FUTURE SHOCK THE THIRD WAVE

THE THIRD WAVE

 

Whether they do so or not, the unevadable fact remains that Third Wave production in the office, as it collides with the old Second Wave systems, will produce anxiety and conflict as well as reorganization, restructuring, and—for some—rebirth into new careers and opportunities. The new systems will challenge all the old executive turfs, the hierarchies, the sexual role divisions, the departmental barriers of the past.

All of this has raised many fears. Opinion divides sharply between those who insist that millions of jobs will simply vanish (or that today’s secretaries will mainly be reduced to mechanical slaves) and a more sanguine view widely held in the word processing industry, and expressed by Randy Gold-field, a principal of the Booz Allen & Hamilton consulting firm. According to Ms. Goldfield, secretaries, far from being reduced to mindless, repetitive processors, will become “para-principals,” sharing in some of the professional work and decision-making from which they have been largely excluded until now. More likely we will see a sharp division between those white-collar workers who move up to more responsible positions and those who move down—and eventually out.

What, then, happens to these people—and to the economy in general? During the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, when automation first began arriving on the scene, economists and trade unionists in many countries forecast massive unemployment. Instead, employment in the high-technology nations expanded. As the manufacturing sector shrank the white-collar and service sectors expanded, taking up the slack. But if manufacturing continues to shrink, and if office employment is to be put through the wringer at the same time, where will the jobs of tomorrow come from?

Nobody knows. Despite endless studies and vehement claims, the forecasts and the evidence are contradictory. Attempts to relate investment in mechanization and automation to levels of manufacturing employment show what the Financial Times of London calls an “almost complete lack of correlation.” Between 1963 and 1973 Japan had the highest rate of investment in new technology, as a percentage of value added, of any country in a seven-nation study. It also had the highest growth in employment. Britain, whose investment in machinery was the lowest, showed the greatest loss of jobs.

 

 

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