appears to be lacking. Fretz (4) surveyed male college
sophomores and juniors in five pre-professional curricula: law, medicine,
engineering, education, and business. They were asked to rank order pay
received, security, prestige, advancement, variety of duties, working con-
ditions, independence, opportunity to use special talents, challenge, self-
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satisfaction, and fringe benefits. Although there was a small amount of
inter-group differences, mean values indicated the top five areas of concern
to be: 1) self-satisfaction, 2) pay received, 3) challenge, 4) security, and
5) independence. Business students ranked the occupational values in the
following order: pay received, advancement, self-satisfaction, challenge,
and security.
Mitchell et al. (10) attempted to predict occupational choice and to
discover why certain students select business as an occupation. The method
of this study was again a questionnaire administered to 141 randomly
selected psychology and business majors in their junior year at the Uni-
versity of Washington. Significant differences between the two groups
were noted. Business majors more highly valued autonomy and eliminating
poverty.
Baker (1) studied differences in value systems between college students
majoring in accounting and those majoring in other academic areas. The
565 students were selected at random from students majoring in sciences,
the humanities, social sciences, and undergraduate and graduate account-
ing programs. They were asked to rank order terminal and instrumental
values as delineated on the Rokeach Values Survey. The results indicated
that accounting students gave statistically greater median rank to: 1) a
comfortable life, 2) family security, 3) ambition, 4) cleanliness, and
5) responsibility, than all other students.
Zikmund, et al. (17) addressed themselves to the question, " What are
accounting students looking for when they consider their future careers?"
Fifty accounting majors at Oklahoma State currently interviewing for
positions in anticipation of near-future graduation were surveyed. They
were asked to choose from a series of job-offer pairs. The researchers
paired salary-interesting work, salary-social responsibility, interesting work-
social responsibility, and interesting work-opportunity for advancement.
Results indicated that opportunity for advancement has the strongest im-
pact on job choice. Interesting work was also highly significant, but was
subject to salary negotiation (e.g., a high enough salary differential would
cause the subject to select for money rather than job interest), and social
responsibility had a positive impact also on selection but was more easily
overcome by high salaries.
Cherrington, et al. (3) surveyed 3,053 workers in 53 companies to
determine worker attitudes toward jobs, company, community, and work
in general. It was found that the most desirable work-related outcome was
a feeling of pride and craftsmanship in your work. The second most
desirable work outcome was "getting more money or a larger pay in-
crease." The survey results indicated that getting more money was more
important to younger workers, male and female, than to older workers.
"Unless they can obtain other valued rewards for their efforts, younger
workers are likely to be less motivated than older workers" (3).
Additional research has been done investigating the values of full-time
MBA students and new employees. Ondrack (11) found that MBA students
at the University of Toronto valued: 1) challenge in work, 2) good salary,
3) quality of peers, 4) opportunity for achievement, and 5) individual
responsibility. Manhardt (7) considered value systems of recent college
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graduates employed in similar positions and found significant differences
in orientations men and women bring to their jobs. Men tended to rate
achievement/responsibility factors, which seemingly relate to long-range
career success, significantly higher than women, while women gave higher
ratings to factors that deal with the nature of the work environment (con-
genial atmosphere, etc.).
To summarize, while there is agreement that the new worker or near-
future worker brings different values and expectations to the job than did
his predecessor, and while there is a clearly demonstrated difference in
value systems between individuals seeking careers in business and those
seeking other types of careers, there is no clear determination as to what
the most important values are. Money, job security, and job content seem
to be consistently high-ranked, but much disagreement exists as to which
is most important. It is clearly evident that security and high salary are
no longer the primary set of values brought to the work situation. An
increased emphasis is being put on job content, challenge, responsibility,
participative decision-making, and availability of leisure time and/or the
importance of family life.
Research that has been done in this area is somewhat limited and sample
sizes have been small and parochial. Only Fretz (4) and the U.S. De-
partment of Labor (13) have concentrated on delineating value systems
of undergraduate students approaching graduation.
III. Methodology
Units of Analysis
The results reported here are part of a larger study that surveyed 1,930
graduating college seniors from 50 four-year institutions across the U.S.
The institutions were selected by stratified random methods so as to be
representative of the national population of such institutions on five dif-
ferent dimensions: size, competitiveness, affiliation (i.e. public, private,
or church), environment (i.e. rural, urban, or suburban), and region of
the country. The 50 schools selected were within 1% of the actual pro-
portion of schools in each sub-category in the country. Once the schools
were selected, a 20% sample of graduating seniors was systemically se-
lected from lists of graduating seniors provided by the schools themselves.
Of approximately 6,800 questionnaires distributed, 1,930 were returned
for a return rate of approximately 28%.
Instrumentation
The results presented here were derived from the following question in
our survey, which asked respondents to rank 20 different job attributes in
terms of their preferences:
Please rank the following attributes in order of importance to you. (1 = highest
priority, etc.) Each attribute completes the phrase, "I would prefer a job that
has
Due to concern that respondents would be unable to accurately rank a list
of 20 items, we pre-tested the approach by having a group of approximately
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60 students also answer this question on a "paired comparison" basis.
That is, they were asked to choose only between two attributes at a time.
This was done for all possible attribute pairs and the overall results of
this approach were compared to the simple ranking of all 20 items by the
same students. The two approaches yielded results that correlated at ap-
proximately .85. The similarity between the results of our national study
and our pilot study also suggests that responses to this question yield
reliable results.
The job attributes selected were culled from the literature to represent
the five dimensions of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. A brief description
of those dimensions and the related indicators is presented below:
Physiological Needs: The lowest rung on Maslow's hierarchy encom-
passses those needs involved with basic physiological requirements, i.e.,
air, food, water, shelter, clothing, sex, comfort, and convenience. While
to some extent wages and salaries can be used to satisfy needs in all levels
of the Maslow hierarchy, basic income is particularly relevant to the
satisfaction of these basic needs. As Boone and Kurtz note, "Because
minimum wage laws and union wage contracts have forced wage levels
upward so that most families can afford to satisfy their basic needs, the
higher-order needs are likely to play a greater role in worker motivation
today" (2:163). We utilized the following four attributes to measure the
dimension of "physiological needs":
? A Convenient Work Location
? An Adequate Wage and Salary
? Comfortable Working Conditions
? Free Organization-Provided Meals
Safety/Security Needs: The next category in the hierarchy is composed
of safety/security needs. This involves the need to feel safe, secure, and
protected. It includes "job security, protection from physical harm and
avoidance of the unexpected" (2:163). In terms of the job, it might include
protection against health and medical care expenses, safe working con-
ditions, and security against inflation (e.g., cost-of-living increases). From
these possibilities, we selected the following four attributes as being rep-
resentative of this dimension:
? Good Insurance Benefits
? Substantial Job Security
? A Non-Competitive Atmosphere
? Clearly Defined Assignments
Social Needs: The next higher dimension is what Maslow describes as
"social" needs. These take various forms. They describe a person's need
to "belong" and be accepted by others. People desire social contacts and
have a basic need to be affiliated with others. The work place provides
several opportunities for people to satisfy these needs through work groups,
clubs, committees, and meetings as well as formal and informal associ-
ations with peers, subordinates, and superiors. We selected the following
four attributes to tap these needs:
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? Co-Workers with Similar Beliefs
? Substantial Interaction Among Employees
? Friendly Co-Workers
? Organization-Sponsored Social Activities
Esteem Needs: Above social needs come "esteem" needs. These de-
scribe a person's desire to feel a sense of accomplishment and achieve-
ment. This has two parts: people need external validation of their worth
and importance, but they also need an internal self-respect and sense of
importance. There are several ways in which a person's job provides the
opportunity to satisfy these "ego" needs: formal and informal feedback
on performance, social recognition, and organizational titles and positions
that indicate status and the ability to influence others. We have included
the desire for a "high wage and salary" in this category. Like basic
wages, high wages can be used to satisfy other needs as well (e.g.,
security). Nevertheless, we have equated basic wages/salaries with the
satisfaction of basic needs, and the desire for high wages/salaries as a
manifest indicator of one's worth in the eyes of others. Therefore, the
four attributes used to measure esteem needs are:
? A High Wage and Salary
? Importance in the Eyes of Others
? Recognition for Good Performance
? Influence over Others
Self-Actualization Needs: Finally, at the top of Maslow's proposed
hierarchy are what he has labeled "self-actualization" needs. Maslow
himself had earlier described these needs, saying, "A healthy man is
primarily motivated by his needs to develop and actualize his fullest
potentialities and capacities . . . what man can be, he must be" (8:384,
392). On the job, these needs are expressed in the desire for self-devel-
opment, autonomy, personal growth, responsibility and independence,
self-fulfillment, and the ability to utilize one's creativity, special talents,
and capabilities. We selected the following attributes as representative of
this dimension:
? Freedom for Self-Expression and Creativity
? Opportunity to Use Your Skills and Abilities
? Interest and Self-Satisfaction
? Opportunity for Personal Development
The previously described job attributes were randomly selected as to
their position on the questionnaire. The question and format were pre-
tested in a pilot study of approximately 200 undergraduate seniors at eight
four-year institutions in the Denver Metropolitan area.
IV. Results
Overall Results
In both our pilot study and our national study, some respondents in-
dicated that it was fairly easy to pick their top five and their bottom five
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preferences. Distinguishing preferences for those job attributes in the mid-
dle was apparently more difficult. The top five preferred job attributes
were:
1. Interest and Self-Satisfaction.
2. Opportunity to Use Skills and Abilities
3. Opportunity for Personal Development
4. Recognition for Good Performance
5. An Adequate Wage and/or Salary
In contrast, the least preferred job attributes were:
20. Free Organization-Provided Meals
,19. Organization-Sponsored Social Activities
18. Influence over Others
17. Importance in the Eyes of Others
16. Co-Workers with Similar Beliefs
The fact that "an adequate wage and/or salary" is ranked as low as
fifth is somewhat surprising and contradicts many current perceptions that
money is the primary objective in job selection. The fact that "organi-
zation-provided meals" and "organization-sponsored social activities"
are ranked last and next-to-last is not surprising. Nevertheless, one is
struck by how different the ranking for such items might be in different
cultures or for respondents entering the job market from different economic
situations (e.g., non-college graduates).
Finally, the overall scores on the five Maslow need dimensions are
shown in Exhibit 1. (These scores can range from 10, which represents
a high preference for a need dimension, to 74, which represents a low
preference). Given our categorization, the "self-actualization" dimension
demonstrates an extremely high preference. Also surprising is the fact that
the "social" and "esteem" dimensions are both lower than "physiolog-
ical" or "security" in terms of respondents' preferences. However, the
inclusion of "an adequate wage and/or salary" only in the "physiological"
category undoubtedly gives greater weight to that dimension than it would
have otherwise. Nevertheless, the overwhelming preference for jobs that
provide opportunities to satisfy one's self-actualization needs is indeed
striking.
Sub-Group Results
The preference orderings for various job attributes have also been cal-
culated for various sub-groups of the overall population of respondents.
Four broad sets of characteristics have been used to identify the sub-
groups: personal characteristics, academic characteristics, family char-
acteristics, and institutional characteristics.
Results for Sub-Groups Defined by Personal Characteristics
The "self-actualization" dimension is the overwhelming preference
among all these sub-groups; jobs that provide "interest and self-satisfac-
tion" and "opportunity to use one's skills and abilities" are the first and
second choices in all cases.
The responses of men and women are very similar. Compared to men,
there is a slight tendency for women to prefer job attributes that provide
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Exhibit I
Overall Need-Dimension Graphs
Physiological:
Low
High
74
61
48
36
23
10
Low
High
Security:
74
61
48
36
23
10
Low
High
Social:
74
61
48
36
23
10
Low
High
Esteem:
74
61
48
36
23
10
Low
High
Self-Actualization:
74
61
48
36
23
10
greater security (e.g., "a non-competitive atmosphere") while men have
a slightly higher preference for job attributes satisfying esteem needs than
do women.
Among age groups, the older respondents definitely appear to have
stronger self-actualization needs, whereas younger respondents have a
greater preference for satisfying social needs. Respondents over 35 years
of age ranked "freedom of self expression and creativity" third whereas
respondents under 22 ranked that item eighth. Similarly, younger respon-
dents demonstrated slightly higher esteem needs while older respondents
have slightly higher physiological and security needs.
Among broad racial categories, Negroes strongly prefer jobs that satisfy
security needs, Orientals exhibit much higher esteem needs, and Cauca-
sians appear to have a slight preference for satisfying social needs relative
to the other two groups. Orientals ranked "an adequate wage or salary"
significantly lower than Caucasians or Negroes, but ranked "a high wage
or salary" substantially higher than the other two groups. On the dimension
of social needs, Caucasians had a higher preference for "friendly co-
workers" while Orientals had a higher preference for "substantial inter-
action among employees." Negroes had significantly higher preferences
for "clearly defined assignments" and "substantial job security" than
other respondents. All racial sub-groups had equally strong preferences
for satisfying self-actualization needs.
Foreign students expressed a stronger preference for jobs that satisfy
physiological needs while American students had a stronger preference
regarding security needs. Indicative of this was the foreign students' higher
ranking for a "non-competitive atmosphere."
The amount of full-time work experience does not appear to translate
to sufficiently different preferences among job attributes, though respon-
dents with no full-time work experience showed a stronger preference for
satisfying social needs. However, in terms of part-time work experience,
there were significant differences among sub-groups and the reasons for
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this distinction are unclear. For example, those respondents with no part-
time work experience have a preference for satisfying those needs further
down on Maslow's hierarchy (i.e., physiological and particularly secu-
rity). Those with more than three years of full-time work experience had
a substantially stronger preference for satisfying esteem and self-actuali-
zation needs. Indicative of this pattern was the higher ranking for "an
adequate wage or salary," "substantial job security," and "clearly de-
fined assignments" among those with no part-time work experience. In
contrast, those with more than three years of part-time experience had a
stronger preference for "freedom of self-expression and creativity" as
well as for a "high wage or salary." The amount of part-time work
experience appeared to distinguish significant differences among sub-groups
more than any other characteristic. Nevertheless, the Spearman's Rho
(rank order correlation) between the ranks of those with no part-time
experience and those with over three years of experience is still a very
high .987. Spearman's Rho for the ranks of males and females is .999.
Results for Sub-Groups Defined by Academic Characteristics
There are some significant differences between academic majors. Busi-
ness and public administration majors had lower preferences for job at-
tributes that tend to satisfy physiological, social, and self-actualization
needs than do other majors. However, they have higher esteem needs than
do other majors. Relatively higher physiological needs were expressed by
fine arts, humanities, and applied majors. A somewhat greater preference
for satisfying social needs was demonstrated by social and behavioral
science majors and pre-professional majors. Humanities and pre-profes-
sional majors had lower esteem needs. The highest possible preference
for satisfying self-actualization needs was reflected by majors in the social
and behavioral sciences, fine arts, and the humanities.
Students with grade point averages below 2.5 demonstrated greater
preference for satisfying security needs and slightly higher preference for
satisfying esteem needs than did students with GPA's of 2.5 and above.
Students with better grades had slightly higher preferences in terms of
physiological, social, and self-actualization needs. Nevertheless, the rank
order correlation between the two groups is an extremely high .996.
We also looked at differences between student groups defined by who
was paying for the majority of their academic expenses. The differences
were negligible. However, students who had the majority of their expenses
paid by sources other than themselves or their families (e.g., employers,
government, etc.) did have slightly greater preference for satisfying "lower
level" needs (physiological and security) and somewhat lower preference
for satisfying self-actualization needs.
Finally, we looked at differences between students who intended to
take jobs in the public, private, and non-profit sectors. Those aiming for
the private-for-profit sector revealed weaker physiological and security
needs, but substantially stronger esteem needs. Those students preparing
to work in the non-profit sector had the highest self-actualization needs
and the lowest esteem needs. Students who professed a desire to enter the
public sector had the highest security needs. Indicative of these patterns
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was a significantly higher ranking assigned to "recognition for good per-
formance" and a "high wage and salary" by those intending to enter the
private-for-profit sector as compared to those aiming for the non-profit
sector.
Results for Sub-Groups Defined by Family Characteristics
The results for various sub-groups defined by family and early childhood
characteristics reveal that those from high-income families (i.e., gross
income over $75,000/year) had higher preferences for satisfying Maslow's
higher-level needs (i.e., social, esteem, and self-actualization) than did
those students from lower-income families (below $25,000/year). Like-
wise, respondents from low-income families had a greater concern for
physiological and security needs.
In terms of religious upbringing, there were few significant differences
between broad religious groupings. Jews reflected stronger esteem needs
than others. Similarly, Catholics had higher security needs than other
groups. Finally, Protestants indicated a higher preference on the dimension
of physiological needs, which was the result of a significantly higher rank
given to "an adequate wage or salary" by Protestants than by Jews.
Protestants ranked that attribute fifth whereas Jews ranked it twelfth.
We looked at differences between families with various work patterns.
Those students who had two working parents when they were growing
up had nearly identical preferences compared with respondents who had
only one working parent. When both parents worked some, the results
were also similar.
There was a noticeable difference between students who were raised in
rural settings as opposed to other settings. Those from rural environments
have significantly higher needs at the bottom of Maslow's hierarchy (i.e.,
physiological, security, and social) and lower esteem and self-actualization
needs than those students raised in small towns, suburban, or urban en-
vironments. Differences between non-rural environments were negligible.
Finally, we examined differences between married and unmarried stu-
dents. Again, the differences were insignificant. Married students had
slightly stronger preferences for satisfying security and self-actualization
needs and somewhat lower preferences for jobs that satisfy social needs.
Nevertheless, in comparing sub-groups defined by all of these family
characteristics, the overwhelming pattern is similarity, not diversity.
Results for Sub-Groups Defined by Institutional Characteristics
The results for students coming from various types of schools indicate
that there do appear to be some regional differences. Students attending
southern schools indicate higher security needs and lower self-actualization
needs than those from other regions. For example, they ranked "substantial
job security" fourth and "freedom for self-expression and creativity"
eighth. Respondents from midwestern schools had the lowest security
needs. Those from western institutions had the lowest esteem needs.
Respondents from less competitive schools had substantially higher
security needs and somewhat lower self-actualization needs than those
from more competitive schools. Indicative of this is the higher ranking
they give to "substantial job security" and "good insurance benefits."
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The affiliation of the school (i.e., private, public, or church) did not
define dramatic differences between students. Students at private insti-
tutions had slightly higher self-actualization and social needs and slightly
lower physiological and security needs than did others. Those from church
supported schools had somewhat higher preferences for job attributes that
satisfy Maslow's lower level needs and less preference for those satisfying
higher level needs.
Students from small schools also expressed a stronger desire to satisfy
lower-level needs (i.e., physiological and security) and lower preference
for satisfying esteem and self-actualization needs. Students from rural
schools demonstrated this same pattern of needs. However, institutional
characteristics do not appear to create significant differences among job-
attribute preferences. Similarity across sub-groups is again the rule rather
than the exception.
V. Conclusions
First, the respondents in this study expressed an overwhelming pref-
erence for job attributes that satisfy what Maslow labeled self-actualization
needs. The three top-ranked job attributes were in this category?"interest
and self-satisfaction," "opportunity to use one's skills and abilities," and
"opportunity for personal development."
Second, the preferences are extremely consistent across sub-groups.
The rank order correlation for the preferences of the most diverse groups
is above .95.
Third, there are some mild differences in preferences, which have been
noted above. For example, a higher preference for satisfying self-actual-
ization needs is indicated by older respondents (over 35), those with more
work experience, those majoring in social or behavioral science, fine arts,
or humanities, those having the majority of their academic expenses paid
by their families or themselves, those aiming at jobs in the nonprofit
sector, those raised in other than rural environments, and those who at-
tended school in the East, Midwest, or West.
Those respondents who appear to have a higher preference for job
attributes that satisfy esteem needs are Orientals, those with some part-
time work experience, those majoring in business and/or public admin-
istration, those intending to enter the private sector, Jews, those raised in
other than rural environments, and those who attended medium or large,
urban or suburban schools.
A stronger desire to satisfy social needs through the job is reflected by
Caucasians, those under 22, those with no full-time work experience,
those from families with incomes under $25,000, those with no particular
religious upbringing, and those raised in rural and small town environ-
ments.
Those indicating higher preferences for satisfying security needs were
Negroes, American students, those with no part-time work experience,
those with grade point averages below 2.5, those expecting to take jobs
in the public sector, those from poorer families, Catholics, those raised
in rural environments, and those attending small, church-supported schools
in the South that are below average in competitiveness.
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Finally, those respondents who put a relatively greater stress on job
attributes that satisfy physiological needs were Caucasians, Negroes, for-
eign students, those majoring in fine arts, humanities, or applied subjects,
those having more than half their academic expenses paid by sources other
than themselves or their families, those intending to take jobs in the public
or nonprofit sectors, those from poorer families, Protestants or those with
no religious upbringing, those raised in rural environments, and those
attending small schools.
Fourth, if groups of needs are satisfied in some sort of priority sequence
as suggested by Maslow, then one would expect the scores on the various
dimensions to reflect that ordering. They do not. On the other hand,
Maslow suggests that needs which have been satisfied tend to lose their
motivating power and are less sought after. If this is the case, it would
appear that all but self-actualization needs have been relatively well sat-
isfied for students just graduating from college. To take this a step further,
social needs would appear to have been the most satisfied and physiological
and security needs the least satisfied (aside from self-actualization). This
makes some intuitive sense when one realizes that these respondents have
just finished four (or more) years of college, probably with relatively low
levels of discretionary income, and are just entering a stage in their lives
when many will be attempting to get their first job. However, this scenario
does not adequately explain why a person would be so dramatically con-
cerned with self-actualization. As one looks at the various orderings of
the five Maslow need-dimensions across various sub-groups, it is clear
that there is not one dominant ordering. Nevertheless, this information
does not necessarily fault Maslow's theory. One would have to know more
about the individual situations of the respondents and which of their needs
have already been satisfied.
Fifth, the job attributes that we have selected to represent each of
Maslow's dimensions do not always hang together. For example, on the
esteem dimension, the "recognition for good performance" is consistently
ranked higher than other attributes on that dimension. Similarly, "friendly
co-workers" is consistently ranked higher than other attributes on the
social dimension. Not surprising is the fact that "an adequate wage or
salary" ranks high among those attributes measuring physiological needs.
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Making Technology Work:
A Report from the Battlefield
by
James L. Horton
Friction is the only concept that more or less corresponds to the factors that
distinguish real war from war on paper. The military machine . . is basically
very simple and therefore seems easy to manage. But we should bear in mind
that none of its components is of one piece: each part is composed of individuals,
every one of whom retains his potential of friction . . . . A battalion is made
up of individuals, the least important of whom may chance to delay things or
somehow make them go wrong. The dangers inseparable from war and the
physical exertions war demands can aggravate the problem to such an extent
that they must be ranked among its principal causes.
This tremendous friction, which cannot, as in mechanics, be reduced to a
few points, is everywhere in contact with chance, and brings about effects that
cannot be measured, just because they are largely due to chance.
?Carl Von Clausewitz, "On War," 1832 (taken from Princeton edition, 1976; edited
and translated by Michael Howard and Peter Paret).
(For "war," read "business"; for "military machine," read "company"; for
,"battalion," read "company unit.")
Factory hands, dockworkers, mechanics, technicians, clerks, secretar-
ies, salespersons, and middle managers are the ones who will make the
future work because they do the business of any company.
But who is overcoming their fears that tomorrow's technology will cost
them their jobs, humiliate them in front of lower-status employees, and
force them to confront concepts they could not have learned in school?
Work improvement and productivity are wonderful theories, but too often
they bring lower-than-expected yields because the human factor is over-
looked.
Item: The leader of one of America's largest corporations has threatened
to replace workers with robots if wage demands are not moderated.
Item: By making managers type on computer keyboards, we ask them
to abolish a fundamental distinction between themselves and secretaries.
Item: An employee wrestles with "user-friendly" software for 10 or
more hours before giving up in frustration at making it work.
James L. Horton is associated with Robert Marston and Associates, Inc., New York,
New York.
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Item: Workers avoid a new high-production office machine because
they have to get work out and they are not "comfortable enough" to use
it. They already had several hours of training on the machine.
The author can document each of these examples and more.
The problem of change in organizations is well-known, but the intro-
duction of computer, communications, and automated technology to every
facet of the workplace is so vast that it is reminiscent of the industrial
revolution and the rise of assembly lines. As anyone who has read Dickens
and studied U.S. unionism can tell you, those shifts were botched. Workers
rose in anger against appalling conditions and intolerable line speeds
ordered by engineers palming stopwatches.
It is too early to predict disaster for the new technologies, but the
warning signs are there and suspicion verges on paranoia in some parts
of the workplace.
Unfortunately, there appears to be little organized effort to confront
human problems and the unquantifiable risks they present. The drive is
once again for the bottom line of the income statement. Cost-effective
management should not impede respect for employees, but too often it
does. Companies such as Emerson Electric, which- attempts to meld ag-
gressive, numbers-oriented performance with strong communications and
worker concern, are rare.
As one who has been on the battle lines to get new technology into
offices, it seems to me that some commonsense observations about people
and management are pertinent to "Working Now and in the Future."
Technological Leaps Are Made Through Microsteps. The best in-
troductions of new technology are tedious. They demand careful personnel
planning, advance employee communications at all levels, "hard-sell"
introduction, training, and new socio-cultural and organizational relation-
ships.
Frequently, planning stops at calculations of return on assets, tax ben-
efits, and production gains. And, unfortunately, this may be as much a
result of education as anything else. For example, in the MBA program
this author attended, nearly all planning was financial and revolved around
discounted cash flows. Human aspects received glancing nods at best.
The importance of humanistic managerial communications has been
much neglected or overburdened by studies on spans of control, optimum
network configurations, and "pop" psychology. An old saying applied
by many a general and -Bull of the Woods" is perhaps still the most
pertinent when major changes occur: "The best management tool is a
good pair of shoes."
One must go to the work site, look at the progress (or the lack of it),
talk to employees at every level, demonstrate enthusiasm, show hands-
on leadership, and exhibit real knowledge of the equipment to overcome
problems and keep a project moving.
Credibility Is Hard Won and Easily Lost. Woe to managers who say
new technology does not threaten jobs but then lay off workers. A breach
of faith is not easily forgotten. It is better to be honest. But this error is
made all the time.
Years ago, Chester Barnard noted that workers give labor voluntarily
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and can withhold it, too, when they no longer accept the authority of an
executive. A manager is only credible if, when he or she leads, workers
follow. Achieving this requires hard, long work to project one's ideas and
goals to the bottom of the organization, to get employees to understand
them, and, most difficult of all, to accept them and act.
When entire organizations are hostile to technology, it takes a dramatic,
uncontested threat to gain credibility, such as the invasion of Japanese
cars. If that does not work, the manager may replace the organization by
moving the plant or forcing installation of machines. Neither are palatable.
Dumping workers on society solves immediate problems, but it ignores
taxes, government regulations, and other consequences arising from mounting
unemployed who cannot be left to starve.
Stick to Fundamentals When Great Changes Occur. Side issues
dilute efforts when new technology is introduced. Most of today's elec-
tronic equipment, for example, can do more than any previous machine.
It is a trap to concentrate on gaining wonderful advantages before making
sure that employees understand how a machine makes basic tasks easier,
faster, and better.
No manager should presume that a manual, a seminar, and hands-on
experience are enough to get employees used to new machines. It doesn't
happen. Workers are overwhelmed by new concepts. Learning is slow,
and volumes of information obfuscate. Two rules are of use:
? KISS: Keep It Simple, Stupid. (An old Army saying.)
? Tell 'em what you're going to tell 'em. Tell 'em. Tell 'em what you
told 'em.
Identify the one key work-flow task and train employees to perform it
well. Then, and only then, branch into new territory.
This has three advantages:
? Work-flow remains steady: there is less disruption.
? Performing key tasks gives workers time to become comfortable with
equipment.
? Key tasks on new machines may be similar to tasks performed on
older equipment. Employees may be able to adapt better and faster. For
example, word processing depends on basic typing skills that nearly every
secretary knows.
Conceptual Understanding Does Not Equal Applications Under-
standing. Before introducing new technology, the careful manager tests
training, instructions, and other procedures on the least skillful employees.
If they cannot grasp it, the manager reworks the program until they do.
When roll-out occurs, chances of success are greater?but never insured.
An engineer may know the principles of an auto but not be able to build
one. A secretary might learn the concept of word processing but get
hopelessly tangled in the buttons.
When Apple built its new "user-friendly" computer, Lisa, software
was tested on unskilled employees during development and revised until
nearly anyone could work the machine with 30 minutes of instruction.
Although it is too early to determine whether Lisa will be commercially
successful, it has been roundly cheered by nearly everyone who has worked
with it.
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Such testing means organizational changes occur slowly. During the
fallow period between the start and finish of a roll-out, managers may
suffer substantial abuse for "doing nothing" and may have to perform
more than a few "symbolic" actions to keep top management and em-
ployees motivated.
Accept the Inevitable. For all the planning that occurs, some things
just don't work. For all the training that is given, some employees cannot
or will not adapt to new technology. Sloan, in writing of his years at
General Motors, recalled vividly the lessons of the experimental copper-
vred engine on which the company nearly bet its existence.
Good managers prepare fallback positions during change to make sure
that work gets out. And, if possible, they test new technology in a place
where the guts of a business are not threatened. When it comes to recal-
citrant employees, managers live with them, move them, or fire them.
Humanistic leaders find this most unpleasant, but wise ones lay ground-
work carefully?if they have time, and they usually do?so that both the
employee and co-workers may see that a reasonable chance to adapt has
been given and not reached.
Status Can Be a Trap. The prestige of having one's own microcom-
puter, robot, or terminal has reached the same proportions in some cor-
porations as gold-plated golf clubs. Status, however, does not guarantee
use.
Stories circulate of executives who have terminals but don't turn them
on, or, worse, do not hook them up. New technology, in these cases,
does not help the business and harms the individual. The executive does
not take the machine seriously. When this happens, problems become
self-fulfilling prophecies about why old ways are better.
However, if a manager tests a machine in one department, favorable
usage reports and word of mouth on the grapevine will confer prestige
quickly. Status then becomes a powerful management tool in rolling out
the technology throughout the organization.
The Most Advanced System May Not Be Best. As high-speed en-
gineering produces new machines, software, add-ons, advantages, and
other enticements, the temptation is to get the most advanced system to
guarantee greater productivity.
However, the manager must ask whether old dogs can learn new tricks
and if so, how fast. It does little good to push people into the 1990s if
they are still in the 1970s. Change should be gradual with easier-to-
understand equipment. While it is best to upgrade by acknowledging the
attitude of the organization, this does not mean that a company that is
behind will remain behind. The smart manager pours resources of time
and attention into highlighting the company's position and its goals.
Use a Time Rule and Make It Well Known. After working with a
new technology, a rough pattern of acceptance emerges. In word pro-
cessing, the author has seen a pattern of three and six months. During the
first three months, there are problems with learning the equipment. By
six months, there are manager clashes for available time on a machine.
Clashes are a sign of acceptance. It has been the author's policy when
participating in new-technology introductions to make time rules well
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known to employees and top managers. It smooths crises that inevitably
occur, and lets all know that their problem is part of a normal cycle rather
than an imminent failure.
Failures Are Usually 90% Managerial and 10% Employee. It is easy
to blame subordinates, the union, or anyone but oneself for poor progress
in introducing new technology. If one accepts that most problems result
from failing to present issues clearly to begin with, then searches can be
simplified when things go wrong. Smart managers do not attempt to start
a change before talking with several subordinates to learn how it is un-
derstood. This, too, is an old managerial rule: "If you want to see how
you are communicating to subordinates, pull some of them aside two or
three days after you announce a new policy and ask them to explain it to
you."
Most managers are appalled to learn how their clear thought, strong
leadership, and driving salesmanship have been distorted beyond recog-
nition.
Blaming management, however, goes only so far. Credibility problems
resulting in generations of unionism have institutionalized distrust and
distort the, best-intended messages. It takes cataclysm to break through
the barrier?or years of hard labor and consistent strategy. It is not unlike
the U.S. and the Soviet Union. While there may be cooperation, under-
lying assumptions and motives are at odds.
If one looks at the source of this distrust, he should find a failure to
maintain employee and management focus on the true functions of the
business. When (on the surface) workers see management aggrandizing,
they will demand what they can get eventually. When technology threatens
personal well-being, it becomes an intimate danger and not a business
good. It is management's long-term task to maintain a clear picture of the
business and the employee's part in it. This is rarely done.
Do It. Fix It. Try It. Some organizations plan in the nth detail, but
never produce. Strategic exercises excuse decision-making. Solving new
crops of risks becomes the prime task rather than facing them. At some
point, good managers act or quit on new technology and do it decisively.
They and their employees gain nothing by endless studies.
It is a fact of life that one can know as much as 90 or 95% of any given
action, but the rest remains unknown. Managers who worry about the
unknown too much fail themselves and subordinates. On the other hand,
serendipity has led to great discoveries. Opportunistic managers use small,
unforeseen insights to extraordinary advantage and the result may be far
removed from the original plan for the technology.
Great Organizational Changes Require Great Leaders. Managing
during great technological change is not scientific. It is art based on skill,
psychology, stubbornness, timing, and luck. Thus far in U.S. industry,
few companies have been survivors?gaining the full benefits of tech-
nology they sought to apply?without alienating workers.
Compare the travails of Chrysler Corporation with those of International
Harvester. On the one hand, an executive has taken a moribund company
and given it a chance to live. On the other, a leader hastened a corporation's
ruin.
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However, it is unfair to damn the executive of International Harvester
while canonizing Lee Iacocca. Both men had successful records before
assuming their posts. Both men faced similar tasks requiring reduction of
bad managerial and employee practices and installation of technology that
would regain productivity and restore company health.
For some reason, however, Chrysler held onto its employees' minds
while International Harvester did not. Harvester's problem may well have
been timing. The corporation took a strike at a time when real dangers
were not yet apparent. The employees reacted bitterly, and help was not
forthcoming when the company really began to plunge.
The corporate executive is a politician negotiating diverse organizational
differences and trying to gain action. He is not a passive player. He must
have a view of where the organization is going. Further, he must have
time to take it there plus the skills to push his views through every level
of the organization where the real work is done.
To do this, he must use all communications skills that a congressman
considers essential. Unfortunately, too many executives have supplanted
communications duties with planners, public relations departments, per-
sonnel administrators, information systems, etc. The result has been dis-
integration of the vision and aims of the organization. Departments eventually
pursue their own goals to the exclusion of others. The executive must use
every managerial skill he has to focus attention, and, of course, this must
be done without creating irreparable hostility.
Carl Von Clausewitz said a leader needs "genius," an indefinable
quality not susceptible to scientific management or textbook formulations.
Another writer, Ralph Z. Sorenson, formerly a professor at Harvard,
summarized his experiences as a manager in a series of observations that
seem to be common sense. The good manager requires:
? Ability to express oneself.
? Leadership skills.
? Broad human understanding.
? Courage and a strong sense of integrity.
? The ability to make positive things happen.
This list is hardly complete or, for that matter, essential since effective
leaders have failed in every one of the points. Moreover, it is disappoint-
ing. It would seem that, after thousands of years of discussing and writing
about great leaders, we would reach a more scientific and technological
definition to help companies face new technology and the future. Thus
far, we haven't.
The problem may lie with the fundamental dichotomy between cu-
mulative and moral knowledge. Cumulative knowledge can be written
down to build a body of learning. Moral knowledge?ways of acting
ethically and in relation to other humans?must be learned by each in-
dividual all over from birth through life-choice decisions and experience.
The Final Rule of Technological Change: There Are No Rules. There
are numerous management and communications techniques, but no cook-
book process that works in every case. For all the organizational behavior
studies and case histories, each manager starts with the people at hand,
the history peculiar to that organization, the cultural bias, and the change.
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Applying a process rigidly or not at all should be less a matter of dogmatism
and more a case of pragmatic judgment. What works 10 times in a row
may not work the 1 1 th. Thus each of the observations made above will
have times of exception when they do not apply and should be discarded.
For the orderly mind, it is frustrating. For the academic, it is a defeat of
reason by illogic.
The author hopes that futurists who are highly optimistic about the
impact of technology will take to heart this lesson. New technology works
only if people make it work. And that's not easy.
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The Segmented Work Force
by
Matthew J. Puleo
It was a simpler world back then. At the end of World War II, Americans
had an insatiable appetite for consumer goods. For one brief decade, all
we had to do to sell something was to manufacture it and put it on the
shelf. Workers were also easier to manage. We subscribed to a common
goal?to build the American business machine?and Theory X was seen
as an appropriate management tool.
The rampant consumerism began to subside as the world moved into
the 1960s. As competition increased, the marketing function moved to
the forefront and became a critical business strategy. Marketers were under
?increased pressure to come up with the best recommendations for pricing,
promotion, branding, etc. However, traditional market research, which
produced demographic descriptions of the consumer marketplace, left a
void. The information produced a vast array of techniques, facts, and
figures, but there was no way to master this information in order to cut
through the detail and focus sharply on new opportunities.
In the '60s, Daniel Yankelovich realized that buying decisions were
based on factors other than demographic influences. He, therefore, began
to collect qualitative, nondemographic forms of information. As a result,
he developed what is now referred to as nondemographic market seg-
mentation, revolutionizing how we define markets and brand products
today.
For example, before market segmentation, the shampoo market targeted
a demographic cut of the population, i.e., men, women, and children. In
1950, there were less than six major shampoos on the market. Nonde-
mographic market segmentation allowed producers to expand their market
share by focusing on incremental differences. This has resulted in con-
sidering the market as a number of segments in lieu of a nondifferentiated
total "market." The result is that today there are over 100 shampoos
catering to value preferences such as natural substances, conditioning of
the hair, daily, shampooing, etc. For the manufacturer, this method of
segmentation has yielded a better return on investment.
Matthew J. Puleo is vice president, Human Resource Group, Yankelovich, Skelly and
White, Inc., New York, New York.
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The research we conducted as a firm to monitor the changing values
and attitudes of the American public was expanded to look at the attitudes
and values of the American work force. Several trends were beginning to
emerge that would have an enormous impact on how we manage that
work force. By the end of the 1950s, the idea that the U.S. was capable
of nearly unlimited economic growth had become prevalent. With the rise
of this unprecedented optimism came a new social phenomenon?a psy-
chology of affluence. We as a society believed that affluence was no
longer something for which to struggle. Instead, it was a logical by-product
of America's endlessly expanding economy.
As we moved through the social revolution of the '60s and early '70s,
the necessity for conformity and adherence to the Protestant work ethic
was being questioned. Our classic American values, based on the Prot-
estant ethic, with its flexible standards and requirement of self-denial and
self-sacrifice, now seemed irrelevant. We asked ourselves, as a society,
Why should we submerge our individuality in order to fit society's model
of a desirable person? Why should we submerge our desires today for
future rewards? And finally, Why should we submerge inclinations for
pleasure in behalf of productivity?
The answer was an overwhelming "It's no longer necessary." The
psychology of affluence was so prevalent that workers, particularly youn-
ger ones, became less willing to change masks when they crossed the
corporate threshold. In addition, society pressured business to assume
responsibility for its welfare and pressured government to step in and
regulate business if it was unwilling to meet that responsibility.
The Need to Change
One of the ways corporate America responded to the changing work
force was to focus on worker happiness rather than on worker productivity.
The personnel function grew into the human resource function as a way
to bring humanity into the workplace. Unfortunately, such approaches
merely dealt with the symptoms and never developed a methodology for
analyzing the causes.
Much like the dilemma facing marketers in the '50s, the work force
became increasingly difficult to understand and manage. Perhaps it is
because we adopted a monolithic strategy for a pluralistic problem.
The pervasive changes in society and the psychology of affluence leg-
itimized the development of the segmented work force?a work force
whose premise was a focus on self-needs?in opposition to an earlier one
based on a submissive subservience to a common cause.
The focus-on-self perspective had allowed nondemographic influences
such as attitudes, values, esthetic concepts, purpose, and individual needs
to become factors to be reckoned with by management. These influences
were identical to those marketers used in making branding decisions. In
effect, the social agenda of the "fix it" era allowed consumers to play
out their wants and needs in the workplace.
A New Definition
Work today is subject to the same pressures as products in the mar-
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ketplace. It is as if it were a segmented product to be sold to workers,
not a commodity we buy from them. Specifically, because the employer/
employee contract has changed, it is those factors which are negotiated
in and determinants of the contract, such as compensation, training, career
development, etc., that are subject to this market segmentation.
Before we continue, I would like to stress that traditional ways of making
human-resource decisions should not be disregarded. Rather, they should
be considered as only one of among many possible ways of analyzing the
work force. In fact, the key requirement in taking a market segmentation
approach is that the human-resource professional should never assume in
advance that any one method of segmentation is best. The first task is to
muster all probable segments and then choose the most meaningful one
with which to work. This approach is analogous to that used in research
in the physical sciences where the hypothesis that best seems to explain
the phenomenon under investigation is the one chosen for working pur-
poses.
The human-relations movement of the "fix-it" era focused on the se-
gementation based on individual needs and satisfaction to the exclusion
of all others and was primarily psychological in orientation. Human-
resource systems, however, collected information on a predominantly
demographic basis. Occasionally they converged and provided direction
for recruitment, promotional policies, retirement planning, etc. But more
often than not it just added to the confusion. For example, a recent finding
from our ongoing study of the work force called "SIGNAL" shows a 50-
point difference between top management and the total labor force on how
well companies were perceived by the average employee in satisfying their
needs as individuals. Even though we focused on individual needs, we
fell far short of our mark.
The New Work Force
As we moved into the '80s, the work values became more entrenched
and pervasive. Today we have five clearly defined groups in the work
force, each one encompassing approximately one-fifth of the total. These
groups have different priorities, different life-styles, and different stances
vis-a-vis wOrk and cut across traditional demographic segments.
It is easiest to think of these groups as old-values and new-values
workers. The-two-new-values -groups
tation-y The first group we call2IftilfillrWrit_seekers.IL-A-fulfillment7seeke
places_more.emphasis761-1.461ratd:career:than-on-interpersonal-relatior
eiips7C-ommitm-ent7wfulfilling=work:is7the:ker There is a strong com-
mitment potential to the organization if they find their work fulfilling.
What clearly differentiates this group from the other new-values group is
that money will not be taken as a substitute for psychic rewards. De-
mographically, they are highly educated, disproportionately professional,
and have the highest concentration in high-tech industries.
Th?e7other_new-values -group -Is-called .money-or..exci errnmit .seekers. "
il'hey...-sa-CarftilIZ:rich-lifestyle-and-the-money-necessary toTathiUre:in
At work_money-is-the-dominant_consitlerati-on_and:they_are-willitTFJD
tWaTt-increased _monetary-rewards _to_compensate_foIack-of-Tfisyehic
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- -
rewards from work. They are willing to commit to and do more for an
organization, to a point.,When they have sufficient money to-pay for their_
level-of satisfaction outside of work; they will not-become involved in
commitmentsthatiTifrin-ge--on- their life-style interests. Demographically,
they tend to be of average education and disproportionately represented
in white-collar clerical and sales positions. Interestingly enough, there are
more women than men in this category.
Old-values workers, as the label implies, have their roots in the past.
They adhere to the traditional work values that have guided American
workers for decades?the Protestant work ethic. Old-values workers are
categorized in one of three ways. First, there are the uncommitted. This
is a segment of the population that is turned-off. They often have adopted
an adversarial role or are disillusioned because they are unable to attain
the rich, full life they thought they were entitled to. The second group is
job-oriented. Specifically, they are interested in security and a job. The
third are called the work-oriented. Work-oriented employees are com-
prised of a relatively well-educated group with a large proportion of profes-
sionals who are interested in strengthening their work skills and abilities.
They are also strongly committed to their jobs and to working per se.
However, there is little or no interest in maximizing earnings by making
unattractive trade-offs.
It is clear to see from this brief description of the values groups how
inadequate demographic information is in determining human-resource
policies. Within both thenew-values and old-values groups, workers and
their needs differ dramatically. For example, although all new-values
workers are relatively intolerant of a static ritualistic work environment,
fulfillment seekers look for a different structure than do money seekers.
Although both thrive on psychic challenges, they seek it differently. They
look for career advancement but do not view money in the same way.
Human-resources policies must, therefore, recognize that the work force
is a segmented community.
New Rules
What are the implications of a segmented work force and the use of a
marketing approach to deal with that work force? Several challenges and
opportunities come to mind. For example, fringe benefits are a part of
every corporate reward system. The pauralistic woiVforce has Created a
n-e-ed to move from a uniform benefits package to a -cg.eteria?plan7--,
With increasing erriphasis o-n-Cogt effectiveness, managers are looking for -
ways to-satMr-employee demands while meeting bottom-line objec
A marketing approach provides a mechanism for determining what is
really being asked for in a benefits package and how to get workers to
buy into it. If we wanted to make health care more cost-effective, what
would a marketing approach give us? The myth is that workers view health
care as a non-negotiable item. The belief that workers are entitled to the
best care money can buy, with someone else footing the bill, provides a
major obstacle to cost-containment efforts.
"SIGNAL," however, indicates that values have shifted considerably
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and that workers are ready to address problems such as the increasing cost
of health care. Specifically, we have found the following shifts:
? Workers are developing a new cost-effectiveness orientation. Benefits
are now measured more against costs and less against abstract ideals.
? Workers are becoming "smart shoppers"; they are willing to plan,
to depend on new information, and to trade off convenience for quality
and value.
? Workers have decreased their reliance on traditional providers of
goods and services. They are more apt to stress self-reliance and entre-
preneurship and are bypassing traditional distributors, including profes-
sionals.
? Workers are demanding information about company plans and pro-
grams that affect their well-being and they are eager to participate in
identifying solutions to problems.
In summary, workers have become more critical and inquisitive than
in prior years. They are ready to examine the quality and cost of services
such as health care rather than accept the services carte blanche. Above
all else, they are eager to join forces with their company to solve joint
problems.
Conclusion
What has occurred in the last two decades? A business creates systems
to meet its own business goals. However, workers' values and attitudes
follow the trends and norms in our society. As society and business move
in their own particular directions, gaps occur. Marketing segmentation
analysis provides a mechanism to define those gaps. Marketing work puts
a manager in a position to bridge them.
Human-resources departments and professionals have been asked to fill
those gaps by finding new ways to manage employees. Is not the marketing
of work to a segmented work force the answer?
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Computer Technology and
Employee Resistance
in Future Work Environments
by
Alan W. Ewert and Alison E. Voight
Computer technology is rapidly becoming an integral part of many
administrative and management systems. In 1982 alone, over 1,440,000
computers were shipped throughout the world (Blundell, 1983), with one
million of these units being used within the United States. Analysts expect
this number to rise to 9.8 million units shipped annually throughout the
world by 1990.
Indeed, a new revolutionary, technological wave has begun, bringing
with it the promise of dramatic changes in the way people live and work,
perhaps even the way they think (Friedrich, 1983). A wide variety of
organizations are being touched by the wave of computer technologies.
Many agencies are turning to computers as a more efficient and effective
means of delivering human services (Sharpless, 1981). One of the first
studies to produce data on computer use in human service delivery systems
came out of the Public Policy Institute at the University of California,
Irvine. Of the over 1,000 municipal governments that responded to the
survey, 59 reported at least one computer application in use or under
development for one type of human service delivery system: recreation
(Sharpless, 1981).
As is true with any major revolutionary change, problems and conflicts
may arise as a result. Computers have created a great deal of apprehension
and resistance regarding their implementation and uses. This article will
attempt to depict the prevalence of computer use in the workplace; staff
resistance and deterrents to computer usage; the overall effect of computer
usage regarding department functions and their employees; and sugges-
tions for the alleviation of staff resistance.
Prevalence of Computers
Increased work loads, reduced resources, and tighter demands for ac-
countability have forced recreation administrators to explore new and more
efficient ways of doing their business. Computers are swiftly infiltrating
Alan W. Ewert is assistant professor, Department of Recreation and Park Manage-
ment, University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon. Alison E. Voight is assistant professor,
Department of Recreation and Leisure Studies, Lyndon State College, Lyndonville,
Vermont.
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the management of human services as a more expedient method of deliv-
ering services and establishing accountability. Although many profes-
sionals feel that the computer is too impersonal for use in a human services
field, it should be regarded as a tool, and used as such (Cheng, 1982,
p. 14). The many areas in which it has already successfully been imple-
mented include: financial accounting, attendance records, registration,
scheduling, reservations, inventory control, and facility management (Cheng,
1982; Howe, 1982; Cheek, 1982).
Regardless of the prevalence of computers, their effectiveness among
organizations will ultimately depend on the attitude of managers, admin-
istrators, and staff. The role of computers in agency operations and the
information they are programmed to produce is placed on a foundation?
the management system. If the management system is not functional, then
the application from a computer will lead to either redundant information
or the non-use of computer services (Siderelis, 1981, p. 121). Basically,
the administrator/manager should strive for a usable end-product: a func-
tional computer system, with workable programs, and a staff that chooses
to work with rather than against, the computer, resulting in a compre-
hensive system that creates more positive benefits than negative results.
Generally, the reception of computers by management and administra-
tion agencies has been favorable. In a nationwide survey conducted by
the Leisure Research Institute at Indiana University in May and June of
1981, 92% of the administrators who responded wanted to see greater use
of computers in their departments (Sharpless, 1981). Seventy-five percent
felt that computers would greatly improve the way departments do their
work, and 76% agreed that computers could solve a great deal of the
problems facing their organizations (Sharpless, 1981; Watts, 1980, 1981).
But while administrators may be eager to implement computer programs
in their departments, their employees, who must work directly with the
computer, may be less enthusiastic. Despite the imminence of the computer
and the many benefits associated with computer use, many professionals
seem to resist the change (Cheng, 1982, p. 14; Malinconico, 1983a).
Staff Resistance and Deterrents to Computer Usage
It is natural for people to resist changes that deviate from a traditional
method of operating (Siderelis, 1981). A simple reallocation of a worker's
responsibility to accommodate the introduction of the computer may have
unfavorable consequences on his/her organizational values and working
relationships (Siderelis, 1981, p. 118). Ultimately, the success of the
operation that implements a computer into its system will be dependent
upon the acceptance of the new technologies by the staff. What is of
paramount importance to many employees when faced with computeriza-
tion and automation is their concern over losing their jobs and/or obtaining
the necessary level of skills to be able to effectively use the technology
(Strauss and Sayles, 1965; Elizur, 1970; Shepard, 1971; Dorf, 1974; Brod,
1982; Covert and Goldstein, 1980). Siderelis (1981) suggests that there
are several reactions to the augmentation of computers, including ag-
gressive behavior (attacking or sabotaging the information fed into the
computer); protective behavior (blaming the computer for operational
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difficulties or projecting their own failures onto the computer); and avoid-
ance behavior (ignoring computer printout information and only using
existing information). While it is possible to mandate employee use of
computers, negative behaviors might arise as a result of this authoritarian
approach.
Because of their unique ability to perform tedious, rote types of tasks,
computers are particularly threatening to people who have jobs involving
tedious, rote types of work. Paradoxically, personnel involved in human
services may find themselves in the uncomfortable position of replacing
people with machines that are more efficient. Additional research has
further substantiated the staff member's concern over lack of skills or
obsolescent skills (Dalton and Thompson, 1970; Shaiken, 1981). The
changeover of skills required by the implementation of a computer system
can often precipitate an escalating error or anxiety cycle, with debilitating
results for the organization as well as for the employee (see Figure 1).
Besides concern over loss of jobs or acquiring the necessary skills to
work in a computer-facilitated operation, Shepard (1971) reports that com-
puters can create three aspects of work alienation: powerlessness, mean-
inglessness, and normlessness. More specifically, introducing computers
can cause staff to perceive a lack of control over the work process, an
inability to identify one's role in the workplace (a provider of human
services or a machine attendant), and a lack of confidence in proper
rewards (i.e., the machine gets most of the credit).
Another deterrent to computer use is the wide spectrum of ethical,
technical, social, and philosophical problems it may create. Because of
their complexity and associated esoteric jargon, computers have the ability
to give the appearance of change or increased efficiency while everything
actually remains the same (Foster, 1970). Professionals must not fall prey
to this "aura" of infalibility surrounding the computer. They should avoid
the trap of assuming what comes out of the computer printout is completely
factual and error-free. Information that is flawed to begin with will be
transformed into erroneous data.
Although the high cost of computers is also considered a deterrent to
their implementation, the major deterrent is the lack of computer knowl-
edge by department personnel (Sharpless, 1981). So while modern tech-
nologies may elicit certain conditions, imagined or actual, the computer
becomes a symbol of change within the workplace creating uncertain
outcomes. This uncertainty produces a stressful condition (Brod, 1982)
that may ultimately result in employee resistance to computer technology.
Alleviating Staff Resistance
Resistance to computer technology can be costly both in fiscal as well
as human terms. Delayed schedules, staff polarization, and lowered per-
formance all serve to decrease the viability of the organization. Antici-
pating and alleviating staff resistance to the computer system and the
"change" it represents is a skill managers and administrators will need
to deal with in future situations (Maynard, 1982). Strauss and Sayles
(1965, p. 263) address this concern in their statement: "An organization
must anticipate changes by altering its own policies and structure in time
to meet these new conditions."
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Figure 1
Computer/Employee Anxiety Cycle
Introduction of Computers
Changing Demands Within
Work Environment
Decreased Productivity
Increased Anxiety
Frustration
Hostility
It
Demoralized
User
Stress
Increased
Errors
Delayed/Facility
Output
Management
Pressure
Increased
Errors
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Increased Anxiety
and Pressure
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It should be noted that the computer can, and usually does, bring about
very positive results, such as greater efficiency in payrolls, employee
records, and report filing. A problem often arises when only a limited
number of staff realize these benefits. For example, the computer operator
and the superintendent's staff may be the only people in the entire or-
ganization who can "see" the beneficial effects of computerization. Other
employees only recognize the changing and often greater work require-
ments. While the benefits are real, the remaining staff may view them as
nonexistent because of a lack of awareness. More often, they view the
computer as generating more, not less, work for them.
Elizur (1970) reports that after initial resistance to computerization,
staff members generally began to like the presence of computers. They
found the work more varied but also more demanding, and were more
satisfied with job security although upward mobility decreased due to the
need for more education or training. Most of the workers studied disliked
how the change-over was accomplished, as agencies provided little training
and preparatory information. Shutz and Weber (1966) found that work
performance did not suffer appreciably when employees were given enough
time to adjust to changes brought on by computerization. Wilensky (1972)
has suggested three approaches for dealing with any alienation and bore-
dom associated with introducing automation through computers: compen-
sating leisure activities, increased benefits, and job variability.
Along similar lines, Herzberg, Mausner, and Snyderman (1964) and
Meyers (1964) investigated motivations to work and found the main mo-
tivators of workers to be: achievement, recognition, responsibility, growth,
and advancement. If the research of Herzberg, Mausner, and Snyderman
is correct, the computer can be a useful tool in providing pathways for
greater staff achievement through recognition of growing computer skills,
new levels of responsibility, and personal growth. Earlier ,research (Benne,
1956; Schein, 1960; Zander, 1950; Lewin, 1947) has substantiated the
view of facilitating the growth of both the group and the individual through
the change process. Zander (1950, p. 10) establishes this point by stating
that:
Resistance will be prevented to the degree that the changer helps the changees
to develop their own understanding of the need for the change, and an explicit
awareness of how they feel about it, and what can be done about those feelings.
Employers may find the introduction and utilization of the computer to
be a useful process for both the development of their staff's specific skills
and affective relationships. Short computer training seminars may be val-
uable in allowing the staff to deal with a subject in which everyone starts
with basically the same skill level.
A Planning Strategy
The following strategy has been developed to aid the administrator/
manager in planning and implementing a successful computer system for
both the organization and the staff:
Time: Allow enough time to adequately plan and think through the
system. Important concerns should include: actual needs for computer-
ization; functions of a new system; cost of the system such as consultation,
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maintenance, acquisition, extra equipment (peripherals), space require-
ments, supplies, and necessary personnel (Ceriello, 1982).
Personnel: Whatever staff may be "touched" by the computer system
should be encouraged to express their concerns and make recommenda-
tions. Previous research already cited has confirmed the problem of lack
of communication between the higher staff echelon and the line staff
members. If appropriate, allow for group decision-making in areas such
as: location, users, and training (Malinconico, 1983b). In using computers
to aid in the decision-making process, the administrator/manager must be
concerned with the following questions: Are decisions made as promptly
with computers? Are the decisions as fair with computers as without? And
finally, does the computer process offer adequate opportunity and time
for reflection and decision-making?
Training: Staff should be made aware of what they can expect from
the computer system in terms of changing work requirements and the
operating procedures of the organization. Training, for those persons di-
rectly involved in the system, should identify the specific communication
patterns, i.e., getting the machine to work for the individual, types of
work, changing time patterns such as scheduling deadlines, task-related
thinking functions, increased hand-eye coordination, and changes in the
work environment. The primary goal is to give the employee a sense of
control over the machine, rather than feelings of helplessness. Frustrations
can be removed by reinforcing coping mechanisms that can lead to greater
employee productivity and involvement with the computer. Finally, ad-
ministrators/managers should strive to create productivity cycles to replace
the anxiety cycles previously mentioned. Figure 2 illustrates a computer/
employee productivity cycle.
Adequate time for training procedures should be allocated within the
organization to allow staff members ample practice sessions with the
computer system to upgrade their skills. A four-step procedure can be
incorporated in the training phase of the organization: 1) preparing for
new demands, 2) handling new demands, 3) evaluating that handling, and
4) improving upon that response.
Identifying Organizational and Individual Needs: While initially con-
sidered in the planning stage, organizational needs should be further de-
fined using two criteria: prioritizing and flexibility. Prioritizing needs to
occur in the areas of: projects in which the computer is critical, projects
in which the computer can be useful, and projects in which other devices
such as people can be as equally effective as a computer. Prioritizing can
also answer the questions of who is in charge, who gets the information,
and how the information can best be used (Rothman and Mosmann, 1976).
From an individual staff member's point of view, computers are often
perceived dichotomously, that is, either as a useful tool or problem-causing
entity (Lee, 1970; Cancro and Slotnick, 1970). Miller (1971) suggested
that a person's attitude is the most important aspect of a successful human-
computer relationship. Enabling an individual to see how the computer
can improve their operations within the organization will be a powerful
tool for the administrator/manager to use in facilitating the staff's transition
to computer technologies.
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Figure 2
Computer/Employee Productivity Path
Introduction of Computers
Changing Demands Within
Work Environment
Increased Initial Stress
Productivity and Anxiety
Increased Employee
Competence
IC
More Employee
Learning
Training
Initial Success
With System
Increased Employee Enthusiasm
For Computer System
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Increased
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Evaluation of Computer Usage and Department
Functions
Any strategy is prone to error through the two factors of conceptuali-
zation and implementation. While increasingly sophisticated computer
systems will negate the manager/administrator's need for a high level of
technical computer competence (Philipson, 1962), evaluation of the com-
puter system in terms of technology and its effects upon the staff will also
be important to the overall performance of the organization. In specific
terms, the evaluation of the computer operation should include the fol-
lowing questions:
Does the system do what it is supposed to?
Is the system enhancing or deteriorating the morale of the staff?
Are appropriate staff being adequately trained?
Is polarization taking place in the staff?those who are aided by the
computer versus those who remain wary of it?
In designing the evaluation format, Thompson and Dalton (1970) have
warned against creating one grand performance appraisal to serve all of
the administrative and management needs of an organization. Appraisal
of the system and the staff's ability to deal with the system should be
open and future-oriented.
If the administrator/manager is to implement and operationize computer
technologies, care must be exercised in acquiring the proper equipment
and integrating the staff with the technology. Computer-generated stress
can reduce staff productivity and create alienation. If computers are to be
successfully implemented into human-oriented organizations, it will be-
come necessary to be more than mere technicians.
Future work environments will certainly involve a greater use of com-
puterization (Naisbitt, 1982). In a similar fashion, the concern for em-
ployee productivity will manifest itself, in part, by a greater emphasis on
the psychological and affective health of the worker. If these two "waves"
are to work synergistically rather than in opposition, the organization must
combine the high-speed efficiency of machines with the sensitivity and
feelings of people in an effective but humanistic manner.
References
Benne, K. Deliberate Changing As the Facilitation of Growth. In W. Bennis, K.
Benne, & R. Chin (Eds.), The Planning of Change. New York: Holt, Rinehart and
Winston. Inc., 1964.
Blundell, G. Personal Computers in the Eighties. Byte, 1983, 8(1), 166-182.
Brod, C. Managing Technostress: Optimizing the Use of Computer Technology.
Personnel Journal, 1982, 6/(10), 753-757.
Cancro, R. & Slotnick, D. Computer Graphics and Resistance to Technology. Amer-
ican Journal of Psychotherapy, 1970, 24, 461-469.
Ceriello, V. The Human Resources Management System: Part I. Personnel Journal,
1982, 6/(10), 764-767.
Cheek, D. Visitor Surveys: A Snap with a Computer. Parks and Recreation, 1982,
/7(4), 55-56.
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Cheng, V. Computers in Leisure Services. Recreation Canada, September 1982, 12-
16.
Covert, M.D. and Goldstein, M. Locus of Control as a Predictor of Users' Attitude
toward Computers. Psychological Reports, 1980, 47, 1167-1173.
Dalton, G. and Thompson, P. Accelerating Obsolescence of Older Engineers. Harvard
Business Review, November 1970.
Dorf, R. Computers and Man. San Francisco: Boyd and Fraser, 1974.
Elizur, D. Adapting to Innovation. Jerusalem: Jerusalem Academic Press, 1970.
Foster, D. Computers and Social Change: Uses and Misuses. Computers and Auto-
mation, August 1970, 31-33.
Friedrich, 0. The Computer Moves In. Time, January 3, 1983, 14-24.
Herzburg, F., Mausner, B., & Snyderman, B. The Motivation to Work. New York:
John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 1959.
Howe, C. Let Your Computer Do the Calculating. Parks and Recreation, 17(1), 70-
72.
Lee, R. Social Attitudes and the Computer Revolution. Public Opinion Quarterly,
1970, 34, 53-59.
Lewin, K. Group Decision and Social Change. In T. Newcomb and E. Hartley (Eds.),
Readings in Social Psychology. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1947.
Maynard, W. Skills Managers Need to Survive. Administrative Management, 1982,
43(12), 33-71.
Malinconico, S. Hearing the Resistance. Library Journal, January 15, 1983, Ill-
113. (a)
Malinconico, S..Listening to the Resistance. Library Journal, February 15, 1983,
353-355. (b)
Meyers, M.S. Who Are Your Motivated Workers. Harvard Business, Review, Jan/
Feb 1964, 73-88.
Miller, R. Human Ease of Use Criteria and Their Tradeoffs. IBM Poughkeepsie
Technical Report, 1971, TTRoo.2185.
Naisbitt, J. Megatrends. New York: Warner Books, 1982.
Philipson, M. (Ed.). Automation: Implications for the Future. New York: Vintage,
1962.
Rothman, S. and Mosmann, C. Computers and Society. Chicago: Science Research
Associates, Inc., 1976.
Schein, E. Interpersonal Communication, Group Solidarity, and Social Influence.
Sociometry, 1960, 23(2), 148-161.
Shaiken, H. Microprocessors and Labor: Whose Bargaining Chips? Technology Re-
view, 1981, 83(3), 37.
Sharpless, D. Trends in Computer Use in Parks and Recreation. Proceedings: National
Workshop on Computers in Recreation and Parks, 1981, 111-116.
Shepard, J.M. Automation and Alienation: A Study of Office and Factory Workers.
Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1971.
Shultz, G. & Weber, A. Strategies for the Displaced Worker. New York: Harper and
Rowe, 1966.
Siderelis, Chrystos. Setting Up for Computerization: An Informational Analysis Ap-
proach. Proceedings: National Workshop on Computers in Recreation and Parks,
1981, 117-141.
Strauss, G. & Sayles, L. Personnel: The Human Problems of Management. Englewood
Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc. 1965.
Thompson, P. & Dalton, G. Performance Appraisal: Managers Beware. Harvard
Business Review, 48(1), 149-157.
Watts, R. Computers in Parks and Recreation Preparation for the Future. Proceedings:
National Workshop on Computers in Recreation and Parks. 1980, 37-48.
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Watts, R. Parks and Recreation Computer Education Survey. Proceedings: National
.Workshop on Computers in Recreation and Parks, 1981, 143-154.
Wilensky, H.L. Work, Careers, and Leisure Styles. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Har-
vard Information Office, 1972.
Zander, A. Resistance to Change: Its Analysis and Prevention. Advanced Management,
1950, 15-16, 9-11.
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Tomorrow's Work Dilemma:
Security vs. Access
by
Sanford B. Weinberg
The moving power behind the acceptance of computers is and has been
the continuing spread of access to the machines. In the not-very-dim past,
a priesthood of data-processing professionals stood guard against all new-
comers, making certain that only the jargon-initiated few could ever really
touch, operate, or control the holy equipment. But severe shortages of
trained personnel, growing pressures for performance, and technological
revolutions brought about a generation of machines that, after a number
of substages, can be easily and comfortably used by the unwashed mul-
titudes. Microcomputers using menu-driven programs can be operated
effectively by any noncyberphobic literate person. Expected advances, to
be introduced in the very near future, will replace modified keyboards
and typewriter entry systems with voice-activated units, making it possible
to verbally command a computer, word processor, or analogous machine,
further increasing access and eliminating "literacy" as a condition for
successful operation.]
There is, however, a more far-reaching matter in the area of increasing
access. Accepting the apparently inevitable impact of computers on the
workplace, a secondary and more potentially limiting dilemma can be
anticipated. As one manager explained, "The only thing worse than me
not knowing our inventory would be to have our competitors know as
much as we do about it." The centralization of data inevitable in com-
puterization raises a series of questions about the security of that data.
The concern about that security may well prove to be the limiting force
in the trend toward increased access, reliance upon, and use of computers
in tomorrow's workplace.
Security
The FBI currently estimates corporate losses due to violations of com-
puter security to be in excess of three billion dollars per year. The average
detected computer theft nets $450,000. Even if discovered, the odds of
the thief suffering a prison term are less than one in ten. Clearly, security
problems are monumental, and deterrent forces are ineffective.2
Sanford B. Weinberg is department chairperson of administrative sciences, Saint
Joseph's University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
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At present, little can be done to prevent computer-related criminal acts.
Contrary to popular belief, most security violations do not require a high
level of intelligence or esoteric knowledge of a system. Most password
keys are poorly protected or easily guessed, and many computer systems
will provide suggestions for bypassing internal controls if properly asked.
The simple and frightening fact is that almost any trained employee with
access to a computer terminal can abuse that access with little fear of
serious consequences. Our major operating protections today are post hoc
audits that have had only ineffectual success in doing more than halting
discovered abusive practices; the basic morality of our working populace;
and a series of fast-exploding myths about how complex computer security
systems really are.3
As access increases, the potentials for violations of security progress
geometrically. It becomes more difficult to pinpoint the source of a breach.
It becomes more difficult to build in limiting controls. And opportunities
for unauthorized tampering grow as remote units are scattered around a
company or around the country.
Many units, for example, are connected to computer mainframes via
phonelines. The potential to tap those lines, and hence monitor sensitive
material or access restricted systems, has always been real. The recent
and projected shifts to microwave and satellite-bounced phone transmis-
sions make tapping even simpler, and even more difficult to detect. In-
cidentally, in light of recent court rulings there is some question about
whether or not any post hoc legal remedies exist to deal with intercepted
microwave transmissions. It may well be quite legal to use a dish antenna
to listen in on your competitor's computer, gaining confidential infor-
mation about pricing, finances, or personne1.4
The move toward increased access, unless coupled with a parallel and
as yet unrealized move toward more sophisticated security systems, creates
a serious dilemma. More users means an increase in remote stations, and
thus greater opportunity for violation. The greater number of users weakens
responsibility and forestalls apprehension possibilities. An increase in
access encourages greater depth as well as breadth of exposure, providing
increased opportunity to accidentally or purposely discover methods of
bypassing existing security restrictions. In short, the pressures to increase
access are running head on into the growing problems of computer se-
curity.
Scenarios
Some authors of science fiction have envisioned a world in which the
dilemma is solved a la 1984. The society so predicted is filled with
computers in every home, but police officers (sometimes in the same
persona) looking over every shoulder. A few optimistic technologists have
argued instead that new breakthroughs in security will allow us to slip
between the horns of the dilemma, having universal access with tight
privacy restrictions. Recently, for example, Honeywell introduced a sys-
tem with a security protection guarantee, claiming it could not be violated
in less than three years of intensive work. A Defense Department "tiger
team" testing the system successfully breached it in less than 12 hours.5
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The far more likely scenario, though, suggests a significant modification
in the workplace, varying not only from the status quo of computer use
but from the apparent trends of today as well. The conflicting pressures
for increased access and more strict security are likely to produce a shift
over the next five to ten years (until blueprint-stage technologies providing
greater security are perfected) to a computerized workplace unlike that
imaged by most theorists, dreamers, or industrial engineers.
Currently, networked intelligent terminals linked to a central data base
predominate the market. Satellite stations used primarily for word pro-
cessing, MIS applications, production control, MRP, and similar functions
connect to common disk storage, printing, and processing facilities. Many
Managers, fearful of spiraling maintenance costs and trends toward de-
partmental "empire building," have resisted requests for freestanding
units, opting instead for the network systems. Diverse physical locations,
too, argue strongly for the interactive and interconnecting units.
The effect is generally a company in which various departments interact
with near simultaneous spontaneity with a central computer, using very
limited local memory capacity to compensate for queuing delays and for
handling brief word-processing functions. Departments can instanta-
neously interact with the main computer, greatly increasing the speed with
which data can be accessed and transmitted.
The vulnerability such a situation creates, with the potential for abusive
breach of internal restrictions, is not likely to continue to be tolerated.
Compromises, including some loss of flexibility and speed, are likely to
provide a necessary alternative in the name of stronger security protections.
Prediction
To balance the counteracting pressures of the need for security and a
growing demand for free access to data and processing within a subsystem,
we are likely to see a scenario relying with increasing commonality upon
a network of microcomputers. Each free-standing micro could be used
for different and secure computing functions, with a central switchboard
linking them with specific authorization to shared or common data bases
and programs.
The use of a telephone-type network is particularly appropriate, for it
allows constant monitoring of shared access, it allows rapid and accurate
networking, and it provides the security of a two-step linkage process.
That is, completing a phone call today requires (a) dialing the proper
access code and (b) speaking or interacting over the phone line. The
connection and communication steps are electronically and physically
separate.
Hypothesizing a continued need for rapid access and a growing security
concern, what changes in the workplace can we reasonably imagine? The
most reasonable expectation would be a continuing growth of telecom-
munication, using phonelines and equivalents to share restricted-access
data while using high-memory (256K) disk drive connected microcom-
puters for most tasks. This combination requires a worker population with
high user training but little expertise in technical and programming skills,
and requires a general managerial acceptance of the presence and use of
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the microcomputer units. Evidence of such acceptance will probably be
realized when executives accept the substitution of magnetic (microcom-
puter) records for paper (printed) equivalents.
It is reasonable to expect, then, that the office of five to ten years from
now will be equipped with one or more free-standing microcomputers,
and with a security-controlled networking access device allowing linkage
to other data bases. Managers will find themselves with responsibility for
controlling the networking system to prevent the kinds of abuses that can
result in a system reversal (and unauthorized access to internal systems).
Workers will find increasing demands for computer literacy. On the other
band, the security pressures explained above will probably prevent a more
widespread use of linked mainframe computer terminals, or of electronic
systems with the potential to replace more carefully monitored human
workers.
Conclusion
There is little or no doubt that computers will have a profound effect
upon the future workplace. Most predictions, however, have failed to
examine the impact of increased concern for security as a mitigating factor
restricting the spread of general-access computer systems. The use of
microcomputers, externally linked to shared data bases, will help to com-
pensate for the counteracting access-security pressures.
Notes
1. Shorr, Melinda, "Voice Recognition," Yankee Group, September 1981.
2. Becker, Jay J., The Investigation of Computer Crimes, Dept. of Justice, Law
Enforcement Administration, 1980.
3. Parker, Donn B., Ethical Conflicts in Computer Science and Technology, Ar-
lington, VA, AFIPS Press, 1979.
4. Wurglitz, Alfred M., J. D., private interview. February 1983.
5. Kolata, Gina, "When Criminals Turn to Computers, Is Anything Safe?" Smith-
sonian, August 1982.
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Innovation and
Economic Strategy
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Innovation and New Institutional
Structures
by
John Diebold
I've always been fascinated by the Industrial Revolution and I think
one of the questions one immediately poses, as I did when I was doing
my student work, is, Why was the Industrial Revolution a revolution?
Was it the machines? The conclusion I came to was that it wasn't the
machines: The steam engine, the cotton gin, the railway, the power loom?
all were extraordinary inventions. But the reason they were revolutionary
was because they were agents for great social change. They were revo-
lutionary because they took people out of the fields and brought them into
factories. They gave us mass production and, through mass production,
the first society in which wealth was not confined to the few. The Industrial
Revolution produced a sense of hurry, a sense of time, a sense of goal
that simply didn't exist previously. It changed human society and that's
what was revolutionary, not the machines themselves. And I think that
today, looking ahead at what is happening, the same thing is true. I think
that if you had asked Richard Arkwright or James Watt if they thought
they were changing society, they certainly would not have thought so.
They were simply concentrating on what they were doing. One of the
problems is that we are changing society with many of today's computer
technologies, and it's very important to be conscious of that fact, and to
think much more widely, as many of our leading scientists are doing, of
what the social consequences and what the human meaning might be.
Computers Will Revolutionize Other Businesses
The really interesting developments have either already started and will
be increasingly important in the years ahead, or are not quite recognized
yet but will be very important in the years ahead. The computer industry
has developed and grown in the last 30 years to what is today a big
industry, but it has already started to shift. It is no longer only a capital
industry producing capital goods. It has also become a consumer product
industry, and that is going to be a very important part of the years ahead?
John Diebold is president of The John Diebold Group, Inc., New York, New York.
This article is based on a speech given at the World Future Society's Fourth General
Assembly, "Communications and the Future," Washington, D.C., July 1982.
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not orny prouucts, out services, and not only the direct products, but the
indirect products, the incorporation of chips in automobiles and consumer
products of all kinds, and in capital products of all kinds. There are a lot
of consequences from this because it means that the main determinant of
economic competitiveness internationally is increasingly going to be suc-
cess in this field because this industry is going to determine success in
almost all other services and in almost all other kinds of product areas.
And the fact that it's not only becoming a consumer field but it's also
going to materially change virtually all other businesses is of the utmost
importance in terms of our own nation's well-being.
Humans Will Interact More Easily with Machines
The second observation I would like to make concerning the years ahead
is the fact that the changes that are going on in the technology involve
fundamentally extraordinary technical steps that will lead to material de-
creases in costs, which means that machines can begin to do more and
more complex things that will make things easier for human beings.
Basically, the human/machine interface is getting much easier, and that
is what I think is the real meaning of the technological changes: for
example, the voice machines that respond in any voice you want; machines
that handle graphics and that you can communicate with in graphics; and
the great portability of these machines. All of these technological changes
mean that we can begin to build systems that are able to handle the flow
of information, which is the principal determinant of our society, and that
are friendly and easy to use and that can adapt themselves to the human
need in this area. That's a very important kind of change and it's composed
of hundreds of innovations.
The intertwining of this change with the other great developments of
our times?the biological developments?is inevitable and obvious. The
interesting part of the biological developments has to do with the fact that
there are enormous volumes of information encoded within cells, which
immediately shows you that we haven't gone as far as people think we've
gone with regard to density of storage and the limits that we have in the
current machine system. Obviously it's possible to go very, very much
further than most of the people thinking about it from the outside realize.
The intertwining of these two developments is going to be formidable.
Several years ago, Vannevar Bush said we would end up with computers
implanted in each of us, and we already have chips implanted in heart
devices and we will have a multiplicity of increasing human involvements
in this, but it also shows us the way toward doing a lot of things in terms
of circuitry.
Computers Will Change What We Do
The third observation that I have is the fact that, so far, most of the
use of automation has been to mechanize what we have done, what we
do, to mechanize work that we've been doing. To a certain extent the
second phase has started, and it will be an enormously important phase,
and that is to change what we do. Already you can begin to find examples
of the parameters of competition in business being totally changed as a
result of the imaginative use of this new technology.
Computer games, for instance, constitute an industry that is already
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twice the size of the movie industry in the United States. The computer-
game industry, which didn't exist a couple of years ago, is totally de-
pendent upon interactive TV and computers.
We now are totally changing the structure of some industries?not by
mechanizing what we did yesterday but by providing services that weren't
provided at all previously. This will be the dominant characteristic of the
years ahead: the fact that we will provide services and products that simply
weren't provided in the past. It is no longer a question of mechanizing
what we've done in the past, but of doing quite new things. And one of
the things that I've always used as my own construction on the future is
that first, you mechanize what you did yesterday; second, you find that
what you do changes; and third, you find that the society in which you're
doing it brings about the greatest change of all.
A few years ago, the stereotype was that developments in automation
and computers meant rigid systems, highly centralized, monolithic types
of structures that were de-humanizing. Today it's exactly the reverse.
They are highly decentralized, very flexible, very human, increasingly
friendly, and very easy to adapt in any way that people who are using
them want. And what that means is, you make it easy to unleash human
imagination and what that leads us to is something that we can hardly
begin to guess. But it unleashes the most important force we have and
that's really what is happening in this field.
New Policy Issues
My first observation concerning the future is that, to date, the devel-
opments in automation and computers have raised relatively few discern-
ible public-policy problems. Some of us feel that a lot of problems have
been raised, but very few people perceive them at this point. But the
period immediately ahead of us will witness the appearance of an increas-
ing array of public-policy problems relating to this technology, and it's a
very wide array indeed. What's a branch of a bank? Is a terminal a branch?
What kind of communications policy should our country have? What about
the rest of the world?
We have a growing array of problems that increasingly encompass all
areas of our public-policy process, but we have a very fragmented insti-
tutional structure to deal with them. One example is antitrust. I cannot
help but feel that it would be a fascinating irony if what the two Japanese
companies have been indicted for in terms of theft of information from
IBM is precisely the information that the European Economic Community
(EEC) is trying to achieve through their antitrust actions. The Europeans'
proposed remedy in their antitrust action would give precisely the infor-
mation that the Japanese, according to the indictments, have been re-
sponsible for stealing!
Another irony of that situation is that if the EEC prevails, the beneficiary
will be the Japanese because the one thing the European organizations
have demonstrated in the last 30 years is an inability to bring to market
competitive products in precisely these areas, and the one thing that the
Japanese have demonstrated is the ability to do so. But what I'm trying
to point out is that we now face a lot of real public-policy problems, and
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I believe we're going to find many more of them. The most pressing of
these is how to maintain the dynamism of U.S. society in terms of in-
novation.
Our Real Problems
My second observation is that our problems tend to be debated at what
I believe is an entirely incorrect level. The crisis issues of the moment?
energy, or inflation, or interest rates, or whatever the current crisis may
be?are not our real problems. Our real problems are a series of funda-
mental institutional problems. I've identified four. You can pick a much
wider list, but four might give you an idea of what I mean.
Maintaining Our Ability to Innovate
The first problem is, How can we in the United States maintain the
ability to innovate, which is what has put us in the leadership position
that we enjoy in the technology of automation? We've led because we
can innovate; that is the thing we are best at. The great strength of America
is its ability to innovate. This ability comes from the mobility of the highly
educated population, the American belief in backing small enterprises and
in getting things started. There is a whole mix of things that have made
us very dynamic in this regard.
But how do we ensure that the marvelous engine of cornucopia will
continue to spew off the things that our society rests on, and that the
marvelous stream of innovations from the Silicon Valley, Route 128, the
Hudson Valley, and other parts of the country will continue. Our strength
is innovation. What do we do to maintain it?
We now have a society in which more and more factors work against
taking risk. How do we maintain one in which there is a value system
that encourages risk? I think this is worth a lot of attention and is a major
determinant of what happens next.
Lengthening Our Time Horizons
A second problem is our time horizons. We have a very short time-
scale in our decision-making, and that is true both at the private as well
as public level. We tend to use a variety of very sophisticated tools such
as discounted cash flow, which lead to decisions favoring short- rather
than long-term investments. This is particularly true in periods of high
interest rates. We have a time-scale in the political system that is extraor-
dinarily short when one considers it is an area where decisions should be
made not just for the lifetime of our children, but also for their children's
lifetime. This ought to be the scale of thinking, and it isn't at all. Once,
in our society, it was. I think we have a serious problem, and a very
complex one.
I've done some writing about it. It's not something we can quickly
solve, because there are many factors involved. But I think that this is a
problem that ought to receive a good deal of attention. At the very least,
we ought to make decisions that are relevant to the lifetime of our chil-
dren?which is not a particularly long period ahead to be thinking about,
yet totally beyond the time horizon used in most decision-making today.
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Trade-off Systems
The third problem is really a series of problems?problems of govern-
ment and of the social structure that we operate within. For example, we
have gradually built up a system in which there are thousands of places
in which you can veto doing something, but we have no system of trade-
offs?no organized method or way of going about setting priorities. We
can block things all over the place?and every year we invent new ways,
either legislatively or with the help of the massive numbers of lawyers
we're turning out. We have gradually developed all kinds of veto points
in society, but we have failed to develop trade-off systems. At some point,
society has to be able to say, "We want to do all of these things but we
can't," "This is more important than that," or "We can go so far on
this and so far on that." We have very crude ways of making such
decisions, but we really need a much better approach to setting priorities
and providing trade-off mechanisms. We really don't have a workable
system, and it's a very serious shortcoming in our society. It's very easy
to find an authoritarian solution, but it's very tough to find a democratic
solution, and that's what we need.
Another facet of this issue is our lack of an adequate coordinating
mechanism. How do we bring about trade-offs and coordinate our actions
when arriving at public decisions? For example, how do we, as a society,
stay ahead in the field of computers and automation? We now are ahead
in it but we have a lot of very complex issues affecting what happens
next, and we don't have a very good coordinating mechanism for handling
what the implications are. The current debate over communications is
another very good example. We don't have a good mechanism for arriving
at public policy in this area and for taking account of the many variables
that need consideration from the standpoint of our society's future well-
being.
We don't know how to arrive at such policy decisions and still keep
flexibility and freedom, but it certainly ought to be possible to do so. I
think that it may be easier to do that than to convert short-term to longer-
term time horizons, but we certainly need to find a way to do it. The
Germans and the Japanese both are able to do a better job than we do.
The French go at it in their way. I don't think we should copy any of
those, but devising our own approach is a task worth spending time on.
Understanding the implications of discernible future change is an area
that we ought to be innovating in. Some years ago, I suggested that we
create autonomous institutes of the future?publicly funded but not tied
to current budgets and insulated by public boards not related to the ad-
ministrations. The institutes could take contradictory positions on partic-
ular issues relating to the current impact of discernible future change, and
to the future impact of current decisions. I continue to think that such
institutes would be very useful. We clearly need some institutional in-
vention in that area.
A Guiding Vision
The fourth and last problem is that of creating what I've characterized
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as a guiding vision for society. French president Francois Mitterrand has
stated that France's future society and economy will be determined by
computers and automation; Japan's Ministry of International Trade and
Industry (MITI) has said that the main determinant of international com-
petitiveness in the future in all fields is going to be the computer; and
Singapore premier Lee Kuan Yew has made similar statements. These
people have some kind of guiding vision and some view of how you draw
things together. We need to invent a way to do that without decreasing
our ingenuity or our individual initiatives, and without getting us into a
structure that is not democratic or that goes against our history. We are
going through an extraordinary social revolution and the changes in com-
puters and in automation are one of the principal motive forces of that
change. Our task is to try to ensure that this change ends up being to the
benefit of mankind and not to its detriment. And the institutional change,
the institutional inventing, and the political questions in this area are
absolutely key determinants to our success. Regrettably, I see very little
going on that is encouraging in that area. I see a lot that isn't.
Some people are trying very hard to come to grips with this, and I think
many more people should be concerned. I think we need to rethink the
institutional relationships within our society because the technology has
outpaced them, and we have outmoded structures in many areas that keep
us from unleashing the human forces in the U.S. and other countries so
that we can make good use of the technology that we've created.
We must come to grips with the task of really making sure that we, as
a society, use technology and science in an imaginative way. And it is
that aspect that I think we should focus on in looking ahead at automation.
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An Economic Strategy for the
1980s
by
Gary Hart
I'd like to offer some perspective on how the high-technology revolution
can be helped or hindered by a conservative institution?our government.
When I use the term "conservative" to describe the federal government,
I'm not referring to current political philosophies. I'm talking, from a
more institutional viewpoint, about an enterprise responsible for balancing
the needs and concerns of some 230 million people, an institution that
historically has functioned best through incremental change, balancing of
competing interests, and hard-fought compromise.
Furthermore, history shows that there's a considerable gap between the
development of a new technology and an ability to comprehend and adjust
to all its ramifications. Many of our elected officials, all our regulators,
are products of an older generation that is basically computer-illiterate,
and that is, at a minimum, a bit wary about where all this change is
headed.
It could very well be that the only people who have an intuitive sense
of how this technological revolution will affect our democracy are the
twelve year-olds playing "Donkey Kong" over at the local convenience
store. But until it's their turn to assume the political leadership of this
country, we'll be dealing, to a certain extent, with a "lost generation"
of political figures. We've got an incredible task ahead of us if we are to
educate the federal government to work as an ally, rather than as an
impediment, to our future progress.
There is also the awesome challenge of re-educating the American
worker to accept this new infusion of information technologies in the
workplace. The fact is the drive toward the highly automated factory will
affect American jobs and jobholders on an unprecedented scale. We will
see a radical restructuring of work; current work skills will be devalued
and new ones will be created at an ever-increasing rate. As many as 45
million existing jobs could be affected by factory and office automation,
and much of that impact will occur in the next 20 years.
One doesn't have to be an expert in political science to guess that the
frustrations caused by this rapid change will be expressed in the political
arena.
Gary Hart is a Democratic U.S. senator from Colorado.
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I say this not in a spirit of pessimism, but merely to present an honest
picture of the tasks we face. In fact, I'm very confident that the American
system, more than any of our competitors, is well-structured to use the
opportunities provided by "high tech" developments to strengthen our
entire industrial base.
As a nation, we face a basic choice. We can engage in a battle between
competing regions and competing industries for a share in piecemeal
federal programs. Or we can try to get beyond the unnecessary and divisive
sunrise/sunset and frost-belt/sun-belt debates and develop a strategy for
encouraging the economic health of the nation as a whole.
That's what I believe we should do?but we're not doing it today.
Today, the federal government is practicing an ad hoc industrial policy,
made up of subsidies and benefits for individual industries. Just a few
examples of current industrial assistance programs make this point:
? Total expenditures for research for commercial fisheries are five times
higher than R&D on new steel technologies.
? $5 billion was spent on R&D for the nuclear power industry, but
only $943 million for coal.
? Tax breaks to the timber industry in 1980 totalled $455 million, while
the semiconductor industry received no direct assistance.
Look also at the "safe harbor" leasing provisions of the 1981 tax law.
They were intended, in part, to encourage new investment by our older
industries. Instead, they were used to shelter income by some of our biggest
and most profitable oil companies. And tax law encourages hostile take-
overs and mergers?with no new productive benefit to the economy?by
making money borrowed for such purposes tax-deductible.
We need a more rational set of policies that takes into account the needs
of our economy today and for the next decade. We need policies that will
help growing industries succeed and older industries become and remain
competitive. Let me outline seven elements of such a strategy.
First, we need a process, initiated at the highest level of government?
by the president?to bring about industry-by-industry agreements on mod-
ernization and growth. Representatives of management, labor, and the
major sources of capital would sit down together to design ways to help
our major industries become more competitive in this changing economy.
Most importantly, this proposal of presidentially negotiated industrial
modernization agreements is designed to make basic American manufac-
turing industries the most modern and the most competitive in the world.
The notion that we can rely on foreign autos, steel, chemicals, textiles,
and other manufactured goods is unacceptable to me and to most Amer-
icans. We can and must compete, but it will not happen by protecting
worn-out industries?or by accident.
Second, our approach to trade must be revised to provide greater com-
petitiveness and greater access for American products abroad. I introduced
a bill to address the restrictive trade practices toward high-technology
products by some of our competitor nations. The idea behind the bill,
which has been incorporated largely into the trade bill reported by the
Senate Finance Committee, is to promote trade liberalization, rather than
have our government duplicate the protectionist policies embraced by our
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competitors.
Third, we need to review and revise our regulatory policies to ensure
that they are supportive of our efforts to strengthen American opportun-
ities.
Fourth, we need to increase government support for research and de-
velopment. The percentage of spending for R&D in this country has fallen
behind that of some of our international competitors, especially in the area
of "pure" as opposed to "applied" research.
The government should dedicate more attention to R&D and make more
funding available for it. But we should also encourage cooperative research
programs among private companies. Indeed, I feel that this is one of the
key domestic initiatives needed to spur the development of our high-tech
companies.
Fifth, we must invest heavily in education.
The first step is to establish excellence in education. Twenty-five years
ago, the launching of Sputnik transformed our educational system and
brought new emphasis to critical scientific and math teaching. Today, the
challenge is no less serious, and we must once again bring our educational
system into line with today's realities. To this end, I introduced the Amer-
ican Defense Education Act, which focuses on improving our deficient
science, math, and language studies throughout our nation's schools.
At the university level, we are not graduating an adequate supply of
scientists, engineers, and technicians. Plenty of students are eager to
enroll, but our engineering and science schools do not have enough lab-
oratories, equipment, or professional faculty to meet the demand. More-
over, more than a third of the doctoral degrees awarded by American
universities in engineering last year went to non-U.S. citizens on temporary
visas.
To break this bottleneck, federal support, through National Science
Foundation grants, should be directed to universities for expanding and
improving science and engineering facilities and for supporting faculty
research and graduate students seeking advanced degrees.
More generally, we need to enact a "High Technology Morrill Act"
that would concentrate our resources and energies and do for high tech-
nology what the first Morrill Act, the Land-Grant College Act of 1862,
did for American agriculture.
Finally, training and retraining literally millions of American workers
will be a, if not the, major employment challenge of the 1980s. We need
a broad-scale, flexible program to meet the immense, changing, and di-
verse needs of American workers. One such system that looks quite prom-
ising is the Individual Training Account in which joint employer-employee
contributions would establish for each worker an account that may be
used, when the worker is displaced, for retraining and for relocation.
Sixth, we have to solve the most serious problems facing new enter-
prises?the need for capital. We can enlarge the pool of available capital
by identifying and employing underutilized capital resources, such as
pension funds. They constitute an enormous potential source of capital:
$800 billion this year, $4 trillion by the year 1995. Pension funds have
remained largely untapped because of regulations that are too restrictive
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and do not recognize the current capital-formation needs of our nation.
We should also consider altering bank regulations to encourage equity
investment in small firms. And by easing regulatory and application re-
quirements on small business loans, we can reduce the relatively high cost
of obtaining them.
And at the state level, state development finance corporations should
provide small businesses not only financial assistance but physical re-
sources?such as computers, laboratories, and office space?and mana-
gerial resources?such as management counseling and assistance in labor
negotiations?as well.
Finally, we should encourage entrepreneurial activity in all areas of
industry. We should maximize the unique assets of the American industrial
culture?and that means creating the necessary preconditions for entre-
preneurial activity to expand and flourish. One reason I reject the Japanese
model for industrial growth is that its emphasis on centralization and
consensus works to inhibit the risk-takers, the entrepreneurs.
Entrepreneurial activity is opportunistic by its very nature, so no static
federal model is going to work. But by working to eliminate many of the
impediments to entrepreneurial success, we can allow the risk-takers in
our society to reach the gold ring and succeed.
These are some examples of the kinds of creative approaches we could
take if we had a well-thought-out national industrial strategy. The potential
clearly exists for developing policies that will enable our high-tech industry
and related businesses to compete aggressively in the future.
Americans, after all, are not afraid of change?we love it. No nation
has been more willing to experiment, to take risks, than ours.
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Technological Innovation and
Economic Development
by
Fred Best
These remarks have been prepared to facilitate discussion of the role
of technological innovation in the overall scheme of economic develop-
ment. The following sections will discuss: (1) the growth and importance
of high-technology industries to economic revitalization, (2) the activities
and findings of the California Commission on Industrial Innovation, and
(3) an exploratory framework for isolating and assessing economic prob-
lems and potential solutions.
The Growth and Importance of Technological
Innovation
During the last few years, the United States has been confronted with
waves of technological innovation that have provided hope for rekindling
the dynamics of the American economy. Since the 1960s there has been
discussion of the impacts of technology and automation on the American
economy.' Although technological advances occurred at a crisp rate, noth-
ing resembling the predicted tidal wave of change emerged until the last
few years.
After years of forecasts, we are not confronted by wave after wave of
innovations that are having profound effects on our personal and occu-
pational lives. The advent and growth of the video recorder is just begin-
ning to revolutionize communication and entertainment. Over three million
Americans purchased home and personal computers during 1982, and
some six million more are expected to make similar purchases in 1983.2
If the cost of purchased or rented computer time continues to decline at
its historic rate of 50% every 21/2 years, and the complexity of utilization
is reduced by "user-friendly" software,3 the assimilation of computers
into every aspect of our lives can be expected to explode at geometric
rates.
The number of industrial robots used within the United States has grown
from 200 in 1970 to 3,500 in 1980, and is expected to pass 35,000 by
1990.4 Perhaps more important is the 'cybernetic' promise of integrating
Fred Best is president of Pacific Management and Research Associates, Sacramento,
California.
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computers and automated machinery. The growing use of CAD/CAM
systems (Computer-Assisted Design/Computer-Assisted Manufacturing)
now allows industrial planners to design products on computer screens
and then reformat machinery on the shop floor by pushing a few buttons.5
The implications for increasing productivity and product diversity are
spellbinding.?
Other innovations in the areas of energy production and utilization, bio-
technology, new materials, and medical services offer equally revolu-
tionary implications.7
The direct and indirect importance of expanding "high-tech" industries
to the U.S. economy promises to be phenomenal. Computers, robots,
communication technologies, and other innovative products are oversha-
dowing and sometimes displacing traditional markets. For example, the
value of the home and personal computer market has grown from $1.8
billion in 1980 to approximately $4.9 billion in 1982.8 If the number of
"personal computers" sold worldwide grows from about 1.5 million in
1982 to the 11 million projected for 1990,9 the market implications are
startling.
The direct and indirect impacts on the job market are equally earth-
shaking. Nationally, the growth of employment in high-technology in-
dustries alone will account for some 7% of all new jobs between 1980
and 1990. In California, these industries will directly provide about 9%
of all new jobs (see Tables 1 and 2).10 Indirectly, these industries are
expected to stimulate about twice this amount again in support and service
jobs.11
Beyond job creation, the technologies produced by these industries will
fundamentally alter the nature of work and skills required from employees
in every sector of the economy. Word-processing and communication
technology is just beginning to affect office work,12 and CAD/CAM and
robotics will drastically change the face of America's manufacturing and
commerce sectors. These changes not only offer new hope for increased
productivity, economic growth, and new job opportunities but also con-
front us with the challenge of negotiating institutional and human adjust-
ments that have not been faced since the first "Industrial Revolution."
The challenges and opportunities presented by technological innovation
are particularly pronounced in California. Since the early days of aerospace
and atomic research, California has been an acknowledged leader in tech-
nological innovation. This lead has been maintained with computers, bio-
technology, energy research, medical breakthroughs, and robot design.
Clearly, encouragement of these industries and responses to the adjust-
ments they foster is a primary policy concern of the state government.
The California Commission on Industrial Innovation
In an effort to assess the direction of technological innovation and
encourage its growth within the California economy, Governor Edmund
G. Brown, Jr., established the California Commission on Industrial In-
novation by Executive Order during November 1981. This commission,
for which I had the privilege of serving as deputy director, was chaired
by Governor Brown. The commission and an interlocking set of advisory
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Table 1
Sources of California Jobs, 1970-1990
1970
1980
1990
Growth
1980-1990
Total Jobs
8,023.9
11,146.5
13,917.0
24.9%
High Technology
273.0
492.2
726.7
47.6
Computer Services
11.4
43.3
128.3
196.3
Computers
52.8
97.1
163.0
67.9
Instruments
50.3
123.1
147.5
26.4
Communication Equipment
102.9
130.1
163.3
25.5
Electronic Components
55.6
98.6
124.6
19.8
Service
1234.8
2082.9
2856.6
37.1
Trade
1530.8
2267.5
2917.2
28.7
Finance, Insurance, Real Estate
374.5
620.9
794.5
28.0
Other Manufacturing
1078.7
1338.9
1642.0
22.6
Mining
31.4
42.9
51.9
21.0
Aircraft/Space
217.7
213.3
237.7
11.4
Self-Employed, Household Workers, Other
1858.3
2321.1
2736.5
17.5
Government
1424.7
1766.9
1953.9
10.6
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Table 2
Employment in California's High-Technology Industries
Industry
1980
Employment
1990
Employment
1980-1990
Growth
Rate
Biotechnology
2,000
9,000
300.5%
Photovoltaics
1,000
4,000-10,000
900.0%
Robotics/Computer-Aided
Manufacturing
1,000
5,000-10,000
900.0%
Computer Software and Data
Processing Services
43,300
128,300
196.3%
Computers and Peripherals
97,100
163,000
67.9%
Electronics Components
98,600
124,600
19.8%
Aircraft and Space
213,300
237,700
11.4%
Instruments
123,100
147,500
26.4%
Communication Equipment
130,100
163,300
25.5%
TOTAL High Technology
709,500
993,400
40.0%
TOTAL California
11,146,500
13,917,000
24.9%
committees worked throughout 1982 to conduct analysis and develop
recommendations. Attention was focused upon the three areas of:
1. Financing research and investment in technological innovation.
2. Adjusting education to better meet the needs of emerging jobs.
3. Encouraging more productive relations between management and labor.
The commission met six times during 1982. During this time, an em-
phasis was placed on open dialogue in an effort to avoid needless polar-
ization of representatives from different interests and to foster productive
"problem-solving" activities.
Over the year, the commission produced a series of technical reports
assessing current trends and emerging developments in key "high-tech"
industries," and a final report titled Winning Technologies, which sum-
marizes analysis and recommends policies to encourage technological
innovation and facilitate their assimilation into the U.S. economy and
society.I4 Highlights of this final report follow:
Introduction and History of Commission (Chapter 1): This chapter sum-
marizes the formation of the commission and highlights some of the leading
concerns of individual members.
Toward a National Industrial Strategy (Chapter 2): Issues are concerning
whether or not state and federal governments should engage in a more explicit
effort to work with business, labor and other groups to develop a "strategic
plan" to encourage our most promising industrial sectors. California and United
States policies are compared to those of European countries and Japan.
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Encouraging Investment and Research in Technological Innovation
(Chapter 3): This chapter reviews current data concerning investment and
research and suggest a variety of approaches for accelerating these activities.
Some of the recommendations include expansion of government grants and tax
credits to encourage research and development, removal of unnecessary anti-
trust barriers to cooperative research, elimination of long-term capital gains
taxes, use of pension funds to encourage innovation and more reciprocal trade
agreements.
General Educational and Job Training Needs for the Future (Chapter
4): A review of the best available state and national data concerning the nature
of employment in the future suggests a need to improve and expand the caliber
of math, science, and technical education, develop effective approaches for
retraining mid-career workers, and provide general skills for living in a more
technically complex society.
Elementary and Secondary (Chapter 4): This chapter, developed primarily
by Michael Kirst, notes a critical shortage of math and science teachers at the
K-12 level and suggests possible solutions, emphasizes the importance and
potentials of computer training and computer-assisted instruction along with
recommendations, suggests a variety of incentives that might be used to increase
the study of math and science, and outlines potential revenue sources.
Vocational Education and Job Training (Chapter 5): This chapter rec-
ommends a "Master Plan" for vocational and job training that would emphasize
performance assessment and integrated planning to insure optional use of re-
sources; suggests improved linkages between education and work through job-
based training, increased involvement of business and labor in educational
planning, and selected use of private sector resources; proposes increased em-
phasis on updating teachers, curriculum, and educational facilities; and supports
a variety of steps to provide effective retraining opportunities for established
workers.
Higher Education and Graduate Training (Chapter 6): This chapter ex-
amines today's existing shortage of scientists and engineers and suggests ex-
panding training capacities by selectively increasing faculty salaries, providing
assistance and incentives to encourage graduate study in selected fields, and
improving campus-based teaching and research facilities. Initiatives are sug-
gested to improve the "technical literacy" of college graduates, including a
"liberal science" program; and resumed emphasis is urged for campus-based
research activities. Revenue sources and resource realignments are suggested.
Partnerships for Productivity (Chapter 8): This chapter discussed how
undue polarization between management and labor can undercut the motivation
to work and foster resistance to technological innovations that are essential to
economic revitalization. Recommendations to give employees a "stake in pro-
ductivity" include tripartite boards to encourage labor-management coopera-
tion, technical and economic assistance to encourage productive application of
new technologies in ways that benefit employees, and profit-sharing options.
The analysis and recommendations are not only supported empirically,
but have also passed the first test of political viability in that they have
been generally reviewed and supported by the commission.
Need for Comprehensive Thinking
The development and application of new technologies will clearly play
a critical role in regalvanizing both the California and the U.S. economy.
At the same time, it must be emphasized that technological innovation is
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only one component in the total formula for economic recovery. As such,
efforts must be made to integrate the promise of these innovations into
an overall economic strategy.
While there is widespread agreement that the California and American
economies are faltering, there is considerable debate over the causes of
this suboptimal performance and prospective solutions. Disagreement over
the basis of today's economic problems ranges from belief that the econ-
omy is fundamentally sound and experiencing a short-term cyclic downturn
to concern that we confront long-term structural problems dealing with
technology, labor supply, investment levels, and other conditions requiring
major institutional changes. Further, there is widespread disagreement
over the relative importance of varied factors believed to be causing both
short- and long-term problems. Needless to say, such varied viewpoints
concerning the causes of U.S. economic problems have complicated the
task of developing a working consensus concerning both the choice and
interrelation of solutions.
Realistically, there is no one set of solutions that can be expected to
solve all our economic problems. Indeed, the development and selection
of solutions is likely to require trade-offs between objectives and the
relative importance of objectives. As such, it is critical to develop an
overview of the factors alleged to foster economic problems, empirically
assess the existence and nature of alleged problems, and develop some
consensus concerning the relative importance of documented problems as
a prerequisite to policy development.
It is also likely that there is more than one set of solutions that might
effectively combat any specified group of economic problems. At the
same time, there is a danger that a chosen set of solutions may not be the
best combination for combating problems or, even worse, entail contra-
dictions that may undermine desired results. Hence, it is increasingly
important that public and private sector policy makers strive to develop
a working consensus concerning the overall nature and relative importance
of today's economic problems.
Factors Contributing to Economic Problems
The final report of the California Commission on Industrial Innovation
provided a provisional outline of factors that may be contributing to the
economy's suboptimal performance. For purposes of discussion, this list
has been grouped into seven major categories:
Poor Economic Climate and Attitudes. It has been suggested that the overall
economic environment has undermined the confidence and economic perfor-
mance of individuals and firms. Inflation and price instability are viewed as
undercutting effective planning, savings and investment, and consumer confi-
dence. Similarly, erratic and sluggish market demand is seen as leading to
underutilization of capital and labor, as well as discouragement of business
confidence to expand and modernize. It is generally agreed that the economic
instability and pessimism discourage optional use of existing productive re-
sources.
Obsolete and Inappropriate Technology. Some claim that the development
and application of new technologies has become inadequate. It is suggested
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that declining expenditures on basic and applied research 4re causing the Amer-
ican economy to be noncompetitive with other industrial nations. Others suggest
that the American industrial system has been too slow to assimilate critical
technological innovations.
Inadequate Investment. It has also been claimed that high interest rates
resulting from public deficits, high debt loads, and the instability of international
loans have curtailed investment in industrial modernization, postponed replace-
ment of obsolete and worn-out machinery, and allowed the basic economic
infrastructure (roads, utilities, etc.) to degenerate. Others suggest that existing
capital investments have not been directed to the most productive areas.
Indequate Organization and Utilization of Human Resources. There have
been varied claims that human resources at both the managerial and line-em-
ployee levels have not been effectively utilized. Some focus on the supply and
skill levels of workers, suggesting that workers are ill-trained for existing jobs,
that work habits and motivation are poor, and that labor costs price workers
out of jobs. Others argue that employees have been ineffectively utilized by
management and that managerial decisions have been suboptimal. Specifically,
there are claims that employees are ineffectively placed in jobs and given
ineffective incentives, that human resources are wasted through needless un-
employment, that little opportunity is provided for retraining and updating skills,
that little attention is given to basic industrial operations, and that too much
attention has been given to short-range profits. In sum, many opine that the
human contribution to economic productivity could be improved.
International Competition. It has been increasingly noted that international
competition has been capturing large portions of foreign and domestic markets
that the United States had previously dominated. Among the reasons for these
observations are global industrialization and economic development of previ-
ously noncompetitive nations, government subsidization of foreign competitors,
noncompetitiveness of American industry, and unfair trade relations.
Inaccessibility of Raw Materials. It has been claimed that constraints in the
supply of essential raw materials (most particularly energy) caused by natural
depletion, institutional barriers, and international trade have caused the economy
to function less productively than in the past.
Obstruction to Economic Revitalization. A number of factors have been
identified that may inhibit the application of more productive economic activ-
ities. Foremost among such obstacles is the tendency of labor, management,
and communities to resist the de-emphasis or realignment of established eco-
nomic sectors. It has been suggested that labor's fear of job and economic loss
impedes modernization and the disinvestment needed to shift resources to more
promising uses. Additionally, it has been claimed that government regulation,
costs of social welfare programs for those without jobs, and general political
instability have curtailed the optimal use of economic resources.
As suggested above, the empirical existence of many of these alleged
problems, as well as their relative importance, must be fully documented
and elaborated by detailed discussion and rigorous empirical assessment.
Approaching an Economic Development Program
The above and other efforts to isolate and define the problems con-
fronting the economy suggest important considerations for those seeking
to develop economic development policies. Regardless of one's views
concerning specific problems areas, there can be little doubt that today's
economic difficulties have their roots in multifaceted causes. While spe-
cialized efforts must be made to attack specific problem areas, it is critical
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that those concerned with economic policy develop and maintain an aware-
ness of the interrelated nature of the task they are undertaking. Given the
severity of today's economic downturn, extraordinary efforts must be made
to facilitate communication among those working on specialized areas and
to create forums that foster broad problem-solving dialogue to build com-
mon understanding of problems and encourage integrated solutions.
The task of moving from a reasonably common agreement about eco-
nomic problems to programs and policies is no simple matter. While there
is a clear and critical need for new ideas, the problem does not lie solely
with a lack of proposals. It also stems from the complexity of existing
proposals, lack of effective elaboration of proposals, misunderstanding of
proposals and their likely impacts, and failure to effectively negotiate
resolutions to conflicting interests.
Notes
1. Howard Bowen and Garth Mangum (editors), Automation and Economic Prog-
ress, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1966; Norbert Wiener, The Human
Use of Human Beings, Avon Books, New York, 1950; and Walter Buckingham,
Automation: Its Impact on Business and People, Mentor Books, New York, 1961.
2. "The Computer Moves In," Time, January 3, 1983, page 14.
3. "The Speedup in Automation," Business Week, August 3, 1981, page 60.
4. The Impacts of Robotics on the Workplace and Workforce, Department of
Engineering and Public Policy, Carnegie-Mellon University, Pittsburgh, June 14,
1981.
5. Thomas Gunn, "The Mechanization of Design and Manufacturing," Scientific
American, September 1982, pages 114-131.
, 6. One source reports that the use of CAD/CAM by Westinghouse resulted in a
25% reduction in manufacturing lead-time and a 400% increase in productivity ("The
Speedup in Automation," op. cit., page 60).
7. "High Technology and the California Workforce in the 1980's," California
Technological Future: Emerging Economic Opportunities in the 1980' s, California
Department of Economic and Business Development, Sacramento, March 1982.
8. "The Computer Moves In," op. cit., page 14.
9. Greggory Blundell, "Personal Computers in the Eighties," Byte, January 1983,
page 168.
10. "Project Summary," California's Technological Future: Emerging Economic
Opportunities in the 1980's, California Department of Economic and Business De-
velopment, Sacramento, March 1982.
11. Michael Kieschnick, "The Incipient California Industrial Policy," Office of
Economic and Business Research, Department of Economic and Business Develop-
ment, San Francisco, California, January 6, 1982.
12. Colin Norman, Microelectronics at Work: Productivity and Jobs in the World
Economy, Worldwatch Institute, Washington, D.C., October 1980, pages 22-29.
13. Four studies of specific high-technology industries were contracted: Richard
Osborn, Barbara Wachsman, Anne Markusen, and Peter Hall, Computer Services:
The People Behind the Machines, August 1982; Elisabeth O'Malley and Marshall
Feldman, Biotechnology: The Next Green Revolution, August 1982; Richard Dorf,
Robotics and Computer-Aided Manufacturing/Design, August 1982; and Eugene Coyle
and James Hawley, Photovoltaics: Technology for Energy Independence, August 1982.
14. Winning Technology: A New Industrial Strategy for California and the Nation,
Final Report, California Commission on Industrial Innovation, Office of the Governor,
Sacramento, California (Executive Summary Released September 1982 and Detailed
Report Released October 1982).
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Incentives
and
Motivation
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Autonomy, Control, and the Office
of the Future:
Personal and Social Implications
by
Don Mankin
The key to understanding the potential impact of the office of the future
is recognition of the essential duality of the technology itself. That is, the
inherent nature of the technology makes possible a wide range of alter-
natives and designs. On the one hand, it is possible to use the technology
to monitor job performance; increase managerial control over/workers;
subdivide and standardize jobs; regulate work schedules, location, and
pace; and remove the most challenging and interesting aspects from many
jobs by substituting computer routines for employee decisions and judg-
ments. By now, most of us are familiar with such applications of computer
technology in the work of secretaries in word-processing pools and order
entry clerks in large commercial enterprises. In effect, these applications
are information-age manifestations of industrial-age ideas about the most
effective ways to organize work; they are F.W. Taylor's principles of
Scientific Management and Henry Ford's assembly line dressed up in the
new technology but exhibiting essentially the same ideas, values, ele-
ments, and substances?with the same dehumanizing consequences.
Other applications, designs, and forms are possible, however. The na-
ture of industrial-age organizations reflected in part the need to "bring
people together around a central energy source that fueled the means of
production," Shoshana Zuboff of the Harvard Business School points out.
They had to interact with various linked and frequently large and cum-
bersome production machineries, and to coordinate their activities in real
time with the energy source, machinery, and each other. Since electronic
information technology does not require work to be collective and syn-
chronous, organizations employing this technology are less dependent on
the location, scheduling, and pacing of inflexible machinery and nondis-
tributable energy sources. Furthermore, since the substance of "computer-
mediated work" (to use Zuboff's words) is symbolic and abstract (in-
formation) rather than physical (raw materials and products), this substance
can be easily manipulated and transformed as long as the software nec-
Don Mankin is a research consultant with the Rand Corporation, Santa Monica,
California. He is also the director of a U.S. Department of Education grant to develop
undergraduate and graduate programs in information resources management for An-
tioch University campuses nationwide.
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essary for these operations is readily available. As a result, more flexibility
and employee control is possible in the execution of the job tasks than is
possible in the rigidly structured and machine-defined tasks found in most
manufacturing industries. Furthermore, the implementation of this tech-
nology and the design of the organizational context can support and extend
this flexibility and control considerably. Involving users in the imple-
mentation planning process, developing training programs that show em-
ployees how to use the systems to aid them in their work, designing
systems that are user-programmable and modifiable, and relaxing orga-
nizational policy concerning work hours and location are just a few of the
ways in which implementation decisions and organizational policy can
contribute to the flexibility and discretion of computer-mediated work.
To conclude, it is clear that automated office technology need not shape
jobs and organizations in predetermined ways. How the technology is
used, implemented, and supported, and therefore its impact on workers
and society, depends as much on management ideology as on the tech-
nology itself. The same technology that can be employed to control,
monitor, and deskill work can also be used to facilitate creativity, initia-
tive, flexibility, variety, and employee self-management. In effect, the
technology?and the work processes in which the technology is em-
ployed?can be used to increase the degree of control, discretion, and
autonomy that workers exercise and experience in their jobs. The principal
hypothesis of this paper, then, is that this autonomy and control, in turn,
could have personal and social implications that go well beyond their
already well-documented impact on work performance and job satisfac-
tion.
Computer-Mediated Work and Stress
Mental and physical health is one of these implications. Control has
long been implicated as a moderating factor in the relationship between
aversive conditions and health. While stress research has often focused
on the sense of or locus of control as a property of the individual, a
growing body of research on work-related stress has begun to examine
control as a characteristic of the job. For example, in a series of studies
using a representative sample of the male Swedish labor force, workers
whose jobs were characterized by heavy work loads and low control over
their work situations were most inclined to exhibit symptoms of depres-
sion, excessive fatigue, cardiovascular disease, and mortality. The workers
with the lowest probability of illness and death were those with moderate
work loads combined with high levels of control over the work situations.
In another series of experiments, also conducted in Sweden, catecholamine
excretion?a neuroendocrine stress response?was highest for workers
whose jobs were highly repetitious and machine-paced.
A study conducted in the United States by a research team at the
University of Michigan also suggests an ameliorating impact of autonomy
on stress. On the basis of this and related studies, Robert Kahn, an or-
ganizational psychologist at the University of Michigan, recommends an
organizational change strategy for alleviating job-related stress that in-
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creases the extent to which employees "participate in the decisions that
affect them. . . and the extent to which they are autonomous or controlling
in their own work." If it is truly the case that work autonomy can moderate
job-related stress, as this research strongly suggests, then automated office
systems designed to increase the degree of control that employees have
over the scheduling, location, pacing, and nature of their work should
lower the psychological stresses they experience in their jobs and the
physical problems typically associated with long-term exposure to such
stresses.
Implications for Social and Political Participation
The office of the future also has implications for social and political
participation. These potential consequences emerge from a tradition of
research that focuses on work as an instrument of social learning. Much
of the early research on this topic tried to account for the apparent lack
of interest exhibited by many workers?particularly urban blue-collar
workers?in work that was challenging and discretionary. The explanation
typically offered was that these attitudes were at least partly a function of
job experiences that had created the expectation that such opportunities
were generally not available to them. Even when challenging and auton-
omous work was available, many workers would view these jobs with
suspicion, treating them as a ruse by management for increasing their job
responsibilities without commensurate increases in job level and pay. Or
they would assume that they lacked the job and decision-making skills
necessary for effective performance. These attitudes, the argument con-
tinues, were further reinforced by workers' perceptions of the job expe-
riences of their parents, peers, and others with similar socio-economic
and educational backgrounds. This learned passivity would spill over into
such areas of their nonwork lives as leisure, family life, and community
and political activities.
This argument leads in turn to the corollary that a way to decrease
passivity and apathy is to gradually introduce acceptable and manageable
increments of control and discretion into the jobs of those for whom little
opportunity for control has previously existed. Not only would they learn
step-by-step to exercise responsibility, discretion, and control in their jobs
but they would seek out additional opportunities to exercise these newly
developed skills in their jobs and in their nonwork lives as well?just as
fit, coordinated, and well-toned athletes seek out activities that exercise
and test their physical capabilities.
Probably the most thorough and explicit presentation of this thesis can
be found in the writings of political scientist Carole Pateman, particularly
in her book Participation and Democratic Theory (1970). Pateman argues
that hierarchical, nondemocratic organizational structures socialize work-
ers into passivity and political apathy, which is reflected in their poor
turnout for elections, low levels of community service, and reluctance to
participate in voluntary organizations and union, community, and political
activities. If workplace authority structures were redesigned along dem-
ocratic lines, workers would develop a heightened sense of political ef-
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ficacy and, therefore, take a more active and participatory role in the
political processes in the larger society. In Pateman's words: "We learn
to participate by participating and . . . feelings of political efficacy are
more likely to be developed in a participating environment."
Modest support for Pateman's thesis can be found in a recently published
article by Maxwell Elden of the Norwegian Technical University (1981).
In the research reported in this article, Elden collected data from a newly-
built, highly automated manufacturing plant. The plant differed from older,
more traditionally structured plants owned by the same company in its
use of semi-autonomous, self-managed work groups. Using a question-
naire distributed to all the employees, Elden found a small but statistically
significant correlation between self-management opportunities and a sense
of political efficacy.
Additional support for Pateman's theory comes from one of the Swedish
studies mentioned in the earlier discussion of job stress. In this study,
conducted by Robert Karasek of Columbia University, a nationally rep-
resentative sample of employed males between the ages of 18 and 60 were
interviewed in 1968 and later in 1974. Those workers whose jobs had
become more "passive" also became more passive in their political and
leisure activity while those with more active jobs became more active
outside of their work. In discussing his own research, Karasek's study,
and several other similar investigations, Elden concludes that "empirical
evidence which has become available since [Pateman's book] validates
her contention that a democratically designed work environment induces
the development of the type of political resources necessary for partici-
pation in and beyond the workplace."
What is the relevance of this conclusion to the subject of office auto-
mation? First, as argued earlier, office automation systems can be designed
to provide employees with substantially increased control over the sched-
uling, location, pacing, and nature of their job tasks. While workplace
democracy is frequently interpreted in terms of employee participation in
organizational decision-making, either directly or indirectly through elected
representatives, it can and often does include "democracy" at the level
of the workplace or the individual job. Indeed, most of the research
indicates that, of the two approaches?higher and lower level participa-
tion?the most effective strategy is to enhance worker control over their
immediate job tasks and work environment. (These are generally com-
patible strategies in any case and should ideally be implemented at the
same time so as to reinforce each other). Therefore, by giving workers
control over the job conditions and context they actually experience
throughout the day, office automation systems could have an immediate
and profound impact on the development of participatory skills and atti-
tudes.
Second, following Pateman's theory on the socializing influence of
democratic job structures, workers exposed to autonomy-enhancing office
automation designs would have the skills and be more inclined to partic-
ipate actively in such nonwork activities as community affairs, public
service, political lobbying, and voting.
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Finally, since an increasing amount of research and organizational ex-
perience points to the important role of employee participation in orga-
nizational effectiveness, autonomy-enhancing approaches to office
automation should gain increased favor. As these approaches proliferate,
office automation could become a major factor in the development of a
society where a majority of the citizenry regularly and actively participates
in the processes by which organizations, communities, and nations are
governed?that is, if Pateman is indeed correct about the relationship
between workplace democracy and political efficacy and participation.
Fulfilling the democratic ideal requires not only the opportunity for par-
ticipation but a populace with the motivation and skills necessary for the
effective use of this opportunity. As Elden notes; "Work democracy seems
to be one way of creating an enduring propensity to participate in political
affairs." And one way to create work democracy?a way that would be
acceptable to managers as well as workers because of its impact on pro-
ductivity and efficiency?is to implement designs for office information
technology that support and liberate human function rather than constrain
and control it.
Before concluding, I would like to inject a brief note of caution into
the rosy picture of this technological utopia. We need to consider what,
if any, negative consequences might arise from a society of active, au-
tonomous citizens willing and able to participate in the political process
for the purpose of influencing policy decisions and issues. Specifically,
there is no guarantee that these citizens, with their recently developed
skills and sense of efficacy organized into groups with competing interests,
will agree on important decisions or even agree to compromise with other
groups equally skillful and confident of their political potency but holding
differing values and opinions. The result, as Daniel Bell notes in The
Coming of Post-Industrial Society (1976), may lead to a seriously con-
straining paradox:
The greater the number of groups, each seeking diverse or competing ends,
the more likelihood that these groups will veto one another's interests, with the
consequent sense of frustration and powerlessness as such stalemates incur. . . .
Thus the problem of how to achieve consensus on political questions will become
more difficult. Without consensus there is only conflict, and persistent conflict
simply tears a society apart, leaving the way open to repression by one sizeable
force or another.
The "zero-sum society," to use Lester Thurow's expression, could
aggravate the problem as competing groups make increasingly contentious
demands for a larger slice of a pie that may no longer grow as rapidly as
it has in the past.
This need not be a reason for resisting the implementation of autonomy-
enhancing office automation systems. Compensating policies and mech-
anisms can be developed: in particular, better means for resolving conflict
among competing public interests and policies for expanding the "pie"
so that everyone's slices can grow larger. Perhaps, the very existence of
more challenging and autonomous work itself would lessen demand for
certain forms of satisfaction outside of work.
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But within the contents of this paper we can do little more than just
raise the issues. These issues, along with further study of the ones dis-
cussed here and several that have not been addressed, comprise a research
and policy agenda that needs to be examined before the revolution in office
automation renders these issues faits accomplis in a manner little to our
liking.
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Tomorrow's Technical/
Communications Labor Force
by
Arthur B. Shostak
Dramatic and rapid advances in modern work practices promise to vastly
increase the number and significance of a new type of nonsupervisory
employee?the "hands-on" operators of large centralized computer work-
stations. Typified by panel watchers in chemical plants, oil refineries,
nuclear power plants, TV and recording studios, and stock brokerage
operations, among others, this new kind of American worker may hold
the most responsible, the most stressful, and the best paid jobs in the non-
college-educated labor force of the next 25 years.
Special insight into the problems and prospects of these distinctive data
processors has been offered by the demands and fate of the U.S. air traffic
controllers' union, the Professional Air Traffic Controller's Organization
(PATCO). Conventional wisdom had it that the highly sophisticated work
of the controllers, performed in modern settings and reliant on elaborate
computer technologies, should have presented few, if any, labor problems.
A bitter strike, and the ensuing dismissal of 11,400 controllers, however,
revealed otherwise, and work experts have since concluded that "the
demands being made by the controllers are the kind of demands that can
be expected from workers in other sectors of the economy that depend on
advanced technologies."'
If we are to maximize the gains in work that advances in communications
make increasingly possible, it is imperative that we improve the manage-
ment of our workplace human resources?and begin by learning from
present-day mistakes. The controllers' strike, for example, marked perhaps
the first time in history that American workers, in effect, "gave up their
jobs because they had been mismanaged."2 Another specialist warns that
the controllers' demand for relief from excessive workplace stress will be
raised over and over again by similar occupational types ("Stress is the
black lung of the technical classes.").3 And a third commentator insists
that the controllers' demand for better equipment to ensure safer air travel
foreshadows many similar pleas from other conscientious employees: The
Arthur B. Shostak is a professor of sociology at Drexel University, Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania. A founding member of both the World Future Society and its Phila-
delphia chapter, he is the author of 12 books and nearly 100 articles on social issues.
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rapid automation of industry is thought likely to generate new controller-
like jobs responsible for the safety of whole factories or offices and their
contents?material and human.4
Supervisory malpractices, the prevalence of debilitating job stress, and
doubts concerning equipment with which to ensure the safety of "souls"
(or passengers in the aircraft being "handled" by the controllers) are
harbingers of labor discontent likely wherever this new breed of controller
and controller-like worker is brought into being.5 PATCO's strike, ac-
cordingly, can be understood as a historic milestone?the first major
rebellion of nonprofessional workers against hardships in the technological
shift from producing things to controlling information. If we intend to
reduce the pressure for many more such upheavals, we must attend to the
reform lessons contained in PATCO's noble, if ill-fated, stand.
PATCO Strike "Lessons"
Drawing on my two years of involvement as a survey researcher for
the union, and on lengthy discussions of work issues I have held with
controllers at the O'Hare Tower (the world's busiest), on the Philadelphia
airport PATCO picket line, and at union headquarters in Washington, I
want to highlight seven guidelines I draw from controller discontents that
might help improve the work and worklives of controller-like employees.
First, technical workers with jobs like those of air traffic controllers
are likely to desire and prosper from collegial rather than authori-
tarian approaches to supervision. This type of worker seems to have a
keen need for sensitive support from supervisors when inevitable human
errors occur. They appreciate supervisory praise when inevitable crises at
work earn an extraordinary response. And they expect an honest and
constructive effort from supervisors in the performance-appraisal process.
Controllers, and other data communicators like them, apparently do their
best when the workstation feels chummy and collaborative: little wonder
that an outside expert insists that "on the face of it, the [tower] should
be the ideal location for quality of worklife experiments."6
Second, technical workers with jobs like those of the air traffic
controllers may need to create a workplace culture that deliberately
alleviates inordinate stress. For example:
? During their eight-hour shift, a controller rotates through several
positions (clearance delivery, ground control, flight plans data, helicopter
control, second approach control, etc.).
? When a controller is having a bad day, others will discreetly "carry"
him, as by extending their time in the hot spot to reduce the time he must
spend in it.
? Every controller is given leeway, and even covert support, to create
maintain, and enhance a distinctive style of "working traffic" (as with
using one's hands like a traffic cop, even though pilots cannot see this;
or, mimicking the accent of different pilots; or, occasionally substituting
CB jargon for more common air-control language).
Confronting a work flow largely outside of their command, and chal-
lenged by rapid changes in the character of work (as with weather reversals
or emergency landing demands), air traffic controllers, and other data
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communicators like them, apparently require considerable latitude to alter
the culture at work.
Third, technical workers with jobs like those of the controllers are
likely to spotlight mental health, rather than yesteryear's physical
health concerns. In contrast to grimy and sooty factories, the computer
communicators work in soaring, antiseptic, climate-controlled "cabs,"
and their discontent focuses away from traditional rage over the absence
of a clean place to sit down in the average mill, warehouse, or assembly
plant. Instead, the controllers are preoccupied with the strain the job puts
on their minds, moods, marriages, and general mental well-being. Many
think the chronic anxiety, ulcers, high blood pressure, sleeplessness, night-
mares, and impotence to be more of a toll than the job ever need entail?
and they especially resent management's reluctance to admit or to deal
with this situation. Accordingly, to extrapolate cautiously from the situ-
ation of the controllers, their counterparts in the work force of tomorrow
can be expected to push the dialogue on a relatively new issue about which
labor and management must reach an accord?the entitlement an employee
has to the reduction of negative (and counter-productive) stress at (and
from) work.
Fourth, technical workers may desire a larger say than other non-
professionals in items commonly and erroneously thought to concern
only well-educated professional types. Controllers, for example, are
eager to help guide management in making crucial decisions about up-
dating safety rules, the better to reduce fraud and hypocrisy in the matter
(". . . regulations are violated every day, day in and day out, in order to
handle the volume of planes we have to handle.").7 As well, controllers
are understandably concerned about the quality of the basic equipment
("The computer-radar combination is subject to far too frequent failure
. . . . Working the system is like, as a surgeon, having to perform delicate
operation after delicate operation knowing the operating room lights could,
and probably will, go out any time. Under conditions like that, a few
seconds in the dark can be a lifetime.").8
Accordingly, many controllers have technical notions about how to
improve the hardware and software of their trade, though most have long
since come to despair of gaining a fair and encouraging hearing from
management. Be that as it may, air traffic controllers, and other data
communicators like them, may be looked to as an eager source of pro-
ductivity-aiding insights?a source, however, that can go sour if denied.
Fifth, technical workers may challenge many prevailing notions
about the significance of time at work. Controllers insist that the sus-
tained nature of mental stress in their computer-driven jobs makes a shorter
workweek (32 hours) a necessary prop for productivity and client safety.
As well, they point to their 80% "burnout" rate, or the fact that four out
of five go out on disability before reaching the retirement minimum, as
evidence of the need to reduce the length of time required to qualify one
for retirement (15 instead of 20 years). Above all, however, they rail
against the casual insistence by management on an "insane" rotating shift
schedule (". . . one of the greatest hazards to the flying public is the
schedule we have to work.").9 Accordingly, data communicators with
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controller-like jobs can be expected to pressure employers for shorter
hours, shorter retirement-qualifying terms, and far more leeway to say
"no" to rotating shift schedules that wreak havoc with family life and
personal fitness.
Sixth, controllers and similar others insist they are worth much
more than they are presently being paid, and they fully intend to win
more! Confusion and controversy abound in the matter, since these em-
ployees reject comparison of their earnings with others who also lack a
college education or are also as young (most controllers are not college
graduates, and 80% are under 36). Instead, they contend that their dis-
tinctive job requirements (mental alertness, stamina, quickness, decisive-
ness) and their demanding job responsibilities (close teamwork, solo order-
giving, extraordinary life-and-death decision-making) set them quite apart
from other classes of workers.
Consistent with this, PATCO respondents in each of four attitude sur-
veys conducted over 18 months before the strike ranked "salary increase"
their foremost demand (with "shorter hours" and "earlier retirement" a
close second and distant third). The rank-and-file also used the surveys
to register strong resentment over having their compensation levels de-
termined by an impersonal and removed Civil Service system. Computer-
aided controller-like workers, in short, can be expected to press increas-
ingly for substantial salary,,and fringe benefit gains consistent with their
self-image as a fairly unique cadre of hard-working, larger-than-life "com-
municators."
Seventh, controller-like workers are likely to appreciate the indis-
pensability of collective bargaining protection, the 1982 demise of
PATCO to the contrary and notwithstanding. "Computer technology
creates the false illusion that problems with the workplace are over," a
student of technological change explains, adding that, "the controllers
were exhibiting old attitudes, the attitudes of coal miners."10
Prime among such proud and self-assertive attitudes was strong re-
sentment against unwarranted irritants (PATCO's 1976 contract finally
compelled management to relax its IBM-like dress code for controllers).
The union had fought to humanize work rules (PATCO forced management
to agree not to change a controller's day off only hours before it was to
begin). The union had also moved to protect controllers who feared man-
agement retribution in the event of a human error (". . . a major source
of stress is the fear that in the event of a crash the FAA will do whatever
it feels it can get away with to 'hang' the controller with responsibility
for the accident.")" Above all, the union compelled management to
reckon with a formal grievance procedure, one that provided the 85% of
all controllers who voluntarily joined PATCO with trained representation
at every level of the process, high-powered legal counsel, and an inva-
luable sense of countervailing power.
Little wonder, then, that when I surveyed PATCO members shortly
before their strike, they expressed ringing confidence in Organized Labor,
outdoing every demographic category in the most recent (1979) Gallup
national poll in this matter.
As some 42% had made use of the PATCO grievance process, it was
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not surprising to find that 80% felt the union's problems were also his or
her own problems, and that 93% believed most PATCO members preferred
to be represented by a union.
Where labor militancy was concerned, these white-collar technical workers
were not shy: although only 20% had had any previous experience as a
unionist, and only 15% had ever walked a picket line before, the vast
majority approved of allowing public employees like themselves to strike
(84% voted "yes" where teachers were concerned; 81% approved in the
case of postmen; 68%, firemen; 68%, policemen). Above all, 84% af-
firmed their intention of supporting a properly sanctioned PATCO strike,
a vote of co-worker solidarity that the White House was mistakenly led
to believe did not exist.
Air traffic controllers, and other data communicators like them, should
be regarded as employees skeptical of management's good intentions, and
inclined instead to meet power with power. Given the intransigence of
abusive managerial ways?as revealed in the insistence of nonstriking
controllers six months after PATCO's decertification that management
attitudes remain "centralized, rigid, and insensitive"12? reason exists to
suspect more, rather than less, union organizing and labor militancy from
tomorrow's growing numbers of technical workers.
Summary
Critics have branded the 11,500 controllers dismissed by President
Reagan as "irreverent malcontents," 13 while admirers insist that PATCO' s
strike forced management to significantly improve work practices (as in
increasing the staffing of the towers and requiring more spacing between
flights). Critics second-guess whether non-strike tactics like a "rulebook"
slowdown might have sufficed, while PATCO supporters remind all that
federal employees have struck the government in 20 earlier labor disputes,
even as they take quiet pride in judging theirs the "most monumental job
action ever directed at the Federal Government.,,14
Controversy here will persist, of course, for as long as the supervision
of human beings remains a critical art form in increasingly automated
workplaces. It already seems clear, however, that controller-like employ-
ees stand apart in the challenge they pose to any post-industrial scenario
of preference: These technical employees are likely to insist on sharing
the managerial decision-making process. They want to directly profit from
experience-gained insights into how to do the job better. They mean to
reduce negative stressors and protect their quality of life on and off the
job. They intend to earn more for their labor, and, as a form of insurance
that all these objectives will be met, they prefer to stand together as trade
unionists and not rely instead only or especially on enlightened personnel
relations.
While middle-class in level of earnings and middle-of-the-road politics,
and while white-collar-like in job content and work setting, this new kind
of worker is potentially more assertive and militant than commonly un-
derstood by outsiders. Operating large centralized computer workstations,
they are steadily coming to realize the exceptional power they command?
and its very real limitations (as in the ability of FAA supervisors to step
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down and help operate a scaled-back system after PATCO had struck).
As well, technical employees of this sort live with nagging insecurity
about technological displacement (as with the FAA's new 20-year plan
to modernize the aging air traffic control system and have one controller
soon do what three or four do at present).15
Not surprisingly, therefore, these workers remain a volatile and prob-
lematic element of the changing labor force?strong in their six-point
agenda of workplace reforms, yet weak in their recognized vulnerability
to "technological scabbing" and technological displacement. Especially
well-satisfied when their jobs are going strong, the commitment of these
workers to the work ethic could not be greater. Accordingly, as the po-
tential vanguard of exactly the high-quality, high-contribution labor force
that the U.S. requires, controller-like technical workers merit a much
fairer, calmer, and far more constructive hearing than PATCO ever re-
ceived?if we intend to salvage vital lessons of value from the nation's
first workplace rebellion of tomorrow's communication "controllers."
Notes
I. Serrin, William, "Controller Called Typical of New Breed of Worker." New
York Times, August 16, 1981, p. 38.
2. Shrank, Robert, formerly of the Ford Foundation, as quoted in ibid.
3. Aronowitz, Stanley, a labor activist, writer, and teacher (Columbia University),
as quoted in ibid.
4. Helpful in making this point clear is Raben, Joseph, "Toward a Nation of
Controllers." New York Times, September 27, 1981, p. 18-E.
5. Weil, Henry, "Those Ultracool, Death-Defying Air Traffic Controllers." Cos-
mopolitan, May 1976, p. 259.
6. Lawler, Edward J., professor of organizational behavior at the University of
Southern California, as quoted in Serrin, New York Times, op. cit.
7. Rose, Sam, controller, as quoted in Biggs, Don, Pressure Cooker. New York:
W.W. Norton, 1979, p. 136.
8. Biggs, ibid., p. 189.
9. McCloskey, Will, controller, as quoted in ibid., p. 152.
10. Shaiken, Harley, an MIT research associate specializing in advanced tech-
nologies, as quoted in Serrin, New York Times, op. cit.
11. Biggs, Pressure Cooker, op. cit., p. 226.
12. Jones, L. M., et al., Management and Employee Relationships Within the
Federal Aviation Administration, Washington, D.C.: FAA, March, 1982, pp. 41, 67-
69.
13. "One of the saddest parts of this tragedy is that a group of people whom I
know to be decent and generous will forever be branded as irreverent malcontents."
Poli, Robert E., "Why the Controllers' Strike Failed," New York Times, January
17,1982, p. E-1. Poli was the PATCO president who led the strike, and resigned in
January 1982.
14. "A judgment advanced in a forthcoming book by two PATCO members, Gary
Greene and Tom Holliday, entitled Strike: The PATCO Nightmare; as reported on in
Flightline Times, June 30, 1982, p. 1.
15. Witkin, Richard, "Revamping of Air Control System in Next 20 Years Pro-
posed by U.S.," New York Times, January 29, 1982, p. I.
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Industrial Democracy
by
Edward Cohen-Rosenthal
Workplaces can become more democratic. In fact, the growth of in-
dustrial democracy in all Western industrialized countries is practically
inevitable. The term industrial democracy has a wide variety of meanings
and applications. On a limited scale, it can mean a somewhat restricted
socio-technical tinkering with existing industrial-relations structures. In
Europe, this approach is represented by a new coterie of worker-directors
who sit on corporate boards. In the U.S., it is found in expanding programs
geared toward greater sensitivity to the opinions of workers and job en-
largement.
However, industrial democracy can mean a new way of structuring
production and power in a post-industrial world, which transfers much
greater influence and responsibility to workers and their unions. This is
far more than the nominal power of boards or sophisticated suggestion
boxes, but rather the infinite power of pooled human purpose. In another
vein, industrial democracy can lead to greater economic democracy for
citizens to be able to voice their concerns on the direction of corporate
activity. Workplace democracy can establish a new relationship between
sources and production that attends greater thought to both the conse-
quences and means of production.
The future surely bears increasing numbers of companies and unions
experimenting with shop-floor workers' and union leaders' participation
in issues previously reserved as exclusively management prerogatives.
These include such areas as work pace, hiring and firing, training design,
occupational safety and health, equipment engineering, and purchasing.
In some countries, there is worker involvement in considering long-range
investment policy, marketing, plant closures, product selection, plant ex-
pansion, and social accounting.
These new patterns of work are presently manifesting themselves in
many Western European countries and Japan. Both in board representation
and shop-floor experiments, serious discussions of proposals are presently
under way in the United Kingdom, New Zealand, and Australia. In the
United States, there has been a marked increase in experimentation with
participatory management. Flavored by their own cultural and political
backgrounds, there are variations on the theme under way in Yugoslavia
and Israel and in many developing countries, including Tanzania and
India.
In Sweden, the old notion of man as "human capital" or man as solely
the merchant of his labor has been replaced by the idea of man as a social
being whose rights extend into the workplace. To many Swedes, industrial
Edward Cohen-Rosenthal is president of ECR Associates, Laytonsville, Maryland.
This paper is drawn from a longer unpublished manuscript.
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democracy represents a way to generate justice in the workplace. They
perceive it as an evolution improved from expansive and expensive social
welfare approaches. Industrial democracy places responsibility squarely
where it belongs: on the shoulders of all of the people concerned, not just
an elite managerial corps. One's humanity does not stop at the factory
gate. One's brain is not disengaged as the office door is closed. There
has to be a better way to work. Endless laws can only attempt to prevent
gross abuses. But creativity and commitment do not come by laws?even
good laws. The nature of relationships at work does not conform neatly
to legal formulations. This new way of working is much less encumbering,
therefore more responsive and effective.
Worldwide, the demand for improved occupational health and safety
has assumed an unprecedented position of importance. In a study released
by the U.S. Department of Labor, the topic of greatest interest to workers
for participation in decisions was safety and health. Seventy-six percent
of workers think they should have all or some say. (See chart Decisions
in the Workplace.)
Decisions in the Workplace
Workers sometimes have a say in decisions at their workplace, even though they are
not supervisors or managers. How much say do you think workers should have about
? ? ?
Type of Decision
Percentage
Base
Complete
A lot
Some
No say
say
of say
say
at all
Safety of equipment and prac-
tices
2256
13.3%
62.5%
22.8%
1.3%
How the work is done
2254
4.8
36.0
55.1
4.1
The wages and salaries paid
2235
3.6
26.8
58.9
10.7
The particular days and hours
people work
2245
2.7
16.7
50.2
22.4
Hiring or layoffs
2224
2.6
13.0
45.1
39.4
Source: Robert P. Quinn and Graham L. Staines, The 1977 Quality of Employment Survey, Survey Research Cen-
ter, Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1979, p. 178.
The present critical importance of industrial health is but a forerunner
of other demands on the workplace to put people first.
The next decade will probably plot an interesting future for the growth
of industrial democracy. Efforts utilizing worker participation will slowly
gain ground in the next five years. There is a rising accumulation of
experience in this field. Projects have been under way at such corporate
giants as General Motors, U.S. Steel, Exxon, Weyerhaeuser, and General
Foods. Unions such as the United Auto Workers, the International Wood-
workers, the United Steelworkers, the Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers
Union, the International Association of Machinists, and the Communi-
cations Workers of America have jointly engaged in projects. In over eight
cities such as San Diego, California, and Columbus, Ohio, and in several
hospitals, experiments have been conducted in the public sector. That
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every state in the nation and over 130 different national unions are involved
in some way is documented by reports of the National Center for Pro-
ductivity and Quality of Work Life.' They are not all successful, but they
provide a base for learning even if they don't last. There is a growing
documentation that these new ways to work are not only more in tune
with the people in them but are more successful economic units.
However, in the 1985-1990 period, the number of companies and unions
moving in the direction of industrial democracy should expand dramati-
cally. A number of factors should coalesce by this period. Emerging
worker values fueled by rising levels of education should precipitate new
demands from workers. A need for renewed purpose on the part of unions
and a drive to organize white-collar and younger employees should thrust
expanded participation in workplace decisions to a higher priority. A need
for productivity improvement and more than a decade of experimentation
should convince many companies to try greater worker participation. When
toted up, it yields a prospective boon in the United States for new styles
of decision-making. In a modest way, the current phenomenal growth of
quality circles is evidence of this. The joining of new values, demographic
trends, and economic necessity is fortuitous for steps in the direction of
industrial democracy.
The likelihood of greater participation by workers in the future has been
noted and written about by numerous commentators. One of the best
glimpses at this future is provided by James G. Affleck, chairman of the
board of the American Cyanamid Company, who writes:
The future of management is "non-management." It will be the development
and utilization of people organized to employ all their individual and creative
talents to the maximum, within an environment of continuous and dynamic
change. The rigid and highly structured organizational framework of the past
will be replaced by a cohesive interdependence of thought and action, perhaps
without conscious direction or apparent leadership as we have understood it.
Management's main job will be to exercise sensitivity and an educated intuition
to draw the maximum from a highly skilled and intellectually sophisticated
force of managers and workers. . .
Up to now organizational structures have served to treat people as surrogate
machines, or to replace them with machines wherever possible in the name of
efficiency. In the future, we as managers will have to develop new attitudes
and practices if we are to lead the men and women of the last quarter of the
twentieth century and give them the kind of rewarding and fulfilling work
experience they are being conditioned to expect. We are going to have to employ
people as people, taking into account all of the interests, habits, attitudes, and
learned skills which when properly exercised lead the human being to new
heights of individual and collective achievement. We are going to have to
employ 100 percent of the individual, not the 20 or 50 percent which may fit
the current job description.2
The critical role of trade unions in industrial democracy should be
discussed. In most European countries, it is the unions who are the most
active proponents of further efforts for industrial democracy. In the United
States, some unions look warily at work reorganization efforts; in them,
they often see management gimmicks, more responsibility with no increase
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in compensation, and weakening of the contract. With real justification,
some unions see workers' participation as undermining efforts for wider
unionization. After all, collective bargaining is in itself a basic model for
democratic participation in the workplace. The union is not an abstract
institution but a reality where workers elect their representatives and ratify
their contracts. A union is an instrument for workers' expression and
protection. Encouragingly, an increasing number of labor leaders are view-
ing quality-of-work-life efforts as a way to extend previously won benefits
while maintaining the security of the contract. More and more are involved
in various labor-management committees and in worker-participation proj-
ects. Their motivation is caused not only by an ideological attachment to
human dignity and democracy but also by many of the same pressures
that are forcing companies to explore new 'styles of participation. These
pressures are exerted in the form of the broadened concerns of primarily
the younger membership for good wages and benefits and an improved
quality of working life. They want both. Unions are squeezed by inter-
national and regional competition, by lower wage markets or higher pro-
ductivity growth thereby threatening jobs and the hard-fought gains in
their standard of living. Declining or stagnant union membership as a
percentage of the labor force calls for bold action in organizing the service
sector and other workers eager for more meaningful participation in the
processes of work. Worker participation could be the demand of the
eighties and nineties.
Irving Bluestone, retired vice president of the United Auto Workers,
has written about emerging trends in worker participation:
Participation by workers in decisions involving management of the job is fun-
damental to the fulfillment of the ultimate goal of achieving industrial democ-
racy. It seems inevitable that workers will demand increasingly to be part of
the decision-making process, particularly with regard to those aspects of work-
life which are of most immediate importance to them in the performance of
their job. In a real sense the trend toward worker participation in decision-
making is an extension of the democratic values into the workplace which the
worker enjoys as a citizen in society.3
Non-union employers are increasingly using these kinds of participative
programs. For some, it is a genuine concern for inclusion. However, some
employers are trying to develop these programs to demonstrate that unions
are unnecessary. Their programs are often sophisticated versions of com-
pany unions. All European experience and much of what has transpired
in America shows to the contrary that strong union organization is not
only important for the workers on the job to provide collective strength
in community, national, and international affairs, but also at the enterprise
level in the successful operation of worker participation and productivity
improvement. Rather than wither away, unions remain necessary to com-
bat management smugness and provide a positive vision of workers' needs.
Industrial Democracy and Education
In my talks with workers, union officers, and managers in many parts
of the world, increased learning is one clear outcome stretching across
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in compensation, and weakening of the contract. With real justification,
some unions see workers' participation as undermining efforts for wider
unionization. After all, collective bargaining is in itself a basic model for
democratic participation in the workplace. The union is not an abstract
institution but a reality where workers elect their representatives and ratify
their contracts. A union is an instrument for workers' expression and
protection. Encouragingly, an increasing number of labor leaders are view-
ing quality-of-work-life efforts as a way to extend previously won benefits
while maintaining the security of the contract. More and more are involved
in various labor-management committees and in worker-participation proj-
ects. Their motivation is caused not only by an ideological attachment to
human dignity and democracy but also by many of the same pressures
that are forcing companies to explore new -styles of participation. These
pressures are exerted in the form of the broadened concerns of primarily
the younger membership for good wages and benefits and an improved
quality of working life. They want both. Unions are squeezed by inter-
national and regional competition, by lower wage markets or higher pro-
ductivity growth thereby threatening jobs and the hard-fought gains in
their standard of living. Declining or stagnant union membership as a
percentage of the labor force calls for bold action in organizing the service
sector and other workers eager for more meaningful participation in the
processes of work. Worker participation could be the demand of the
eighties and nineties.
Irving Bluestone, retired vice president of the United Auto Workers,
has written about emerging trends in worker participation:
Participation by workers in decisions involving management of the job is fun-
damental to the fulfillment of the ultimate goal of achieving industrial democ-
racy. It seems inevitable that workers will demand increasingly to be part of
the decision-making process, particularly with regard to those aspects of work-
life which are of most immediate importance to them in the performance of
their job. In a real sense the trend toward worker participation in decision-
making is an extension of the democratic values into the workplace which the
worker enjoys as a citizen in society.'
Non-union employers are increasingly using these kinds of participative
programs. For some, it is a genuine concern for inclusion. However, some
employers are trying to develop these programs to demonstrate that unions
are unnecessary. Their programs are often sophisticated versions of com-
pany unions. All European experience and much of what has transpired
in America shows to the contrary that strong union organization is not
only important for the workers on the job to provide collective strength
in community, national, and international affairs, but also at the enterprise
level in the successful operation of worker participation and productivity
improvement. Rather than wither away, unions remain necessary to com-
bat management smugness and provide a positive vision of workers' needs.
Industrial Democracy and Education
In my talks with workers, union officers, and managers in many parts
of the world, increased learning is one clear outcome stretching across
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the industrial democracy spectrum. An enormous new demand for further
learning is released. It stands to reason that this will occur. In represen-
tative models of industrial democracy, worker directors and members of
work councils dealing with complex issues find that there is much they
need to learn to function effectively. Shop-floor participants are brought
into contact with areas of knowledge and operation where they previously
have had little exposure. Participants not only learn facts and theories but
a lot about the people and human dynamics involved.
There have been a number of examples of this learning connection. In
Europe, both companies and unions have designed education programs
for representatives. The classic example in the United States is the in-
plant school established by members of the United Auto Workers employed
at Harmon International. In this automobile minor plant in Bolivar, Ten-
nessee, workers were, on their own initiative, learning a wide variety of
subjects from welding to anthropology. In Norway, the educational rede-
sign of seafarer's schooling based on the outcomes of participative de-
cision-making is another sterling example of new demands on education
rising out 01 new demands on the workplace.
For most people, real participation is not easy. In order to participate
effectively with other people in reaching workable and informed answers
to real-life problems within reasonable time limits, workers need to focus
on how to do it well. There is a definite need for training in a variety of
process skills that assist workers in understanding the techniques of prob-
lem-solving, group dynamics, information-gathering, and a range of other
process aides that clarify ways to make decisions better. There is also a
wide band of content skills, which differs according to the nature of the
industry and the idiosyncracies of the work organization. However, some
content skills such as an understanding of the history of industrial de-
mocracy, the range of alternative work patterns available, and a general
understanding of economics would be important for most if not all par-
ticipants.
The style of worker participation will put new process demands on
schools and colleges. Since horizontal work teams cut across occupational
titles, workers will expect and want interdisciplinary and problem-centered
curricula. Since workers will have more of a say in the operation of their
workplaces, they will expect more of a say in the operation of their schools
and participation in setting the goals and objectives of their learning ex-
periences. The use of new behavorial-science techniques to facilitate par-
ticipation in the workplace will make standard lectures as arcane as company
pep talks. Though functional on occasion, didactic, one-way communi-
cation needs to give way to more interactive approaches to learning.
Industrial democracy is an answer to the paradox of advancement through
education. Up until recently, more education has been an effective entree
to positions of authority and challenge. While expectations of education's
payoff remain high, the ability of the existing system to absorb people at
either their level of aspiration or their level of talent is dim. A society
based on frustration of talent or drive is in a serious predicament. The
only real solution is to broaden participation and expand the number of
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"good" jobs. Any attempt to brainwash people into lower expectations
or to ignore the problem will fall flat on its face. Industrial democracy is
a way to buy out of the mentality of laboriously climbing the hierarchical
ladder. Though new types of work will uncover talents that have been
previously submerged and better match individuals and jobs, this concept
of democracy does not offer a way for individuals to reach "the top" by
stepping on the backs of co-workers. Industrial democracy implies a shared
growth where success has new definitions.
The three issues identified earlier in this essay?cybernetics, democ-
racy, and ecology?help to understand the particular direction that new
forms of industrial democracy should take. In the workplace, we need to
know how to sort out the mountains of data to select important information
without ignoring evidence helpful for full understanding. At work, like
elsewhere, the more people who participate in decisions, the more infor-
mation they in turn create. They then have to wrestle with the frustrating
task of coping with even more intimidating mounds of data. In addition,
the useful life of data is open to serious question. Things became irrelevant
or pass?o quickly. So common that they fail to shock anymore are stories
of the obsolescence of knowledge as in the case of engineering students
who are out of date by the time they graduate. What is unclear is how
the emerging workplace will learn?if at all?to sift and order its wealth
of know-how. How will it improve its cybernetic capacity?
A true industrial democratic system is a much more intricate animal
than formal organizational charts with lines between departments. The
difficulty of communication grows with increased complexity. Unfortu-
nately, we don't know enough about how to involve large groups of people
in effective decision-making. When it does work well, democracy is a
powerful social tool. Cooperative decision-making needs to be taught from
the earliest years to the end of life. Unless we learn and relearn this skill,
increased participation will represent a two-edged sword. On one hand,
even good decisions will be rejected unless arrived at in a democratic
fashion. On the other, by their very lack of focus, amoebic and anarchistic
"democracy" could stifle or divert any effective resolution of problems.
Concerning the ecological dimension, we need to encourage holistic
decisions at the workplace that give due consideration to the social and
environmental ramifications of proposed actions. Workers and managers
need to learn better how to broadly frame issues to assess their impacts
on social and environmental well-being. Enterprises in France and Scan-
dinavia are required by law to prepare a report on corporate impact on
the community and their workers. This impact statement is a new field
called "social accounting." Another example is found in the United King-
dom, where workers at the Lucas Aerospace Company are thinking of
more humane ways to employ technology. A Center for Alternative Tech-
nology has been established by the Lucas Aerospace Combined Shop
Stewards Committee in conjunction with researchers and academics in
order to find viable alternatives to the production of military hardware.
One of their successful ideas was to bid on a new type of light rail
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transportation system suitable to Tanzania. In the United States, workers
are beginning to realize that, contrary to scare tactics, not only has en-
vironmental action failed to cause the promised massive layoffs but in
fact more jobs were created. In an age of limited resources and a more
intimate "global village," workers need to be able to understand and act
on the environmental consequences of their actions. In India, environ-
mental protection is one of the locally mandated functions of worker
participation councils. Given the opportunity, new ways can be found to
save energy and redesign products to suit a new ecological consciousness
with the cooperation and imagination of workers?instead of being viewed
with distrust as a threat to job security.
Welded together, these three concepts help inform a version of industrial
democracy that is deeply participatory, keenly informed, and broadly
concerned. It is a kind of work experience that can help stimulate more
justice inside the workplace, produce better goods and services, and fuse
better with expanded notions of leisure and education. Industrial democ-
racy is a workstyle for the future.
Notes
1. National Center for Productivity and Quality of Working Life, Directory of Labor-
Management Committees, Washington, D.C., Spring 1978
2. James G. Affleck, "Constructive Orchestration of Chaos," in Lewis Benton, ed.,
Management for the Future, McGraw Hill Book Company, New York, 1978, p. 3.
3. Irving Bluestone, "Human Dignity Is What It's All About," Industrial Union
Department, AFL-CIO, Viewpoint, Vol. 8, No. 3, Third Quarter 1978, pp. 21-25.
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Careers and
Work Trends
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Jobs with a Future
by
Marvin J. Cetron
Forecasters, as opposed to other futurists, must use very specific yards-
ticks to measure the likelihood of a prediction actually taking place. These
yardsticks include technical feasibility, economic feasibility (cost effec-
tiveness), social acceptability, and political acceptability. If any of these
are not applicable to a projected change, it will not rate a positive forecast.
For example, a futurist might look at solar energy and determine that
it is the way of the future since it is clean, nonpolluting, and there is an
inexhaustible supply. However, in making a forecast about the use of
solar energy, even though it is technically feasible and acceptable socially
and politically, it will not become economically feasible until the price
of oil goes up to $54 per barrel. Therefore, solar energy will not be the
way of the future.
When applying these tests and measures to occupations, one thing is
sure about tomorrow's job markets: major shifts will occur in employment
patterns. These changes are going to affect the work force of the future,
and are going to precipitate changes in the education and training of both
potential and existing workers.
Major shifts in the job market do not necessarily mean major changes
in the numbers of people employed anywhere inside the job market. What
it does mean is that many of the old jobs will disappear?and not just
because of robots and computers. Manufacturing of products will consume
only 11% of the jobs in the year 2000, down from 28% in 1980. Jobs
related to agriculture will drop from 4% to 3%. The turn of the century
will find the remaining 86% in the service sector, up from 68% in 1980.
Of the service-sector jobs, half will relate to information collection, man-
agement, and dissemination.
Unemployment will continue to be a problem. If the current recession
were to end tomorrow, probably 1.2 million of the more than 11 million
unemployed today would never be able to return to their old jobs in the
automobile, steel, textile, rubber, or railroad industries.
Marvin J. Cetron, a pioneer and expert in the areas of technological forecasting and
technological assessment, is president of Forecasting International, Ltd., Arlington,
Virginia. This article is adapted from his forthcoming book Jobs with a Future, to be
published by McGraw-Hill in January 1984.
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About one-sixth of the 1.2 million jobs will be eliminated by foreign
competition in low-wage countries; another one-sixth will disappear be-
cause of the nationalization of many major industries in other countries,
which results in "dumping" of products on our market, undercutting our
prices. "Computamation" (robotics, numerically-controlled equipment,
CAD/CAM [computer aided design and computer aided manufacturing],
and flexible manufacturing) will assist in the demise of the remaining two-
thirds of the jobs eliminated.
As this technological transition takes place, productivity will increase.
For example, the use of robotics or CAD/CAM in the automotive industry
can replace up to six workers if operating around the clock. Quality control
increases four-fold, and scrap is reduced from 15% to less than 1%.
Japan is already using some of these new jobs and technology. It had
no choice. Presently, 96% of its energy is imported. By the year 2000,
it will rise to 98%. Eighty-seven percent of all of its resources come from
outside the country. These statistics form a base for the decision to go
robotic, but the essence of Japan's problem is that, between 1985 and
1990, 20% of the entire work force will retire at 80% of their base pay
for the rest of their lives. They were forced to go robotic to remain
productive. The United States, too, will be filling many of today's blue-
collar jobs with robots. The displaced workers will have to learn the new
skills necessary to build and maintain the robots.
White-collar workers in the offices of the future will see some dramatic
changes in their jobs, also. Currently, about 6,000 word lexicons are in
use. After a person dictates into the machine, it will type up to 97% of
what was said. In addition, it can translate the material into 9 languages
(including Hebrew, which it types backwards, and Konji symbols, which
it types sideways and the user reads down the columns). Machines such
as this will lead to the demise of 50% of all clerical and stenographic
jobs. But instead of going to an unemployment line, these workers will
find jobs controlling the robots in factories with word-processing equip-
ment.
Not only will types of jobs change, but so will the definition of full
employment. Currently, a 4.5% unemployment rate is considered full
employment. By the year 1990, 8.5% unemployment will be considered
full employment. This is not as disturbing as it first appears, for at any
given time 3.5% of the work force will be in training and education
programs preparing for new jobs. This will be made possible, in part,
because of the job shift patterns. In 1980, 45% of the households had 2
people working. In 1990, this will increase to 65%, and in 2000, 75% of
family units will have 2 incomes. This shift will allow easier entry and
exit from the work force to the training programs and back to the work
force. Forecasts estimate that, every 4 or 5 years, one or the other of the
spouses or partners will leave the ranks of the employed to receive the
additional knowledge and skills demanded by changes in technology and
the workplace.
With these changes already taking place, Americans must acquire the
knowledge and skills they will need for today's new jobs and for the future
jobs that will soon need to be filled with qualified workers. Vocational
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educators and trainers must gear up to provide this vital education and
training to the work force of the next two decades. The future will include
jobs related to robots, lasers, computers, energy and battery technology,
geriatric social work, hazardous waste management, and biomedical elec-
tronics. (See table for some of the jobs that are disappearing and others
that are growing in the shifting job market).
The Shifting Job Market
Some jobs that will be disappearing by 1990:
oio Decline in
Occupation
Employment
Linotype operator
-40.0
Elevator operator
30.0
Shoemaking machine operators
19.2
Farm laborers
19.0
Railroad car repairers
17.9
Farm managers
17.1
Graduate assistants
16.7
Housekeepers, private household
14.9
Childcare workers, private household
14.8
Maids and servants, private household
14.7
Farm supervisors
14.3
Farm owners and tenants
13.7
Timber cutting and logging workers
13.6
Secondary school teachers
13.1
Some jobs that will be growing until 1990:
?A) Growth in
Occupation
Employment
Data processing machine mechanics
+157.1
Paralegal personnel
143.0
Computer systems analysts
112.4
Midwives
110.0
Computer operators
91.7
Office machine service technicians
86.7
Tax preparers
77.9
Computer programmers
77.2
Aero-astronautic engineers
74.8
Employment interviewers
72.0
Fast food restaurant workers
69.4
Childcare attendants
66.5
Veterinarians
66.1
Chefs
55.0
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New Occupations for the 1990s
The following occupations are among those that we can expect to be-
come increasingly important. Included with each is a short description,
starting salary, average salary, and training requirements. The descriptions
have been prepared by Clyde Helms and Marvin Cetron, president and
vice president of Occupational Forecasting, respectively.
Energy Technician-650,000 jobs starting at $13,000, averaging
$26,000. Jobs will dramatically increase as new sources of energy become
marketable. Demand will greatly exceed available supply of labor in nu-
clear power plants; coal, shale, and tar sands extraction, processing, and
distribution; solar systems manufacturing, installation, and maintenance;
synfuels production; biomass facilities operations; and possibly geothermal
and ocean thermal energy conversion operations.
Technicians, inspectors, and supervisory positions will require a high-
school education and the equivalent of two years of technical college.
Housing Rehabilitation Technician-500,000 jobs starting at $14,000,
averaging $24,000. In the next 35 years the world population will double,
intensifying housing demand. This will lead to mass production of modular
housing, using radically new construction techniques and materials. Mod-
ular housing will be fabricated with all heating, electric, waste disposal
and recycling, and communications systems pre-installed.
Technicians, inspectors, and supervisors will require a high-school ed-
ucation and the equivalent of two years of technical education plus ap-
propriate experience such as formal apprenticeship.
Hazardous Waste Management Technician-300,000 jobs starting
at $15,000, averaging $28,000. Many years and billions of dollars may
be required to clean up cities, industries, air, land, and water. Additionally,
tens of thousands of jobs will be added to each area as breeder reactors
and coal, shale, and tar sands mining and processing reach commercial
stages. When the requirements for collection, transportation, and disposal
of radiological, biological, and chemical wastes are included, the total
workers needed could well exceed 1.5 million.
Highly specialized technical training will be required for workers, su-
pervisors, and managers in this very hazardous occupation.
Industrial Laser Process Technician-600,000 jobs starting at $15,000,
averaging $25,000. Laser manufacturing equipment and processes, in-
cluding robotic factories, will replace many of the machine and foundry
tools and equipment. The new equipment, processes, and materials will
permit attainment of higher production quality at lower production costs.
High school, technical training, and retraining requirements will vary
with levels of skill required under a severe system of job evolution.
Industrial Robot Production Technician-800,000 jobs starting at
$15,000, averaging $24,000. The microprocessor industry will become
the third largest industry in the U.S., facilitating extensive use of robots
to perform computer-directed "physical" and "mental" functions. Mil-
lions of human workers will be displaced. New workers will be needed
to ensure fail-proof operation of row after row of production robots.
Knowledge and skills requirements will compare with present-day com-
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puter programmers and electronics technicians.
Materials Utilization Technician-400,000 jobs starting at $15,000,
averaging $24,000. Future materials are being engineered and created to
replace metals, synthetics, and other production materials not suited for
advanced manufacturing technologies. Materials utilization technicians
must be trained in working with amorphous and polymer materials and
others that may be produced at the molecular level through the process
of molecular beam epitaxy, involving atomic crystal growth. In addition,
there will be genetically engineered organic materials. These and other
"man-made" materials will substitute for natural-element metals and ma-
terials now being depleted.
An education level equivalent to that of an electronics technician, tool
and die maker, nondestructive materials testing specialist, or industrial
inspector will be required. Two years of technical college will be the
minimum requirement.
Genetic Engineering Technician-250,000 jobs starting at $20,000,
averaging $30,000. Genetically engineered materials will greatly improve
upon and supersede present organic materials and will also produce ben-
eficial effects upon some inorganic materials processes. These engineered
"man-made" materials will find extensive usage in three general fields:
industrial products, pharmaceuticals, and agricultural products. Com-
pletely new and modified materials and substances will be produced under
laboratory-like conditions and in capacities comparable to industrial mass-
production quantities. Technicians must be educated and trained to work
under laboratory-type controls without inhibiting production of some of
the materials in tonnage lots.
A bachelor's degree in chemistry, biology, or medicine will be helpful
in the initial industrial production work, but production operations will
be accomplished by "process technicians" with high-school and two-year
postsecondary technical education and training.
Holographic Inspection Specialist-200,000 jobs starting at $20,000,
averaging $28,000. Completely automated factories will use optical fibers
for sensing light, temperature, pressures, and dimensions and transmitting
this information to optical computers that will compare this data with
holographic, three-dimensional images stored in the computer. Substantial
numbers of inspectors and quality-control staffs will be replaced.
Specialists working in this new technology will require a minimum of
two years of postsecondary technical education and training, with em-
phases on optical fibers characteristics and transmission, photography,
optical physics, and computer programming.
Bionic-Medical Technician-200,000 jobs starting at $21,000, av-
eraging $32,000. Mechanics will be needed to manufacture the actual
bionic appendage (arm, leg, hand, foot) while other specialists work on
the highly sophisticated extensions of neuro-sensing mental functions (seeing,
hearing, feeling, speaking) and brain-wave control.
These technicians will require appropriate technical knowledge of mi-
croprocessors and specialized accredited education in the respective an-
atomical, physiological, and psychiatric disciplines equivalent to a minimum
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of four years of college work. Medical professionals who establish a
reputation will move into the higher six-figure levels of earning.
Automotive Fuel Cell (Battery) Technician-250,000 jobs starting
at $12,000, averaging $18,000. These technicians will schedule and per-
form tests and services for new fuel cells and batteries used in vehicles
and stationary operation, including residences. Such fuel cells may be
charged and discharged by direct electric inputs from conventional electric
distribution systems, by solar cells, and by exotic chemicals generating
electricity within the cells.
These processes include potential hazards but can be safely serviced by
technicians with a vocational high school education.
On-Line Emergency Medical Technician-400,000 jobs starting at
$16,000, averaging $29,000. The need for paramedics will increase di-
rectly with the growth of the population and its aging. In forthcoming
megalopolises and high-density residences, emergency medical treatment
will be rendered on the spot with televised diagnoses and instruction from
remote emergency medical centers. Despite reports of a forthcoming glut
of doctors, they and other professional and paramedical specialists will
become part of emergency medical teams, traveling in elaborately equipped
mobile treatment centers.
To meet the needs for more complete treatment on site, education and
training must be upgraded to an extent comparable to that required for
registered nurses.
Geriatric Social Worker-7000,000 jobs starting at $15,000, aver-
aging $22,000. These workers will be essential for the mental and social
care of the nation's aging population. By the year 2000, the birthrate of
native-born Americans will merely equal the "replacement rate"?zero
population growth. Improvements in food, medicine, and life-extending
medical processes will create the need for hundreds of thousands of work-
ers to serve the aged.
Education and experience requirements comparable to those for licensed
practical nurses, recreational specialists, mental hygienists, and dieticians
will enable GSWs to find financially and physically rewarding employ-
ment.
Energy Auditor?l80,000 jobs starting at $11,500, averaging $15,600.
Using the latest infrared devices and computer-based energy consumption
and controlled networking, energy auditors will work with product en-
gineers and marketing staffs in the production, sales, operation, and man-
agement of energy conservation and control systems for housing, industrial
plants, and machinery. They will help architects and cost accountants
achieve significant cost reductions through use of sophisticated heat sen-
sing and measurement devices and systems, appropriate construction and
insulation materials, and energy enhancement and recovery systems.
Technicians, inspectors, and supervisors will require a high-school ed-
ucation and the equivalent of two years of technical college education plus
appropriate apprenticing or on-the-job experience.
Nuclear Medicine Technologist-75,000 jobs starting at $18,000,
averaging $29,000. With the advanced understanding of medicines and
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serums using radioisotopes, a substantial increase in demand for this tech-
nologist will be needed. As the isotopes are absorbed in tissues and mus-
cles, diagnosticians can observe functions of normal and/or damaged tissues
and organs and can determine treatment needs and responses to medication
in the central nervous, cardiovascular, pulmonary, digestive, and meta-
bolic systems. Flow of medicines and effects can be traced and viewed
directly on computer-enhanced video displays, thus reducing the incidence
of surgery.
Technologists must be trained to work in laboratory conditions, become
familiar with sophisticated equipment, and be prepared to assist doctors
and nurses in handling equipment and patients.
Dialysis Technologist-30,000 jobs starting at $16,000, averaging
$25,000. With the use of new portable dialysis machines and a greater
number of hospital dialysis machines available, the demand for more
dialysis technologists will grow.
These technologists must be educated and trained to work under lab-
oratory conditions in a two-year postsecondary technical education pro-
gram including a four-week computer-assisted training program and
instruction from other dialysis technologists.
Computer Axial Tomography (CAT) Technologist/Technician-
45,000 jobs starting at $13,000, averaging $20,400. Though more than
a decade has passed since development of this technique for using X rays
with computer technology to give sectional views of internal body struc-
tures, the supply of qualified technicians has not kept pace with the growth
of this non-invasive diagnostic science and equipment. Jobs for technicians
to install, maintain, and operate CAT scanning systems and assist in the
analysis of these scans will offer attractive employment situations for
thousands of qualified people.
Minimum requirements for technicians include two years of postsec-
ondary education and on-the-job training on the actual equipment in a
participating hospital or equipment manufacturer. Minimum requirements
for technologists include two years of instruction in anatomy, biology,
and medicine. Fully qualified professionals will need further education
leading to a baccalaureate degree.
Positron Emission Tomography (PET) Technician/Technologist-
165,000 jobs starting at $14,500, averaging $17,500. PET scanners are
used for diagnoses of disorders of the human brain. Requirements for
qualified workers in this field will increase with the growing use of this
science, advances in human and computer technology, and research in
human intelligence. Due to specialization in several technological and
medical disciplines, technicians will be specialized.
Minimum requirements for technicians will include two years at the
postsecondary level. They will specialize in equipment, chemistry, phys-
ics, or computer programming. Technologists must be qualified at the
professional level, including a baccalaureate degree. Both occupations
will require on-the-job experience.
Computer-Assisted Design (CAD) Technicians-300,000 jobs start-
ing at $18,000, averaging $30,000. New uses for applications for this
new design, engineering, and production technology will create hundreds
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of new occupations for CAD specialists, both professional and nonprofes-
sional. Millions of workers?including blueprint file clerks, draftspeople,
designers, engineers, researchers, inspectors, secretaries, and artists?will
find the computer can do more, better, and faster than traditional methods.
Whether designing modes of transportation, dwellings, or other products,
CAD will affect the education, employment, and ways of work more than
any other single technology.
Education and training requirements will include high-school diplomas
and at least two years of postsecondary technical school
Computer-Assisted Graphics Technician (CAG)-150,000 jobs starting
at $20,000, averaging $35,000. Rapid growth of computer-assisted graph-
ics will affect the education, training, and employment of all graphics
technicians as no other event in graphics pictorial history. Demands for
artists and technicians will increase tenfold with an increase in demand
for new forms and dimensions of graphics to portray objects, schemes,
and scenarios before they are actually produced.
Basic education and training will still include the physics of color,
layout, dimensions, etc., along with instruction on specialized effects
attainable through computers, computer programming, and business po-
tentials and effects.
Computer-Assisted Manufacturing (CAM) Specialist-300,000 jobs
starting at $20,000, averaging $31,000. CAM systems will permit all the
design, development, specification, and logistics data to be pulled out of
CAD and CAG data bases and be reprogrammed into computer-assisted
manufacturing programs, which will then operate most of the production
facility. This permits the attainment of Flexible Manufacturing Cells (FMC)
in which every step of producing a product is determined and programmed
sequentially for accomplishment without or with minimal human inter-
vention. Education and training requirements must be changed in almost
all occupations, especially in industrial and business management and
personnel administration.
Education and training will include a high-school education and at least
two years of training in postsecondary or technical institutions.
Computerized Vocational Training (CVT) Technicians-300,000
jobs starting at $14,000, averaging $22,500. Hundreds of thousands of
these technicians will be employed in education and training materials
development firms as this art becomes a new science to use in programs
at all levels and in all disciplines in public and private educational insti-
tutions. Utilizing the demonstration capabilities and versatilities inherent
in CAD software, in conjunction with the art and color expression of
computer graphics, educators and trainers will be able to depict any object
and any action with a vividness and dynamism that will produce higher
learning benefits than any mode ever employed. Students will be able to
assemble or disassemble the most complex mechanisms, construct the
most artistic forms, and design dwellings and structures without ever
leaving their computer terminals. While "hands-on-training" will remain
an essential part of vocational training, terminology and work sequencing
will be learned at the CRT. Textbooks and lesson plans, lengthy lectures
and dissertations will become pass?n the coming decades of learning by
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doing at the computer terminal interface. Up to 75% of all instruction will
be acquired at the computer console, allowing teachers to spend much
more time helping students learn actual on-the-job work skills with actual
products and processes.
Technicians working in this new area will specialize in graphic arts,
computer programming, educational and learning theory and practice, and
technical competence in respective vocational technologies. At least two
years of technical education after high school will be required.
Strategies to Provide Training for New Jobs
To upgrade and update the capacity of vocational education to provide
the education and training needed by the labor force of the future will
require addressing three areas of concern: acquiring competent teachers;
changing prevailing attitudes toward education, training, and new tech-
nologies; and updating teaching methodology and instructional materials.
Attracting Competent Teachers
Currently, competent teachers are not attracted to the profession due to
low salaries and low status. Competent teachers in vocational education,
math, and science can earn 50-60% more in positions in the private sector.
The decline in the profession can and must be stopped. Over the years,
teacher-education programs have encountered declining enrollments?due,
in part, to low salaries, to oversupplies during baby-boom years, and to
the high status of working in the private sector. To counteract the declining
enrollments, teacher training programs lowered their standards for entry,
which resulted in not only attracting a lower caliber of student into the
program, but also making teacher training a curriculum of last resort for
those students who could not make it in other curriculums.
To reverse this trend, long- and short-term strategies must be instituted
nationwide. Teaching can be made more attractive through the support of
administrators and by raising the salaries of teachers, especially in areas
of high demand such as vocational education, math, and science. Raising
the salaries by 20% across the board, and by an additional 20% in those
areas of high demand, will attract teachers back from the private sector
and encourage a higher caliber of student to enter undergraduate teacher-
preparation programs. The law of supply and demand will work if other
constraints, such as inflexible pay scales and tenure laws, are lifted; but
standards must not be lowered.
For long-term solutions to assuring a supply of competent teachers, a
series of three hurdles must be instituted by teacher-preparation programs
and departments of education on a national basis:
1. Before acceptance into a teacher education program, students must
have scored at least 850 combined total on their SATs and have passed
a proficiency test in reading, writing, and computational skills.
2. Before continuing in a teacher education program, students must
maintain above average grades (3.0 GPA or the equivalent) for the first
two years of undergraduate work (or the equivalent).
3. Before receiving permanent certification, a teacher must pass a com-
petency examination and receive positive evaluations from supervisors,
administrators, and/or peers.
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These are not new suggestions; each has been implemented successfully
in several states already. The implementation of these standards will not
happen without controversy. Witness the furor caused by Penn State's Joe
Paterno and the NCAA when they decided to require a total of 700 on
the SATs before accepting college athletes. But for assured positive impact
on the teaching profession as a whole, each of the three (entry standards,
maintenance standards, and certification standards) must be initiated and
maintained on a national basis.
Requiring each prospective teacher to overcome these hurdles will tighten
the profession's standards and limit the numbers entering to the best. The
resulting shortage of teachers will raise salaries and attract more from
other places. The downward spiral will be reversed and the status of the
teacher will rise, along with the salaries and the level of competence. If
we do not reverse the trend, we may be forced to use teachers from foreign
countries, similar to the medical professions' solution to maintain medical
services in rural America.
To relieve the short-term lack of math, science, and vocational teachers,
rather than tolerate less than the best, the best retired teachers or business
people in these fields could take a 1-2 month refresher course and return
to the classroom for a year or two. To further alleviate the shortage,
corporations could be encouraged to make available some of their skilled
technical people to provide some teaching.
Along with limiting entrants into the profession to the best, schools
must continually retrain their good teachers. For example, computer lit-
eracy for every high-school student and every teacher must be required.
In-service programs provided by school districts or departments of edu-
cation should be available, and every teacher should be able to pass a
computer literacy test within four years. If teachers do not fill the gap in
their skills, they should be phased out on the basis of failing to keep
current with the requirements of the profession. To win the salaries and
esteem that the profession deserves, schools cannot keep deadwood on
their faculties.
Changing Prevailing Attitudes Toward Education,
Training, and New Technologies
Across the board, the gap is closing between the highest and lowest
students. Special programs help the lower students come up to their ca-
pacities; however, few programs help the truly brilliant students perform
at their capacities. In general, teachers who are brighter and capable of
making more money are going into other occupations and are being re-
placed by less adequate teachers, so the students with the greatest potential
are not getting the necessary support.
The latest report by the National Commission on Excellence in Edu-
cation states the problems with the U.S. educational system very bluntly:
"If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the
mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have
viewed it as an act of war." The commission found that some 23 million
American adults are functionally illiterate, nearly 40% of the 17-year olds
cannot draw inferences from written material, and two-thirds of the 17-
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year-olds cannot solve a math problem. College entrance tests show a
steady decline in scores in such subjects as physics and mathematics.
The commission strongly recommends increasing the length of the school
day from six hours to seven or eight hours and the length of the school
year from 180 to 210 days. (Additionally, I recommend one and a half
hours a day of homework instead of the current one and a half hours a
week.) But the report doesn't say who will pay for the extra hours of
teaching, how the economy will absorb the additional 10-12% of women
who will join the work force because their children are at school longer,
or what will happen if large numbers of the children now in private schools
return to public schools as a result of the longer school day.
There are, however, other steps that can be taken to improve education
in the United States:
? Increase the number and competence of math and science teachers.
? Adopt more rigorous measurable standards of academic achievement.
? Adopt a curriculum that requires four years of English, three years
of math, three years of physical and biological sciences, three years
of social sciences, and one-half year of computer science. If a person
ii.planning to go to college, there should be an additional two years
of languages required.
America must encourage its youth to be proud of their skills in science,
math, and vocational subjects. Students in any of these areas of study
should not be made to feel inferior to anyone. Traditional funding sources,
as well as parent/teacher groups, boosters clubs, etc. should be encouraged
to make money and give funds to "mathletes" and "chemletes" as well
as athletes. Students should be given letters in math, physics, chemistry,
and vocationally-related extracurricular activities, similar to athletic let-
ters. Finally, schools should be pouring dollars into computers rather than
stadiums.
Education must equip people to change. As important as math, science,
and vocational skills are, they are not enough. As society changes, so will
the skills and knowledge needed to be productive and satisfied. The higher
levels of cognitive skills must be learned as early as possible. People must
be taught skills in decision-making, problem solving, creativity, com-
munications, critical thinking, evaluation, analysis, synthesis, and the
structuring of problems to understand what the results ought to be. We
must make people think.
Updating Teaching Methods
Keeping vocational education programs up to date always has been a
problem. The rapid pace of technological change accentuates and widens
the gap between programs and the cutting edge of knowledge. Budget
cutbacks make the problem even greater. The same problem has hit in-
dustry. Consequently, businesses are turning to computerized training to
lessen the cost and, at the same time, maintain or improve the quality of
their programs. At the forefront of this nationwide trend is the PLATO
computer-assisted instruction system developed by Control Data Corpo-
ration.
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The applications for PLATO are as limitless as the range of business
and industry itself. Such diverse industries as manufacturing, petroleum,
banking, real estate, finance, aviation, and emergency medicine find PLATO
indispensable. Individual companies and associations training with PLATO
include American Airlines, General Motors, General Mills, Shell, DuPont,
Federal Express, National Association of Securities Dealers, Bank Ad-
ministration Institute, Con Edison, and Merck Sharp and Dohme.
Computer-assisted instruction (CAI) is easily adaptable for short-term
training. Many of the unemployed need two or three months of training
for a job that will exist. CAI is practical and effective. Currently, over
12,000 hours of training make up the body of PLATO, with more added
constantly. The information is absolutely up-to-date. If this or similar
programs were implemented in vocational-technical schools, every teacher
and every student would have immediate access to the most recent infor-
mation available. Students could learn theory and related content on the
computer. Teachers could then work individually with students for the
hands-on training that is so vital in vocational education. This method
requires a different kind of thinking by teachers. Insecure teachers will
feel threatened by the computer if they have not yet become computer
literate. But the computer is a tool to make teaching more efficient and
more effective?not a replacement for the teacher.
Maintaining a skilled work force will take an enormous expenditure of
resources. Operating training programs in vocational, technical, and in-
dustrial facilities 24 hours a day will eliminate much of the need for
duplicating expensive equipment.
Even more importantly, we must use our training dollars only for jobs
that exist or will exist in the near future. In the past, the training programs
sponsored by the Comprehensive Education and Training Act (CETA) did
not give Americans what was promised. Sixty percent of the money was
used for administration; the remaining 40% went into training. Only 3%
of the trainees actually obtained jobs. The people were trained for jobs
that did not exist and will not exist. For example, up until 1979 people
were still being trained to be linotype and elevator operators, even though
a need for these skills had not been identified for the preceding 10 years.
In fact, the equipment these people were trained to operate had not been
manufactured for 15 years preceding 1979.
The new Job Partnership Training Act has tried to correct this by re-
quiring that 70% of the funds go to actual training programs and limiting
administration to 15%. The remaining 15% is designated for basic literacy
education and for childcare services for trainees.
Conclusion
The jobs of the future are changing in nature. America needs to make
short- and long-term changes to avoid disastrous consequences.
The first step is to begin to encourage the unemployed to upgrade their
skills and take lower-paying jobs as temporary solutions. The next step
is to get the education system back on track to produce educated minds
that accept the challenges of the future and want to learn more. Strong
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-
emphasis on education is necessary; however, it is not sufficient. Training
for the occupations of tomorrow is also needed. Finally, Americans must
admit past mistakes and do what it takes to make the country strong and
stable in the future.
References
Cetron, Marvin, and O'Toole, Thomas. Encounters with the Future: A Forecast of
Life in the 21 st Century. McGraw Hill: 1982.
National Assessment of Education for the Last 13 Years. Educational Commission of
the States, Denver, Colorado, January, 1983.
A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform. National Commission on
Excellence in Education. April, 1983.
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Knowledge, Technology, and
Professional Motives
for the Future
by
M. Kent Mayfield
Paradigms for social change are rapidly shifting. D.N. Chorafas, for
example, argues that the industrial revolution is over, superseded by a
knowledge revolution that will result in upheavals as great as any spawned
by the industrial revolution.' Peter Drucker outlines the emergence of a
knowledge society where the systematic collection, organization, and ap-
plication of information is the basic foundation for work and productivity.2
Alvin Toffler tells us that society is now riding a wave of revolutionary
change that will provide civilization with more, and more precisely or-
ganized, information than could have been imagined even a quarter-cen-
tury ago.3
The concept of a "post-industrial society," particularly as outlined by
Daniel Bell, is probably the most widely known analysis of the coming
social order.4 Bell describes his society along five dimensions. First, the
economic sector of society is experiencing a shift whereby a greater pro-
portion of the labor force is engaged in providing services rather than
working in agriculture and manufacturing. Second, the number of indi-
viduals engaged in professional and technical employment is increasing.
Third, theoretical knowledge gains rising importance in contrast with the
primary use of empirical knowledge that characterized industrial society.
The central role of technology requires, according to Bell, the continuous
opening of new technological frontiers. Therefore, a fourth dimension of
post-industrial society is a future orientation that involves the deliberate
planning and assessment of technological growth. Finally, post-industrial
society experiences the rise of a new intellectual technology to handle
multi-variable problems.
A common theme in the literature is that the emerging society is a
technologically-based service economy with a work force dominated by
highly professionalized groups whose elite status is based on their pos-
session, manipulation, and application of specialized knowledge.
The emphasis that social forecasters give to the role of knowledge, the
emergence of technological elites, and the service orientation of the econ-
omy are all themes that have great appeal to the professions. The danger
M. Kent Mayfield is director of education for the Medical Library Association, Chi-
cago, Illinois.
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is that, in their enthusiasm to serve and join the elites of the post-industrial
society, social forecasters may adopt the uncritical attitudes that seem to
have characterized earlier efforts to respond to social change and the tacit
acceptance of social goals formulated by elite segments in American so-
ciety whose main objective was and is to preserve the status quo.5
Eager as professionals may seem for increasingly important roles in the
knowledge-based society of the future, change of long-established practice
does not equal the velocity of technology itself. Technology adoption
follows a regular pattern: In the first stage, technology replaces manual
or traditional methods, and activities are performed faster and more ef-
fectively; in the second stage, technology fosters new applications and
things are done that were never done before; in the third stage, technology
transforms or changes lifestyles. And, Kochen warns, "The flow of tech-
nology is so rapid it can acquire a momentum of its own and sweep us
into lifestyles we may not like . . . We have barely enough lead time to
prepare for an effective control."6
Yet, in a day when the world of corporate business is promoting the
use of new communicative technologies to close the gap between an
exponentially expanding information base and its effective management,
the professional community lags far behind in its response to the immediate
question of organizational information resource management and the far-
reaching, and certainly more serious, issue of managing the intellectual
resources on which' society is based. The Conference Board raised the
issue in its 1971 information management policy analysis study;7 edu-
cational groups and medical associations have more recently voiced similar
concern.8 The intellectual professional community is familiar with the
question. The assumptions of scholarly professional activity are not far
removed from notions of information as a resource or a commodity to be
managed nor from the considerations of the access to and transmission of
knowledge or information as essential elements of professionalism. Why,
then, so cautionary a posture on the part of the professions?
Nina Matheson, in her report on "Roles for the Library in Information
Management," suggests that "the major barrier to change is often not the
love of the status quo but the lack of a clear picture of where technology
leads . . . . Without a vision . . . a concrete demonstration of feasibility,
change is difficult to initiate."9 Therefore, she sets forth three scenarios
describing how the evolution of the present environment into more ad-
vanced stages might proceed.
Matheson describes the outlook for one profession, that of medical
librarianship, but it resonates with significance for the professions more
generally. But, intriguingly sketched as her canvases are, they lack the
very dimension by which Matheson commends them to our consideration.
Concerned with the organized surveillance of information, possessing
special skill in manipulating knowledge, and therefore justifiably eager
to foresee what impact technology will have on their world of work in
the future, for what purpose, toward what goal, with what intent does the
profession now define itself? No engaging, commanding, humane social
or professional motive is evident. Nor, then, is there that motive that can
enliven a profession's practice. Lacking that, although technologically
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sophisticated and organizationally complex, the work of the professional
in the future she describes may be routine, mind-deadening, clerical,
inconspicuous?a downward rather than an upward linear projection of
the status quo.
The critical characteristic of any occupation recognized as a profession
has been its grounding in a coherent body of theory, and in the technical
"lore" grounded in its theory. The profession protects itself both by
monitoring and controlling growth through research and by managing the
distribution of private knowledge through venerable institutions or agen-
cies. Only those persons surviving a prescribed protocol of training, in-
doctrination, and scrutiny are allowed to apply knowledge in practice.
The exclusive right vested in a profession by society for the use of such
knowledge has been the basis for the profession's autonomy and the
practitioner's authority over the client.
The monopolization of specialized knowledge is now seen as funda-
mental to the emergence of the technological elites in the post-industrial
society. However, the monopoly of knowledge and the status of traditional
professions are threatened by the increase in the level of education of the
general public. The gap narrows between the professional and the client,
even in areas of professional expertise, through books, articles, television
programs, and other media. Consumer health groups sponsor workshops
on self-help health care. "The law belongs to the people. Pass it on,"
reads a recent advertisement from a law book publisher.
The intrusion of technology, especially the computer, also breaks down
the monopoly of knowledge. Computers are becoming an important tool
for all professions, forcing the practitioner to rely on specialists for access
to and analysis of information in the professional field. Furthermore,
information can be made widely accessible. "No longer," according to
Haug, "need knowledge be packed only in the professional's head or in
a specialized library, where it is relatively inaccessible. It can be available
not just to those who know, but also to those who know how to get it. to
As clients become more knowledgeable and have greater access to spe-
cialized bodies of knowledge, we move closer to the self-service society.
It will be those occupations that create the techniques and service that
increase the direct access to information and who pursue that intent with
vigor that will experience the greatest increase in status.
The expansion of knowledge, seen as a harbinger of the post-industrial
society, could in itself have a contra-professional effect. True, the growth
of knowledge increases the number of specialists and experts vying for
professional status, but it also leads to greater specialization and segmen-
tation within professions. The proliferation of experts and the fragmen-
tation within occupational groups diminishes the distinctive role of a specific
profession and again reduces its ability to monopolize a body of knowledge
and a system of technical lore. It is, then, increasingly difficult for the
lay person to distinguish who is and who is not a professional.
On the other hand, the client is in the advantageous position of having
a wider range of expertise to draw upon. Information on a particular
financial problem, for example, might be supplied by a lawyer, accountant,
real estate broker, financial advisor, social worker. or librarian. As clients
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become more knowledgeable and have a wider range of experts at their
disposal, they become more self-reliant and demanding, require greater
accountability for professional decisions, and assume a greater role in the
governance of individual professions through lay representation in profes-
sional bodies.
Social change will undoubtedly have an impact on the established and
emerging professions, but this change is not necessarily leading to a highly
professionalized knowledge-based service society, at least not in the form
often predicted by prominent futurists. Instead, it may be a time when
clients are more self-reliant, depending less on professionals whose oc-
cupational structure is based on the monopolization of a specific social
service and the knowledge upon which it is based. What we could see is
the emergence of a self-service society requiring a new kind of profes-
sional, a professional who helps the client become more self-sufficient.
Indeed, this is now occurring; occupations that are often cited as the
emerging or semi-professions with little chance of attaining the full profes-
sional status of the recognized professions can now be shown to be, in
fact, a new distinct type of profession, the goals of which are consonant
with those of a changing society.
William Bennett and Merle Hokenstad, expanding on the work of Paul
Halmos, have made the challenging case that there is a group of "people-
working" or "personal professions" significantly distinct from the tra-
ditional professions. In contrast to such accepted professions as medicine,
law, architecture, and engineering, which prescribe solutions to the client's
problems, the newer professions, such as education, social work, and the
mental health sciences, "function as catalysts who, through the com-
munication of information and sharing of insights, attempt to help the
client help himself. "11
The elite professional uses his or her knowledge to help the client but
does not share the knowledge, while the personal professional shares the
profession's knowledge so that the client is better able to cope with his
or her problem. The client's problems are often social or economic and
may have a political or spiritual aspect to them in that the professional
may serve as an allocator of a beneficial resource?information, welfare,
salvation. Because of the nature of the problems, then, the knowledge-
base of the personal professions also differs from that of the impersonal
(older or elite) professions. It is less substantive, more technique-oriented,
especially with regard to interpersonal skills and strategies for transferring
knowledge. It is the ideal of the personal professional that the client grows
or changes through the meetings with the professional and in the future
can handle the problem without the professional.
In short, the professional and the client become more like each other.
This is in sharp contrast to the elite professional, whose clients are expected
to return for any recurring problems and are not expected to become self-
sufficient at any point.
While it may be difficult to ascertain what course of action is specifically
appropriate for the professions, it is clear that attempts to protect the
ideologies and structures of the elite tradition alone would be a retro-
gressive step if the professions are to meet the challenge of social change.
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A few propositions may be important in identifying professional motives
for the future:
1. The professions must clarify who they are, what and whom they
care about, what they have a talent to do, what kind of world it is into
which they have been thrust, and where and how that being and caring
and doing can change the world in the direction of their highest aspiration
for it.
2. The professions must adhere to the practice of encouraging the growth
of persons?competent, integrated, sufficient?and of demonstrable hu-
man outcomes.
3. The professions must be committed to insuring the greatest access
to knowledge, opposing censorship and the monopolization of information
by the private sector and promoting freedom of information and increased
access for all clients.
4. The professions must not be limited to outmoded models of profes-
sional identity that would limit their contribution to social change. Instead,
they should reflect on Haug's observation that "perhaps the term 'profes-
sional' with all its upper class implications will become obsolete or even
a pejorative term, symbol of an earlier, pre-modern era. Some new word
to signify the human service expert will emerge in the 21st Century."
5. The professions must not feel threatened by the emergence of other
occupational groups concerned with the organization and dissemination
of knowledge nor see in them the occasion for compromise or accom-
modation, but instead approach them as allies.
Perhaps these are little more than a reiteration of long-standing principles
of exemplary professional practice, not always adequately applied but still
valid. It is the critical and forceful application of these concepts that will
be the challenge to established professional groups as they cope with
knowledge, technology, and the selection of motives for the future.
Notes
1. Chorafas, D.N., The Knowledge Revolution, London: George Allen and Unvin,
1968.
2. Drucker, Peter E., The Age of Discontinuity, Harper, 1968, pp. 263-380.
3. Toffler, Alvin, The Third Wave. Morrow, 1980, p. 193.
4. Bell, Daniel, The Coming of Post-Industrial Society. Basic Books, 1973.
5. Harris, Michael H., "Portrait in Paradox: Commitment and American Li-
brarianship, 1876-1976," Libri, December 1976, pp. 281-301.
6. Kochen, Manfred, "Technology and Communication in the Future," Journal
of the American Society for Information Science, March 1981, pp. 148-156.
7. Kozmetsky, George, Ruefli, T.W., "Information Technology: Initiatives for
Today?decisions that cannot wait." New York: The Conference Board, 1971.
8. Sawhill, T.C., "Curriculum Priorities for the '80s: Beyond Retrenchment,"
Current Issues in Higher Education, 1980. Vol. 4, pp. 13-33; Tosteson, D.C., "Sci-
ence, Medicine, and Education," Journal of Medical Education, January 1981, pp. 8-
15.
9. Matheson, Nina. Academic Information in the Academic Health Sciences Cen-
ter. Association of American Medical Colleges, 1982, pp. 27-29.
10. Haug, Marie R., "The Deprofessionalization of Everyone?" Sociological Fo-
cus, August 1975, pp. 197-213; Helena Z. Lopata, "Expertization of Everyone and
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the Revolt of the Client," Sociological Quarterly, Autumn 1976, pp. 435-47; Adam
Yarmolinsky, "What Future for the Professional in American Society?" Daedalus,
Winter 1978, pp. 159-74; Rue Bucher and Anselm Strauss, "Professions in Process,"
American Journal of Sociology, January 1961, pp. 325-34.
11. Bennett, William J., Jr., and Merle C. Hokenstad, Jr. "Full-time People
Workers and Conceptions of the 'Professional" in Paul Halmos, ed., The Sociological
Review Monograph, University of Keele, 1973, pp. 21-45; Paul Halmos, The Per-
sonal Service Society, Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1966.
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Education:
What Do We Do?
I
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The Reindustrialization of
Vocational Education
by
Amitai Etzioni
"Vocational education is not a priority," lamented Richard Arnold,
division manager of the Community Educational Relations Department of
AT&T. "The Business Round Table decided not to take it on," confided
one of my colleagues. When Iran into David Goslin, the top social science
staffer of the National Academy of Sciences on the way to a "VocEd"
meeting, he wanted to know, "What are you doing here?" When Con-
gressman Carl D. Perkins launched hearings on possible renewal of the
massive five-year program of federal aid to vocational education (which
was due to run out September 30,1982), the opposing views did not make
the network news, indeed were barely reported at all.
Vocational education may not be a prestigious or "in" subject, but it
requires attention in this era of national turnabout. Call it renewal, revi-
talization, or?I naturally prefer my own term?reindustrialization, the
quality and preparation of human capital is a vital part of the renewed
attention to economic growth. Few if any would contest the elementary
truth that even if government intervention in the marketplace is slashed,
its guzzling of resources is effectively curbed, and R&D and the formation
of capital are encouraged, labor will still remain an essential factor in any
equation defining the elements of productivity and economic growth.
Indeed, a pivotal element of the first industrialization of America, roughly
between the 1820s and the 1920s, was the mass preparation of immigrants
and farmers for work in factories, including acculturation, general edu-
cation?and vocational education.
The Condition of Human Capital
Many corporate executives find vocational education?and, more widely,
preparation for jobs?a subject best delegated to someone in personnel,
a topic not nearly as worthy as return on capital, new technologies, or
even labor relations. The same executives are nevertheless keenly aware
of the bottom line of the condition of human capital, the frequent absence
of "employable skills." There is an acute shortage of persons with some
specific skills (computer programmers, toolmakers, engineers, secretar-
Amitai Etzioni is university professor at The George Washington University, Wash-
ington, D.C. and is also director of the Center for Policy Research, New York City
and Washington, D.C. This article is based on his book An Immodest Agenda:
Rebuilding America Before the Twenty-First Century (McGraw-Hill, 1982).
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ies). Moreover, in the groups of workers, blue collar and white collar,
who are available in abundance, many are reported to be unable to read
a blueprint, query a work processor or computer, compose a coherent
report, or do simple calculations with assurance. "When I told her to use
the yellow pages," a Washington-based executive says about his new
secretary, "she said she couldn't." It turned out that she did not have a
firm grasp of the alphabet, nor was she trained in the use of a simple
index, two "skills" without which the yellow pages become quite un-
wieldy. The U.S. Army, one of the greatest users of raw human capital,
found out in a recent tank-battle simulation that the messengers and radio
operators were unable to "decipher" rather simple, but urgent messages.
Indeed, complaints about the lack of skills of the youth who graduate
(or drop out) from American high schools, whether regular or vocational
programs, have reached the level of a common clich?It is less widely
recognized that in fact the poor skills level of many of America's youth
is an important reason for "youth dispreference" in hiring. In a study
conducted by a White House task force in preparation for the administra-
tion's 1980 youth employment initiatives, employers said they could not
find enough young people who have the basic skills of reading, writing,
and arithmetic to perform white-collar jobs; they sometimes have to in-
terview 12 to 15 young people to find one who can qualify for even an
entry-level job. The literacy gap among applicants was a serious problem;
major employers reported that over 60% of young applicants fail entry-
level job exams. It is estimated that almost 23% of those who begin school
will never receive a high-school diploma; even among those who do,
many lack elementary preparation for work. Complaints about the decline
of work-ethic are similarly common.
Social scientists, whose job it is to be skeptical about all widely-held
assumptions, are less sure. Economist Edward F. Denison, a leading
authority on productivity, is "skeptical that a sudden drop in willingness
to work is responsible for the recent retardation of productivity." His
skepticism, he explains, is
largely attributable to having heard similar generalizations all my life and having
read them in the works of observers who wrote long before my birth. It was
well before 1967 that I wrote, "Like the supposed decline in the spirit of
enterprise, there seems always to be a popular belief that people are less willing
to put in a hard day's work than they used to be, but this is scarcely evidence."
Another leading authority in the field, the National Institute of Edu-
cation's Henry David, in A Policy for Skilled Manpower, published 27
years ago, wrote "It was contended that workers are no longer governed
by internal standards of work; that they display less of the old-time will-
ingness to please the boss. . . ." Among the factors cited at the time were
schools that no longer stress discipline, and decline of supervision at home
because many mothers are employed.
The truth may well lie somewhere between employers' complaints and
social scientists' doubts. Assuredly, matrons in ancient Rome complained
that "you can't get good help anymore," but there is some evidence that
the quality of America's human capital has indeed deteriorated over the
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last decades. A recent study by the National Assessment of Educational
Progress found that the average quality of the writing of 17-year-olds is
somewhat lower than it was in 1969, while the descriptive writing of 13-
year-olds showed a "significant decline." The study concluded, "It ap-
pears that a considerable proportion of young people?from 10 percent
to 25 percent?do not understand the nature and conventions of written
language." Similar data have previously been published on declines in
ability to compute and most other things.
And, despite his doubt about the decline in willingness to work, Denison
found that great increases in the proportions of inexperienced workers?
young people and adult women?among the employed caused a reduction
of productivity, albeit not a major one. While the entry of so many young
people and women into the labor force did increase total labor input and
output, it added "less than an employment expansion of similar size would
have done if it had been distributed like existing employment."
The data indicating decline of the work ethic are much weaker and less
clear, but still point toward less motivation to work hard, and more demand
for using work for self-development rather than a day's pay. A recent
survey conducted by Louis Harris for Sentry Insurance found that among
labor leaders, business leaders, and the public, two-thirds to three-fourths
endorse the views that people take less pride in their work than a few
years ago; that their work motivation is not as strong as it used to be; and
that people are not working as hard as they used to. Daniel Yankelovich
reports in his recent book New Rules that the quest for self-fulfillment has
drastically reduced the proportion of Americans who believe in "hard"
work.
In short, it seems that employers may be bitching as usual, but also
may have more to bitch about.
"Wait a moment," I can practically hear the reader exclaiming. "Will-
ingness to work and employable skills are not the product of vocational
education alone." Quite right. They are a kind of an educational bottom
line that reflects all that preceded employment, from the condition of the
home on. Was learning?and work?appreciated in the family? Was the
primary school adequate? And so on. Vocational education builds on all
this, and if the pillars are shaky the roof cannot be stable. Vocational
education cannot make up for years of underpreparation for the world of
work, of jobs. The more general term "job education" seems preferable
when one wishes to include all work-relevant educational "inputs," leav-
ing "vocational education" to refer to educational preparation for a spe-
cific vocation or for skills applicable to several categories of jobs. In these
terms, job education may be more at fault than vocational education, at
least the place where matters first go awry. But call it any name, prep-
aration for work seems to be deteriorating.
Minorities, Women, and the Business Community
Preparation for work is gaining renewed attention as the United States
undergoes a major turnabout in its national priorities. After three decades
of pumping up public and private consumption, social priorities, and
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concern with "inner" growth and the environment, the national focus is
shifting to rebuilding economic vitality and growth.
As part of this turnabout, emphasis on minimum competence is replacing
social (or automatic) promotion in schools, and emphasis on standards
and structure is returning to colleges. While this shift in emphasis grows
out of a general concern about falling skills, both its advocates and its
detractors often use "minimum competence" and "standards" as code
words for positions specifically concerning minorities. Social promotion
in schools (and open admission in colleges) came to be favored, after
compensatory education largely failed, to help minorities catch up with
educational requirements. Many kids, especially in minority groups, were
three to four years behind in math and English; instead of being held back
to repeat classes endlessly, and suffer stigma on top of deficient skills,
these young people were promoted?and graduated?automatically. Now,
the call that schools demand at least some demonstrated competence is
often perceived as aimed first and foremost at minorities.
Moreover, for long, too long, the media have tended to depict unem-
ployment as first of all a problem of inner city, minority, especially black
youth. Major federal programs have been evolved to try to increase the
employability of these young people. Indeed, preparing minorities for
work is one of the two top priorities of the federal vocational education
program. The program's other social justice target is women. States receive
funds to hire "sex equity coordinators," whose tasks include reviewing
all vocational programs in a state for sex bias and helping local education
officials to improve vocational education opportunities for women.
Indeed, the whole federal vocational education program smacks of the
sixties. It began in 1963 with/the passage of the Vocational Education
Act, which significantly exp ded federal aid to vocational education and
established such funding as "permanent." In 1968 and again in 1976,
Congress amended this act to inject social considerations into vocational
education. The amendments provided that portions of the money appro-
priated to vocational education programs were to be earmarked for special
"target" groups, especially women, minorities, and the handicapped.
Through these amendments, the federal government has been trying to
spur the states to direct vocational education toward federal priorities rather
than their own. It provides the states with only a fraction of the money
that is spent on classroom vocational education, about 9% of roughly $6
billion spent annually on such training; the rest is provided by the states
and local boards of education. (Of course, training on the job is provided
mainly by the industry as well as a sizable growing number of schools
run by corporations, especially big ones such as AT&T and GM.) Never-
theless, the federal government has been trying to be the tail that wags
the dog. Francis Tuttle, state director of vocational and technical education
in Oklahoma, sums it up: "Under existing federal laws and guidelines,
the federal government furnishes less than 10 percent of the money but
is attempting to drive 100 percent of the programs. I don't think any of
the states think this is appropriate." Most states, in turn, have tried their
best to take the federal dollars and follow their own views as to what is
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to be done. Tuttle notes, "What we have had to do sometimes is work
around the federal rules in order to accomplish what we see as our prior-
ities."
The focus of vocational education on "special targets," the hardcore
unemployed, equity, and social change, has led to a wholesale disregard
of industrial and business needs. Young people have often been trained
for jobs that did not exist and have ended up, in droves, working for local
governments, not in the private sector. In its 1978 report on employment
and inflation, the Joint Economic Committee concluded:
The problem of teenage unemployment is not the inability to hold a job, but
to get one in the first place . . . . The central focus of eliminating [this problem]
must be to provide better mechanisms to match job seekers with jobs. Schools,
businesses, and unions should expand the scope of the activities that link class-
room activity to work.
The Committee also noted, "Poor or nonexistent counseling often re-
sults in coursework choices which are irrelevant to future jobs."
Employers and their representatives second this complaint. Robert L.
Craig, communications director of the American Society for Training and
Development, an organization of private-sector job trainers, comments:
Vocational education wastes a lot of money because the education people don't
get together with the people from the world of work. There's a big gap between
education and work, and the employer has to fill it. . . .
Craig Musick, training director of the Graniteville Company in South
Carolina, notes the discrepancy between education and industry in his
own state:
The technical colleges in South Carolina are trying to develop technicians (2
years) and skilled craftsmen (1 year) for business and industry. . . . However,
corpofations have been slow to accept the technician concept because they do
not have such a slot in their salary administration plan and corporate struc-
ture. . . . Both units (college and industry) are training people but not working
together.
In addition, labor representatives have protested the lack of contact
between educators and unions. Rod DuChemin, assistant director of human
resources development for the AFL-CIO, notes that
the split between the thought processes of the vocational education people and
the business community is very wide. The vocational education people never
really spend any time trying to learn what [union] apprenticeship programs are
all about.
Widening the gap between vocational education and the business world
is provision of vocational education mainly through public schools, the
majority of which are comprehensive high schools and community colleges
that offer both vocational and academic programs of study. There are
nearly 5,600 such institutions, compared to 700 vocational high schools,
technical institutes, and other specialized schools that offer instruction
primarily in technical education, and 1,900 area vocational schools and
centers offering technical education on a part-time basis. Most compre-
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hensive high schools tend to treat vocational education as a third cousin
at best, while they favor liberal arts. Moreover, subjects that are not
specifically vocational are increasingly taught in a way that makes them
more academic?relevant to college but not jobs?as witnessed by recent
changes in mathematics, economics, and natural sciences courses.
A push in the same direction comes from the structure of the advisory
vocational education boards states must set up if they are to receive federal
funds. The federal government spelled out in fine detail 20 categories of
people that must be represented on these boards. The advisory boards
must include members concerned with the education of women, the hand-
icapped, ex-cons, and people whose knowledge of English is limited; a
VocEd student; and so on; but few are required to represent or understand
the needs of the client of vocational education, the business community.
Beyond this general, almost incomprehensible inattention to the client,
the preoccupation with social priorities and liberal arts distracts attention
from two other obstacles to rebuilding human capital for reindustrializa-
tion: inappropriate psychic preparation and the mismatch between jobs
and the labor force.
Skills or Self-Discipline?
Inadequate preparation of the labor (typical, by the way, of underde-
veloped countries, which the United States is slowly coming to resemble)
is not limited to some minorities, women, or inner cities. Large numbers
of white males are also graduating from high school (or dropping out)
unable to do elementary computation, and functionally illiterate, unable
to follow a training ,manual, even one simplified to comic-book level.
Moreover, to the extent that the widely-used term "lack of employable
skills" focuses attention on cognitive deficiencies (inability to read, write,
and compute), it is, I believe, deeply misdirected.
As I see it, the quality in which large segments of the labor force are
particularly deficient is self-discipline, the basis of the ability to work
with authority figures, with co-workers, with rules, and to do routine
tasks. Indeed, this deficient psychic preparation seems to me to be a main
cause of both deficient cognitive preparation and unemployability. Intel-
ligence is rarely the issue; even a person of relatively low IQ can memorize
the alphabet if he or she is able to mobilize self for this elementary level
of concentration and effort?in other words, has self-discipline.
The intellectual demands of using an index system, reading a blueprint,
or querying a computer are quite low, but these tasks do require an attention
span, a level of concentration, and a systematic approach that exceeds
that of impulse-ridden, unfettered minds. Behind most complaints about
lack of skills (quite valid in themselves in that the person does not com-
mand the skills) is the lack of adequate psychic preparation. Thus, the
inability to compose a simple memo, indeed a paragraph, is not so much
intellectual as psychic?the inability to adhere to simple rules?a sentence
must have a subject and a verb and end with a period, and so on. (I refer
here not to effective essay writing, but to straight composition.) Similarly,
simple math requires first and foremost a level of self-discipline to mem-
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orize some basics (e.g., multiplication tables) and to adhere to a few rules.
As I see it, the shortage of secretaries reflects a shortage of people willing
to deal with routines (such as filing), to memorize (as in stenography),
and to submit to authority. The key attribute of a good toolmaker is
precision; precision is not a matter of high IQ, but of considerable self-
discipline.
Indeed, give me a self-disciplined person, motivated to work, able to
deal with others, with authority, and with rules, and having reasonable
intelligence, and I will teach that person all the "employable skills" in
short order. And give me a person lacking in these essential psychic traits,
and I will find that person very difficult to teach?and to employ.
Why the deficient psychic preparation? In an America in which most,
if not all, institutions have eroded, each institution tends to load part of
what it should do in a well-functioning societal division of labor onto the
next one, creating multi-institutional overload. The result is an institutional
domino theory: as one institution underperforms, it leans on the next and
strains it.
Laying the psychic foundation of self-discipline is first the task of the
family; the formative years are crucial, and parents (and siblings) provide
the first and most important "role models." True, even in good old
America, not all families did their basic educational thing. But recently,
with both parents often working outside the home, with "parents" often
rotating (through divorces, a sequence of boyfriends or girlfriends, re-
marriages, stepparents, grandparents temporarily playing parental roles,
etc.), and with a widespread notion that normless permissiveness is the
childrearing practice to follow, many kids reach the educational institutions
woefully underprepared, from a psychological viewpoint.
Schools are supposed to be the bridge from the family to the world of
work?the first experience of dealing with rules, authority, time-specific
"work" units, structured achievements and rewards?but in many of the
nation's educational institutions the experience is quite different. These
schools are overloaded with excessive and conflicting demands; suffer
from a breakdown of inner discipline and structure; and are equipped with
a boundless permissive psychological philosophy and burned-out staff.
Particularly among schools in the inner cities, the breakdown of discipline
has turned many institutions from educational establishments to inefficient
warehouses, where the entrance of young people into the labor force is
delayed while they indulge themselves, act out, and otherwise hinder those
who wish to teach or learn. In these schools, protecting teachers from
rape and assault, and the building from vandalism, is often itself a con-
suming and inadequately performed task. Teaching does occur, but the
sum of the educational experiences generated in these schools is a better
preparation for a world of street gangs, drug-pushing, numbers-running,
or sporadic work laced with drugs and alcohol than for "a day's work for
a day's pay."
Even where there are but few disadvantaged students, as in the many
suburban public schools, the quality of psychic preparation varies a great
deal. In many, the psychic message is based on a version of developmental
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psychology according to which the teacher focuses on the person, not on
his or her ability to function within a team or community. The result is
well depicted in The Class of '65, a book about the graduates of an upper-
middle-class school in Pacific Palisades, California. The students, typi-
cally the products of parental neglect or boundless permissiveness, had
been faced by a school that set no clear standards, promoted no positive
values, and "understood" the need to act out. Ten years later, only two
of the graduates seem able to function in an adult work world. Others
have committed suicide or had nervous breakdowns, are religious freaks
or in a Turkish jail for drug smuggling, and so on. Some will eventually
straighten out, but no thanks to their families or schools.
Not all American schools are like that certainly; but maybe half of the
nation's kids pass through such schools. Not all of those who appear at
work's gate are underprepared psychically; about half of the youth is a
reasonable estimate.
When many families and schools are not doing their psychic preparation,
their job-education, the task falls on the high school's vocational education
programs, junior or community colleges (often openly perceived as re-
medial institutions for what the high schools neglected), or special pro-
grams, such as vocational schools. Many of these focus on cognitive
elements (teaching remedial English or applied math). Other vocational
programs do succeed in making up, to some extent, for previous defi-
ciencies because they select youth in a way that screens out the psychically
underprepared; or because they keep the kids day and night (the various
"academies") and so can penetrate deeper into their pupils; or because
training is closely tied to. available, sought-after jobs at the end of the
schooling?a powerful incentive.
Often, though, the load is passed to the next institution in sequence,
the workplace. Large corporations end up spending hundreds of millions
of dollars not on vocational training, or fine-honing skills to their needs,
but on elementary job education and on attempts to cope with the con-
sequences of deficient psychic preparation. Smaller corporations face even
greater difficulties; unable to set aside the resources for schooling, they
commonly have to make do with what they can hire: raw or underprocessed
human capital.
Mismatch
Not all the difficulties arise from deficient psychic and cognitive prep-
aration of workers; the world for which workers are being prepared has
also changed. Henry David, who has led a major study of vocational
education for the last five years, gives a telling example: twenty-five years
ago a cabbie could be illiterate; today he must be able to write, because
he is required to keep a log. Generally speaking, while the distribution
of innate talent within the labor force may well not have changed, job
requirements have escalated, with a decline in blue-collar and an increase
in professional and semi-professional jobs. The computer revolution, the
so-called onset of the post-industrial society, is but part of all this. No
wonder less-skilled workers are in surplus and skilled ones in great de-
mand.
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Reindustrialization of Human Capital: What Is to Be
Done?
All this suggests that there has been a wide decline of "employable
skills," not one limited to minorities; that it is due first of all to institutional
erosion and lack of self-discipline, not cognitive deficiencies; and that the
federally imposed priorities of the sixties helped separate Vocational Ed-
ucation from the world of work; and that changes in job specifications
have added to the difficulties.
If the preceding analysis is roughly correct, not too much is to be
expected from attempts to straighten out the last domino of a teetering
series. To ask vocational education in public institutions to provide "em-
ployable" workers is to ask its often unappreciated staff, thrust aside by
general educators and often ignored by business, to correct for underpre-
paration by the family and the schools in both personality and cognitive
areas, as well as to make up for what God and nature have not provided,
an expanding pool of innate talent to suit raising job demands. Sure, some
benefits can be squeezed out by using up-to-date instead of obsolete equip-
ment (e.g., electric instead of manual typewriters). And a remedial course
in English will somewhat improve the reading and memo writing of some.
And if it is possible to forecast with reasonable accuracy where the jobs
will be, and train people for them rather than for jobs that are vanishing,
motivation to study will be improved. But these measures won't do the
whole job.
Greater benefits might be generated by basic organizational changes.
First, remove federal direction and let states and localities run vocational
education. Second, increase the representation of business in the vocational
education state advisory board and reduce the role of general education,
which tends to foster an anti-vocational educational orientation. Third,
increase the contact between vocational education representatives and the
business community by forming local business visiting committees. Har-
vard has committees of outsiders who come to visit regularly with its
departments, review achievements, and advise on directions to be fol-
lowed. Vocational education programs would gain in relevance, reality,
clout, and status if local employers would be invited to form committees
to regularly advise these programs. Employers, increasingly concerned,
might volunteer?especially if they felt their advice would be heeded.
To get at the two core issues, however, the growing labor-job mismatch
and psychic underpreparation, quite different approaches are necessary.
For the mismatch, one must recognize that as a rule it is easier to restructure
the job than change the person. Thus, in the new anti-tank Cobra heli-
copter, the U.S. Army found that if the guiding mechanism breaks down,
it is more efficient to unplug the "black box" and plug in a spare one
than to call for, or train, repair personnel. Auto repair shops will benefit
once computers start doing much of the diagnostic work, since fewer and
fewer mechanics have the needed "insights." New typewriters, linked to
processors, are equipped with a memory of the spelling of 50,000 words;
if one is misspelled, the screen flashes. Using these may turn out to be
more efficient than teaching anyone to spell all these words. Even more
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than before, we need to look at the job-worker match as a two-sided
dynamic, without limiting our efforts to suit one to the other, not to make
room for self-actualization but to be more cost-effective.
As to psychic preparation, "remedial" work is best achieved through
surrounding the person with a constructive total environment?not in
specialized classes, in which what is gained in class is lost in other en-
vironments. Hence, for those who come to work underprepared, the best
hope lies in on-the-job training, not in additional schooling, though in
many instances some additional schooling is needed before on-the-job
training is practical, or must accompany it.
In the long run, the pass-the-overload system will need to be reversed.
Rather than stacking more and more remedial institutions on top of one
another, families and schools will have to do more of their elementary
duty: to prepare persons able to function in an adult work world. This is
not something that employers can command, but in the renewing Amer-
ica?in which the public has come to favor a tax cut for business over
one for itself?the concern with our national and economic future may
be carried over to a greater attention to the human capital, especially in
the psychic formation of the next generation of Americans. It is as nec-
essary as fighting inflation and securing investment in capital if economic
growth and social stability are to be provided for the future.
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New Work and Education:
Socio-Technical Work Theory
and
School Learning
by
Arthur G. Wirth
In the past several decades, an extensive literature has emerged that
has identified a variety of ways in which schools correspond to the needs
of the work world.
In this paper, I shall argue that the kind of systems efficiency influence
from the corporate world that bore down on schools in the 1970s is being
challenged by a counter set of factors in the 1980s. The challenges derive
from two interrelated changes taking place in work: the emergence of
democratic social-technical work theory, which, in turn, is being supported
by some forms of high technology.
I shall make a brief reference to influences on schools of the systems
efficiency rationale. Then I shall examine implications for education of
emerging socio-technical work design by turning to theory/practice ex-
amples that have emerged from Norwegian Work Research Institutes where
socio-technical theory has received its most serious attention. The Scan-
dinavian experience may be seen as a model from which Americans might
learn if the socio-technical trend already under way in the United States
becomes a serious force in the economy.
Systems Efficiency and Schools in the 1970s
In the past decade, schools have been influenced heavily by the cost-
benefit model of systems efficiency theory from industry. Pressures have
mounted to treat education as a production function. As C.A. Bowers has
pointed out, this has infiltrated the ways that teachers are led to think
about their work; they begin to use the restrictive language of technocratic
ideology?inputs, outputs, behavioral objectives, competency-based cri-
teria, etc. Life in school gets narrowed down to "mastering" measurable
components of instruction engineered by outside experts. In Bowers's
words:
Arthur G. Wirth is a professor of education at the Graduate Institute of Education,
Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri. This article is based on research for his
forthcoming book, Productive Work?In Industry and Schools: Becoming Persons
Again, and also appears in modified form in the Fall 1983 issue of The Teachers
College Record.
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. . . (The) application of systems theory to the teaching process . . . is likely
to transform teaching and learning into a mechanical, positivistically oriented
process . . . In effect, it creates an encapsulated technological universe where
only technological and management problems are real.'
A turn in this direction became the strategy of educational policy makers
in the '70s. It was their response to concerns about decreases in produc-
tivity that were plaguing both industry and education.
While the tendency of educators to seek answers through technocratic
efficiency techniques might be understandable, there was also an irony in
the move. At the very time when schools were turning toward refined
versions of Taylorist control, that model was being declared dysfunctional
by growing numbers of thoughtful leaders in industry.
They began to entertain the idea that the malaise of people at work
might be an outcome of the very technocratic expertise introduced to
correct it. They concluded that the old remedy of stepping up supervisory
controls over a reluctant work force producing shabby work was no longer
viable. They could continue to apply the failed treatment?or try some-
thing else. One surprising alternative was to turn to the concept of socio-
technical or industrial democracy work design theory. It was based on the
peculiar notion that the revitalization of human productivity might depend
on a return to the neglected values of democracy under conditions of
modern technology.
Before delineating features of socio-technical work theory and how it
might affect education, I want to comment on several factors in the larger
society that have supported this development: (1) the success of American
education in producing an "over-educated" work force, and (2) certain
trends in high-technology work.
American ideology holds that democratization of opportunity is pro-
vided by access to public schooling, which opens possibilities of upward
mobility and personal satisfaction. The twentieth century, in fact, wit-
nessed an impressive expansion of the school system aimed at accom-
modating all aspirants seeking better work. Success, however, became a
source of trouble. Educational expansion has produced a larger number
of educated persons than the economy provides jobs for. There is much
evidence that a highly educated work force tends to be more resistant to
the authoritarian social relations of the scientific management tradition.
The discontents of "over-educated" workers could result in disruption of
productivity and capital expansion. Concern about this potential has led
to awareness of the need to address disaffection at work. One response
has been to increase worker participation by various forms of workplace
democracy. In the view of Henry Levin, who wrote the article "Education
and Work" for The International Encyclopedia of Education (1983), moves
toward greater worker participation and collective decision-making could
have profound implications for schools. If the emerging system of pro-
duction requires more collaborative, problem-solving human interactions
it, in turn, could require school experiments with more liberalizing forms
of learning for students and teachers. The conditions begin to arise for a
new stage of work/school "correspondence."
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One test of whether there is evidence for the possibility sketched by
Levin is to see if it gets any support from developments on the frontier
of new work?high-technology production.
High Technology and Learning at Work
We get a vivid sense of this in Larry Hirschhorn's analysis of the
situation in the high-technology nuclear power industry, with events at
Three Mile Island as an illustration.2 There is a growing awareness,
Hirschhorn says, that cybernetic technology does not replace human work,
but leads to workers, technicians, and supervisors actually taking on more
complex roles. A basic reason is that inevitable failures of cybernetic
processes built into production require a higher order of coping responses.
In his analysis of events at the Three Mile Island accident, Hirschhorn
identifies lessons we are beginning to learn: "The more complex the
machinery, the more complex are the possible varieties of machine failure.
There are moments when only human intelligence can diagnose and correct
unforeseen breakdowns. To prevent catastrophes, machinery must be de-
signed to permit human intervention, and workers must be trained as
problem solvers, not merely machine tenders."
At Three Mile Island, there was a lack of flexible response to the
complicated set of events that unfolded. Multiple failures included poor
maintenance, bad design of the console and the control room, error of
judgment, and inappropriate training. These "errors," says Hirschhorn,
did not derive from failures to operate a machine correctly, but reflected
a failure by the engineers and managers to design a system that integrated
effectively worker intelligence and technical processes. Analysis of the
situation reveals basic contradictions resulting from a conflict between old
industrial mind-sets and the actual demands of the new post-industrial
production systems.
On the one hand, the philosophy and training of engineers leads them
to create designs based on the ideal of the regularity and lawfulness of
the solar clock. In technical systems, "feedback" controls are designed
to cope with predictable errors and failures. Workers are treated as ex-
tensions of the mechanical system. The aspiration is to control their actions
through training programs and system design so that their responses will
be specific and predictable. On the other hand, cybernation is a product
of fallible humans. It cannot eliminate errors and, in fact, raises failures
to new levels of complexity. Hirschhorn's analysis of the failures at Three
Mile Island leads him to conclude that "workers in cybernated systems
cannot function as passive machine tenders, looking to instruction manuals
for the appropriate response. This suggests an entirely new definition of
work in a post-industrial setting. Skills can n6 longer be defined in terms
of a particular set of actions, but as general ability to understand how a
system functions and to think flexibly in solving problems."
In spite of this, Hirschhorn finds that the traditional mind-set of engi-
neers and managers makes them reluctant to help workers gain insight
into system designs, or to train them to think conceptually beyond lists
of responses to a series of anticipated problems. He found that training
by utilities at nuclear plants is typically conducted by utility officials or
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vendors who sell training packages to companies. They are technically
competent, but their courses are usually geared to the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission's qualification examinations. The aim is to test competence
on routine tasks and familiarity with specific emergency procedures. The
aim is not to deepen workers' understanding of the physical, chemical,
and system features of the reactor process. The result is a kind of training
that ignores requirements for the kind of expanded learning that would
equip workers to cope with the unexpected.
Even while these mismatches between concepts of training and the new
technology continue to happen, there is growing experimentation with
alternatives. The general trend in cybernated industries is to locate workers
in control rooms where they manage from a distance the manufacturing
process. In the chemical industry, for example, continuous "batch pro-
cesses" are controlled by microprocessor operations. While not subject
to nuclear catastrophe possibilities, failures in the system can become a
major cost of production. Workers must not only be prepared to respond
to emergencies but also to adapt appropriately to the introduction of new
machinery or new products. Some manufacturers are recognizing the need
to create designs that permit fruitful interactions between technology and
human intelligence. Thus, a Canadian plant that manufactures alcohol
which has to be "customized" for use in a variety of things such as soaps,
carpets, containers, etc., designed a computer process not simply to au-
tomate production but also to supply workers with technical and economic
data so that they could solve problems of customizing and could test their
own production decisions. Workers who develop a facility for experi-
mental decision-making become more knowledgeable and contribute to a
constant upgrading of the manufacturing process.
Moves in these directions involve a fundamentally different conception
of the interactions of workers and machines. Hirschhorn points out that
the emerging logic of post-industrial workplaces tends to leave both man-
agement and unions in a paradoxical position.
Management, to operate and protect the new machinery, needs highly
trained workers, trained to think independently; but its traditional interest
in control mandates a work force with limited skills and aspirations. There
is an uneasiness among some utility owners that moves toward autonomous
work teams with highly trained problem-solving skills could become threats
to the basic prerogatives of management.
Other problems are posed for trade unionists. Traditionally, union sol-
idarity has been secured by emphasizing a class division between man-
agement and workers. But this tradition is in conflict with the professional
character of work transformed by cybernated processes. In fact, unions,
to protect workers, need to seek upgrading of competencies and broader
worker involvement in plant operation. They need to assure workers' rights
to understand the technology that they use. Such moves, which recognize
the paraprofessional status of better-educated workers, may further blur
the increasingly unclear line between workers and managers. There is fear
among union officials that this could lead to erosion of union security. It
could also lead, however, to new and different opportunities. There is
growing dissatisfaction among engineers, middle managers, and other
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professionals who chafe at being underutilized or being victimized by
bureaucratic size and politics. Imaginative unions might become a coun-
terpoint to represent all employees, workers and managers, who are seek-
ing new perspectives and goals for work life. They might assume leadership
of an "oppositional culture" aiming at a new integration of company
goals with protection of professional competence and needs for profes-
sional growth.
Hirschhorn concludes:
The logic of the post-industrial workplace may force a radically different con-
ception of production work upon both managers and trade unions. Managers
may be forced to share real power with their workforce, not for the conventional
purpose of improving morale or smoothing industrial relations, but because
technological exigencies and market pressures simply demand more knowl-
edgeable, autonomous workers. The old-fashioned class politics of industrial
society is giving way to a new post-industrial politics, in which representation
of worker interests by trade unions will turn on a very different set of issues,
such as education and access to information.
The implication is clear that, for effective performance in work like
that described by Hirschhorn, new modes of learning are needed that move
Geyond "training" concepts' of the classical scientific management model.
The implication also seems clear that school learning based on narrow
technocratic influences from industry will likewise be dysfunctional.
As we indicated in the introductory remarks, an alternative concept of
work?democratic socio-technical work theory?has been emerging as a
vigorous challenger. It is a growing force in the United States, but there
is a longer history behind it in Scandinavia. Since we are concerned with
linkages between the new work concepts and education, we can benefit
by looking at projects developed at the Norwegian Work Research Insti-
tutes. They represent the most serious efforts to explore education/"new
work" linkages.
Socio-Technical Work Theory and Education
The contemporary origins of democratic socio-technical work theory
may be found in the interrelated work of a variety of thinkers such as
Philip G. Herbst, Einar Thorsrud, Fred Emery, and Eric Trist, who, though
scattered from Norway to Australia, have been associated with the English
Tavistock Institute of Human Relations and the Norwegian Work Research
Institutes. American theorists like Louis Davis and Michael Maccoby
(influenced by Erich Fromm) have moved in similar directions.
A basic insight of socio-technical theory is indicated by the term itself.
It holds that the fundamental flaw of the technical efficiency model is the
"technical fix error," i.e., the insistence on seeking purely technical
solutions in systems that are, in fact, socio-technical. "Socio" refers to
the human part?the personal, intentional, creative aspects of human
reality.
This is not the place to explicate in detail this alternative philosophy
of work, which seeks to tap worker involvement as a corrective to the
technical-fix error.3 My purpose is different. I work from the assumption
that educators must accept the reality that their work will be influenced
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significantly by the master economic institution and the world of work.
When technocratic ideology and systems efficiency are unchallenged in
industry, schools cannot escape their influence. But what kinds of edu-
cational implications might arise if significant sectors of American labor
and management bring under question the Taylorist system of work design?
What if there is a significant turn to democratic, workplace theory as a
means of economic survival? Are there implications for the philosophy
and practice of education when the work of teachers and students in schools
is viewed from this perspective?
Formal writing on the subject is meager. Philip G. Herbst, one of the
most creative thinkers of the Norwegian Work Research Institutes, has
been the most direct in addressing the question of the relation of socio-
technical work philosophy and education. I shall refer to his writing in
exploring the question.4
He and his colleagues in the Norwegian Industrial Democracy Project
took the position that growing concern about the quality of life at work
and the need for democratic alternatives to hierarchical bureaucracies is
not merely an aberrant wish of impractical humanitarians. It is rooted in
fundamental changes in man's relationship to his environment. The bu-
reaucratic model worked when man's fundamental relation to his world
was the physical environment and the technology he developed to act on
it. The environment could be conceptualized as an aggregate or cluster of
elements that could be manipulated for human gain. Classical economic
and management theory incorporated humans as constituent elements of
the aggregate.
The socio-technical theorists maintain that we are entering a new stage
marked by the emergence of a turbulent environment. The source of the
turbulence lies in the shift from a situation where the physical environment
and technology functioned as the medium for the relation of man to man.
This derives from man's own conceptualizing, which confronts humans
with rapid, profound, often unpredictable change. "The turbulent envi-
ronment is man himself and efforts to solve turbulent type problems with
procedures based on principles of the mechanistic, aggregate model in-
creasingly break down."
Norwegian work redesign in areas like the new high-technology mer-
chant marine is based on the assumption that the rate of change in tech-
nological design increases so that it has now become necessary to build
learning capacities into the organization of industrial work teams. Herbst
and colleagues decided that this can be achieved only by creating relatively
autonomous matrix organizations in which neither task roles nor work
relationships are fixed. Within this framework, work teams of persons
engaged in on-going learning become capable of doing reseach both to
find ways to improve production and to develop strategies for coping with
changes in tasks. Linkages are established with university and other re-
search units.
In the new Norwegian Merchant Marine, there was a growing recog-
nition that the sophisticated computerized technology of new ships was
not amenable to old-style organization of ship personnel. There is a steady
flow of newness in equipment and operations, which requires crews ca-
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pable of ongoing learning and collaborative trouble-shooting. It cannot be
met by organizational systems in which relations are impersonal, inflex-
ible, and unstable due to rapid turnover.
To try to retain the old organizational forms seemed irrational, and
Norwegian leaders also were increasingly dissatisfied with the disjunctions
between the democratic values and relations in community life and the
authoritarian traditions aboard ships. The basic decision was to experiment
with alternatives to hierarchy so that Norwegian ships would become more
democratic places in which to live and work. These developments, in
Herbst's view, point toward the possibility of a new emerging post-in-
dustrial work model for some significant portion of the population:
A society in which there will be relatively little difference in the educational
level and status of those who work in industrial, educational, research, and
service organizations. Persons will differ more as regards their focus of ori-
entation than as regards the nature of their work. The leading elements in the
transitional stage of development are the rapid increase and diffusion of complex
technologies which can be operated by a small number of persons, and the rapid
increase and diffusion of higher education . . . As development continues, the
traditional hierarchical type of organization based on the separation of doing,
planning and deciding will be replaced by primary work groups in which these
functions are integrated. The members of these groups will to an increasing
degree be able to participate in policy decisions and be capable of using spe-
cialists as consultants.
In Socio-Technical Design: Strategies in Multidisciplinary Research,
Herbst devotes attention to the implications of "new work" philosophy
for educational organizations. The assumption is that constant technolog-
ical and social innovation is the dominant reality with which institutions
must cope. The need grows to create educational organizations that can
equip persons to adapt to indeterminate change. Educational institutions
themselves experience turbulent change due to rapid growth in knowledge
and shifts in expectations of their clienteles.
Herbst's premise is that the possibility for creating educational orga-
nizations appropriate for any era depends on the model used for structuring
educational tasks. He makes a socio-didactic analysis of the basic as-
sumptions that have been built into twentieth-century schools and finds
that educational tasks have been structured on a simple "production-
process model" paralleling the organizational features of the traditional
factories. They have not yet responded to the learning characteristics of
the new work world, which is still very much in the minority.
To clarify his thesis, Herbst differentiates two fundamentally different
types of work tasks: determinate tasks and indeterminate tasks. Deter-
minate tasks are those where every element is specifiable and the outcome
is predictable. (The manufacture of Model T Fords would be an example.)
Regarding indeterminate tasks, Herbst identifies three varieties, which
progressively become more indeterminate:
1. There may be a given initial situation and a required outcome and
the indeterminate factor is the means to use to get from the initial state
to the outcome. For example, the engine room of a ship (now full of
sophisticated technology) may need to be cleaned. The means may be left
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undetermined if the crew is permitted to create its own task force, which
will take initiative in reaching the goal. In this case, it becomes a research-
type task. On the other hand, if the methods are prescribed in detail and
executed under bureaucratic scrutiny, the work has remained as a pro-
duction-type determinate task.
2. We may have a task where new material is given, and the two
indeterminate tasks become "what can we do with it?" (end product) and
"how can we use it?" (means). For example, if a school gets a micro-
computer, the staff might be brought into the thinking about what ends
to use it for and how to use it.
3. Finally there is the fully indeterminate task where no element can
be fully specified at the outset: This is the type of task that increasingly
emerges with advanced technology. For example, in the case of the Nor-
wegian merchant marine, as changing computer-oriented technology trans-
formed the nature of the ships, the old production-type model increasingly
became dysfunctional. New training programs could not be implemented
before technological changes upset the planned design. The new type of
ship emerging required flexible, multiple-skill trained personnel who could
identify the problems and form themselves into flexible autonomous matrix
groups to help the ship perform its mission. All workers who participate
in this kind of indeterminate work task are actively engaged in a learning
process.
We can understand why the socio-technical work theorists repeatedly
refer to Jean Piaget's To Understand Is to Invent. Those who are at work
in indeterminate-type tasks cannot be people who know only the discrete
steps of a manual or workbook. They have to understand the whole system
in terms of the interrelation of the parts.
A basic point in Herbst's socio-didactic analysis is that the way school
tasks are structured affects all aspects of the dynamics of school life. The
basic distinction is between production-type tasks and research project-
type tasks. He quotes the findings of Dutch researchers (1969) who showed
that students spot with high consistency the difference between production-
type "schoolish" teachers and "non-schoolish" research-project oriented
teachers. Herbst says that the production-type teacher
? . . splits his subject into small isolated bits, which have to be worked on and
learnt one at a time. Students are required to follow rigid instructions. The
performance of students, both in terms of following instructions and in terms
of the results obtained, is judged simply as right or wrong. The teacher claims
complete autonomy for himself as an expert, while allowing little or no auton-
omy to his pupils. Subjects that especially lend themselves to being taught in
this manner are mathematics and foreign languages. A machine teaching pro-
gramme is an extreme example of this type of teaching technique.
Research-project type teachers
. . . give their students autonomy to investigate, discuss, and find out for
themselves. The teacher defines his role as a resource person for the activities
of his students. . . . Where drill is needed, the purpose and meaning are ex-
plained. Judgment of performance is not simply in terms of right or wrong, but
in terms of the development of increased ability, competence, and independence.
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The "production-type" teacher aims to have his students follow in-
structions and to perform precisely a predetermined program. Original
ideas of students are seen as non-compliant behavior, so curious students
are often forced to choose between being passive or being seen as rebel-
lious. This type of school organization fulfilled its function to produce
human beings who were attached to traditional production processes and
who were to subordinate themselves to the control of managerial authority.
It also produced alienation from school tasks.
On the basis of his analysis, Herbst sees growing discrepancies between
the task definitions in schools and the task definitions in industries under
turbulent change. Secondary schools typically are organized around sep-
arate subjects. The research problem-oriented tasks of higher-technology
industry do not split up the field of knowledge in the same way as the
school subjects, and they require a type of organization based on coop-
eration rather than on competition. "Many types of problem encountered
on the shop floor, in a hospital, or in a family require an understanding
of social-psychological, economic, technological and political aspects and
their inter-relationships."
A major project of the Norwegian Work Research Institute was a 10-
year study of progressive changes in the design of work on the ship Balao .5
As Norwegians on the Balao began to work more and more in the "in-
determinate research learning" style rather than the traditional "produc-
tion task" mode, they discovered they had to turn attention to the schools
that were training personnel for the merchant marine. They found that the
schools and teachers who were not in touch with the new developments
were becoming isolated from maritime reality. The younger personnel
were losing respect for out-of-date teachers and programs. A decision was
made to bring teachers aboard the ships. Teachers were integrated into
the work process itself, which gave them a sense of being on the frontiers
of learning and enabled them to communicate as equals with ship's per-
sonnel who were working in the autonomous, matrix task force mode.
Teachers, however, also taught classes in their specialized skill areas,
which were valued as components of an integrated training program. When
teachers returned to their schools on shore, they began to introduce prob-
lem-oriented projects consistent with the emerging learning style they had
seen on ships.
Later I was able to visit a secondary school in Stavanger that was pointed
out to me by the merchant marine researchers as a place exemplifying
moves in the new direction. It has established working relations with the
Jonas Oegland plant, which produces bicycles and industrial robots. This
plant has moved in the direction of shop-floor democracy, with autono-
mous work group teams. Major changes were introduced in the modes of
production and quality control, with workers taking over functions of
managers and supervisors.
At the school, I observed classes in electronics where students were
working on project problems that had been identified in consultation with
factory work groups. For example, several students were working on a
problem from the industrial robot division. Teachers, students, and factory
representatives jointly planned strategies and evaluation procedures. A
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school steering group was created, composed of elected pupils and teachers
and representatives of work groups from industry. The steering committee
will allocate study projects into several courses 'of study: electronics,
calibration, physics, etc.
Beyond this, the director explained that Norwegian education officials
and representatives of collaborating industries are developing a plan for
a postgraduate thesis program that can be completed by people who have
entered industry. A practical or theoretical industrial problem will be
identified by a candidate. His plan for thesis research will be placed under
the supervision of the head of the appropriate department (for example,
a department of professional engineers), and there will be consultation
with appropriate personnel in the university. If the thesis is well executed,
the candidate will be assisted in entering advanced training in a university.
The director saw these developments as giving continued encouragement
to students who like research-type learning. He said that places like the
Oegland Plant industry begin to be a learning place for both workers and
management?and move in the direction of the label described by Herbst
where "everyone ought to be a researcher."
Industries of this type have to become capable of "learning" to meet
change. In order for students to be adequately prepared for entrance to
such places, the young should learn in schools that also are capable of
"learning as institutions." Ironically, many schools whose programs are
rigidly prescribed by centralized authority have less capacity for "learn-
ing" than some of the newer workplaces. Teachers and administrators are
worn out by keeping the system running, by being made subordinate to
prescriptions of external authorities, and by having to keep tabs on re-
luctant charges.
Herbst calls for more autonomy for individual schools, with meaningful
roles for some representative committees like the Steering Committee of
the Viderengaende Skole in Stavanger. Centralized boards of education
would still have system-wide responsibilities but their consultative, fa-
cilitative roles would rise sharply in importance and their prescriptive,
control functions would diminish. Pride would be taken in fostering schools
skilled in getting students and teachers involved in personal learnings that
relate to the changing social reality.
In Herbst's view, this does not mean that all "schoolish" type teaching,
is bad. There are needs for systematic specialized learning experiences.
One of the avenues to be explored seriously in the 1980s will be to see
how many of these can be programmed into computer-assisted instruction.
That dimension is a necessary complement to the "research-project, non-
schoolish methods" that now need to be expanded.
The Norway example illustrates the following: When people start down
the socio-technical road, questions about the nature of learning and school-
ing tend to be raised.
If "new work" requires the empowering of people to learn reflectively
and to act based on that learning (features of the liberalizing ideal), then
continuities are needed between "new work" and schooling. The notion
arises that the kind of learning that needs to be supported in both institutions
is the liberal "freeing of intelligence" type learning.
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If we seek ideas about how to make schools centers of liberalizing
learning, we might turn to these new workplaces for useful clues. The
question of what conditions support the freeing of intelligence (or what
thwarts it) can be pursued productively both within schools as workplaces
and within workplaces themselves.
Herbst himself defends the idea that this work theory has significant
implications for societal transformation at the broadest level. He sees the
possibility of a transition between a late-industrial stage and a potentially
less destructive post-industrial era. Socio-technical work design is seen
as a "leading edge" toward the forming of a social order based on the
principle that productive development depends on human conservation or
"well-faring" of all. Herbst uses the concept "world model" to compare
present social features with a possibly emerging alternative.6
In the late industrial (or "modernist") model, the significant challenges
seen as problematic for survival are located in the properties of the en-
vironment. The fundamental characteristic of the environment is that it is
a cluster or aggregate of elements. This is the model in terms of which
classical science built its theories of universal determinist laws. Armed
with the tools of science, man stands apart from the environment and
against it. This results in a basic contradiction in his condition.
In the active mode, standing godlike outside the world, man controls,
masters, and subjugates the environment. In the passive mode, it is the
environment that shapes, governs, and determines his behavior.
The orientation of a science that is atomistic, mechanistic, and deter-
ministic, which permitted mastery of the environment, also provided the
conceptual base for the creation of bureaucratic organizations based on
the principle of uniform replaceable parts. When "fixing" is needed, one
turns to the engineering expert who provides the thinking required "to
restore efficiency." Others follow orders.
The pathologies of this model emerge, Herbst wryly observes, "when
man begins to treat man as part of the physical environment. In the active
mode he perceives and masters others as objects. In the passive mode he
experiences himself as object, as a cog in the machinery." In this engi-
neer's view of the world, "the function of insight and understanding is
no longer a liberating one but the pragmatic one of meeting the challenge
of the environment."
But the organizational patterns designed to increase control are them-
selves increasingly marked by unruly complexity, size, and dysfunctional
change that becomes increasingly repugnant and unacceptable to humans.
The principles of hierarchical bureaucratic control no longer provide the
conceptual base for understanding the problems of the present turbulent
environment. "This is because the behavior of man, the relationship of
man to man, and the social ecologies that have come into being do not
conform to the universal and immutable principles of classical science."
The capacity to deal successfully with this order of change depends now
on building a human choice-making capacity into the system itself.
The Taylorist tradition based on the separation of doing and thinking
becomes increasingly inappropriate and is replaced by work groups in
which these functions are integrated. "The members of these groups will
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to an increasing degree be able to participate in policy decisions and be
capable of using specialists as consultants." The shift, then, is from a
feeling of alienation to a feeling of autonomy.
The "well-faring world model" requires a kind of science of man that
is not ethically neutral but has a responsibility to determine the choice of
technologies that support the learning and growth of all persons in the
system. According to Herbst, the shift to the new world model requires
the capacity and opportunity to participate in "research style" inquiry
type learning. This requires the values that John Dewey said are essential
to engage in scientific inquiry?values of individuality and community.
A forerunner of work of this type may be seen in some high-technology
work processes where a relatively small number of well-educated workers
need to respond to random unpredictable events.
Herbst himself, however, argues that high technology itself is not a
guarantee of humanistic reform. Computer technology, for example, may
be designed to bring closer the goal of complete, rational machine control
that requires no human participation or intervention. "It is possible that
god-like mysterious power will be projected upon computer programs, to
which effective decision-making authority will be transferred and which
may for a time permit the survival of centralized hierarchical organiza-
tions."
Herbst and colleagues simply point to the waste that results when human
capacities are unutilized; and that technical and social health can be re-
stored when people are "brought in" as whole human beings?as dem-
onstrated with low-skilled workers in assembly plants as well as people
in high-technology industries. These may be seen as "leading edge"
examples of a well-faring world model where ethical choices about uses
of technology and social relations are made for sane social and personal
development. No one knows if they are aberrants or forerunners. They
are beginning to appear, however, in the master institution. They might
function as laboratories where growing numbers of people begin to raise
questions about the quality of life under technology.
My personal conviction is that democratidecological.third ways beyond
main-line capitalist and state socialist systems need to be created. Producer
cooperatives of the type developed in Mondragon Basque communities in
Spain provide one promising example. We should seize the chance, how-
ever, to find out if working through corporate structures with the values
of socio-technical, democratic work theory can become one serious source
for effecting liberating social change.
Footnotes
1. C.A. Bowers, "Emergent Ideological Characteristics of Educational Policy,"
Teachers College Record, Vol. 79, No. 1, September 1977, p. 50.
2. Larry Hirschhorn, "The Soul of a New Worker," Working Papers Magazine,
Vol. 9, No. 1, January/February, 1982, pp. 42-47.
3. Arthur G. Wirth, Productive Work?In Industry and Schools: Becoming Persons
Again (Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1983).
4. Philip G. Herbst, Socio Technical Design (London: Tavistock Publications,
1974), and Alternatives to Hierarchy, (Leiden: Martinus Nyhoff, 1976).
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5. Ragnar Johansen, "Democratizing Work and Social Life on Board M. S. Ba-
lao," Report of Ship Research Group, Work Research Institute, Oslo, Norway, 1979.
Supplemented by interviews with Mr. Johansen, Oslo, May 14, 1980.
6. For an elaboration, see Fred E. Emery and Eric L. Trist, Towards a Social
Ecology (New York: Plenum/Rosetta, 1973).
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Getting Ready for the Next
Industrial Revolution
by
James O'Toole
The Japanese have finally gone and done it. They've built a factory in
which, untouched by human hands, robots make robots. From the initial
delivery of parts and materials, through the stages of cutting, grinding,
molding, casting, welding, assembling, painting, and packaging, to the
final warehousing of the finished product, machines do all the work. The
"offspring" of this process are now being installed in American factories
where they soon will be making cars, tractors, jet planes, and nearly every
other manufactured product currently made by the hands of men and
women. In the near future, automation will start even prior to the man-
ufacturing stage of 'production: miraculous computers are now capable of
actually designing products and then "sending orders" to robots on the
shop floor telling them what to make and how to make it.
Revolutionary changes of this magnitude always entail a mixture of
blessings and curses. For example, the nineteenth century industrial rev-
olution ultimately led to the great advances in living standards, social
equality, and democracy enjoyed today in Europe and North America.
But along the way a heavy price was paid as workers were exploited,
traditional community values were destroyed, and Dickensian slums were
created. From what we can tell, America is on the verge of a second
industrial revolution made possible?indeed, compelled?by the com-
puter in its many manifestations. Like its predecessor, the next revolution
will have both benefits and costs.
The benefits to the nation promise to be impressive. The advances in
productivity provided by the new technologies are likely to increase Amer-
ica's standard of living, make the economy less inflation-prone, and,
perhaps, make our industry once again competitive in world markets. On
the personal level, machines will relieve humans of almost all dirty,
dangerous, strenuous, menial, and repetitive tasks. In factories of the
future, the only human workers will be engaged in installing, program-
ming, monitoring, and repairing the robots that will do all the direct labor.
James O'Toole is a professor of management at the University of Southern California's
Graduate School of Business Administration, Los Angeles, California. This article is
reprinted by permission from National Forum: The Phi Kappa Phi Journal, Vol.
No. 1, pp. 16-18.
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In offices of the future, word processors, intelligent copiers, and automated
information systems will eliminate such drudge work as filing and ste-
nography?and probably do away with the rote work of the typing pool.
Already, such diverse workers as farmers, lawyers, accountants, nurses,
journalists, managers, technicians, teachers, postal employees, auto me-
chanics, retail clerks, real estate agents, and military and police officers
are finding subtle alterations in their jobs thanks to the new computer-
based technologies. In the future, such changes will be profound and, in'
most cases, beneficial.
The office worker who once used only lower-level skills to sort, copy,
and file will soon have access to information that formerly was the purview
of managers only. The secretary of the future will hence be able to use
her higher-level analytical and reasoning skills to make challenging de-
cisions. Similarly, the industrial worker, who now uses her lower-level
abilities to drag parts around and feed them into a machine, will soon
have access to managerial information?and, hence, the ability to engage
in tough and interesting problem solving along with her supervisor. In
effect, the new technologies blur the invidious distinctions between the
secretary and the boss and between the blue- and white-collar worker.
This presents tremendous opportunities to those office and factory workers
who are prepared by experience and education to accept increased re-
sponsibilities.
Unfortunately, this general upgrading of jobs comes with a negative
side: the new technologies are beginning to erode the already poor em-
ployment prospects of the disadvantaged. While the coming wave of
automation probably will not reduce the total number of jobs, it will
decrease dramatically the number of lower-level jobs that typically go to
the least-educated workers. Unskilled and semi-skilled industrial workers,
clerks and typists in offices, and even service workers who do routine
tasks will all see their jobs eliminated as sure as humans make little green
Apple computers. Everywhere one looks there are signs of oncoming job
losses: In an aircraft factory, labor that once required the efforts of 12
men is now done by a robot and one man monitoring its performance; in
an auto corporation, work that once took a draftsman three weeks is now
done in a day by an engineer with the aid of a computer; in an insurance
office, letters that were once typed by a secretary are now entered directly
into a computer by the boss himself, and sent electronically to other
managers. Even in relatively high-technology industries, the impact of
the miraculous new machines is being felt: the introduction of the computer
to the telephone and telecommunications industries has eliminated some
100,000 jobs. In workplaces around the country, hundreds of thousands
of people are being made redundant by automation. If current trends
continue, the already-high levels of unemployment among the unskilled,
the disadvantaged, and factory workers will rise to depression levels in
the years ahead.
This forthcoming revolution is not a matter of if, it is quite simply a
question of when. While the current prolonged recession has slowed the
introduction of the new technologies, it has not altered industry's long-
range automation plans. For example, before the recession, General Mo-
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tors had planned to be as fully automated as its Japanese competitors by
the end of the 1980s. That date has been set back because of GM's inability
to raise the capital needed for expensive robots. But as soon as the economy
turns around and capital starts flowing again into corporate coffers, GM
and every other industrial giant is planning to convert its cash into new
machines?not into hiring new workers.
These are not idle plans. Nor are the changes that are soon to occur
the mere fantasies of dreamy futurists: they are real. Moreover, the coming
industrial transformation promises not only quantitative but qualitative
change. Indeed, the very nature of the economy is already being altered.
As the power of computer technologies has increased exponentially by
over 25% annually since the mid-1960s, and the cost of computer capa-
bility has fallen while the cost of labor has risen, the curtain has been
lowering on the industrial age. For example, half of the U.S. work force
is currently engaged in information work: the processing and manipulation
of words, data, and ideas. The future promises more such changes. In
vanguard post-industrial cities like Los Angeles, something like three-
quarters of all advertised job openings are for information workers. In
factories, we find the obverse of these white-collar trends. General Elec-
tric, for instance, has built a factory in which one enormous locomotive
engine frame is produced daily in a process that involves no production
workers at all. The plant replaces one that employed 68 workers who
produced only one such frame every 16 days. The difference in the rate
of productivity between the old and new plants is staggering; the resulting
loss of employment alarming. Over the next decade, automation will
reduce the total number of manufacturing jobs in the economy by 25-
50% (the rate will depend on the speed of economic recovery).
In order to save the remaining jobs of the least-educated industrial
workers, union and minority leaders will be tempted to call for limitations
on the introduction of new technologies and on the closing of outmoded
plants. Already, the International Association of Machinists is proposing
a "Technology Bill of Rights" to protect displaced workers. But Luddite
movements never succeed. Automation brings too many benefits to too
many people to be denied. On this score, history is always cruel to the
few for the good of the many.
But there is no reason why we need stand by helplessly and watch our
most vulnerable citizens victimized by the onrush of technological prog-
ress. The only policy that can protect them in the long run is to begin
educating them so that they will be prepared to enjoy the fruits of the
second industrial revolution. The years to come will see tremendous de-
mand for knowledge and information workers: analysts, engineers, sci-
entists, technicians, managers, and the like. Unfortunately, America is
failing to educate an entire class of citizens to realize these occupational
opportunities. In the current system, general, basic, liberal educations are
provided to the children of the privileged, who then are able to pursue
advanced, specialized education in preparation for good jobs. In contrast,
narrow vocational education is given to the children of the disadvantaged,
who then enter the kinds of jobs that technology is eliminating. This system
has always been undemocratic and unjust?now it is becoming econom-
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ically untenable as well.
The only hope for the disadvantaged is for them to learn to read, write,
and compute so that they can then acquire the skills needed for the jobs
of the future. Soon there will only be work for those who have the skills
of speaking, listening, observing, and measuring, and the confidence to
use their minds to analyze and solve problems. Those who will succeed
in the work force will be those who have learned how to learn?the
unthinking jobs all will be done by machines. The French have anticipated
this phenomenon. They have remade their once class-segregated educa-
tional system into a single-track in which all children now receive the
same basic liberal education that was, until recently, preserved for only
a privileged few. This new system complements a national effort to be in
the forefront of the computer revolution.
The Japanese, too, have anticipated the age of automation. Recently,
they have outpaced us in providing high levels of basic education to all
their children and youth. Consequently, Japanese workers and unions
welcome the introduction of labor-saving technology. Unlike Americans,
the well-educated Japanese workers are able to be rapidly retrained for
better jobs when their current jobs are automated. Domestically, we seem
to be moving in the opposite direction, compounding the undesirable side
effects of automation. For example, there are now misguided calls for
increased high school vocational training of industrial workers. (We never
seem to learn: after the Watts riots, the federal government trained young,
black Angelenos to be elevator operators?oblivious, as late as 1967, to
the inevitable dominance of the automatic elevator.)
Vocationalists go wrong, in part, because they cling to an outmoded
assumption that the typical worker is, and will continue to be, a lathe
operator (or some other factory or manual laborer). While the assembly-
line worker was the representative employee of the industrial revolution,
Drexel University's Arthur Shostak suggests that the air controller is the
prototypical worker of the future. Unlike factory workers of the past who
worked mainly with their hands, air controllers (and similar nonprofes-
sional controllers of machines in factories and power plants), work with
their minds. Their computer-based jobs are highly sophisticated, critical
to the safety of their enterprises and the public, directly affect productivity,
and are indispensable (one can't get machines to make human judgments
about other machines). Thus, the worker of the future is not the manual
laborer of the vocationalist's imagination, but a "data communicator"
with heavy responsibilities?both technical and moral?that require the
judgment and analytical skills that are characteristic of the broadly edu-
cated person.
Perversely, calls for outdated, vocational training often come from
liberals and leaders of minority communities. There seems to be an un-
spoken conviction among many in these groups that black and brown
children can't handle the same educational challenges as whites, and that
many nonwhites are uneducable for good jobs. These assumptions over-
look evidence coming from the few inner-city schools lucky enough to
have teachers and principals who refuse to let students cop out of learning
with the excuse that they are disadvantaged. Where teachers demonstrate
high expectations of their students, poor nonwhites respond to educational
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challenge as well as do their suburban, white counterparts. Once they
have the confidence that they can learn?and are provided with a sound,
basic educational curriculum?minority students quickly form appropriate
habits of study and work and develop the language and numerical skills
needed in all jobs in the second industrial revolution. Fortunately, such
a curriculum has come along at exactly the moment it was needed: The
Paideia Proposal by Mortimer Adler and his colleagues outlines exactly
the form of education that can prepare disadvantaged and advantaged
students alike for life and work in a technologically advanced society.
What educators must avoid is overreaction. For example, in California,
Governor Edmund Brown, Jr., has called for the remaking of all education
into high-tech education. In schools across the state, administrators and
principals are directing every spare nickel into computers and software.
In a trendy rush to be on the cutting edge of the latest social movement,
California's politicians and school administrators are overlooking the fact
that computers are tools?albeit powerful tools?but merely tools none-
theless. While students must be trained at an early age to make full use
of these tools, it must be remembered that computers are means, not ends.
Computers are no substitute for sound, basic educational preparation for
life's many activities and roles: work, leisure, family, citizenship, and
lifelong learning. Certainly, there should be a place for a computer in
every classroom, as there will be a computer in every aspect of life in the
future. Still, the computer must be kept in its proper place. In California,
unfortunately, some schools have let the computer drive the educational
process. For example, the vocational preparation of computer program-
mers has been pushed at the expense of liberal learning. Ironically, this
has occurred just as self-programming computers are being developed.
This is no better than training elevator operators.
Caveat: I have not addressed a related and potentially tragic issue.
America has not come to grips with the shorter-term problem of finding
work for the many 40- and 50-year-olds whose jobs are being decimated
by automation. Hundreds of thousands of factory workers in the auto,
steel, and rubber industries of the Northeast and Midwest may never again
know gainful employment?most certainly not employment at the high
pay they once received. These semiliterate men and women?people who
never learned the skills of lifelong learning when they were young?
cannot readily be retrained to work in the new semiconductor industries
or in jobs in computer maintenance, monitoring, or programming. Unless
government and industry can find imaginative ways to retrain, even to
educate, these people, they will face bleak life prospects. And society
will face the terrible burden of an angry and dispossessed working class.
More and better education for all is the only policy that can prevent
terrible social consequences from accompanying the introduction of the
new technologies. Either America must begin now to educate the disad-
vantaged in the manner it educates the privileged, or expect a nightmare
future. For the social consequences of millions of unemployed workers
could make the side effects of the first industrial revolution appear benign
in comparison. Fortunately, such consequences for our youth, at least,
are not predetermined. They can be avoided if America acts now to make
the reform of elementary and secondary education a high social priority.
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Current Models for the Future
Education of Workers
by
Sharon Rubin and Amy Thomas
As we consider work in the future, it's necessary for us to think about
the education of future workers as well. The challenge is substantial.
There will be huge numbers of new workers, including more women and
minorities than ever before. They'll be doing new work, serving an in-
formation society. Both large corporations and small businesses will have
new needs as they manage technological change, prepare new employees,
keep workers from becoming obsolescent, and retrain them frequently.
Wprkers will change careers more often and enter and leave the work
force and educational institutions more frequently. How will higher ed-
ucation respond to these challenges?
As we look at present higher education, we see patterns surprisingly
like those of 20 and 30 years ago. Although adults are returning to school
for training or personal development in record numbers, most colleges
still don't accommodate adults with ease. For every college that gives
credit for life and work experience, another treats old transfer credits as
if they were carriers of contagious diseases. For every course a major
university offers in a distant part of the state on weekends, a dozen colleges
continue to offer courses in three one-hour segments per week during the
middle of the day. Corporations, frustrated by the inability of colleges to
respond to their needs, develop more and more specialized training courses,
but for every company that creates new in-house training, another cuts
the training budget immediately when the bottom line is unhealthy. For
every company that encourages employees to develop their abilities by
taking college courses, another reimburses by the grade, discouraging
employees from taking the truly rigorous or challenging courses.
If the general outlook for future-oriented worker education is gloomy,
that gloom is not unrelieved. There are presently a number of programs
that bring colleges and businesses together in ways that anticipate future
trends, that use resources wisely, and that fill the needs of businesses and
employees while supporting the mission of higher education, as well.
? These programs provide models that can be used as they are or readily
revised for new circumstances.
The workers whose numbers will be increasing in the future?females,
Hispanics, blacks, older workers?are those who have traditionally not
Sharon Rubin is director, Experiential Learning Programs, University of Maryland,
College Park, Maryland. Amy Thomas is a research associate at Experiential Learning
Programs.
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been trained to enable them to pursue careers in technical fields. Three
programs have found innovative ways to prepare such workers.
Evergreen Valley College, in San Jose, California, began its Transition
into Electronics program to give displaced homemakers, the disadvan-
taged, and reentry students both exposure to technical industries and the
confidence that they can be workers in such fields.
The 10-week program, initially funded through the Displaced Home-
makers Act, combines classroom instruction with experiential learning, a
curriculum geared to help each student make "realistic and knowledgeable
career decisions."' The hands-on training includes constructing a tran-
sistor radio. Students report that this experience helps them "overcome
their anxiety and fear of working with machines, tools, and other things
technically-related." Other experiential learning includes a number of
plant tours, so students can see different actual work environments. Class-
room instruction is provided by "role model" instructors, many of them
women employed in area industries. Students report that such instructors
have had a major impact on them in creating an awareness of different
occupations where they can "fit in."
Most of the students who enter the Transition into Electronics program
are not already students at the college, but many decide, after completing
the course, to become regular full-time or part-time students, continuing
studies in electronics, data processing, electronics drafting, and engi-
neering technology.
Women are rapidly becoming the largest population of new workers.
Chase Econometrics estimates that, by 1990, 70% of working-age women
will be in the work force.' Although women are entering the work force
in record numbers, they are still concentrated in low-paying, low-skill
jobs. Full-time employment responsibilities, in addition to family respon-
sibilities, often prevent women from pursuing the extra education and
training they need for job advancement.
The banking industry can serve as a model to study the difficulties of
advancement for women in the business world. The National Association
of Bank Women, an organization of women banking executives, conducted
a study of its membership in 1972 and found that only 12% of the members
had college degrees. This lack of educational credentials affected both the
women's immediate positions as bank professionals and their prospects
for future promotion. For instance, because of lack of education, women
bank workers were primarily in the personnel, operations, and retail side
of banking, but the line to senior management tends to be in the more
technical commercial and lending areas.
NABW decided to develop an undergraduate management degree pro-
gram to provide its members with the financial, analytic, and problem-
solving skills they needed for promotion. NABW's original proposal,
developed with Simmons College, Boston, was funded by the Carnegie
Corporation in 1974. The NABW/Simmons program has been so suc-
cessful that NABW decided to expand the program, and it is now offered
at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge and Mundelein College in
Chicago as well.
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The program is geared to the full-time banking worker, who can earn
a bachelor's degree in management in three to five years without quitting
work. Students attend six Management Institutes, two two-week sessions
for each three years. The Institutes are designed to provide the student
with in-depth instruction in the structural and behavioral aspects of finance,
accounting and control, operations management, and marketing.3 By com-
pleting the Institutes, the student earns between 36 and 42 credits; the
remaining credit hours are earned in liberal arts and business-related courses,
which vary by institution, and by credit for prior work and life experience.
Both bankers and banking institutions have acknowledged the program's
immediate benefits. Women who complete the NABW program comment
that the knowledge and experience gained are useful immediately to their
current jobs. Over 85% of the program's participants have received pro-
motions since first enrolling in the program. Sponsoring banks have wit-
nessed increases in participants' productivity, professionalism, job
satisfaction, and commitment to their banks.
Although employment opportunities have improved for minorities in
fields traditionally closed to them, many obstacles remain. The number
of minority executives has shrunk since the mid-1970s, despite efforts
from major corporations to recruit minorities into management. This prob-
lem extends from the executive suite to the university classroom, where
there continues to be low minority enrollment in undergraduate and grad-
uate business programs.4
The Leadership Education and Development program (LEAD), estab-
lished in 1980, is a national effort to increase the number of minority
students in business schools and the business world. The program exposes
high school minority student leaders to educational and career opportun-
ities and to role models available to them through special summer pro-
grams.
Talented minority high school juniors and seniors participate in four-
week intensive business and management curricula at LEAD-cooperating
universities. The students are then monitored throughout their undergrad-
uate careers and are encouraged to pursue liberal arts degrees, followed
by professional business programs.
The students' role-model exposure extends beyond the classroom into
the business world itself. All students participate in three-year part-time
internships with the companies of their choice. At the end of each student's
third year of undergraduate study, LEAD will assess the student's progress
and plan a program of "upward mobility. "5
LEAD, which started in 1980 at the University of Pennsylvania's Whar-
ton School of Finance, has spread to Northwestern University, the Uni-
versity of Michigan, Columbia University, and the University of Maryland,
which has a joint program with Howard University. By 1985, the program
will operate in 10 major business schools.
These three models are different in intent and scope, yet they each have
major implications for the successful integration of new populations of
workers into the labor force.
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As a result of the speed with which the United States is turning into a
service economy, many companies have developed programs to upgrade
their employees' abilities as effective service workers. Their definitions
of "effective," however, have varied by both industry and philosophy.
INA, one of the nation's largest financial services organizations, with
worldwide operations in property-casualty insurance, life insurance, em-
ployee benefits, health care, and investment management, has identified
the liberal arts as the basis for giving employees organizing, planning,
decision-making, and creative skills, along with leadership, oral com-
munication, and interpersonal abilities.6 As Ralph S. Saul, INA chairman
has noted,
Education in the liberal arts plays an important role in developing managers.
It provides a vital perspective on the interrelationship and growing complexity
of business and society. As a multinational company doing business in 145
countries around the globe, INA recognizes the need to understand not only
our own business, but also the diverse and complex social, political, economic
and cultural environments we work in. It is no longer enough for managers to
be well trained; they must be well educated. The demands of business and
society require them to explore and act on dynamic and wholly new concepts
that accept no traditional solutions. For that they will need to know the best
that has been thought and said by generations before them, and that is the benefit
of a liberal arts education for business decision makers and leaders.
Other companies having philosophies similar to INA's often introduce
top executives to the liberal arts through special summer programs, such
as those at Amherst or Williams. INA, however, has imagined liberal arts
eduction in a much broader context. With the University of Pennsylvania,
INA has developed a liberal arts degree program that makes attending
school as attractive and convenient as possible for INA employees. For
instance, all courses are held at INA headquarters from 4:30 to 7:10 in
the evening. A complete selection of liberal arts courses leading to a
degree with a major in the social sciences is offered with regular University
of Pennsylvania faculty. Courses are tuition-free to qualified students, and
INA pays all tuition bills in advance of each semester. A full-time co-
ordinator is available to help employees discuss their educational plans,
to facilitate application to the University of Pennsylvania, and to provide
information and counseling to students.
Although the program was originally intended for employees of any
level seeking to enhance their liberal arts backgrounds, the program has
been most attractive to clerical personnel who do not already have college
degrees and who see the program as a route to long-term mobility within
INA, as well as a chance for personal enhancement. INA is now consid-
ering graduate courses to give professional staff and middle managers
motivation to develop their liberal arts competences, too.
Companies wanting to improve their employees' service abilities often
sponsor short-term training or even offer college courses specifically linked
to job performance. INA feels it has taken a truly future-oriented step by
investing instead in an on-site baccalaureate program in the liberal arts.
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Although shifts in the economy are gradual in some fields, in others
they are more drastic. A typical case of major change occurred at Western
Electric's Columbus Works, due to the restructuring of the Bell System.
Plant operations were being switched from production of electro-mechan-
ical systems to computer-based systems, and heavy layoffs occurred. A
work force of 6,500 was reduced to 3,000. Even remaining employees
were not immediately transferable to newly-designed positions, and most
were told that they had to become computer-literate if they were to keep
their jobs. ?
Franklin University had been working with Western Electric since 1978,
when the Western Electric employee development club had approached
Franklin to ask them to offer business administration courses. It was
therefore natural that Western Electric should again come to Franklin for
help.
The first orientation meeting that Franklin:arranged for Western Electric
employees drew 125 people. Although Western Electric had planned the
program for some of its technical and engineering employees, the majority
of emplqyees at the orientation were regular production line employees
who did not have the mathematics skills to take the college-level math-
ematics prerequisites for computer science courses.7
Although Franklin and Western Electric could have restricted the pro-
gram to those few employees who had the background necessary to begin
programming courses, Western Electric made the decision to open the
program to all its employees and Franklin quickly restructured the program
to offer re-entry mathematics to interested employees.
In the summer of 1982, the program began with over 30 employees
enrolled in on-site remedial mathematics and over 30 employees enrolled
in on-site introduction-to-algebra courses. In addition, technical employees
who did have good mathematics skills were enrolled in a computer pro-
gramming course on the Franklin campus.
Although there is nothing particularly unusual about universities offer-
ing courses at company sites, both Western Electric's willingness to retrain
rather than replace, and Franklin's willingness to provide a more basic
program than anticipated speak well for the effectiveness of the collab-
oration.
Shifts in the economy lead to a scarcity of potential employees in fields
where they were overabundant just a few years before. In the early 1970s,
electrical engineers were having a hard time finding jobs; now those with
graduate degrees are becoming more and more difficult to find. According
to a recent survey by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, there will be
10,500 openings for electrical engineers per year through 1990, but col-
leges will produce only 35% of the electrical engineers needed in the next
half-decade.8 The University of Maryland at College Park and Fairchild
Industries have therefore developed a cooperative master's degree program
in electical engineering, emphasizing communications, systems, and soft-
ware engineering.
Cooperative education programs have a long and honorable history since
they began at the University of Cincinnati in 1906. Today, 210,000 stu-
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are provided for a fee. Innovative services include special programs for
inventors, a regional waste exchange, trade area analysis, and international
trade information for small businesses. 14
Owners of small businesses not only get the benefits of services of the
Center for Industrial Research and Service. By using those services, they
become familiar with students and faculty at cooperating universities and
find out how to use such college resources as library information and
publication data base searches, advisory services, and workshops. The
access that major businesses often have to university research and facilities
is thus made accessible to small businesses as well. '
Although the model of the university consulting center, such as Iowa
State's, is hardly unknown, Henry Ford Community College in Dearborn,
Michigan, has taken the idea much further by seeing the needs of small-
business people and taking solutions to them instead of offering already-
available courses or waiting to be asked.
The college happens to be across the road from Fairlane Town Center,
a regional shopping center managed by the Taubman Company. As the
director of Henry Ford's Center for New Directions was discussing prob-
lems of small-business people with the Mall's managers, certain typical
problems emerged. Salespeople were often promoted to store management
to fill a sudden vacancy without having any management skills or training.
Problems of cost reduction, employee motivation, and management-tenant
relations were frequent for these new managers.
In order to serve the mall tenants, the Center for New Directions de-
veloped a program geared to these typical store-management problems.
To help make it as convenient as possible, the program, which came to
be known as Sunrise Seminars, was held in a mall restaurant for two hours
before the stores opened for the morning. Store managers were formally
invited to attend by the center's management staff, but both groups were
given equal status in the course and were encouraged to work as teams
by the college faculty, who acted as neutral presenters. Participants com-
pleted "problems questionnaires" and all tenant problems were addressed
during the series.
The seminars have been even more successful than either the college
or the mall management could have anticipated. Participants have com-
mented that the program is "precise, to the point, up-to-date, very in-
formative," that "the interaction between the managers was of tremendous
value," that "I use the principles of the course with my employees to
help them perform better." 15 In fact, the program has resulted in "better
tenant-center management relationships, increased profits and a reduction
of costs, increased interaction of store managers with each other, and
community involvement through the local community college." 16 The
model is now being used in 21 malls throughout the United States in
conjunction with 18 colleges; over 3,200 retail establishments have par-
ticipated. ?
Each of the preceding programs offers the solution to one or more
problems of employee preparation or retraining in a changing economy.
However, they have generally depended on one business or organization,
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or a small number of businesses, working with one college or a small
number of colleges. The idea of a systems approach, which makes it
possible for many colleges to work with many employers and individual
employees in a coordinated, effective way, is still very unusual, but it
does exist.
Because colleges typically guard their territories vigorously as they
compete for students, for 38 colleges to develop a cooperative relationship
to serve the needs of an entire region's adult population is as likely as
Pepsi and Coca Cola joining hands. Yet the Compact for Lifelong Edu-
cational Opportunities (CLEO) is a consortium of 38 colleges in the Del-
aware Valley "working together to improve and extend the support of the
adult development process in the region." 17
CLEO's services for adults are both individual and company-based. For
instance, one telephone call from an inquiring adult will result in infor-
mation on the courses, programs, and educational services at all the par-
ticipating colleges and universities. Career and academic counseling or
assessment of learning acquired through life and work experience can be
obtained through CLEO, as well. However, CLEO also serves as a broker
for education and training courses for industry, offers customized seminars
for companies wishing to provide placement services for displaced em-
ployees, provides career-development planning seminars for groups of
employees, and even offers testing services.
CLEO's activity as a liaison between higher education and business is
successful because it keeps decision-making about training and education
off its doorstep. CLEO will complete a request for proposal based on a
company's training needs, circulate it to all member institutions, collect
responses, and provide the company with full information, but the com-
pany contracts directly with the college it selects.
CLEO's brokerage has been useful to colleges not only for establishment
of training collaborations but also economically. Advertising about all 38
colleges is included in CLEO brochures, advertisements, and newsletters.
In addition, with CLEO's coordination, 17 colleges are now part of a
national project offering telecourses to adults via local Public Broadcasting
System affiliates. Because of CLEO's coordination, the group was able
to license the courses at lower rates than they could have individually. In
addition, CLEO offered a series of teleconferences to help individual
schools market the telecourses, as well as teaching faculty how to "develop
an instructional system based on telecourses and how to integrate them
into college curricula." 18
CLEO is now forging connections with area churches, public school
districts, radio and television stations, and social service agencies, as well
as continuing services to individuals and businesses, in order to support
the education of adults in, or seeking to be in, the work force in as effective
a way as possible.
For employers, the programs we have described provide models for
training and retraining employees but also models for improving the quality
of work life as well. For instance, a number of participating employers
mentioned the increase in productivity of workers who had gone through
special training, and their increased longevity of tenure in their positions.
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Employees being trained mentioned being stimulated by their experiences
and being encouraged by their company's interest in their welfare. Other
workers mentioned more positive morale, as they saw others being re-
trained instead of fired, and promoted as a result of the new training.
For colleges, these programs provide models for excellent collaboration
with a world not always familiar or open to advice from the educational
sector. In addition, these programs give indication that systematic, future-
oriented educational activity rather than crisis intervention can be a func-
tion of higher education.
For both colleges and businesses, these programs show that even with
current resources and current knowledge, workers can be served both
humanely and effectively to prepare them for their futures.
Notes
1. Andrew McFalrin, letter to authors, February 14, 1983, p. 2.
2. TAP 17: The Changing Nature of Work, American Council of Life Insurance,
1977, p. 3.
3. NABW's Bachelor's Degree in Management Program, pamphlet, p. 5.
4. Audrey Bishop, "UM Tries to Attract Blacks to Business," The News Amer-
ican, September 29, 1982.
5. Stephany D. Graham, "LEAD Program Merges with Howard U.," The Black
Explosion, October 14, 1982.
6. The Productive Partnership: The University of Pennsylvania Program at INA,
pamphlet, pp. 7-8.
7. Peg Thomas, interview with authors, February 17, 1983.
8. Anne Moultrie, "Maryland and Fairchild Plug into Tomorrow," Maryland
Today, January-February, 1982, p. 6.
9. Trudi Spigel, "Retrofitting," Washington University Magazine, August 1982,
p. 22.
10. Nancy J. Perry, "Recycled" Engineers Provide Talent and Technical Expertise
at Monsanto," World of Work Reports, Vol. 7, No. 6., June 1982, p. 1.
11. M.P. Dudokovic, G.T. Kennedy, J. Maguire, "Industry-University Program
for Long-Term Retraining of Engineers," Chemical Engineering Progress, June 1982,
p. 21
12. Howard Gombert, handout on Spartanburg Program.
13. Lloyd E. Anderson, letter to authors, January 31, 1983, p. 2.
14. Management and Technical Assistance for Iowa Industry, pamphlet, pp. 2-3.
IS. Robert J. Kopecky, "An Overview of Sunrise Seminars," Henry Ford Com-
munity College.
16. Sunrise Seminars abstract.
17. "What is CLEO?" handout, p. 1.
18. CLEO* Faculty/Staff News, Fall 1981, p. 4.
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The Future Impact of Technology
on Work Skills
by
Henry M. Levin and Russell W. Rumberger
During the war . . the Second Industrial Revolution . . . managers and en-
gineers learned to get along without their men and women. . . It was the
miracle that won the war?production with almost no man-
power . . . . Machines were doing America's work far better than Americans
had ever done it. There were better goods for more people at less cost, and
who could deny that that was magnificent and gratifying? . . . Now you people
have engineered them out of their part in the economy, in the market place,
and they're finding out?most of them?that what's left is just about
zero . . . Maybe the actual jobs weren't being taken from the people, but the
sense of participation, the sense of importance was.
?Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Player Piano, 1952
There is little doubt that technology will profoundly affect jobs in the
future. Current technologies in biomedical engineering, computer design,
and communications have already altered work in a variety of settings.
The September 1982 issue of Scientific American documented how work
in agriculture, transportation, offices, and even design has already been
transformed significantly by technological advances. Future break-
throughs, especially in microelectronics, will bring even more changes
and further spread the impact of high technology.
There is much more uncertainty about how technology will affect the
number and composition of jobs in our future economy. Many business
leaders, government officials, and citizens believe that an increasing num-
ber of jobs will be in high-technology occupations, such as the engineering
and computer fields. Robots and similar devices will eliminate some of
the more mundane and boring jobs in society, freeing workers for more
rewarding and creative jobs. And since more and more jobs will involve
the use of computers and other highly sophisticated technical products,
the skill requirements of jobs will generally be higher than they are today.
Henry M. Levin is a professor in the School of Education and the Department of
Economics and also director of the Institute for Research on Educational Finance
and Governance, Stanford University, Stanford, California. Russell W. Rumberger is
senior research associate and economist at the Institute for Research on Educational
Finance and Governance, Stanford University.
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As a result, future workers will need more education and training to acquire
these skills.
Despite the popularity of these beliefs, available evidence does not
support them (Levin and Rumberger, in press). Recent employment pro-
jections by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) of the U.S. Department
of Labor show that many more jobs will be created in low-skilled service
occupations than in high-skilled professional ones. Between 1978 and
1990, the BLS projects more than 600,000 new jobs for janitors and
sextons, compared to 200,000 new jobs for computer systems analysts;
and 800,000 jobs for fast-food workers and kitchen helpers, compared to
88,000 jobs for computer operators (Carey, 1981). While occupations in
high-technology areas will grow by 45% between 1980 and 1990?almost
three times as fast as employment growth overall?they will generate
only 7% of the new jobs (Coleman, 1982). Just 20 occupations will
generate 35% of new jobs during the 1980s and not one relates to high
technology. In fact, only two of those jobs?elementary school teachers
and accountants?require a four-year college education.
Of course, these figures are only estimates. But they are based on
sophisticated, econometric techniques that are constantly revised by the
BLS to reflect new advances and information (see Oliver, 1982). What
they fail to show, however, is how technology will affect jobs in the
future, particularly the skill levels of jobs. In the remainder of this paper,
we will speculate on how technology is likely to impact on the number
and composition of jobs in our future and why. We will then discuss the
social implications of these changes.
Technology and Jobs
Technology will affect the number of jobs in our future economy as
well as the skill composition of jobs. Both of these impacts are important.
Some people fear that robots and other devices will eliminate an increasing
number of jobs in our future economy. Others fear that the impact of
technology on existing jobs will be equally disastrous by removing much
of the discretion and creativity from jobs, leaving workers to simply
monitor and respond to the demands of their machines. How likely are
these fears to be realized?
The Number of Jobs. Technology will eliminate jobs, but it will also
create jobs. The important issue is whether it will create more jobs or
fewer jobs than it eliminates. One difficulty in addressing this issue is
that the jobs created are frequently in different industries than the jobs
eliminated.
Consider the case of robots. Robots have been used primarily to replace
operative positions in manufacturing industries, such as automobiles and
steelmaking (Ayres and Miller, 1983). One estimate suggests that robots
could replace up to 3 million operative jobs during the next 20 years and
eliminate all 8 million operatives by 2025 (Ayres and Miller, 1982). But
the increasing use of robots will create jobs in those industries involved
in their design, development, production, and maintenance. Another re-
cent estimate suggests that robots will eliminate 100,000 to 200,000 jobs
by the year 1990, while creating 32,000 to 64,000 new jobs (Hunt and
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Hunt, 1983). Thus, it appears that one major technology has the potential
to eliminate more jobs than it creates.
In order to assess the net impact of technological changes on the level
of employment, one must account for the effect of economic growth.
Economic growth creates jobs. So even if technology has the potential to
eliminate more jobs than it creates, economic growth could produce enough
new jobs to offset this tendency. Yet with the number of unemployed
currently so high-12 million persons at the end of 1982?the economy
would have to sustain a long period of high growth to both reduce the
current level of unemployment and offset future displacement due to tech-
nology. Recent government forecasts suggest unemployment will remain
high for the next five years even without further displacement (U.S.
President, 1983; U.S. Congressional Budget Office, 1983). So while eco-
nomic growth may help to offset the displacement effects of technology,
there is no assurance that the requisite levels can be attained in the near
future.
Another threat from technology is that it may facilitate the movement
of production from the United States to other countries. Even high-tech-
nology firms themselves are not immune to this development, as the recent
announcement of 1,700 layoffs by Atari demonstrates (Washington Post,
February 27, 1983). Technological developments in production, even so-
phisticated electronics products, now permit these processes to be carried
on by workers in other countries who receive much lower wages?$1 per
hour versus $9 per hour?and have much less education-5 years versus
12 years?than American workers (San Jose Mercury News, February
28, 1983). Future technologies could accelerate this tendency.
The Types of Jobs. It is not only important to consider how technology
will affect the level of employment in our future economy, but also the
types of jobs in the economy. First, will the jobs created by technological
advances be more skilled or less skilled than the jobs eliminated? Second,
will the impact of technology on existing jobs tend to raise or lower
requisite work skills?
It is unlikely that technology will ever eliminate the most skilled, cre-
ative, and demanding forms of work in our future economy. Yet tech-
nology is unlikely to eliminate the least skilled and most mundane jobs
in our economy either, at least in the near future. It is much more profitable
for companies to employ new technologies to eliminate jobs that pay $12
per hour than it is to replace jobs that pay the minimum wage of $3.35
per hour. Robots, for example, have been used primarily to replace op-
eratives whose earnings are well above the minimum wage.
Other examples also suggest that technology is most likely to eliminate
middle-level, skilled and semi-skilled jobs. A series of technological ad-
vances in the printing industry, from machine typesetting to computer-
aided phototypesetting techniques, have eliminated large numbers of skilled
craft jobs for composers and typesetters (Zimbalist, 1979a). Automatic
teller machines are eliminating jobs for bank tellers. And computer-aided
design (CAD) may soon eliminate the 300,000 current positions for draf-
ters (Gunn, 1982).
It is much more difficult to predict the types of jobs that will be created
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as a result of these changes. Many of the new jobs will be in high-
technology firms where these new products are designed, developed, and
produced. While high-tech industries do employ a larger proportion of
engineers, computer specialists, and other high-level, technical workers
than other industries, the majority of jobs in these industries are at the
semi-skilled level?operatives, clerical workers, and managers. Further,
high-tech industries are only expected to generate about 5% of all new
jobs between 1980 and 1990 (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1982).
Thus, it appears that the skill levels of jobs created through the increasing
use of technology in the workplace will not differ significantly from the
jobs eliminated. To the extent that jobs in high-tech industries themselves
become less skilled because of technology, the net impact of technological
change will be to lower skill levels.
The impact of technology on existing jobs will be much more important
in determining the skill requirements of jobs in our future economy than
the jobs created and lost through technology. Of course, technology alone
does not change the skill requirements of jobs. It also depends on how
the tasks associated with jobs are changed. As Adam Smith first recognized
in The Wealth of Nations over 200 years ago and Charles Babbage more
carefully documented 50 years later, if job tasks are fragmented into their
respective parts, employers can hire less-skilled workers to perform the
simpler tasks and pay them lower wages than workers who perform the
more complex, skilled tasks (Braverman, 1974, p. 77-83). As a result
of fragmentation, some jobs become "deskilled."
Technology can aid this process as machines take over some of the
tasks formerly performed by workers. The assembly line developed by
Henry Ford was based on the principle of job fragmentation?some work-
ers assembled one portion of the car while other workers assembled other
portions. The introduction of machinery automated some aspects of the
process, such as the movement of the automobiles down the line (Gartman,
1979). Automation also allows employers to better control the production
and work process (Braverman, 1974, p. 195).
One way to predict how technology will affect the skill levels of jobs
in the future is to examine how technology affected the skill levels of jobs
in the past. A number of studies have examined the implementation of
past technological innovations on the skill requirements of jobs. One of
the most thorough of these was conducted by James Bright, a professor
at Harvard University. Bright examined the impact of automation in a
variety of U.S. manufacturing firms during the 1950s. With increasing
levels of automation, he observed that the skill requirements of jobs first
increased and then decreased as many formerly skilled workers were
simply required to tend machines (Bright, 1958). Other studies support
the conclusion that past technological innovations have tended to reduce
the skill requirements of jobs (e.g., Zimbalist, 1979b). Moreover, the
skill requirements of jobs in the U.S. economy as a whole appear to have
changed very little over the last 20 years despite the growth of professional
and technical employment (Rumberger, 1981a).
Present and future technologies promise the same impact. Computers,
for example, have become easier and easier to use. Early computers were
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initially programmed in machine languages that required extensive train-
ing. Since that time, computer software has become increasingly "user-
friendly" so that people can use computers with little or no computer
background. A recent sales ad for the new LISA computer claims that
workers can use the system with only 20 minutes of training. Current
systems available with a "mouse" cursor and future systems commanded
by voice may soon eliminate the need for most keyboard functions.
While early technologies primarily displaced physical labor, computers
and other electronic technologies threaten to displace mental labor and
thereby reduce requisite work skills. Word processors now correct spelling
mistakes and hyphenate words, thereby eliminating the need for those
skills in secretaries. Computer-aided machines can now diagnose many
of the problems that develop in these products, thereby reducing the
requisite knowledge and skills of repair technicians. There appears to be
virtually no area of work where computers cannot take over some of the
mental tasks and make the judgments that were formerly the domain of
individual workers. Computers also offer employers better ways of con-
trolling the work process and monitoring the output of their employees
(Wall Street Journal, May 6, 1983).
Social Implications
One implication of these changes is that our future economy may not
be able to fully employ all those who wish to work. Similar fears were
expressed during widespread automation of U.S. manufacturing firms
during the 1950s. Those fears turned out to be unfounded as the United
States experienced rapid and sustained economic growth during the 1960s.
Yet the uneven economic growth of the last 10 years at least cautions
against too much optimism over our country's ability to achieve the high
growth rates of the past. Moreover, the future impact of technology on
the workplace is likely to be much more widespread than past changes,
increasing the potential for job displacement. If our economy is unable
to generate sufficient jobs in the future, then our present system of dis-
tributing income based on work may have to be revised (Leontief, 1982).
Another implication of these changes is that work may become increas-
ingly repetitious and boring in more and more jobs. Adam Smith (1937,
p. 734) not only recognized the rationale for fragmenting jobs, but also
the result:
The man whose life is spent in performing a few simple operations, of which
the effects too are, perhaps, always the same, or very nearly the same, has no
occasion to exert his understanding, or to exercise his invention in finding out
expedients for removing difficulties which never occur. He naturally loses,
therefore, the habit of such exertion, and generally becomes as stupid and
ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become.
Similar concerns were expressed in the government-initiated Work in
' America, which appeared 10 years ago (U.S. Department of HEW, 1973).
Declining skill levels of jobs is particularly troublesome in the U.S.
because education attainments, and hence skill levels, of the American
work force are moving in the opposite direction. Currently, more than
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one out of every four young workers entering the labor market has com-
pleted four or more years of college (Rumberger, in press). As young
workers with more schooling continue to replace older workers with less
schooling, the average education level of American workers will continue
to increase. Underemployment among college graduates is already wide-
spread and will get worse even without further reductions in the skill levels
of jobs (Rumberger, 1981b). Workers whose skills are underutilized dis-
play higher levels of job dissatisfaction and may be less productive as a
result (Rumberger 1981b, Chapter 5). This not only poses a problem for
individual employers, but for the country as a whole.
While the influence of technology on work is inevitable, its impact on
the level and composition of jobs in our future economy is not. The
influence of technology will depend on what technologies are developed,
but its impact will depend on how it is employed. And that, in turn,
depends on who controls the technology. Computer-generated medical
diagnosis, for example, is unlikely to displace the need for physicians or
their high status in the work world because they can control how this
technology is employed. Most workers cannot. In most cases, employers
determine how a particular technology will be employed and whom it will
affect. Increasingly, unions have recognized the importance of bargaining
with management over the use and impact of technology. The issue is
likely to become more important in the future, especially as the threat of
displacement becomes more apparent.
To the extent that the workers affected by technology can help determine
how it is employed, some of the negative consequences may be mitigated.
But even that may not be,enough. The widespread influence of technology
may require that all citizens become involved in setting policies over its
use (Walton, 1982).
References
Ayres, Robert U., and Steven M. Miller. 1983. Robotics: Applications and Social
Implications. Cambridge: Ballinger.
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Human Capital:
A High-Yield Corporate Investment
by
Anthony Patrick Carnevale
It is human nature to waste anything that seems abundantly supplied.
At the moment, there seems to be an overabundance of American workers.
Our economy apparently is overflowing with underemployed, unem-
ployed, and expendable people. As unseemly rates of unemployment hover
in double digits, we are told that labor-saving machinery will soon make
us all redundant. The bogeyman of technology is loose again.
We Americans are predisposed to the view that there are too many
people. Our recent history encourages us to accept the notion that people
are superfluous while machinery, financial capital, and the tangible fruits
of the earth are scarce. Since 1946, we have been forced persistently to
reshape our economic and social structures in order to bear, feed, clothe,
educate, employ, and house the 76 million members of the American baby
boom. As a result, while we have learned to value people for their pur-
chasing power, we have not seen them as critical resources for production.
Things are riirely as they first appear. Upon closer examination, the
apparent oversupply of Americans proves illusory. Unfortunately, our
misconceptions and the biases of our recent history are threatening our
nation's economic future. There is some risk that we will be misled by
the notion that people are oversupplied and beguiled by our recent past
into a national investment strategy that favors machines and resources
extracted from the earth over people. This would shortly prove a serious
economic error.
As the following evidence will demonstrate, the economic and social
yield from investing in human resources is high and increasing. Our
economic growth and productivity are becoming ever more dependent on
our human resources.
Increasing Yield from Human Capital
The nation's economic history tells us with deadening statistical reg-
ularity of the increasing yield from human capital investment. The evi-
Anthony Patrick Carnevale is presently a consulting economist and is also a research
associate at both Harvard and Ohio State University. This article is an executive
summary of a study prepared for the American Society for Training and Development
(ASTD); information on the full study can be obtained from ASTD, 600 Maryland
Avenue, S.W., Suite 305 Washington, D.C. 20024.
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dence, as summarized in Figure 1, divides the increase in national income
between 1929 and 1978 into its human resource, land, capital, and pro-
ductivity components. Figure 1 also shows a middle-of-the-road projection
of the growth in national income and its component parts through 1990.
The evidence demonstrates clearly the overwhelming historical and pro-
jected contribution of human resource factors to the increase in national
income. By way of comparison, human resource inputs are shown to be
consistently more important than capital. Further, land continues to slip
as a critical economic resource. For every year measured since 1928, and
projected through 1990, human resources have been the dominant factor
accounting for growth in national income.
Figure 2 provides additional detail on human contributions to growth
in national income. It breaks the human contribution into its component
factors: hours worked, age/sex composition, and education. "Hours worked"
have a nearly persistent negative effect on the human contribution to
national income. The reason: People are working fewer hours and enjoying
more leisure time. Thus it becomes a happy problem when understood in
the context of another set of trends?the simultaneous rise in wages and
worker productivity. Between 1929 and the mid 1960s, American workers
managed to increase their leisure time, their wages, and their productivity
all at the same time. The negative impact of "hours worked" is, therefore,
good news. It is testimony to the ultimate success of the American econ-
omy throughout most of this century. It demonstrates that American work-
ers have been working smarter, not harder.
% GROWTH NATIONAL INCOME
4
Figure 1
Components of Growth in National Income 1929-1990
1929-41 1941-48 1948-53 1953-64 1964-69 1969-73 1973-78
Projected
1980-1990
High Moderate
Growth Growth
-1 x
The economic contribution f om growth in Human Resources + Capital + Land + Productivity = Growth in National Income.
DHuman Resource Factors
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% GROWTH IN NATIONAL INCOME
5
4
3
2
Figure 2
Components of Growth in National Income 1929-1976
1929-41 1941-48 1948-53 1953-64 1964-69 1969-73
1973-76
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