Technical Change, Manufacturing Organisation and Labour Markets

Abstract

A wave of discussion about the consequences of recent technical change has come to sweep industrialised countries. The topic is mainly the development, production, and use of integrated electronic circuits, specifically in the sophisticated form of microelectronics. The technology of information and control has made striking advances, and it effects important changes throughout all manner of products, production processes, and administrative procedures. Conspicuous and often‐quoted examples are watch‐making and newspaper production. These branches are often held up as showing what is to come everywhere: a radical transformation of technology, the death of established trades and vocations, and large‐scale redundancy and unemployment. Furthermore, such prospects are often associated with a change in the international division of labour, whereby recently industrialising countries of the Third World, such as Algeria, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Korea, and many others, have come to produce industrial goods and import them to Europe and North America on an increasing scale. Because of higher labour costs here, there is a constraint to rationalise production and strengthen technical improvement, both of which are facilitated by new semiconductor technologies, particularly microelectronics, and the automation associated with it.

Citation

Sorge, A. (1980), "Technical Change, Manufacturing Organisation and Labour Markets", Management Research News, Vol. 3 No. 3, pp. 10-11. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb027768