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The chip and employment, east and west
The chip and employment,eastandwest G. P. Sweeney Japan recognised the approach of the information society in the late 1960s. By 1972, government, industry, and other institutions had adopted programmes of research, development, and education aimed at transforming its labour-, energy- and materials- intensive industries into knowledge- intensive industries, the ultimate goal being the creation of a new socioeconomic structure: by 1985, an information oriented society; by 2000, a full information society. By contrast, Europe-except for France-seems ill-prepared for a future which requires not merely the adoption of a new technical change but also of a new industrial philosophy.
Technological change has brought Western Europe massive improvement in standards of living since the Second World War. Employmenthas increased:not only more men-but a much higher proportion of women, together with many immigrants from poorer countrieshave beenabsorbedinto the workforce. It has beena period without parallel in history, its economic successdue not to conquest or colonial exploitation but to the application of technology. However, since the OPEC-inducedoil crisisof 1973, economies have stagnated, unemployment has increased,and pessimismhas becomethe pervasive mood. The pessimism may be well-founded. C. Freeman has pointed out [l] that European growth in employment had actually ceasedbefore 1973. Investment since the 1960s has been concentrated on rationalisation and cost-saving machinery rather than on expansion.Expenditure on R&D, the basis of future growth, began to fall in the 1960s.The problem is more deep-seatedthan any oil crisis, and lies not so much in too much technological change but in too little and of the wrong kind. Now comes a technical change, telematics, made possible by another, microelectronics, which is generally regarded as the most pervasive yet to appear, affecting all industries and business and even domestic life. Yet, paradoxically, it is viewed with fear and hostility by a wide number of people: paradoxically becausethe prosperity so far achieved has been brought about by technology and there is need for a new and massive stimulus to Western economies. Undoubtedly, in an ill-prepared Europe, it is seen against the background of an industrial society and not as the technology which will bring nearer a new society-the information society. No vision of the future has been put forward to give hope of a return to further economic growth in which this new technology would play the key role. The Japanese
philosophy
The contrast between the optimism of Japan and the pessimismof Europe is stark. The difference may be due more to an accident of industrial history rather than to G. P. Sweeney Is Assistant Director General of the Information Technology Group of the institute for Industrial Research and Standards, Dublin. He has a longstanding interest in information science, telecommunications, and related fields, and is Vice-Chairman of the committee supervising the introduction of the Euronet on-line information network. This is a Euro-article, sponsored by the Commission of the European Communities through its Directorate-General for Scientific and Technical Information and Information Management, which arranges the necessary translations. Such articles are published concurrently in some or all of the participating journals: Umschauin Wissenschaft and Technik in the Federal Republic of Germany, La Recherche in France, Natuur en Techniek in Holland and Technologyirelandin the Republicof Ireland. Endeavour, (0 Per(lamon
If8
New Ssriss Volume 4, No. 3,198O Press, Printed in Grant Britain)
culture. After visiting Japan to investigate the impact of the information and microelectronics revolution, the writer’s dominant overall impression was apparently unrelated to this main objective. It was that, somehow,Japan has leapfrogged the mechanistic philosophy of American industry
and the centralised corporate management syndrome epitomised in the MBA which have dominated Western Europe. Japanese workers are recognised as intelligent humans, trained and retrained to yet higher skills, encouraged to be innovative and expected to make decisions. In its contrast, this image of Japan strongly reinforces the proposition of two French analysts [21 that the model of industrialisation pursued in Western Europe, that of massproduction, has been a blind alley ending in Europe’s present economic and employment stagnation. Taylorism, scientific management,and the concept of large scalehave emphasisedproductivity asthe absolutegoal and to achieve this have imposed on each worker a narrow repetitiveness of operation in the manufacturing process. Massproduction has thus destroyed traditional skills, and reduced workers to a proletariat-without skills, without land or other resourcesto fashion to their needs,urbanised and without a local socio-economicculture. Mass-production dependson massdemand for the same standardisedmodel or article. In both, there is disregard for quality fostered by the insistence on low cost and a narrowness in the diversity of the product. Too many workers are dependent for their livelihood on the same narrow range of products and at the same time their ambitions are restricted to purchase of this same narrow range. Technical change and investment to improve productivity and lower costs in production of this narrow range, in the absenceof diversity, ultimately results in fewer workers and a slow growth economy. Diversification and the creation of more varied and novel products has become difficult. A workforce with downgraded skills lacks the capacity to devise new products and simultaneously has lost the ability to demand greater variety. The fear of the microprocessor as the job-killer could be simply fear that this new technology may take away the only role left to many workers in the industrial mass-production society. Where did Japan take a different turning? The European visitor to Japan soon realises that not only his concept of mass-production has been stood on its head, but more importantly so has his preconceived view of the paternalistic structure of Japanese industry. In the immediatepost-war period, Japandid not havethe tradition of craft skills which still persisted in Europe, and Japanese products were synonymous with cheapness and poor quality. In order to create a consciousnessof quality in a largely ignorant workforce, Japanesemanagement,largely American trained, reversed Americiin management
practice and put the responsibility for quality at the lowest level possible-on the individual operative. To enablehim to undertake this new responsibility, he and his colleagues were trained in quality control. Quality circles were formed of six or more operatives under a more senior operative or foreman as the first link in a communication channel to the most senior management. The drive to win for Japanese products a namefor quality and reliability was the start of a process which will undoubtedly make Japan a world economicpower in the information society. Decision-making is delegatedto the lowest level possible. The worker on the mass-production line has a high degree of individual responsibility and is thus expectedto apply his training and intellectual capability to the products and processes for which he is responsible. On the Toyota assembly line, any worker has the authority to stop the entire line (and does)if he seessomefault or other problem. Quality assuranceis paramount. Yet every car coming off the assemblyline is different to the one before it and the one after. Poor Henry Ford! Each is a different colour, three basic models are assembledon the one line, with all the detailed variations for domestic and overseas markets. Each car is nearly unique. Within the one mass-production unit, somediversity of product has been restored, together with flexibility of production. Above all, the worker is not part of the machine; he has regained the authority of his skills and training. There is a constant searchfor improvements in products and processes. Over 60 per cent of real innovations in Japan come from the factory floor. In 1978. each Toyota employee made on average eleven suggestions,over half a million in total. 86 per cent were acceptedand the proposers rewarded. The decision to adopt a suggestionis again at the lowest level possible,and foremen have a surprisingly wide discretion as to new investment. Some suggestions eliminated the job of the proposer, but change was welcomedfor its elimination of a boring or dirty job, and for its opportunities to learn new higher level skills and gain advancement. Creativity and the knowledge base of industry are recognised to be dependent on the education and training of the workforce at every level. 90-92 per cent of children go on to secondary school, 50 per cent to university, and there are 400 universities. Toyota has its own technical high school and in 1981 opens its own technical college. At the age of 45, all managersin Fujitsu must undertake retraining, and Fujitsu also maintains several institutes of learning. Higher education and constant retraining and upgrading of skills is seen everywhere as the base of Japan’s next phaseof industrial developmentand advancementto the information society. Undoubtedly, the confidence and creativity of the Japanese worker are aided by the security of his employment and method of payment. Basic wagestend to be mediocre and age-related, but half-yearly bonusescan double the final take-home pay. There is, therefore, a very lively interest in the businesssuccessof the company. It is very much their company. Sacking for economicreasonsis not possible. This is the real meaning of the unwritten contract of life-time employment. There are no redundanciesbecauseof lost markets, no cut-backs in the labour force because of technical changes. Hence the corporate objectives of a Japanese company, which whatever else must maintain employment, are somewhat different to those of a Western company. Its objectives are, through good economicperformance,to provide for further
investment and to diversify; that is, growth rather than profitper se. Mitsubishi, the shipbuilder, has developed one of the leading software houses, and Kanebo, a textiles firm threatened by imports from newly industrialising countries is now the largest cosmetics firm. Diversification in these circumstancesrequires a workforce, which becauseof the level of its skills and the retraining available, is able to changejobs with comparative easeand to contribute to the successof the new processesand products. On the other hand, 60 per cent of employment is in small industries to which technical changecould meanextinction, but neverthelessthe principle is maintained. Subcontractors to large manufacturing firms, and suppliers to large distributors, are assisted into new technology and new products by their customers. Workers receive retraining and the government financially assistssmall companiesto transform totally their production capability and product. Yet in spite of this security-perhaps as an elementof ittechnical change is introduced only with the concensusof the work force. It is a slow process-since the Japanese worker is basically conservative-but an effectiveone once concensusis reached. A recent analysis 131 of innovation and industrial developmentin OECD countries suggeststhat a new phase of development is emerging. In the 1950s and 196Os, investment and growth were concentrated in the sectors producing relatively standard goods where competition was on the basis of price, that is, in mass-production technology. In the 1970s a new trend was discernible. Entrepreneurial activity in the future will concentrate on market segmentswhere quality takes precedenceover price and on export of equipment, technology, and skills. There will be a continuing shift from investment in process and manufacturing equipment to investment in R&D-related activities leading to product and systemsinnovations. This matches the current emphasis by Japanese industry on quality and the longer term view that exports, necessaryfor the survival of Japan, can no longer be dependent on a mere continuation of conventional industrialisation. Knowledge-intensive products, with their higher added value per unit, must be the answer. Japan has thus begun the evolution from the blind-alley of the mass-production society; firstly, through its emphasis on quality and secondly, in its recognition of the knowledge-base of industry and its preparation for, a new socio-economic order. The computer
in Japanese
society
In 1972, the Japanese Computerisation Committee put forward a view (Table 1)of the role of the new technology in society. Japan was not involved in the first phase,the useof computers as scientific calculators working on big projects. It was a late entrant in the second,and still current, phasein 1957, there were only three computers in Japan. Today, there are over 50,000 computers excluding minis and micros, but management information is a phase of development still confined to a minority of organisations. The pervading of all organisations by the technology will in effect take place in the third phase of development, the application of the integrated technology of computing, communicating, and control to the wider needsof society, and the varied social units and organisations within society. This year, 1980, was planned to seethe commencementof 119
TABLE
1
GENERALTRENDOFDEVELOPMENTOFCOMPUTERISATION 4th period 1980-2000
1 st period 1945-1970-~-~
2nd period 1955-1980
3rd period 1970-1990
Big science
Management
Society
Objective
Defence, space, nuclear etc.
GNP (Productivity)
GNW
(Welfare)
GNS (Satisfaction)
Value
National
Economic
Social
Welfare
Self-realisation
Subject
Field
concept
prestige
growth
____
Individual
Subject
Country
Enterprise
People
Private
persons
Object
Nature
Organisation
Society
Human
beings
Basic Science
Natural
Management
Social
Science
Behavioural
S cience
Science
Science Attaining
Information Pattern
goal
Solving
Pursuing efficiency
problems
Intellectual Creativity From Ando14’
the final phase of development, the enhancement of the individual. Technology in its various forms to date has in effectbeen an extension of the muscular and manipulative power and skills of the human. Electronics technology as it is now evolving is the extension of his intellectual and sensory processes. Only the imaginative creativity of man will restrict the pervasiveness of its applications and the products and systems derived from its use. In this very constraint lies the continuing subjection of the technology to man. It will never surpass his unique combination of intellect, multiple sensoryperception, emotion, and creative imagination, but will support his economic, social, and personal development.Nevertheless,even with this view of the technology, the Japaneserecognise that its continuing impact and the demand for continual change which will characterise the years ahead will prove painful to many citizens. It will take time beforeeveryone can cometo grips with the ‘computer- and information-mind’ and acceptthe advent of the new world of the information society [41. TABLE2
Employment
EMPLOYEES IN JAPAN CLASSIFIED (Percentage of total employment)
Primary
Industries
Agriculture Secondary
Industries
Mining Construction Manufacturing Tertiary Public
Industries Utilities
Commerce, Service
120
Bankingetc
BY INDUSTRY
Actual
_____
prospects
Familiarisation is, therefore, an important aspect of the Japaneseprogramme. Since 1972, the first weekof October has beendeclared an Information Familiarisation Week by the Government. During this, the public service, business, industry, and research throw open their doors to demonstrateto the public current and future developments. Public and private education programmes are being developed.For example,the Fujitsu Institute of Computer Science is open to the general public, and JIPDEC (the Japanese Information Processing Development Centre) runs seminarsaround the country. But the continuing trend to yet higher levels of education amongst the young is a main driving force. More and more they are finding employment in the quaternary, information, sector. The average age in the data communications service of NTT (the Japanesedomestic telecommunicationscorporation) is 27, as against the 50 of the postal service.In Fujitsu’s new Numazu computer assembly complex the average age is 28, and many young people are finding employment in the
Forecast
1960
1965
1970
1975
1985
14.35 (32.8%) 13.22 (30.2%) 13.02 (29.8%) 0.53 (1.2%) 2.70 (6.2%) 9.78 (22.4%) 16.32 (37.3%) 2.44 (5.5%) 7.67 (17.5%) 6.22 (14.2%)
11.74 (24.6%) 10.86 (22.8%) 15.69 (32.9%) 0.33 (0.7%) 3.40 (7.1%) 11.75 (25.1%) 20.18 (42.4%) 3.15 (6.7%) 9.72 (20.4%) 7.31 (1 5.3%)
10.09 (19.4%) 9.33 (17.9%) 18.19 (34.9%) 0.22 (0.4%) 3.94 (7.6%) 14.02 (26.9%) 23.82 (45.7%) 3.50 (6.8%) 11.44 (2 1.9%) 8.88 (17.0%)
7.40 (13.9%) 6.72 (12.6%) 18.66 (35.1%) 0.14 (0.3%) 4.75 (8.9%) 13.77 125.9%) 26.92 (50.7%) 3.69 (6.9%) 13.08 (24.7%) 10.15 (19.1%)
4.04 (6.8%) 3.67 (6.1%) 21.33 (35.7%) 0.05 (0.1%) 5.90 (9.9%) 15.38 (25.7%) 34.2 1 (57.2%) 4.07 (6.8%) 14.96 (25.1%) 15.18 (2 5.4%)
TABLE3
WORKERS
ENGAGED
IN PRODUCTION
OF MACHINERY 1985
Actual
--__ Total Number of Production General machinery works Electrical machinery Precision machinery
Workers
1975
Demand,
Minimum
Median
2,061 796 1,056 209
1,884 739 929 216
2,430 953 1,198 279
2,233 896 1,096 273
2,087 859 1,018 210
Maximum 1,948 820 946 182
The major problem foreseenis not lack of employment opportunities, but shortageof peoplewith appropriate skills and training. In other words, the principal conclusion is that there is a shortageof facilities to train a sufficient number of people to fill the opportunities which will occur and at a high level of expertise. The needs for technological education and reeducation are such that a major and continuing government programme is required. Indeed, education itself is a growth industry, and is one on which growth in other sectorsis dependent.It is a major sourceof the main capital input into the manufacturing sector. One indicator of the long-term potential for employment in the information industries can be gauged from the NTT forecast that in the year 2000, 90 per cent of telecommunications traffic will be data as against the current 5 per cent, with voice traffic itself continuing to grow. NTT has developed a number of services which might be classedas societal. Table 4 gives someexamples, but these are as yet only 35 data basesfor public accessin Plus utilisation
software
by level of diffusion
1970
mushroom growth of medium and small software and systemshouses. Nevertheless,there is concern about future employment. The Japanese Management Association, in an interim report [5l commissioned by MIT1 (the Ministry of International Trade and Industry) concludes that there will be a continuing shift in the distribution of employment between the three traditional economic sectors (Table 2). Manufacturing employment overall will increase after the decline of 1970-75. A considerablenumber of workers will lose their existing jobs as a result of automation, and will relocate their employment within their existing companies or fill new opportunities createdelsewhere. Production workers engaged in the manufacture of equipment and machinery, it is estimated, would reach a total of 2.43 million in 1985 by natural increase (Table 3). However, expansion of microcomputer application, if it is at a maximum, will reduce this to 1.95 million; if it is at a minimum, to 2.23. Appllcatlon
forecast
engineers
software
engineers 795.6 maximum .
800 645.7
maximum
448.7
median
290 8 median
. 131.7 minimum 482. 01
Figure
1 1975
1
Forecast
of employment
I 1985
of software
I 1975
I985
engineers.
Software and systems technology development will generatelarge employment opportunities in the foreseeable future in users of the hardware; in producers of microcomputer hardware; and in manufacture of products, both industrial and consumer, containing microprocessor devices.Softwareengineersengagedin utilisation of general purpose computers, of whom there were 32,100 in 1975, are expectedto maintain the annual growth rate of 12 per cent until 1985; that is, to increase to a total of 149,900. Application software engineerswill increaseby a rate of 15 per cent to 35 per cent depending on rate of diffusion and demand (flgure 1). As the technology is diffused and the information society develops, many new innovative services and products will develop which cannot at the moment beprecisely forecast.
Japan. The development and maintenance of data bases and of other distributed systems is an intensive user of highly educatedpeople. Community and personal services developing on the model ofthe Hi-OVIS project will require hardware of new types; new information and education services; and the installation of new telecommunications facilities. This last will take many years to develop and install, and some services will be dependent on a wide market beforethey can be commenced. In the development of this market a further delaying factor will be the willingness to pay. Managementgenerally, whether in industry, business,or government has little idea of the cost of information and finds it difficult to agreeto pay an economic price. The private consumer is even worse. Government has been slow to apply the new 121
TABLE4
DATA
PROCESSING/COMMUNICATION
SERVICES
OFFERED
BY NTT
DEMOS-E
Scientific, engineering and management on-line calculation service, e.g. architectural, LP, PERT etc. Commenced 197 1. Serving 65 cities. 700 Iibraryprogrammes. DRESS Sales and inventory management service. Sales, purchase, deliveries, billing file maintenance. Commenced 1970. Serving 64 cities. Motor vehicle registration and inspection system, serving 69 districts. Nationwide banking system. Connects 708 citgl, local mutual, credit and other banks and Bank of Japan, many of which have private networks, in one network-l 7,000 bankoffices. Automated Meteorological Data Acquisition System. Data collected from 1300 points. Operated for Meteorological Agency, Nationwide Cash Dispensing System. Cash dispensing for 54 cooperating banks through equipment located in public places, supermarkets, railway stations, hotels etc. Provision through Telex terminals of information on markets (quantity, grades, prices) Agricultural Information Distributing System. production (area, growth conditions, shipmentsetc.) distribution (imported foodstuffs etc.) and other information. Emergency Medical Information System. Automatically collects data on presence of doctors and specialists, availability of beds, blood supplies, etc. at medical institutions, hospitals, clinics. Integrated Data Communication Banking System for Shared Use. Banking system for small and medium size banks. Shared Hospital Information System. Patients registration,feescalculation, invoicing,other management statistics. --
technology. An interministerial committee has been set up to coordinate and integrate new uses but is hampered by lack of skilled personnel in the different ministries. MITT, however, has the role, here as elsewherein the economy, of stimulating new development and sees the use of the technology and the ensuing provision of more efficient existing and new seriesby Government as a key factor in the overall developmentof the information sector. MIT1 sponsorsnot only projects such as Hi-OVIS and a national medical information service, but also funds new applications in businessand industry in order to stimulate widespread use and familiarisation. It is active in the development of the computer and micro-electronics manufacturing industries. The VLSIC (Very Large Scale Integrated Circuit) project commencedin 1972 has placed Japan at the forefront of ‘chip’ technology. The Pattern Information ProcessingSystemProject will not only enable Japan to overcome the massive problems presented by Kanji script with its 4000 commonly used characters, but will lead to yet wider flexibility of the technology in acceptance,processing,storage,and transmission ofvaried input and output-graphic, pictorial, objects, speech.The motor vehicle traffic control systemhas enormous potential not only in systems technology but in manufacture, installation and maintenance. NTT is developing its new data network, which will be the nervous system of the information society. The first phase, now in hand, is the provision of high-speedbroadbank trunk lines. The next stage will seethese extendedto local exchanges. The local distribution network to subscribers will utilise optical glass fibres and provide a total ‘telematics’ serviceto the private user. Given this view of the future and its existing involvement in provision of computer or information transfer services, NTT is also active in terminal hardware development. One consumer product is the data telephone,with its magnetic card reader, diode display unit, and small printer. In manufacturing applications, the area of major fear in the West, Japan already employs half the world’s robots. The Japan Robot Manufacturers Association sees the primary objective of industrialists in employing robots as being to improve productivity but with higher levels of quality, consistency, and reliability of the product. They will be an essentialfactor in furthering the trend away from mass-production towards more versatile small-batch production. The trend of much of industrial.production will 122
continue strongly towards products and equipment of high quality and of a specialisedcharacter, embodying advanced design, technology, and precision. The demand for more small runs and customised components and end-products will be reinforced by the trend to marketing of systems, embodying ranges of equipment designed for individual customers.These developmentswill demand a more highly educated workforce in product design, in the search for higher quality and in systems and programmes development. In themselves, higher education levels are leading to pressure to improve the personal work environment, eliminate the ill-effects of industrialisation on the person, and provide more skilled work for personal satisfaction. The dirty, boring, repetitive task is degrading to the worker and is therefore better performed by machine. Mass-production is a technology for the machine. The workers’ intellectual talents and manipulative skills can with further education and training be put to the provision of the higher-addedvalue, the knowledge-intensiveinput in design, control, and maintenance. Progressto automation is basedon a very consciously identified needto move away from the syndrome of the unskilled worker dominated by the mass-production systems technology. Indeed, in the small firms particularly, it is the workers who are demanding the introduction of new technology. Automation in the factory could be considereda part ofthe final phaseof the application of the technology-the phase of personalenhancement. Intake of new workers in manufacturing will undoubtedly decline in comparative numbers, but again employment opportunities being created in the rest of the economy will absorb any workers who might otherwise have entered manufacturing employment. The knowledge baseof industry will dependon the quality of the education and re-education of the workforce not only in the information technologies but also in the traditional disciplines and technologies. The demand for knowledge and information is wide-ranging. The European
situation
A major advantage of Japan as against Europe is that, through the combined effort of government and industry, a viable, highly efficient, and competitive computer manufacturing industry is being established. Given its philosophy of serving the community and its large and culturally homogeneous domestic market, the Japanese
computer industry is developing systems technologies which are in harmony with the national culture. Similarly in the U.S.A., the computer industry’s systems match the cultural moresof businessand the community. Europe is not so fortunate. Already dominated by massproduction systems philosophies from which it is finding escape difficult, it lacks a domestic computer industry capable of meeting a majority of its needsand is dominated by a single U.S. corporation. The dominanceof the systems philosophy imposed through that company and its potential antipathy to European cultural and social values may well be a factor in hindering the successfulevolution of the information society in Europe and therefore of a growth information economy. It is a factor identified in the NoraMint report ‘L’Informatisation de la Societt’, the cultural threat may have seriouseconomic consequences. Telematics-the integration of computing, communicating, and control technologies-is a technology basedon distributed data capture and information input, on distributed processing to meet local, regional, or central decision-making and therefore on distributed access. Notwithstanding this, it has enormous potential to make decision-making even more centralised, to build further on the mass-production philosophy of removing discretion, creative assessmentand input, and therefore skills from both lower levels and from geographically dispersed process, product, or market diversified activities. Even in Japanesecompanies, the adoption of the new technology for management information has been at first to develop more centralised decision-making, but the trend is now away from this. In Government, the system for the Social Welfare Serviceis designedto decentralisedecisionmaking. One of the major points of the French Informatisation Plan, announced in December 1978 is to decentralise the application of the technology in order to decentralise and humanise the decision-making of the French Administration. Undoubtedly, the popular requirement for more participative decision-making and for more involvement in control and developmentof the personal work environment
and work content is strong but still frustrated in much of Europe. In Japan, the evolution of such a philosophy and innovative participation in the industrial process has created Japan’s economic growth. The philosophy of the information technology hardware and systems developmentcompanies, such as Fujitsu, will reinforce this evolution. There is a deep consciousnessof the new social and economic structures being brought about by the evolution of the information society. The overall impression which one gains of Japan is not so much of advanced and sophisticated technological development-which undoubtedly does exist-but of a very widespread provision of sometimes mundane but useful servicesto the private consumer, to managementof even the smallestbusiness,and to the community at large. The technology is being developed and diffused to meet societal and public needsrather than being imposed, and is progressing by steady evolution rather than traumatic change.Above all, it is basedon the personal development of the skills of its population. In Europe, there is no such wide peripheral vision other than that now beginning to evolve in France. Forecasts of the impact of the technology are confined to sectorsand to narrow structural changes, and serve only to deepenthe widespreadpessism.Without doubt, many jobs will be lost, and the forecasts prove correct, if Europe refusesto move to a new approach to the future, and if governments, management and unions hold on to the philosophies of a dying industrial society and to its outdated massproduction techno-economics. References
Ill Freeman, C. ‘Unemployment and technical change’. Thomas McLaughlin Memorial Lecture. Dublin, 1979. I21 Aubert, J. E. and Gaudin, T. ‘Innovation and unemployment: towards a cultural reading’. Six Countries Programme, Workshop on technical development and employment. Paris, 1978. 13) Pavitt, K. Technical innovation and industrial development. Futures, pp. 458-70, Dec. 1979. [41 Ando, K. ‘Economic and social impacts of the computer industry in Japan’. Fujitsu, 1978.
0013-7162/80/0113-0123/$02.00/O
123
Technological change has brought Western Europe massive improvement in standards of living since the Second World War. Employmenthas increased:not only more men-but a much higher proportion of women, together with many immigrants from poorer countrieshave beenabsorbedinto the workforce. It has beena period without parallel in history, its economic successdue not to conquest or colonial exploitation but to the application of technology. However, since the OPEC-inducedoil crisisof 1973, economies have stagnated, unemployment has increased,and pessimismhas becomethe pervasive mood. The pessimism may be well-founded. C. Freeman has pointed out [l] that European growth in employment had actually ceasedbefore 1973. Investment since the 1960s has been concentrated on rationalisation and cost-saving machinery rather than on expansion.Expenditure on R&D, the basis of future growth, began to fall in the 1960s.The problem is more deep-seatedthan any oil crisis, and lies not so much in too much technological change but in too little and of the wrong kind. Now comes a technical change, telematics, made possible by another, microelectronics, which is generally regarded as the most pervasive yet to appear, affecting all industries and business and even domestic life. Yet, paradoxically, it is viewed with fear and hostility by a wide number of people: paradoxically becausethe prosperity so far achieved has been brought about by technology and there is need for a new and massive stimulus to Western economies. Undoubtedly, in an ill-prepared Europe, it is seen against the background of an industrial society and not as the technology which will bring nearer a new society-the information society. No vision of the future has been put forward to give hope of a return to further economic growth in which this new technology would play the key role. The Japanese
philosophy
The contrast between the optimism of Japan and the pessimismof Europe is stark. The difference may be due more to an accident of industrial history rather than to G. P. Sweeney Is Assistant Director General of the Information Technology Group of the institute for Industrial Research and Standards, Dublin. He has a longstanding interest in information science, telecommunications, and related fields, and is Vice-Chairman of the committee supervising the introduction of the Euronet on-line information network. This is a Euro-article, sponsored by the Commission of the European Communities through its Directorate-General for Scientific and Technical Information and Information Management, which arranges the necessary translations. Such articles are published concurrently in some or all of the participating journals: Umschauin Wissenschaft and Technik in the Federal Republic of Germany, La Recherche in France, Natuur en Techniek in Holland and Technologyirelandin the Republicof Ireland. Endeavour, (0 Per(lamon
If8
New Ssriss Volume 4, No. 3,198O Press, Printed in Grant Britain)
culture. After visiting Japan to investigate the impact of the information and microelectronics revolution, the writer’s dominant overall impression was apparently unrelated to this main objective. It was that, somehow,Japan has leapfrogged the mechanistic philosophy of American industry
and the centralised corporate management syndrome epitomised in the MBA which have dominated Western Europe. Japanese workers are recognised as intelligent humans, trained and retrained to yet higher skills, encouraged to be innovative and expected to make decisions. In its contrast, this image of Japan strongly reinforces the proposition of two French analysts [21 that the model of industrialisation pursued in Western Europe, that of massproduction, has been a blind alley ending in Europe’s present economic and employment stagnation. Taylorism, scientific management,and the concept of large scalehave emphasisedproductivity asthe absolutegoal and to achieve this have imposed on each worker a narrow repetitiveness of operation in the manufacturing process. Massproduction has thus destroyed traditional skills, and reduced workers to a proletariat-without skills, without land or other resourcesto fashion to their needs,urbanised and without a local socio-economicculture. Mass-production dependson massdemand for the same standardisedmodel or article. In both, there is disregard for quality fostered by the insistence on low cost and a narrowness in the diversity of the product. Too many workers are dependent for their livelihood on the same narrow range of products and at the same time their ambitions are restricted to purchase of this same narrow range. Technical change and investment to improve productivity and lower costs in production of this narrow range, in the absenceof diversity, ultimately results in fewer workers and a slow growth economy. Diversification and the creation of more varied and novel products has become difficult. A workforce with downgraded skills lacks the capacity to devise new products and simultaneously has lost the ability to demand greater variety. The fear of the microprocessor as the job-killer could be simply fear that this new technology may take away the only role left to many workers in the industrial mass-production society. Where did Japan take a different turning? The European visitor to Japan soon realises that not only his concept of mass-production has been stood on its head, but more importantly so has his preconceived view of the paternalistic structure of Japanese industry. In the immediatepost-war period, Japandid not havethe tradition of craft skills which still persisted in Europe, and Japanese products were synonymous with cheapness and poor quality. In order to create a consciousnessof quality in a largely ignorant workforce, Japanesemanagement,largely American trained, reversed Americiin management
practice and put the responsibility for quality at the lowest level possible-on the individual operative. To enablehim to undertake this new responsibility, he and his colleagues were trained in quality control. Quality circles were formed of six or more operatives under a more senior operative or foreman as the first link in a communication channel to the most senior management. The drive to win for Japanese products a namefor quality and reliability was the start of a process which will undoubtedly make Japan a world economicpower in the information society. Decision-making is delegatedto the lowest level possible. The worker on the mass-production line has a high degree of individual responsibility and is thus expectedto apply his training and intellectual capability to the products and processes for which he is responsible. On the Toyota assembly line, any worker has the authority to stop the entire line (and does)if he seessomefault or other problem. Quality assuranceis paramount. Yet every car coming off the assemblyline is different to the one before it and the one after. Poor Henry Ford! Each is a different colour, three basic models are assembledon the one line, with all the detailed variations for domestic and overseas markets. Each car is nearly unique. Within the one mass-production unit, somediversity of product has been restored, together with flexibility of production. Above all, the worker is not part of the machine; he has regained the authority of his skills and training. There is a constant searchfor improvements in products and processes. Over 60 per cent of real innovations in Japan come from the factory floor. In 1978. each Toyota employee made on average eleven suggestions,over half a million in total. 86 per cent were acceptedand the proposers rewarded. The decision to adopt a suggestionis again at the lowest level possible,and foremen have a surprisingly wide discretion as to new investment. Some suggestions eliminated the job of the proposer, but change was welcomedfor its elimination of a boring or dirty job, and for its opportunities to learn new higher level skills and gain advancement. Creativity and the knowledge base of industry are recognised to be dependent on the education and training of the workforce at every level. 90-92 per cent of children go on to secondary school, 50 per cent to university, and there are 400 universities. Toyota has its own technical high school and in 1981 opens its own technical college. At the age of 45, all managersin Fujitsu must undertake retraining, and Fujitsu also maintains several institutes of learning. Higher education and constant retraining and upgrading of skills is seen everywhere as the base of Japan’s next phaseof industrial developmentand advancementto the information society. Undoubtedly, the confidence and creativity of the Japanese worker are aided by the security of his employment and method of payment. Basic wagestend to be mediocre and age-related, but half-yearly bonusescan double the final take-home pay. There is, therefore, a very lively interest in the businesssuccessof the company. It is very much their company. Sacking for economicreasonsis not possible. This is the real meaning of the unwritten contract of life-time employment. There are no redundanciesbecauseof lost markets, no cut-backs in the labour force because of technical changes. Hence the corporate objectives of a Japanese company, which whatever else must maintain employment, are somewhat different to those of a Western company. Its objectives are, through good economicperformance,to provide for further
investment and to diversify; that is, growth rather than profitper se. Mitsubishi, the shipbuilder, has developed one of the leading software houses, and Kanebo, a textiles firm threatened by imports from newly industrialising countries is now the largest cosmetics firm. Diversification in these circumstancesrequires a workforce, which becauseof the level of its skills and the retraining available, is able to changejobs with comparative easeand to contribute to the successof the new processesand products. On the other hand, 60 per cent of employment is in small industries to which technical changecould meanextinction, but neverthelessthe principle is maintained. Subcontractors to large manufacturing firms, and suppliers to large distributors, are assisted into new technology and new products by their customers. Workers receive retraining and the government financially assistssmall companiesto transform totally their production capability and product. Yet in spite of this security-perhaps as an elementof ittechnical change is introduced only with the concensusof the work force. It is a slow process-since the Japanese worker is basically conservative-but an effectiveone once concensusis reached. A recent analysis 131 of innovation and industrial developmentin OECD countries suggeststhat a new phase of development is emerging. In the 1950s and 196Os, investment and growth were concentrated in the sectors producing relatively standard goods where competition was on the basis of price, that is, in mass-production technology. In the 1970s a new trend was discernible. Entrepreneurial activity in the future will concentrate on market segmentswhere quality takes precedenceover price and on export of equipment, technology, and skills. There will be a continuing shift from investment in process and manufacturing equipment to investment in R&D-related activities leading to product and systemsinnovations. This matches the current emphasis by Japanese industry on quality and the longer term view that exports, necessaryfor the survival of Japan, can no longer be dependent on a mere continuation of conventional industrialisation. Knowledge-intensive products, with their higher added value per unit, must be the answer. Japan has thus begun the evolution from the blind-alley of the mass-production society; firstly, through its emphasis on quality and secondly, in its recognition of the knowledge-base of industry and its preparation for, a new socio-economic order. The computer
in Japanese
society
In 1972, the Japanese Computerisation Committee put forward a view (Table 1)of the role of the new technology in society. Japan was not involved in the first phase,the useof computers as scientific calculators working on big projects. It was a late entrant in the second,and still current, phasein 1957, there were only three computers in Japan. Today, there are over 50,000 computers excluding minis and micros, but management information is a phase of development still confined to a minority of organisations. The pervading of all organisations by the technology will in effect take place in the third phase of development, the application of the integrated technology of computing, communicating, and control to the wider needsof society, and the varied social units and organisations within society. This year, 1980, was planned to seethe commencementof 119
TABLE
1
GENERALTRENDOFDEVELOPMENTOFCOMPUTERISATION 4th period 1980-2000
1 st period 1945-1970-~-~
2nd period 1955-1980
3rd period 1970-1990
Big science
Management
Society
Objective
Defence, space, nuclear etc.
GNP (Productivity)
GNW
(Welfare)
GNS (Satisfaction)
Value
National
Economic
Social
Welfare
Self-realisation
Subject
Field
concept
prestige
growth
____
Individual
Subject
Country
Enterprise
People
Private
persons
Object
Nature
Organisation
Society
Human
beings
Basic Science
Natural
Management
Social
Science
Behavioural
S cience
Science
Science Attaining
Information Pattern
goal
Solving
Pursuing efficiency
problems
Intellectual Creativity From Ando14’
the final phase of development, the enhancement of the individual. Technology in its various forms to date has in effectbeen an extension of the muscular and manipulative power and skills of the human. Electronics technology as it is now evolving is the extension of his intellectual and sensory processes. Only the imaginative creativity of man will restrict the pervasiveness of its applications and the products and systems derived from its use. In this very constraint lies the continuing subjection of the technology to man. It will never surpass his unique combination of intellect, multiple sensoryperception, emotion, and creative imagination, but will support his economic, social, and personal development.Nevertheless,even with this view of the technology, the Japaneserecognise that its continuing impact and the demand for continual change which will characterise the years ahead will prove painful to many citizens. It will take time beforeeveryone can cometo grips with the ‘computer- and information-mind’ and acceptthe advent of the new world of the information society [41. TABLE2
Employment
EMPLOYEES IN JAPAN CLASSIFIED (Percentage of total employment)
Primary
Industries
Agriculture Secondary
Industries
Mining Construction Manufacturing Tertiary Public
Industries Utilities
Commerce, Service
120
Bankingetc
BY INDUSTRY
Actual
_____
prospects
Familiarisation is, therefore, an important aspect of the Japaneseprogramme. Since 1972, the first weekof October has beendeclared an Information Familiarisation Week by the Government. During this, the public service, business, industry, and research throw open their doors to demonstrateto the public current and future developments. Public and private education programmes are being developed.For example,the Fujitsu Institute of Computer Science is open to the general public, and JIPDEC (the Japanese Information Processing Development Centre) runs seminarsaround the country. But the continuing trend to yet higher levels of education amongst the young is a main driving force. More and more they are finding employment in the quaternary, information, sector. The average age in the data communications service of NTT (the Japanesedomestic telecommunicationscorporation) is 27, as against the 50 of the postal service.In Fujitsu’s new Numazu computer assembly complex the average age is 28, and many young people are finding employment in the
Forecast
1960
1965
1970
1975
1985
14.35 (32.8%) 13.22 (30.2%) 13.02 (29.8%) 0.53 (1.2%) 2.70 (6.2%) 9.78 (22.4%) 16.32 (37.3%) 2.44 (5.5%) 7.67 (17.5%) 6.22 (14.2%)
11.74 (24.6%) 10.86 (22.8%) 15.69 (32.9%) 0.33 (0.7%) 3.40 (7.1%) 11.75 (25.1%) 20.18 (42.4%) 3.15 (6.7%) 9.72 (20.4%) 7.31 (1 5.3%)
10.09 (19.4%) 9.33 (17.9%) 18.19 (34.9%) 0.22 (0.4%) 3.94 (7.6%) 14.02 (26.9%) 23.82 (45.7%) 3.50 (6.8%) 11.44 (2 1.9%) 8.88 (17.0%)
7.40 (13.9%) 6.72 (12.6%) 18.66 (35.1%) 0.14 (0.3%) 4.75 (8.9%) 13.77 125.9%) 26.92 (50.7%) 3.69 (6.9%) 13.08 (24.7%) 10.15 (19.1%)
4.04 (6.8%) 3.67 (6.1%) 21.33 (35.7%) 0.05 (0.1%) 5.90 (9.9%) 15.38 (25.7%) 34.2 1 (57.2%) 4.07 (6.8%) 14.96 (25.1%) 15.18 (2 5.4%)
TABLE3
WORKERS
ENGAGED
IN PRODUCTION
OF MACHINERY 1985
Actual
--__ Total Number of Production General machinery works Electrical machinery Precision machinery
Workers
1975
Demand,
Minimum
Median
2,061 796 1,056 209
1,884 739 929 216
2,430 953 1,198 279
2,233 896 1,096 273
2,087 859 1,018 210
Maximum 1,948 820 946 182
The major problem foreseenis not lack of employment opportunities, but shortageof peoplewith appropriate skills and training. In other words, the principal conclusion is that there is a shortageof facilities to train a sufficient number of people to fill the opportunities which will occur and at a high level of expertise. The needs for technological education and reeducation are such that a major and continuing government programme is required. Indeed, education itself is a growth industry, and is one on which growth in other sectorsis dependent.It is a major sourceof the main capital input into the manufacturing sector. One indicator of the long-term potential for employment in the information industries can be gauged from the NTT forecast that in the year 2000, 90 per cent of telecommunications traffic will be data as against the current 5 per cent, with voice traffic itself continuing to grow. NTT has developed a number of services which might be classedas societal. Table 4 gives someexamples, but these are as yet only 35 data basesfor public accessin Plus utilisation
software
by level of diffusion
1970
mushroom growth of medium and small software and systemshouses. Nevertheless,there is concern about future employment. The Japanese Management Association, in an interim report [5l commissioned by MIT1 (the Ministry of International Trade and Industry) concludes that there will be a continuing shift in the distribution of employment between the three traditional economic sectors (Table 2). Manufacturing employment overall will increase after the decline of 1970-75. A considerablenumber of workers will lose their existing jobs as a result of automation, and will relocate their employment within their existing companies or fill new opportunities createdelsewhere. Production workers engaged in the manufacture of equipment and machinery, it is estimated, would reach a total of 2.43 million in 1985 by natural increase (Table 3). However, expansion of microcomputer application, if it is at a maximum, will reduce this to 1.95 million; if it is at a minimum, to 2.23. Appllcatlon
forecast
engineers
software
engineers 795.6 maximum .
800 645.7
maximum
448.7
median
290 8 median
. 131.7 minimum 482. 01
Figure
1 1975
1
Forecast
of employment
I 1985
of software
I 1975
I985
engineers.
Software and systems technology development will generatelarge employment opportunities in the foreseeable future in users of the hardware; in producers of microcomputer hardware; and in manufacture of products, both industrial and consumer, containing microprocessor devices.Softwareengineersengagedin utilisation of general purpose computers, of whom there were 32,100 in 1975, are expectedto maintain the annual growth rate of 12 per cent until 1985; that is, to increase to a total of 149,900. Application software engineerswill increaseby a rate of 15 per cent to 35 per cent depending on rate of diffusion and demand (flgure 1). As the technology is diffused and the information society develops, many new innovative services and products will develop which cannot at the moment beprecisely forecast.
Japan. The development and maintenance of data bases and of other distributed systems is an intensive user of highly educatedpeople. Community and personal services developing on the model ofthe Hi-OVIS project will require hardware of new types; new information and education services; and the installation of new telecommunications facilities. This last will take many years to develop and install, and some services will be dependent on a wide market beforethey can be commenced. In the development of this market a further delaying factor will be the willingness to pay. Managementgenerally, whether in industry, business,or government has little idea of the cost of information and finds it difficult to agreeto pay an economic price. The private consumer is even worse. Government has been slow to apply the new 121
TABLE4
DATA
PROCESSING/COMMUNICATION
SERVICES
OFFERED
BY NTT
DEMOS-E
Scientific, engineering and management on-line calculation service, e.g. architectural, LP, PERT etc. Commenced 197 1. Serving 65 cities. 700 Iibraryprogrammes. DRESS Sales and inventory management service. Sales, purchase, deliveries, billing file maintenance. Commenced 1970. Serving 64 cities. Motor vehicle registration and inspection system, serving 69 districts. Nationwide banking system. Connects 708 citgl, local mutual, credit and other banks and Bank of Japan, many of which have private networks, in one network-l 7,000 bankoffices. Automated Meteorological Data Acquisition System. Data collected from 1300 points. Operated for Meteorological Agency, Nationwide Cash Dispensing System. Cash dispensing for 54 cooperating banks through equipment located in public places, supermarkets, railway stations, hotels etc. Provision through Telex terminals of information on markets (quantity, grades, prices) Agricultural Information Distributing System. production (area, growth conditions, shipmentsetc.) distribution (imported foodstuffs etc.) and other information. Emergency Medical Information System. Automatically collects data on presence of doctors and specialists, availability of beds, blood supplies, etc. at medical institutions, hospitals, clinics. Integrated Data Communication Banking System for Shared Use. Banking system for small and medium size banks. Shared Hospital Information System. Patients registration,feescalculation, invoicing,other management statistics. --
technology. An interministerial committee has been set up to coordinate and integrate new uses but is hampered by lack of skilled personnel in the different ministries. MITT, however, has the role, here as elsewherein the economy, of stimulating new development and sees the use of the technology and the ensuing provision of more efficient existing and new seriesby Government as a key factor in the overall developmentof the information sector. MIT1 sponsorsnot only projects such as Hi-OVIS and a national medical information service, but also funds new applications in businessand industry in order to stimulate widespread use and familiarisation. It is active in the development of the computer and micro-electronics manufacturing industries. The VLSIC (Very Large Scale Integrated Circuit) project commencedin 1972 has placed Japan at the forefront of ‘chip’ technology. The Pattern Information ProcessingSystemProject will not only enable Japan to overcome the massive problems presented by Kanji script with its 4000 commonly used characters, but will lead to yet wider flexibility of the technology in acceptance,processing,storage,and transmission ofvaried input and output-graphic, pictorial, objects, speech.The motor vehicle traffic control systemhas enormous potential not only in systems technology but in manufacture, installation and maintenance. NTT is developing its new data network, which will be the nervous system of the information society. The first phase, now in hand, is the provision of high-speedbroadbank trunk lines. The next stage will seethese extendedto local exchanges. The local distribution network to subscribers will utilise optical glass fibres and provide a total ‘telematics’ serviceto the private user. Given this view of the future and its existing involvement in provision of computer or information transfer services, NTT is also active in terminal hardware development. One consumer product is the data telephone,with its magnetic card reader, diode display unit, and small printer. In manufacturing applications, the area of major fear in the West, Japan already employs half the world’s robots. The Japan Robot Manufacturers Association sees the primary objective of industrialists in employing robots as being to improve productivity but with higher levels of quality, consistency, and reliability of the product. They will be an essentialfactor in furthering the trend away from mass-production towards more versatile small-batch production. The trend of much of industrial.production will 122
continue strongly towards products and equipment of high quality and of a specialisedcharacter, embodying advanced design, technology, and precision. The demand for more small runs and customised components and end-products will be reinforced by the trend to marketing of systems, embodying ranges of equipment designed for individual customers.These developmentswill demand a more highly educated workforce in product design, in the search for higher quality and in systems and programmes development. In themselves, higher education levels are leading to pressure to improve the personal work environment, eliminate the ill-effects of industrialisation on the person, and provide more skilled work for personal satisfaction. The dirty, boring, repetitive task is degrading to the worker and is therefore better performed by machine. Mass-production is a technology for the machine. The workers’ intellectual talents and manipulative skills can with further education and training be put to the provision of the higher-addedvalue, the knowledge-intensiveinput in design, control, and maintenance. Progressto automation is basedon a very consciously identified needto move away from the syndrome of the unskilled worker dominated by the mass-production systems technology. Indeed, in the small firms particularly, it is the workers who are demanding the introduction of new technology. Automation in the factory could be considereda part ofthe final phaseof the application of the technology-the phase of personalenhancement. Intake of new workers in manufacturing will undoubtedly decline in comparative numbers, but again employment opportunities being created in the rest of the economy will absorb any workers who might otherwise have entered manufacturing employment. The knowledge baseof industry will dependon the quality of the education and re-education of the workforce not only in the information technologies but also in the traditional disciplines and technologies. The demand for knowledge and information is wide-ranging. The European
situation
A major advantage of Japan as against Europe is that, through the combined effort of government and industry, a viable, highly efficient, and competitive computer manufacturing industry is being established. Given its philosophy of serving the community and its large and culturally homogeneous domestic market, the Japanese
computer industry is developing systems technologies which are in harmony with the national culture. Similarly in the U.S.A., the computer industry’s systems match the cultural moresof businessand the community. Europe is not so fortunate. Already dominated by massproduction systems philosophies from which it is finding escape difficult, it lacks a domestic computer industry capable of meeting a majority of its needsand is dominated by a single U.S. corporation. The dominanceof the systems philosophy imposed through that company and its potential antipathy to European cultural and social values may well be a factor in hindering the successfulevolution of the information society in Europe and therefore of a growth information economy. It is a factor identified in the NoraMint report ‘L’Informatisation de la Societt’, the cultural threat may have seriouseconomic consequences. Telematics-the integration of computing, communicating, and control technologies-is a technology basedon distributed data capture and information input, on distributed processing to meet local, regional, or central decision-making and therefore on distributed access. Notwithstanding this, it has enormous potential to make decision-making even more centralised, to build further on the mass-production philosophy of removing discretion, creative assessmentand input, and therefore skills from both lower levels and from geographically dispersed process, product, or market diversified activities. Even in Japanesecompanies, the adoption of the new technology for management information has been at first to develop more centralised decision-making, but the trend is now away from this. In Government, the system for the Social Welfare Serviceis designedto decentralisedecisionmaking. One of the major points of the French Informatisation Plan, announced in December 1978 is to decentralise the application of the technology in order to decentralise and humanise the decision-making of the French Administration. Undoubtedly, the popular requirement for more participative decision-making and for more involvement in control and developmentof the personal work environment
and work content is strong but still frustrated in much of Europe. In Japan, the evolution of such a philosophy and innovative participation in the industrial process has created Japan’s economic growth. The philosophy of the information technology hardware and systems developmentcompanies, such as Fujitsu, will reinforce this evolution. There is a deep consciousnessof the new social and economic structures being brought about by the evolution of the information society. The overall impression which one gains of Japan is not so much of advanced and sophisticated technological development-which undoubtedly does exist-but of a very widespread provision of sometimes mundane but useful servicesto the private consumer, to managementof even the smallestbusiness,and to the community at large. The technology is being developed and diffused to meet societal and public needsrather than being imposed, and is progressing by steady evolution rather than traumatic change.Above all, it is basedon the personal development of the skills of its population. In Europe, there is no such wide peripheral vision other than that now beginning to evolve in France. Forecasts of the impact of the technology are confined to sectorsand to narrow structural changes, and serve only to deepenthe widespreadpessism.Without doubt, many jobs will be lost, and the forecasts prove correct, if Europe refusesto move to a new approach to the future, and if governments, management and unions hold on to the philosophies of a dying industrial society and to its outdated massproduction techno-economics. References
Ill Freeman, C. ‘Unemployment and technical change’. Thomas McLaughlin Memorial Lecture. Dublin, 1979. I21 Aubert, J. E. and Gaudin, T. ‘Innovation and unemployment: towards a cultural reading’. Six Countries Programme, Workshop on technical development and employment. Paris, 1978. 13) Pavitt, K. Technical innovation and industrial development. Futures, pp. 458-70, Dec. 1979. [41 Ando, K. ‘Economic and social impacts of the computer industry in Japan’. Fujitsu, 1978.
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