Rethinking Work: New Ways To Work in A Knowledge Society

European Commission
Directorate-General XIII
RETHINKING
WORK
NEW WAYS TO WORK IN A K N O W LE D GE S O C IE T Y
TECHNOLOGY GROWTH COMPETITION GLOBALIZATION PROFITS SHORT-TERM RATIONALIZATION REENGINEERING DOWNSIZING LAY-OFFS JOBLESSNESS DEINDUSTRIALIZATION POVERTY EXCLUSION SICKNESS HOPELESSNESS CRIMINALITY VIOLENCE ABUSE FAMILY COLLAPSE XENOPHOBIA POLICING PRISONS FLIGHT DOWNWARD SPIRAL REGIONAL DECLINE OUT-MIGRATION BRAIN-DRAIN QUANDARY BUREAUCRACY INDIFFERENCE TECHNOCRACY PRIVILEGE TWO-SPEED SOCIETY ISOLATION DENIAL WITHDRAWAL TEMPORIZING PALLIATIVES ABDICATION SURRENDER DESPERATION IMPATIENCE ADAM SMITH MARX KEYNES PATRIMONY LEONTIEF SCHUMAN MCLUHAN MONNET NEW AWARENESSES HEILBRONNER HIRSCHMAN DELORS RETHINKING INTEGRITY SUSTAINABILITY DEMATERIALIZATION LEADERSHIP LOCAL RESPONSIBILITY NEW REGIONALISM SOLIDARITY SUBSIDIARITY VARIETY CONCERTATION INNOVATION DEMONSTRATION INFORMATION ENTERPRISE EMULATION PARTNERSHIPS PARTICIPATION SHARING COMMUNICATIONS KNOWLEDGE EDUCATION OPPORTUNITY CHILDREN COOPERATION DIVERSITY FLEXIBILITY ECONOMY COMMUNITY ECURITY DIGNITY SOCIETY DEMOCRACY THE S
R ETHINKING W ORK
R E T H I N K I N G WO R K
N EW WAYS T O W O R K IN A K NOWLEDGE S O CIET Y
by Eric Britton
ECOPLAN INTERNATIONAL
24 Hour Backup Voice/Fax 331.4326.1323 Mobile: 336.0737.7798 Voice/Video: 331.4441.6340 Fax 331.4441.6341 Data 331.4441.6342
email postmaster@ecoplan.org www.EcoPlan.org/21stT
8/10, rue Joseph Bara
75006 Paris, France
A T HINKING E XERCISE (interim electronic edition for comment)
N EW W AYS
TO
W ORK
IN A
K NOWLEDGE S OCIETY
F OREWORD
TO
S ECOND E DITION
When the first edition of Rethinking Work was issued by the European Commission in October 1994, I was generally encouraged by the response it received. My intention had been to offer it as a stalking horse a quickly fashioned but nonetheless readable compilation of provocative thoughts, concepts and proposals drawing from an extensive range of interesting sources, disciplines and points of view, in order to put before the public the case for taking some quite different approaches to those problems of work and employment that had been baffling decision makers and actors across Europe and the world at large. My goal was to use it to stir up international debate of the potential utility of less traditional work concepts and organizational approaches, in an attempt to move this thinking from the fringe squarely into the middle of the policy debate, where I thought it belonged. More ambitiously, it had been my hope that this process of debate and discussion might in time lead to a certain number of demonstrations showing how such concepts might be put to work in actual practice. The stalking horse gambit worked to a degree: some five thousand copies were reportedly sold and distributed, and in the months after publication I received more than a hundred communications and comments from readers around the world. Most of these were supportive of the ideas I was putting forward, and a certain number of them actually led to further cooperation and in several cases to joint projects building on these ideas. But there were also complaints that I had failed to make ample practical recommendations for breaking the impasse. Now that really astonished me, since I had devoted the entire final section to just this. However, I am forced to conclude that my notion as to what constituted useful and appropriate counsel at that point in the development cycle was not as widely shared as I had so optimistically hoped. Admittedly the first edition was in many ways decidedly embryonic, convolute and challenging, leaving a great deal to the wit and energy of the reader. However, that was precisely the idea -- the whole operation after all having been announced as a thinking exercise. As such, I had envisaged it as just one step in a much more extensive process, with the real working out of recommendations, experiments, demonstrations, etc., to follow in a subsequent stage. This revised and extended edition represents my attempt to respond to these criticisms. I offer if to the reader as a progress report, an interim update on a process that is now well engaged, while at the same time cleaning up the worse presentational glitches that marred the 1994 report. Beyond this familiar paper trail, I would also like to invite you to join in an on-going process of cooperative knowledge building on this important topic which we here at EcoPlan have put in place over the last year and which I hope you will try. Here is how it works: simultaneously with publication by the Commission in the present Gutenberg form, the full text of this volume is also being placed on the World Wide Web along with a number of working papers, and thereby made freely available to anyone in the world who wishes to access it. To take advantage of this, all you need to do is get on your computer and turn to the New Ways to Work forum at http://www.ecoplan.org/new-work/. In parallel with this feedback cycle, I shall in the months ahead continue to present these ideas for discussion and debate in meetings, workshops and courses across Europe and North America. My colleagues and I are also drawing on them as working materials and draft guidelines in support of several on-going new work team projects presently under way in Austria, Germany, Italy, and Spain, and perhaps eventually in Ireland and Sweden, which should provide excellent opportunities for critical discussion and feedback.. Then, enriched by all that this process manages to generate (and assuming that I survive it all), I intend in the spring of 1997 to take a close look at whatever may have gotten through this tough screening procedure, and put into the results into a more definitive and comprehensively supported form, complete with a carefully vetted set of final recommendations and action proposals. So what I offer here is only a next step in this rethinking process. The emphasis is still on getting the right questions as opposed to coming up with firm answers. But even that will be a great step forward, since for the most part we are still bogged down with the wrong questions, and this is one of the main reasons why so very little progress is being made. But it does not have to be like that. Eric Britton, Paris, 15 September 1996
A Thinking Exercise (interim electronic edition)
R ETHINKING W ORK
A C K NOW L E DGM E NTS
The creative activity behind this small book would never have gotten off the ground had not Peter Johnston and Robert Pestel of the European Commission stepped forward to provide a second round of support and seed money in 1994. They were in fact taking something of a risk, in part because I was taking aim at an area of policy that was much larger and much more contentious than that for which they are officially charged in their functions at the Commission (namely, providing policy counsel on telecommunications futures), but also because they understood that the only way I would work on this would be if I had an entirely free hand. And they did this within what is after all an unforgiving government bureaucracy. I am extremely grateful to these two public entrepreneurs for their confidence, and can only hope that the quality and ultimate usefulness of what has resulted will vindicate their decision. Certainly the fact that my unconstrained read of the evidence makes it overwhelmingly clear to me that telecommunications advances are going to play a major role in the retooling process of work that is already well underway, can be taken as constituting some vindication of their judgment and initiative. But this conclusion was arrived at from an entirely independent perspective. I also would like to express my thanks to the Commission more generally for having the mettle to permit me to air this independent assessment before a wide international audience, despite the fact that I am in these pages often quite critical of many of the things they and their clients (i.e., the national governments of Europe) have done thus far or have failed to do in this important and most troubling area of public policy and private practice. It takes not a small amount of integrity to provide a forum for such a critical voice, and it is my hope that this openness of spirit and the usefulness of these results will serve to encourage other institutions and agencies, in both public and private sectors, to enter into this sort of fully open debate and discussion. Such wide ranging critical assessment which goes far beyond the polite, not to say timid, discourse of the proverbial organization man behavior is going to be indispensable if we are ever to work our way out of the debilitating impasses in which our economies and many of our citizens including many who are not able to represent and defend their own interests in the fora that count currently find themselves. Since we began this cooperative brainstorming and knowledge building effort back in 1993 many people and groups have joined in to share their information, ideas, and critical assessments of the continuing of working papers and reports that have been generated in an attempt to move these ideas ahead. Likewise over the last two years progress not nearly enough progress, but progress nonetheless -- has been made on a small but growing number of new work projects, demonstrations and experiments in various parts of Europe and elsewhere as the result of the unflagging commitment of a number of people with whom I have had the privilege of corresponding and in some cases collaborating directly. The list of those to whom I owe thanks is far too long for me to do it justice here, though if you take a moment to peruse the New Ways to Work sites and libraries on the World Wide Web you will be able to identify a number of them quite handily. Acknowledgments such as this are invariably basically retrospective, but in these closing lines I would like to seize this opportunity to push them out into the future. As they used to say in gangland Chicago, I am taking this occasion to put the arm on you. There is a great deal that needs to be done to improve and advance the best of these ideas and to begin to turn them into visible demonstrations that will show that we can indeed both rethink and rework work. But this is only going to happen if many people and groups step forward to take an active part in this far-reaching process of social and economic regeneration that now has to be engaged. In the pages that follow you will find a number of specific ideas and recommendations, some of which you may be able to do something about. So let me end this note of thanks by encouraging you to do just that. Because without such dedication and active participation, the future looks rather uninviting. And there is no reasons that this has to be.
N EW W AYS
TO
W ORK
IN A
K NOWLEDGE S OCIETY
Contents
1. THE BACKGROUND.......................................................................................................................................................5
1.1 Introduction ............................................................................................................................................................................... 5 1.2 A Base Case We Can Usefully Bear in Mind ...................................................................................................................... 3 1.3 Lets Look Back (and Think) -- Before Leaping Ahead .................................................................................................... 4 1.4 Ten Bones of Contention ........................................................................................................................................................ 6 1.5 Project Preparation and Organization of the Meetings ................................................................................................... 10 1.5 ..................................................................................................................................................................................................... 10 1.6 Report Organization ............................................................................................................................................................... 11 2.1 The Telework Agenda............................................................................................................................................................ 13 2.2 Introduction ............................................................................................................................................................................. 15 2.3 Some Alternative Points of View Worth Considering..................................................................................................... 16 2.4 Twenty Tentative Conclusions on Telework and Its Prospects .................................................................................... 21 3.1 The Questions Asked ............................................................................................................................................................. 23 3.2 Where do We Stand Today on the Key Issues? ................................................................................................................ 24 3.3 Transient Technical Glitch or Fundamental Systems Failure? ...................................................................................... 25
2. Telework As A Harbinger ................................................................................................................................................ 13
Telework: One profile of recent European experience at the firm level ........................................................................................... 19 3. WORK, TECHNOLOGY & SOCIETY: GALE OF DESTRUCTION? ............................................................. 23
Some observations from the meetings: ........................................................................................................................................... 25 Some Alternative Points of View Worth Considering ................................................................................................................. 27
3.4 Will Economic Growth Alone Do It? ................................................................................................................................ 29
Some Observations from the Meetings .......................................................................................................................................... 29 Some Alternative Points of View Worth Considering ................................................................................................................. 31 A Proposed Conclusion on the Growth Option(For discussion and comment): ......................................................................... 33
3.5 Do We Need to Rethink Work? .......................................................................................................................................... 35 3.6 Toward New Systems of Work ............................................................................................................................................ 42
Some Alternative Points of View Worth Considering: ................................................................................................................ 38 Some Comments from the Meetings ............................................................................................................................................. 44 Some Alternative Points of View Worth Considering: ................................................................................................................ 45 4. THE CHANGING SHAPE OF WORK ..................................................................................................................... 48
4.1 Tomorrows Work .................................................................................................................................................................. 48 4.2 Todays Work Profile ............................................................................................................................................................. 49 4.3 Tomorrows Work - A 2020 Profile .................................................................................................................................... 51 4.4 Some Facts of Work Life in the Year 2020 ....................................................................................................................... 53 4.5 A Real World Policy Target: Redrawing a Deficitory Public Enterprise .................................................................... 54 4.6 Policy ArchitectureNot Lists............................................................................................................................................ 57
Facts of Work life: Current Perspectives ...................................................................................................................................... 50
5. Conclusions & Recommendations .................................................................................................................................. 61
R ETHINKING W ORK
5.1 New Approaches for the Commission and the Public Sector ........................................................................................62 5.2 Recommendations for Proposed Work in Society Program ..............................................................................................64
Research Support Component ...................................................................................................................................................... 64 Communications/Concertation Recommendations ....................................................................................................................... 64 Action and Field Support Recommendations ............................................................................................................................... 65
5.3 Some Additional Background, Comments and Expansions ...........................................................................................67
R1. Overhaul Of Taxation System............................................................................................................................................ 67 Some Thoughts on Implementation .............................................................................................................................................. 68 An EC Leadership by Example Program (2000 Hours program) ............................................................................................ 69
5.4 Work, Technology and Society: Why We Need Alternative Approaches ....................................................................72 5.5 Some Closing Thoughts .........................................................................................................................................................76 6.1 Annex A: The Paris Brainstorming Sessions ......................................................................................................................79 6.1 ......................................................................................................................................................................................................79
6. Annexes and References ................................................................................................................................................... 78
Meeting I (French Senate) ........................................................................................................................................................... 79 Meeting 2 (UNESCO).............................................................................................................................................................. 80 7. ANNEX B: ORGANIZATION AND CONTENTS OF THE READER .......................................................... 83 7. ................................................................................................................................................................................................ 83
7.1 Contents of Reader .................................................................................................................................................................84 7.1 ......................................................................................................................................................................................................84 7.2 Background Reading in Support of Telework Futures Panel.........................................................................................85 7.3 Background Reading in Support of Work Futures Panel................................................................................................86 7.3 ......................................................................................................................................................................................................86 7.4 Selected Press Articles and Editorials .................................................................................................................................89 7.5 ANNEX C: 101 Work Policies Someone, Somewhere is Thinking about or Promoting ........................................90 7.6 ANNEX D. TOOLS TO GET THE JOB DONE ........................................................................................................93
8. ANNEX E: Studies, Reports and Policy - A Reflection on the Effectiveness of Paper ....................................... 95 9. ANNEX E: Rethinking Work and the ECTF Forum.................................................................................................... 96 10. Annex G: Examples of Feedback from Forum ......................................................................................................... 99
N EW W AYS
TO
W ORK
IN A
K NOWLEDGE S OCIETY
RETHINKING WORK
N EW WAYS TO W ORK IN A K NOWLEDGE S OCIETY
R ETHINKING W ORK
F OREWORD
The nature of the problem that brings you the reader and me, your momentary scribe, together on this page stretches far beyond the usual jobs concept and concerns that excite so much attention these days, or even that of unemployment -- and as such it is one that requires entirely new thinking and new approaches to make the necessary inroads. Seen from the broader perspective which is appropriate to these considerations, the challenge before our poor, beleaguered, badly out-gunned policy makers is no more or less than that of managing a transition from one epoch, style or shape of work to another, which is radically different in many fundamental respects. This profound economic process has not been analyzed and intelAny refusal to face this lectually digested, as Marx set out to do for his time. Mr. Drucker challenge squarely will be says we do not yet understand how knowledge works as a rea major leadership failure. source. We need a theory, he says. Most urgently, we need a But the sad truth is that theory that redefines labor and how to set its value. The difference there are going to be between work and play is now essentially defined by money, countries and regions that whether you are paid for what you do or pay for doing it. ... Industrial society has made labor a crucial element of identity. You are are going to fail this test. The new world of work which I address in these pages is already fast upon us and is proving the source of great confusion. It differs radically in many respects from all those old concepts which we still inevitably have in the front of our minds when we hear the word. While it necessarily has the same hard economic core as the old concept (efficient economic production is certainly going to be no less of an imperative in the future than it has been in the past), it has a much broader social and human context within which the purely economic decisions and actions are going to play themselves out. The challenge before the planners and policy makers is going to be to create and manage this context - this broader environment of social, ethical, ecological and historical concerns and priorities, within which the wondrous powers of the market economy and spirit of entrepreneurship can then do their best. In a phrase, I suspect that we are going to remake the world of work by consulting quite a lot more than just our wallets, our transient appetites and the clock.
what you work at. That is why being unemployed is such a blow, even if the safety net is adequate. Being without a job is being made to feel a nobody. But at least in the transition phase of this new industrial revolution, there are not going to be enough jobs for all. ... So a new analysis, a new theory, a new understanding of the role of labor is required. Let us hope that when the new Marx appears he will not be so arrogant, so fertile in spawning error and 1 terror as was the old. Still, we do need one.
Flora Lewis, International Herald Tribune, Paris, 18 May 1993
N EW W AYS TO W ORK What we have come to call Europe, finds itself in the curious position of having a major leadership responsibility in this regard, at least in part faute de mieux. For better or worse most of the rest of the planet is caught up with other concerns and priorities, and appears to have neither time, resources, social-intellectual commitment or inclination to dig into these issues and come up with robust, long term, sustainable new patterns capable of replication in many different sorts of surroundings. And even if there should be some happy surprises in this respect, this would nonetheless not remove Europes leadership obligations for itself and possibly for the rest of the world as well. I therefore fear that if the leading European institutions, an d in particular the Commission and the European Parliament, fail to take leading role in managing this transition, the world as a whole risks to be a substantially poorer place for future generations, and Europe a place with a rich past, an impoverished present and a possibly nightmarish future. By helping itself, by devoting resources and effort to coming to grips with the challenges of this new age, Europe will be able to make the transition not just something which is bearable, but something which is deeply enriching. Fortunately, virtually all of the means for doing this are at hand. In the end, the job crisis raises the most fundamental ques* * *
tion of human existence: What are we doing here? There is a colossal amount of work waiting to be done by human beings - building decent places to live, exploring the universe, making cities less dangerous, teaching one another, raising our children, visiting, comforting, healing, feeding one another, telling stories, inventing things, and governing ourselves. But much of the essential activity people have always undertaken to raise and educate their families, to enjoy themselves, to give pleasure to others, and to advance the general welfare is not packaged as jobs. Until we rethink work and decide what human beings are meant to do in the age of robots and what basic economic claims on society human beings have by virtue of being here, there will never be enough jobs. 2
Against this background, The purpose of the initiative behind this monograph, the several years of focused research, brainstorming and work that have preceded it, has been to draw attention to what I believe to be a potentially promising track of inquiry and action in the face of the perplexing jobs/work/society conundrum which is being so unsuccessfully joined in most places to date, whether in Europe, North America or, for that matter, anywhere else in the world. Given the immense stakes and the resounding failure of policy makers to engineer any major inroads in the problems thus far, it is clearly important for all concerned to be in a position to consider the full range of available knowledge concerning the changing nature of work in the closing years of the 20 th century, including less familiar and less conventional concepts. At present this is somewhere between very difficult to absolutely impossible to do. At the same time there is a huge body of information and opinion available on the topic and its many parts. Unfortunately, for reasons that will be reviewed here, most of this is marred by poor or misleading statistics, flawed reasoning and misrepresentation, both conscious and unconscious. Almost as unfortunately, much of the information available until now that might help us move away from the obviously unsuccessful policies of the past based on the received wisdom, has in the main emphasized criticism of the existing arrangements, rather than providing positive counsel which might help us better understand what to do next. It is agreeable of course to have counsel as to what not to do in these circumstances, but it would be even more useful to have a better idea of what we should be trying to do next.
Richard J. Baronet, The End of Jobs, Harper's Magazine, March 1993
II. 1994 P ERSPECTIVES
R ETHINKING W ORK Against this backdrop, my goal in these pages is to make a provocative and reasonably convincing first statement of an alternative way of thinking about and addressing these issues which I believe merits closer attention by those responsible for making and influencing policy. As hopefully will become quickly clear, this is not intended as yet one more expert report. The intention is to put before the reader a lively document which pulls together many disparate strands from the critical literature and thinking, and which is interesting and provocative enough to stimulate further discussion and exchanges of these ideas and perspectives. This introductory statement assumes that the reader has full access to the abundant national and international statistics and other indicators which, warts and all, provide the vital backdrop to these considerations and judgments, many of which are highly qualitative in nature. 3 If the document succeeds, it is because it manages to make the case for giving more attention than we have till now to new, more heavily innovative and potentially more far-reaching approaches. If on the other hand you come away from this reading with the impression that the existing arsenal of tools and measure is likely to do the job, I will have failed in what I set out to accomplish. This piece is called a thinking exercise, as opposed to the more familiar article or book. Certainly it takes printed form in this instance, but it differs from the usual approach to the extent that it is seen as part of an on-going process that has several rather interesting aspects, as will be seen in the pages that follow. This paper is presented at this point as the work of an individual author, a private citizen and long time observer of these issues who is responsible for all these words and thoughts, for better and for worse. (Thus, when you have a grievance or disagreementor possibly some encouragement or ideas about how to do betteryou the reader will know exactly where to turn.) Since it is my intention to evoke response and reactions, the whole thing is set out in an informal and quite personal style. The idea was to get away from the numbing prose of most official documents which, while it may accomplish some ends, rarely engages the entire brain and interest of the reader. In places the following is thus purposely quite pugnacious, in others perhaps a bit zany But I believe that on the whole it does not lack ideas and that it does set the challenge. We will now see if this has been done well enough to evoke the response that is to be hoped for. The author stakes no claim to original thought on any of the many varied subjects set out here. I didnt think it to be necessary since there is no paucity of good ideas. The main challenge, as I see it, is that of sorting out all these ideas, insights, preferences, prejudices and recommendations, and then lining up the best of them in a way so that they make sense and can somehow be implemented -- or at the very least not prevented from taking place on their own. As far as original ideas are concerned, I have followed the prescription of Stravinsky who, when asked if he ever borrowed themes or musical ideas from other composers, replied that he certainly did notthat he stole them! So, if you spot any really good ideas in the following pages, you can be sure that they were stolen from someone else. But then again, is not this the way we really fashion all knowledge and progress?
This cautionary note is needed because as will be seen an important part of our present policy impasse stems from the fact that a major overhaul is needed in terms of the systems of indicators that we are using to navigate in these troubled waters. Since these materials are also being made freely available in easy to use electronic form to anyone who wishes them through our World Wide Web site (http://www.the-commons.org/) and the New Ways to Work Forum that we have set up on Telework Europa and CompuServe for these purposes, it can also be anticipated that the larcenies will continue as others make us of and build on them in a variety of ways. This of course gets us deep into the realm of intellectual property, one which we are going to hear a great deal more about in the future as Internet and technology in general re-position us all in the world of ideas and words. For my part, I tend to worry a lot less about issues of intellectual property than I do about the crushing considerations which I have tried to take on in these pages.
3
N EW W AYS TO W ORK I would like to thank my colleagues at the Commission who have not only taken the risk to support such a free-wheeling project as this, but also have proven a source of ideas and useful criticism over these months of hard work. The contributions and support of those who attended the roundtables, sent papers and comments, and generally energized and inspired us have been enormous. I also must mention if not the names at least the fact that several dozen people have kindly taken the time to communicate their reactions and critical commentsand in almost all cases their not-inconsiderable enthusiasmfor the ideas set out here. Their encouragement is deeply appreciated; to them all I am profoundly grateful. This is however by no means the end of this process. The present version (the second to date) is now being widely shared through electronic and other means, a technique of intellectual interaction which has already shown enormous usefulness. I also look forward with great interest to the reactions of those who will be attending the Berlin Assembly on New Ways to Work, to whom copies are being made available. It is anticipated that later versions will not only contain a considerable number of changes and rectifications, but it is even to be hoped that there may be additional ideas and content that will make it into a more provocative, useful andin the final analysis what really counts effective document. I realize that this approach places considerable demands on the readerboth intellectual and otherbut I rather think that the effort will prove worthwhile. There is some very good stuff here and your patience should be amply rewarded. In the meantime, I must personally assume responsibility for all interpretations and representations, knowing that there are omissions and errors, but hoping that the sheer interest of this hastily produced second version will justify these shortcomings. My real interest, however, is in using this as an irritantto get YOU to rethink work.
Eric Britton, EcoPlan, Paris 25 October 1994
R ETHINKING W ORK
1. THE BACKGROUND
The striking phenomenon for most countries within the Community at the beginning of the 1980s is the gross and general increase in unemployment. The scale of this phenomenon: 2 million unemployed in the 1960s; 6 million in 1978; nearly 12 million in 1983. Hence, the term crisis is fully justified for societies whose future and whose very credibility is placed in question, since they are based on an assumption of full employment which is no longer valid. The employment crisis will be the dominant influence on the 1980s, and will largely displace the energy crisis as the central preoccupation. The problems of employment and work will, much more than in the past, be central to the elaboration of policies in the member states of the Community over the coming years.4
1.1 Introduction
Here we are today, well more than a decade after that thoughtful FAST report was issued by the Commission, and we have to be prepared to admit at least two things. First, all the various workrelated problems to which their probing report on Employment, Technology, Society referred have only gotten worse (and in most instances a great deal worse at that). Second, that somehow the authors call for priority action was somehow not effective. Despite their warning, here we are a full thirteen years later and one of the most pressing. Altogether unresolved policy issues before us as we get set to turn the corner into a new century is still that of work. The challenges to policy makers and society, no matter how they are phrased, whether put in terms of work or jobs or unemployment (three very different angles on our problem) continue to be vast, structural, deeply felt and long term. And as if all that were not bad enough, it also turns out that, banal as they may sound, these problems are highly unfamiliar in many important respects. Thus, they are proving especially puzzling for analysts, politicians, media and public alike. It leaves one wonderingdoes it not? How is it possible that researchers and others may be so thoughtful, lucid and useful, and still somehow unable to get the attention of the policy makers and the public more generally? This certainly has to be one of our main concerns here as we face the same challenge, all too many years later.
4
Employment, Technology, Society - A New Model of Work?, FAST program, European Commission, 1983
N EW W AYS TO W ORK The central facts at least are clear, indisputable and out there for all to seelots of people out of work, more joining them on the dole every day, and no sign of honest relief in sight. These incontrovertible truths are however being obscured by the perspectives and terms chosen for the debate. The
There are three positive views about the future of work, leaving aside the purely pessimistic view that the present unemployment crisis will lead to disaster or continuing decline. The first is that something like full employment will return, and that employment will remain the normal and dominant way of organizing work. The second is that full employment will not return, and that we have now begun the transition to a leisure society for increasing numbers of people. The third is that full employment will not return, but that for increasing numbers of people it will be replaced by self-organized work, or ownwork. The actual future will, of course, contain all three. 5
resulting incapacity of policy makers (and their advisors) to sort out from this complex welter of facts and perceptions the real driving issues and options is proving immensely costly in economic, institutional and human terms to all involved: individuals, families, businesses, communities, and government at all levels. For all these reasons in 1992 EcoPlan decided to launch a pro bono independent public interest effort of collaborative problem-definition, exploratory research, information gathering, analysis and networking, which we dubbed the Rethinking Work program. Collaborators and sponsors around the world were approached for ideas, recommendations and support. Inputs were solicited and secured from a broad range of organizational types, disciplines, nationalities and philosophic points of view, in an attempt to ensure results which would at once be rich in possibilities and broad in terms of their application potential. Feedback, suggestions, materials and offers of collaboration flowed in from
In moving to a new ideology for our economic system, an essential first step is to recognize that the present conceptual framework is not only unworkable but destructive because it obscures the need for fresh and clear thought. A second is the need to frame a comprehensive diagnosis of the situation that we are in. The third is to frame a vision of what a new system could be. With that in hand, we can move to the questions of transitioning to that new system, which recognizes, preserves, and celebrates our success to date and will carry us to new heights of human advance.6
many different sources. Based on the early returns of this preparatory effort, representative of DG XIII of the Commission agreed in 1993 to support two brainstorming sessions to explore a wide range of ideas about the changing nature of work in post-industrial society, in order to have access to some independent views which might help better orient EC policy related to the development of new communications technologies, services and infrastructure. The present thinkpiece builds on these findings.
5 6
James Robertson, Future Work: Jobs, self-employment and leisure after the industrial age, Gower Temple Smith, 1985 Joseph Coates: Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Washington, DC, 1991
R ETHINKING W ORK
1.2 A Base Case We Can Usefully Bear in Mind

To help us focus these considerations I would like cite a single exemplary case of the basic underlying dilemma as I see it and set it out in a few words and a single diagram. The case chosen is the French experience between 1977 and 1994, during which time official unemployment soared from less than half a million to well more than three million todayan order of magnitude jump in less than twenty years. One might perhaps ascribe this shocking development to inattention or priorities placed elsewhere, but that was hardly the case. Over this period were no less than nineteen major, announced government job program initiatives, each of which took direct aim at this specific problem! The attached graph, which carries the title
Plans And Pacts: 16 Years Of Employment Policy in France, summarizes the dilemma in
a nutshell. To us it suggests that something rather complex is going on. It is this something, this clearly non-random event that we propose to investigate and comment on here.
There will be those who will be fast to claim that this is exactly what the problem isgovernment getting in the7way and above all impeding business from taking up the slack. To this often-expressed single-factor view of things, our response has to be not so fast. With do doubt, past government actions and interference in the labor marketplace is certainly proving an important part of the problem, but that there is much more to it than that. There are important qualitative considerations concerning the well-being of the population as a whole, which measures of a single index such as official unemployment do not even begin to get at. Furthermore, we should not lose sight of the fact that in many of these life quality areas, the French are not doing so badly. And that too somehow needs to be brought into the decision grid. In fact, we will go further and stake the claim that the French example is probably as good a place to start as anywhere in this attempt to fathom what is going on, since virtually all of the major problem elements are there. The reader should not accept as gospel even for a minute the claim that economic growth and giving a free rein to business is all that is needed to get out of this crisis. As will be seen there is a great deal more to it than that, and for our part we believe it is worthwhile taking the time to look into this a bit more closely.
Source: Liberation, Paris, 17 October 1993
N EW W AYS TO W ORK
1.3 Lets Look Back (and Think) -- Before Leaping Ahead

The way out of these vexing issues is going to be anything but easy. What may be surprising at first sight is our conviction that the main sticking point, ultimately, is not going to be I doubt whether more than a handful of the hundreds of mila lack of resources or money, lions of people who have worried about the future since the but a certain poverty of the days of Adam Smith have ever heard of, much less read, the mind. Great reservoirs of economic spokesmen of their times. 8 knowledge, imagination, clear thinking, cultural and institutional flexibility, hard work and negotiating skills will be needed to sort out the issues: any attempted remedial effort that fails to make full use of all these available resources is doomed to failure. Fortunately, we dont have to start from scratch: we have considerable help at hand. Observers, philosophers, doers and writers have been struck by this phenomenon of work, the struggle for wellbeing and daily life for many centuries, noting contradictions and fundamental underlying trends of the sort which concern us today. To go forward without looking back first is unwise as well as unnecessary. Here by way of some first reminders are a few rather different voices of the distant and less distant past that we can usefully consider, or at the very least keep at the back of our minds as we seek our way through these thorny issues. Consider for example Adam Smiths famous cautionary words about the longer term implications of modern work on man. His suggestion that the market needs some help may surprise some who may not have actually read what the master wrote. The understandings of the greater part of men are necessarily formed by their ordinary employments. The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become. The torpor of this mind renders him, not only incapable of relishing or bearing a part in any rational conversation, but of conceiving any generous, noble, or tender sentiment, and consequently of forming any just judgment concerning many even of the ordinary duties of private life. His dexterity at his own particular trade seems, in this manner, to be acquired at the expense of his intellectual, social, and martial virtues. But in every improved and civilized society this is the state into which the labouring poor, that is, the great body of the people, must necessarily fall, unless government takes some pains to prevent it.9 Or Nobel laureate Wassily Leontiefs more recent warning: The role of humans as the most important factor of production is bound to diminish in the same way the role of horses in agricultural production was first diminished then eliminated by the introduction of tractors, Mr. Leontief wrote. The demand for clerical and service workers as well as for semi- and unskilled workers will fall with technological innovations. Employment opportunities are likely to increase only among professionals, particularly scientists, engineers, computer specialists, managers and teachers. And their numbers will be small compared with the pool of millions of white- and blue-collar workers who will be permanently displaced.10
Robert Heilbroner, Reflections - Economic Predictions, The New Yorker, 1991 Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, 1776 10 Institute of Economic Analysis, New York Univ., New York, 1986
8 9
R ETHINKING W ORK The irrepressible Ivan Illich too can help us open our minds and look around for the sort of new perceptions we must be prepared at least to consider: In the Middle Ages there was no salvation outside the Church, and the theologians had a hard time explaining what God did with those pagans who were visibly virtuous or saintly. Similarly, in contemporary society effort is not productive unless it is done at the behest of a boss, and economists have a hard time dealing with the obvious usefulness of people when they are outside the corporate control of a corporation, volunteer agency, or labour camp. Work is productive, respectable, worthy of the citizen only when the work process is planned, monitored, and controlled by a professional agent, who insures that the work meets a certified need in a standardized fashion. In advanced industrial society it becomes almost impossible to seek, even to imagine, unemployment as a condition for autonomous, useful work. Henceforth the quality of a society and of its culture will depend on the status of its unemployed: will they be the most representative productive citizens, or will they be dependents? The crisis again seems clear: advanced industrial society can degenerate into a holding operation harking back to the dream of the sixties: into a well-rationed distribution system that doles out decreasing commodities and jobs and trains its citizens for more standardized consumption and more powerless work. This is the attitude reflected in the policy proposals of most governments at present.11 Despite his usual pyrotechnic language and love of exaggerated statement for shock purposes, what Buckminster Fuller says merits reflectionparticularly his prescriptive words on the new role of education in this post-work society: We should do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian Darwinism theory he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors. The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living.12 Joe Coates was a trifle tamer but hardly less interesting when he expressed his views that: The market system has brought us unprecedented benefits since its conception in the 18th century. But that system at every turn in its history has created large-scale disruption, wreaked havoc on the lives of millions of people, and been the subject of constant legal and regulatory correction to constrain and control bad behavior. After a century or more of corrective measures, we now end up with a system that bears little relationship to anything Adam Smith wrote about. It is important we recognize that, since he is the icon to which most conventional thinkers genuflect. The name lives on but the system is dead. The measures to make capitalism socially acceptable have reshaped it beyond recognition. 13 Robert Heilbronner put it this way: What remains unanswered is two questions posed by the economists whose work still dominates our future. Can political and social forces wrench themselves sufficiently free of the imperative of economic expansion to keep this vital and vulnerable system from shaking itself to death? And, if so, must the great body of its people become as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become. These are matters
11 12 13
Ivan Illich, The Right To Useful Unemployment And Its Professional Enemies, Marion Boyars, London Buckminster Fuller in Workers of the World Unite and Stop Working!, 1993 Joseph Coates: Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 1993
N EW W AYS TO W ORK that are inextricably entangled in all economic predictions, which is to say that economic predictions are inextricably entangled in political and social ones. That has always been the case, but never before to such a degree. The same people who take me aside to ask what I think of the stock market often also ask me, somewhat nervously, whether economics is really a science. What they mean is whether it can look to the future with the farseeing eyes of the astronomer. I tell them it is half science and half morality tale, and that the hope of attaining whatever goals we seek will depend at least as much on economists thinking like moralists as predicting like scientists.14 And Albert Hirschmann sums up our sentiments on what we believe to be the position that our efforts should be taking as we gear to deal with these difficult challenges: The extent to which the ideas that have been discussed in this essay have been erased from the collective consciousness can be gauged by recalling some contemporary critiques of capitalism. In one of the most influential of these critiques, the stress is on the repressive and alienating feature of capitalism, on the way it inhibits the development of the full human personality. From the vantage of the present essay, this accusation seems a bit unfair. The opposite kind of forgetfulness is also in evidence: it consists of trotting out the identical ideas that had been put forward at an earlier period, without any references to the encounter they had already had with reality, an encounter that is seldom wholly satisfactory. ... I conclude that both critics and defenders of capitalism could improve upon their arguments through (better) knowledge of intellectual history. This is probably all one can ask of history, and of the history of ideas in particular: not to resolve issues, but to raise the level of the debate.15 Which brings us back to the objective of this small book, which is just thatto raise the level of the debate.
1.4 Ten Bones of Contention

Dissatisfied with the level of the debate -- and above all with the demonstrably inadequate results of policy throughout most parts of the OECD region -- EcoPlan set out in early 1993 to develop a procedure to test a certain number of problem statements: propositions and working hypotheses that were set out in a first exploratory memorandum. The thought was that if these decidedly controversial readings of the evidence could pass the test of critical review and commentary by a properly qualified independent audience, it would be appropriate as a next step to seek support for further research and action programs based on new and more far-reaching approaches to these issues. After several years of study, networking, brainstorming, and international exchanges involving a wide range of individuals, institutions, disciplines, nationalities and points of view, we have reached the following ten conclusions which, in our view, provide a convincing argument for the need to take a radically different look at the issues and the remedial policies we should be considering: 1. The Present Crisis Is Profound, Structural, And Society Threatening Unemployment rates are inexorably inching up across the OECD region, crossing thresholds first double and now triple or more the long accepted norms for "frictional" or "normal" unemployment, creating new magnitudes of hardship and suffering
14 15
Robert Heilbroner, Reflections - Economic Predictions, The New Yorker, 9/1991 Albert Hirschmann , The Passions and the Interests, Princeton University Press, 1973
R ETHINKING W ORK for individuals, families and institutions alike. The problems associated with running out of work are not only very grave already but also are steadily getting worse. When we say very grave, we mean not just uncomfortable or transient -- but fundamental, structural, long term and, ultimately if unmet, society threatening. 2. The Paradox of Progress: We Have Successfully Saved Labor Now What? The measures currently in place are not doing the job, because there can be no easy or quick fixes to these problems. The harsh reality is that the circumstances before us are neither temporary nor the result of some hapless accident; they are the direct outcome of the social and economic system we have set in place. We have deliberately created all the preconditions of a "labor-saving" society -- and are now somehow flabbergasted that there are increasing numbers of people "out of work". Our dilemma is precisely this: with the long long arm of technology, we can now produce virtually everything we need with only a small fraction of the labor force we historically employed. So the real question is: how do we organize our daily lives under these radically different conditions? This absolutely vital question is not receiving the attention that it deserves. 3. Growth + Fine-Tuning Are Patently Not The Answer Confronted with what is clearly a major watershed issue of technology and society, our politicians, administrators, industrialists, labor unions and the rest are by and large giving their time to considering remedies, most of which in the final analysis consist of little more than marginal adjustments of existing policies, practices and institutions. The presumption appears to be that there is nothing basically wrong with the machine that is the economy, and that all that is required is a bit of fine-tuning and an upturn in the economic cycle. This is in our view a cosmic mis-match of medicine and disease. Growth as we know it will deal with only a small part of the problem, and all of the rest remains to be addressed.
4. We Have a Grossly Inadequate Understanding of What Work Is All About.

Clearly the point of departure for any serious remedial program cannot be to treat work as if it were only labor, i.e., just one more freely substitutable part of the process of production. But in our society work is a great deal more than that. In addition to its purely productive role, it is also the main vehicle that puts into the hands of citizens the means to obtain the goods and services they want and need in their daily lives. It is thus the vital motor (through demand pull) for keeping the productive side busy. But work has many other important functions too, of a psychological and social nature, none of which are getting sufficient play in the present debate. Moreover, it is clear that what we call work in the 21st century is going to differ as notably from what we have come to know over the last two centuries as did the model of the Industrial Revolution from its predecessor. Complicating all this yet further is that the transition from old work to new work is already well underway, and that this transition itself poses a large number of major challenges to policy makers. These various differences need to be factored into the debate (which till now has been remarkably retro-oriented in its vision of what work is all about.) 5. The Time Scale of the Analyses Is All Wrong. The problems before us are not cyclical or short term in nature, but structural and long term. We cannot simply wait for that next upturn in the current economic cycle. The time horizon of study and policy is thus not the old familiar one of months or a few years, but closer to generational. Our frame of reference cannot be the blips of the latest NBER figures or quarterly indicators, but the realms of Adam Smith, Marx,
N EW W AYS TO W ORK Kondratiev, Keynes and Schumpeter. Our dilemma in front of this unfamiliar situation is a double-bind: not only do we need to sharpen and develop analytic tools which can deal with these deeper horizons, but also the institutional and political arrangements which will permit us to make better decisions against this necessary long term frame. 6. We Are Looking at the Wrong Indicators How do you get out of the woods if your compass is broke? In examining the issues we are consistently looking at the wrong things (and often measuring even those wrongly). This is disguising the true dimensions of our dilemma. Thus, for example, the real dimensions of unemployment are in most places at least half again more than what is usually admitted or discussed. If that is true, of course, it changes everything. Furthermore, what we call work is a rich and complex phenomenon which has many important qualitative aspects which are by no means reflected in the usual indicators and in the discussions that ensue. The day of single indicators (and single factor causality) needs to be put firmly behind us. Progress is needed in developing new indicators that can permit us to understand better where things stand, in all their human and natural complexity. 7. We have a Major Tools Problem. We are struggling with these problems using analytic tools that are ill-adapted to the challenges of a post-industrial, mature, post-capitalist economy. Most of them were by and large fashioned at a time when scarcity was the driving factor in society, not plenty. Economics, for instance, is often defined as the study of the allocation of scarce resources between various and competing ends. But if resources are available in great abundanceas they are! -- arent entirely different analytic tools required? How does one factor in the externalities of work, including those that are positive? What are these new tools? Who should be trying to develop and refine them? Where is promising work going on along these lines which we all should be trying to follow? Furthermore, and not without irony, it needs to be mentioned that our analytic tools themselves are part of the problem. Therefore one of our first steps must be to develop the new tools that are needed and to refashion the best of those we have to accomplish the job that is needed in their new environment. 8. Many of Currently Proposed Measures May Make Things Even Worse The crowning news of our dilemma is that, as a result of a badly wrong-headed understanding of the basic problematique, many of the measures presently being discussed or enacted run the risk of being directly counter-productive. Some are likely to lock in parts of the problem. Others, yet more perniciously, risk to create situations which could be substantially worse than what would have resulted with no policy at all. We must develop a much clearer view, first of the problem, and then of the policy options which are available under the circumstances we actually face. 9. Radical Rethinking is Called For A critical read of the evidence makes it clear that the entire "work system" that we presently are living with (both in our daily lives, but, even more important in this case, the one we have in our minds) is no longer doing its job. Not only is there something that is already quite wrong, but, whatever it is, it is only going to get a lot "wronger" in the years ahead. The system we are stuck with and frantically trying to fix comes from another time and an entirely different set of circumstances. It is changing massively in front of our noses and needs to be completely rethought and radically over-hauled.
R ETHINKING W ORK 10. The Age of Plenty Paradox: The Problem Holds the Solution Because of the accumulated impacts of technology development over the last decades, we have entered an age of plenty -- without really recognizing it. But for some unfathomable reasons we insist on approaching the challenges before us as if we were paupers. Here is what countries within the OECD region now have in untold historical abundance: labor, capital, natural resources, physical and other support infrastructure, organizational and management skills, access to markets and huge numbers of people around the world who need goods, services and a higher quality of life. But no one appears to be taking this great abundance into account. We somehow stubbornly refuse to acknowledge what is going on. Technology -- embodied, usable knowledge -- is at the heart of our dilemma, but in a highly ironic way. On the one hand it is a critical part of the problem, on the other it is at the same time an absolutely vital element of the solution. This point, which is not being adequately brought into the debate, needs to be targeted, verified and then broadcast. To the best of our knowledge no one is giving this thesis the attention that it deserve -- and yet all the germs of the solution are there! * * *
Against this purposefully argumentative base, a six-step testing process and work program was then engaged: 1. Build up a flexible state-of-the-art network of people and institutions from many places and backgrounds to review and comment on this critical assessmentand in general to join forces to widen and deepen the debate. 2. Develop a collection of working papers which set out these alternative considerations and circulate these widely for comment. 3. Put the network to use to generate not only ideas and studies, but also actions and projects of a sort that will improve the base of information and experience available on the full range of available approaches. 4. Solicit ideas and support for one or more pilot projects which might provide a solid micro level base for testing and applying some of the ideas that are resulting from this collaborative investigation. 5. Lay a base for additional meetings, projects and events which will further query and develop the most promising of these ideas and materials over the next several years. 6. Develop funding and institutional support for continuing this program and developing new projects and activities within these broad policy areas. 7. On the basis of the first round of results from this preparatory work, in September 1993 DG XIII/B of the European Commission asked EcoPlan to organize, host and report on two workshops and brainstorming sessions to explore a wide range of ideas about the changing nature of work in post-industrial society, in order to provide some independent views and ideas which might help better orient EC policy related to the development of new communications technologies, services and infrastructure in general, and for telework in particular. It was anticipated that these meetings would not only serve the purposes of the Commission to get some independent orientation on these matters, but they also would give the participants and others following the EcoPlan Rethinking Work program from a distance an opportunity to define useful new projects, initiatives and exchanges, on the basis of a better understanding of both problem and solution path.
N EW W AYS TO W ORK
1.5 Project Preparation and Organization of the Meetings

Throughout the social sciences it will be necessary to question whether work should continue to be taken as meaning employment. As in other fields, a systematic review of the implications of this is called for. However, academic inertia and academic vested interests in the status quo make such a systematic review unlikely until the shift from employment to ownwork has become more commonplace. So meanwhile, it will be a top priority for pioneers of alternative thinking to open up the field. 16 The present project for the Commission was able to draw on the considerable base on information and contacts already initiated by EcoPlan under its Rethinking Work program. Building on this base, the first preparatory step was to begin to narrow the selection of people to attend the first two workshopswhich it was decided should be quite smallfrom the base of contacts which already numbered more than four hundred individuals and institutions with interests in these areas. This proved to be a most challenging first task for the project team. A distinguished group from a wide range of backgrounds, disciplines, interests and nationalities was assembled. The three dozen participants who eventually agreed to join the two sessions are identified by name in Annex A. Considerable care was taken to ensure that these were going to be creative and useful learning experiences for all involved. We were concerned not only with what was going to take place during the course of the meetings themselves, but also with what might happen or be made to happen in their wake. In a very real way one of the objectives of these sessions, in fact, was to coopt both the participants and the resources that they command in the hope of encouraging further work and cooperation on these important subjects. In preparation for the meeting an ambitious international database search was launched in an attempt to check out the leading print databases covering periodicals and other sources which might possibly report on interesting developments in the field of employment, unemployment, etc. The target was to develop a collection of somewhere between, say, 50 and 200 articles or extracts on our topic from a wide variety of sources that would, in and of themselves, make an informative and provocative (fast) read for the participants and others on the lookout for new ideas and approaches. We surely did not want to try to identify everything that had ever been printed that mentions employment, jobs or unemployment, since we were looking for things that involve unconventional, unusual, structural approaches, projects, etc. This sorting procedure was guided by a set of keywords that we gradually honed in test runs and which eventually led to a first set of results identifying approximately 500 sources in summary form. This proved of some use for the purposes of the Reader, but, truth to tell, it needs to be said that more work will be required if this kind of electronic sorting in this important area of public policy is to be achieve its full potential. Taking advantage of the prior research program, approximately 300 pages of materials in the form of articles and extracts were eventually identified and assembled to support the meetings and the project more generally. The Reader (as we call it) opens with half a dozen pieces which, taken together, provide a good general overview in support of the Telework Panel and its presentations. The remainder is given over to the broader issue of Rethinking Work and is more spread out in its coverage and concerns. The objective was to construct a series of lensesand very different lenses indeed! -through which those attending the workshops could together view the many aspects of the topics under study. The Reader is introduced in some detail in Annex B to this report.
16
J. Robertson, Future Work: Jobs, self-employment and leisure after the industrial age, Gower Temple Smith, 1985
10
R ETHINKING W ORK
1.6 Report Organization

This particular projects focus is dual and includes both the global problems of work and employment in society, as well as the specifically targeted sub-topic, telework. A few points need to be clarified about this background before taking it any further. What follows is not intended as a transcript of the two Paris meetings that were called by EcoPlan under this project supported by the Commission. It is rather an independent brainstorming piece based on a personal interpretation of the results of those sessions, and to an even greater degree on the broader process of research, exchange and idea-mongering that both preceded and followed them. It is aimed at both those within the European Commission who are concerned with both sets of issues (i.e., work/employment/society and telecommunications policy/telework) and the rapidly expanding array of individuals and institutions who are participating in the Rethinking Work network. The paper is organized in the form of a loose collage of things said, developed and implied by the meetings, intertwined with a number of telling references taken from the Reader and other published sources It also offers a sort of dialogue between some ideas, perceptions and concerns of the present and those of the past. And while the borrowed materials have been appropriately sourced, in most cases the individual comments have not been attributed to any one speaker, which is probably fair enough since what we were involved with was give and take and not authorship per se. It was no ones intention in participating in this process to write a book or even a report, but rather to open up, and if at all possible, to deepen the debate. While the paper draws from many sources, one in particular needs to be singled out for mention: a decade-old report by the FAST program of the Commission produced under the title Employment, Technology, and Society - A New Model of Work?, of which an incomplete copy was sent to me by Professor Robert Ayres of INSEAD (who has been a helpful source of both critical opinion and encouragement over this last year). The FAST report turned out to be one of the most provocative and thoughtful documents that I have yet run across on this subject. As you will note I cite it frequently as a sort of counter-point device on a number of occasions throughout this paper. And if I do not agree with every one of its perceptions (say, only 95%) and eventual recommendations (rather less), I nonetheless do not hesitate to recommend it as essential reading. One despairs only that it did not get more attention and use at the time. Our report has been organized into four major chapters in addition to this introduction, which are intended to present the main thrust of the materials and arguments that we believe need to be considered at this time in order to make the case for our main claim: that more resources and energy need to be directed to considering alternative and more far-reaching approaches to the challenges to these problems of work and joblessness in our fast changing 21 st century society. You will notice that we are already putting ourselves into the next century, an approach which we believe to be justified on several grounds.
First, because in point of fact we are almost there as far as many of both the problems and the potential solutions are concerned. Second, because the brunt of the impact of whatever we might agree to actually do along these lines will in fact make itself felt primarily in the next century, not this onethat being the inevitable lag between even the best idea on paper and fact of daily life.
11
N EW W AYS TO W ORK
Third, because it will, I hope, impart a certain shock value to these considerations and recommendations. We do indeed want the reader and others who s/he may be able to influence to think: sapristi!, we are already in the Year 2000!
This shock is apparently going to be needed if we ever are to get out of the traps of inertia and easy thinking which are, indeed, important elements of the present dilemma, which we claim to be one more of a failure of imagination and will, and not of dollars, ECU or resources. This first chapterThe Backdropattempts to set the stage for the three main chapters of the report. It tells the story of the events which led up to this report and sets out the basic objective of the Rethinking Program more generally. The second chapterTelework as Harbingerserves to open the report, focusing on this somewhat more narrow aspect of the agenda of the two meetings on the grounds that it gives us a quite good point of departure for the more general considerations which follow. It attempts to provide some useful perceptions both for the Commission in its own efforts in this field and for others who might be interested to have the results of our independent assessment of the potential of this particular new work approach. I might mention that the meeting found this to be an approach which is surprisingly useful in several important respects. The third chapterWork, Technology and Society: Gale of Destruction? -- gets us into the heart of the matter, bringing together several streams of materials and ideas addressed to the basic underlying concern of this program: the changing and puzzling relationship between what we call work and society and the economy more generally. This chapter is intended to make the case for the claim that it is going to be worthwhile to look more closely at approaches which go quite a bit farther than the range of things currently being done or discussed either in the media or government and business circles. In addition to the authors interpretation of the discussions and findings of the first brainstorming sessions (which ,as has been mentioned, are now being subjected to correction, amendment and review by the meeting participants themselves), this chapter brings together citations from several dozen authors who have addressed these issues from alternative perspectives both in recent years and in the past. The fourth chapter, The Changing Shape of Work, has been developed quickly to put before the Berlin Assembly four sets of concepts which I think can usefully be added to the policy debate. The closing chapterRecommendations, Conclusions and Next Stepsattempts to bring together both the most important of the broad general findings of the program to date, together with a certain number of recommendations for further action and follow-up.
12
R ETHINKING W ORK
2. T ELEWORK A S A H ARBINGER
The field of technology and organizational developments that are collectively known as telework, is not only an area of considerable interest in its own right, but is also an excellent lens for looking at and eventually better understanding many aspects of the broader work agenda that is the primary incentive of this study.
2.1 The Telework Agenda
1983 perspectives: The transition from mechanical work to electronic and telematic has not entirely eliminated the work on line but the latter is in the course of transformation, subdivision and diversification. Other nearby or distant units, linked with the production process by ever more complex and diverse connections, are participating in many different phases of the process of work. This transformation represents and contains a double process. On the one hand, there is a physical, temporal and spatial separation of the phases and the modes of production. On the other hand, there is a growth in all phases of production in activities ancillary to those of the manufacturing itself. 17
The immediate motive of this project was of course DG XIII/Bs decision to take advantage of the existence of a broad and highly qualified independent forum to look at, reflect on and test the telework concept and program of the Commission against the considerably broader background of the Rethinking Work program. The meeting took as the base for discussion the following definition of telework:
In the context of the actions described here, the term telework does not have a narrow technical definition. It covers a range of new ways of working, using telecommunications as a tool, and for at least part of the time outside a traditional office environment. These new ways of working include:
A new division of working time between an office near a persons home, the home itself and a city-centre office (the neighborhood office may be managed by the persons employer or by a third party).
17
Employment, Technology, and Society - A New Model of Work?, FAST program of the European Commission, 1983
13
N EW W AYS TO W ORK
A new division of working time between home, clients premises, and the employers offices for example by sales representatives, service engineers and software engineers. Work in geographically dispersed groups, either within the same organization, or bringing together people from different organizations for a particular project.
Telework increasingly involves the use of mobile and data communications as an integral part of a persons work, rather than as a specialist function. It is associated with new flexibilities in employment. 18
The means for this testing consisted essentially of three main parts: first, the various preparatory exchanges and materials that together lay the base for the two workshops; then, the backgrounds and knowledge of the participants themselves; and finally the process of discussion and exchange that took place. The actual focus of this part of the discussions extended beyond the specifics of telework or distance working, to consider as well the new structures, values and arrangements for communications technologies and services in general, which are the broader interests of this part of the Commission.. Here are the sorts of issues that were discussed under this heading by the meeting: What are the specific targeted goals behind telework (for individuals, employers, communities, suppliers, nations, regional institutions such as the Commission)? What is the time frame for telework planning today (on the part of each of these constituencies)? How far out into the future do these projects tend to look? What kind of future are they considering (extrapolative or other)? To what extent are radically different patterns of work organization considered? How do telework projects look at and try to incorporate education? Is telework a goal, or a transition strategy? How will we view telework in, say, twenty years time?
This was not, of course, an assessment in the formal or scientific term; rather it was a semistructured exchange of information, ideas and opinions with no particular end-objective in mind other than the exchange itselfa true brainstorming session. The present report attempts to provide a synopsis of the most important findings and observation of the meeting. No attempt was made to reach any formal conclusions: nonetheless, we feel that a certain general thrust of consensus was reached, as informally reported in the following pages.
18
European Commission, DG XIII, Actions for Stimulation of Transborder Telework & Research Cooperation in Europe, 1993
14
R ETHINKING W ORK
2.2 Introduction
The point of departure for the telework agenda was, to say the least, appropriately reserved for the circumstances. With perhaps one or two exceptions none of those who contributed to this process of exchange joined the project as unquestioning enthusiasts for the concept of using any given set of new technologiesno matter how promising they might be in principlein order to target major inroads in the often painful process of adjustment to post-industrial society and the many severe work-related problems that we are seeing in its wake. This is a point that needs to be stressed, since it can be seen that there are in this general area of applied information technologies quite a large number of, let us call them, enthusiasts. We can observe, based on past experience, whether at meetings, in the literature, etc., that they tend to fall into one or both of the following camps, which for purposes of argument we shall characterize as the innocents (more often than not academics or inventors) and the interested (usually current or potential producers of the technology, services suppliers, financial groups looking for a special niche.) It is our experience that in a variety of technology development arenas these devotees often find ways to make their weight felt in ways that may not always be directly proportional to the true potential and merits of the thing being examined. Now this is not to condemn this particular form of entrepreneurship or interest mongeringbut it is good to keep ones eye on it and recognize the biases when they begin to creep into recommendations, work programs of public institutions, etc. There were few such enthusiasts involved in this particular assessment effort, permitting us to provide the Commission with a properly balanced critical view of prospects in this particular area. Indeed if I were to try to characterize the general view of most of those who attended prior to getting into the discussion concerning what some think of as the rabbit out of hat thinking of most technology enthusiasts, I would be inclined to quote the words of Henry David Thoreau written in 1849:
We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas, but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate. We are eager to tunnel under the Atlantic and bring the old World some weeks nearer to the New, but perchance the first news that will leak through into the broad flapping American ear will be that the Princess Adelaide has the whooping cough... So with a hundred modern improvements; there is an illusion about them; there is not always a positive advance. The devil goes on exacting compound interest to the last for his early share and numerous succeeding investments in them. Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end.
Against this grittily independent background, the results of the discussions proved all the more surprising to many of us, highlighting the potential of telework and its related capabilities to make a major contribution in what we hope will become a war on Europes pressing employment problems more generally. A consensus gradually emerged to the effect that there is a great deal more to the concept than had perhaps been anticipated by most of us at the point of departure. Not only is significant activity already going on in the telework sector in daily life terms (i.e., not only in the laboratories and demonstration projects) and growing fastwithout as well as with government intervention and guidancebut also the whole concept turns out to be a powerful microcosm for the rest of the issues that brought us all to Paris.
15
N EW W AYS TO W ORK
Telework Isnt About Telework: Telework as we typically discuss it is only the tip of a growing iceberg. Above the surface is the visible issue of remote work locations and how to use them effectively, a subject about which we have learned a great deal and which is no longer, in my mind, much of an issue. Below the surface are related issues of flexibility in the workplace in general, managerial (in)competence, rethinking of office space requirements and designs, transportation and land use planning, and what I call life after bureaucracy - the prospects for organizational forms other than traditional hierarchical structures 19 . The take-up of new technologies has been so rapid, and has become so pervasive in modern society, that it is difficult to appreciate the extent to which ways of working have evolved. Already more than 10 million people in Europe could be classified as teleworkers in the sense they use telecommunications as a key link to their colleagues: sales representatives, lorry drivers, taxis, doctors and many others. The next step in this revolution will be the take-up of teleworking by other categories of employees with a single place of work.20
Thus, we were able to conclude that the broad, still evolving array of technologies, operating and institutional arrangements identified under this umbrella term of telework can be useful not only to achieve certain specific objectives on its ownbut also, if we take the time to observe it closely, should be able to help us open up our minds concerning a number of the practical things that we must now try to do in order to make valuable and much needed inroads into the larger questions of work and employment in post-industrial society more generally. It is for this reason that we speak of it as a harbinger. Rather than attempt to synthesize the individual remarks of the meeting on this component of the discussions, let me instead draw your attention to the following selection of brief extracts from various reports that were either shared with the meeting (through the Reader) or from other sources which are identified in each case and generally obtainable. I felt that such a pot porri of background information and views on this substantially underdefined but important subject could be useful to the readers of this report in helping them make up their own minds concerning the relevance and importance of telework in the future.
2.3 Some Alternative Points of View Worth Considering

In 1988, 15 years after launching the concept of electronically mediated distance working, Jack M. Nilles proposed a broad definition, covering all the abovementioned forms of telework. He simply stated that telework includes all workrelated substitutions of telecommunications and related information technologies for travel. Thus, the concept of telework is used for all kinds of electronically mediated work-related interactions across distance.21
19
20
21
Gil E. Gordon, Some Semi-Random Observations On The Status And Future Of Telework, commentes submitted over CompuServe subsequent to first two brainstorming sessions. Peter Johnston, Development of advanced communications and telework stimulation in the context of economic growth and job creation in Europe, DG XIII/B, European Commission, Brussels, April 1993 L. Qvortrup, Telework:Visions, Definitions, Realities, Barriers. (See Niles protest in closing annex.) Next 2 citatations from same source.
16
R ETHINKING W ORK Interest in telework did not spread widely until the early 1970s. The first reason was that the price of computers fell, making home computing a realistic possibility. Secondly, it became gradually understood that telecommunications and data processing would mesh into an integrated system. The combination of technical potential and social need seems to be a precondition for technological breakthrough. The dominant view of telework in this initial phase was the potential to save energy by substituting electronic communication for physical transportation. To sum up the search for an adequate definition of telework, one can specify three organizational phases and three corresponding definitions.
1. Telecommuting: The first phase is characterized by an early fragmentation of traditional centralized organizations. The corresponding definition of telework is to work at home instead of in a central office, thus substituting telecommunication for the twicedaily commuter journey. The appropriate term for this is Telecommuting. 2. Teleworking: The second phase is characterized by a dispersion of traditional organizations. New, decentralized satellite offices and local work centers are established in addition to electronic homework. Still, however, the dominance of the centre is unchallenged. The appropriate term for this is Teleworking. 3. Networking: Finally, the third phase is characterized by a diffusion of traditional organizations. New specialized service organizations are being established, individuals work as advisers and consultants, traditional office work is replaced by work based on computer conferencing networks etc. The appropriate term for this is Networking. At the OECD experts meeting in 1987, Maria Christina Gibelli described two contradictory tendencies in the development of the city: On the one hand she identified the Fordist Metropolis, characterized by a strict relationship between form and function, by specialized zones of industry, administration and residential quarters, with a cultural-symbolic centre, and with a regular pulse, beating like a heart, everyday sending flows of commuters from the outskirts into the centre and back again. On the other hand she put forward the concept of the Postmodern Metropolis, heavily reliant on networking co-operation, less rigidly structured, capable of hosting changing functions in the same buildings, thus losing its unambiguous architectural signals. In order to host flexible information-based activities, traditional architectural typologies clearly related to specific functions will lose their significance in favor of flexibility and multi-purpose adaptability. Consequently we witness a trend away from traditional architecture saying that this is an office, this is a railway station, this is a museum, to a post-modern or negative architecture saying that this is not an office (because offices have become invisible), and this is not railway station (because railway stations are used as museums). Based on networking and thus partly eliminating the meaning of geographical distance, this post-modern city will mix up office work quarters, shopping centers, and residential quarters, with the intelligent home as the symbolic node of home-working, home-shopping, homebanking, and home-based leisure.22
22
Lars Qvortrup, Telework: Visions, Definitions, Realities, Barriers
17
N EW W AYS TO W ORK
Rural America: A Future of Decline and Decay Unless ... As we see it, the long-term solution to rural Americas decline lies in effective economic linkages to the Knowledge Society nationally and globally. The single, most important factor in achieving that linkage is the fiber optics wiring of rural America. If there were one Godlike intervention that one could bring about to promote the rehabilitation of rural America, it would be fiber optics wiring of thousands of communities around the nation. 23 Multi-Purpose Centers Are A Must: Much of the current telework discussions around the world are concerned with rural telework centers, satellite offices, telecottages, and other non-residential remote work sites. I would suggest that singlepurpose centers are almost always doomed to fail. Instead, we should be looking for ways to make them tele-everything centers: telelearning, telemedicine, telegovernment, and perhaps teleshopping, in addition to telework. This range of uses will help leverage the investment in the centers themselves, as well as making them more attractive to different community members for different purposes. Similarly, the design and role of these centers cannot be predetermined; each community must have a role in shaping its own center, instead of relying on a cookie-cutter design created by so-called experts.24
To close out this section, we give the word to the EC unit that is working on this, to hear how they define it: Telework increasingly involves the use of mobile and data communications as an integral part of a persons work, rather than as a specialist function. It is associated with new flexibilities in employment, both in the place of employment and in the hours worked. It may involve quasi-autonomous working by highly trained specialists or supervised work in secretarial support, accounting and data entry activities. The business sectors most involved are those with a high information content . In high added-value up-stream activities such as research, software development, product design; in business management activities, such as accounting, financial services, insurance claims processing, business services and information management; in media activities such as journalism, publishing, TV, video services and games development, advertising and publicity services; in retail and distribution; in transport fleet management and in stock control, customer services and commercial sales support. Telework can help to introduce new flexibilities in employment. Job mobility is increasing: the average time people spend in any job is now down to 6 years in Europe and less than 3 years in the USA. In many cases, people are not able to move their homes and families with the frequency they change job. This geographical inflexibility can now be compensated by the geographical redistribution of work, driven by market forces, and enabled by the development of appropriate information infrastructures and training in the use of telematics.
23
24
Joseph F. Coates, From My Perspective: Rural America: A Future of Decline and Decay Unless ..., Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 1993 Gil E. Gordon, Some Semi-Random Observations On The Status And Future Of Telework, Submitted to the "New Concepts of Work in an Knowledg Society" meeting, 10/11 December 1993
18
R ETHINKING W ORK Telework can be associated with new flexibilities in working hours, particularly for part-time work, and in employer-employee relationships (multiple part-time employment patterns), particularly important for women and the disabled. The motivations for teleworking are therefore numerous for employers: lower overheads, particularly office costs; access to new pools of skilled labour and a more flexible and stable workforce. For employees: greater flexibility in their allocation of time and energies, lower housing and commuting costs, and a better quality of life, and for society less congestion in major cities, less environmental damage, reduction in energy use and a better distribution of local and regional tax revenues. 25 The information infrastructures now emerging in all industrialized areas of the world have the potential to radically change the way people work and the structures of business activities. Work outside a traditional office environment, and at a location distant from colleagues and clients, is now a real possibility thanks to desk-top computers and fast digital telecommunications. .26
Telework: One profile of recent European experience at the firm level

The best knownbut the least interestingform of telework is surely telecommuting: situations where people work at home some or all of the time for their employer. I say least interesting, not because nothing of interest is going on in this areabecause a great deal is! -- but to give the an idea of just how exciting, explosive and far-reaching the developments that already are going on in this sector as broadly defined are. That may sound like a wild statement, so let me try to clarify with a specific example to show in a few words how new ways of doing business to which telework is integral are rapidly become banal everyday propositions, often without those who are participating in the experience actually realizing that the extent to which telework or distance working is involved. There are thousands of instances, but let me cite the case which has very recently taken form in Europe... perhaps a harbinger in its own right, In 1985 a group of young people got together in a small town in South Dakota in the United States to start a company to sell through the mail personal computers which they assembled quite literally in a barn on a cattle farm. The components they assembled were almost all imported from overseas suppliers. Even at this early stage this experience has at least elements of telework in it, primitive though it may seem: distance sources and distance clients. Their business was held together (the glue) through a combination of phones, faxes, mails, external delivery firms and some computer-to-computer communications. It is worth noting that this formula worked because the group was small, young, flexible, adaptive, non-hierarchical, entrepreneurial, wellorganized, hard working and optimistic. Within a few years they grew into a Fortune 500 firm, which employs more than 4,000 people with close to $2 billion in sales (note: thats half a million dollars a year per head) and are fast expanding throughout Europe, but with their own particular model of business organization.
25
TELEWORK '94: Actions for Stimulation of Transborder Telework and Research Co-Operation in Europe, DG XIII/B, European Commission, Brussels, April 1993. Seven preceeding citations taken from this source and rearranged withminor editing by the author. 26 Peter Johnston, Development of advanced communications and telework stimulation in the context of economic growth and job creation in Europe, DG XIII/B, European Commission, Brussels, April 1993
19
N EW W AYS TO W ORK The old work model for the industry was of course typically a situation in which a single large brought all of its employees under a given roof or roofs, 19 th century style, in order to build and eventually sell, deliver and service their own line of equipment. The labor forceall contracted, beholden and, hence, loyal to a single employertraveled to their distant work place, assembled on fixed schedules, performed tightly specified tasks under due supervision, and were paid weekly or monthly by their unique employer (who in Europe also assumes a major part in the responsibility for the supporting social services (health care, unemployment, retirement) for each employee). All produced equipment is either sold and transported by the firms own employees, or put into stores that people travel to in order to buy the computer, which is then somehow transported to their office or home (often as not by the seller or the buyer), with maintenance subsequently provided either by the seller sending a repair man or the buyer physically bringing the equipment back to the repair shop. A cradle-to-grave operation in more senses than one. The new model involves a radically different mode of work organization. Gateway for example has achieved and extended its system with a rapidly growing and vital telework component. The firm continues to tele-order all vital components from distant suppliers. It now assembles its computers in Ireland (creating more than 400 new jobs since its October 1993 start-up) as well as in the States. Much of its administrative support is handled on a telework basis. It markets through the media (include electronic shopping, bulletin board services and fora), makes the sales transaction through yet other media, tele-invoices and tele-collects, and then delivers them directly to their using a third party transporter intermediary (such as the postal system or courier service, all of which themselves are increasingly voracious users of distance work technologies). Maintenance is carried out either on contract by yet another group who carry out the maintenance in both of the traditional models (though if you look close you will see that these too are heavily laden with new communications and distance work elements), plus a third which is only now beginning to take off: telediagnostic. The latter, which is becoming an increasing prevalent mode of maintenance, allows technicians at some distant location to analyze and even adjust equipment through modems and over the phone lines. At each step along the process of design, parts supply assembly, payment, sales and maintenance, you will spot a growing telework component. This is accompanied in this particular case, I have observed, by quite a high degree of job satisfaction on the part of, if not all at least most of those concerned. What seems to appeal to those who practice this new work style is the flexibility that this work environment provides, plus the high degree of independence and responsibility. They do not of course have anything like the old concept of lifetime employment, but this new model appears to be working at least for them and for now. What business is Gateway really in? Information, knowledge, manufacture, entrepreneurship, marketing, communications, education, finance, co-ordination, transport, data processing, , incitation, and management ...? Whatever it is, both their product and the strategic base is shifting very rapidly, so they have to continue to perform well in the niche which they have chosen. So flexibility, partnerships, teleworking and, above all, information, communication, and flexibility are their main stock in trade. I would like to think that these young entrepreneurs read the 1983 FAST report. The truth is, of course, that they actually understood it. Which may provide us with some clues for the future.
20
R ETHINKING W ORK
2.4 Twenty Tentative Conclusions on Telework and Its Prospects

Against this background, I present in closing a number of thoughts and conclusions which flowed from the meeting but which the participants themselves have not yet had the opportunity to review and comment on. Nonetheless, here they are for now, with individual items numbered to facilitate later discussion and reference. 1. Telework (in the very broad definition which is appropriate) is going to undergo major and far-reaching significant development in the decade ahead 2. Its impact on employmentqualitative and quantitativeis going to be enormous. 3. By virtue of the geographic and temporal flexibility that it can impartand its associated reach into the guts of a highly varied labor force and changing climate of work organizationtelework and its principal variants constitutes one of the major harbingers of the new flexible work arrangements of the 21st century. 4. While we can certainly see that it might in specific instances possibly reduce jobs, properly supported (through revisions in the law, business practices, etc.), it can be expected to extend the possibility of working to many more people and, potentially, in substantially improved work circumstances and life quality. 5. Attention should be paid, though, to its potential down sides which are several and often not exactly self-evident. 6. All of this is moving and changing very fastcertainly much faster than those who do not follow these developments carefully will be aware. 7. In fact the pace of developmentbecause much of it is hidden in the interstices of existing institutions and practicesis even faster than many of the tele-philes may imagine. 8. Most of the development that is going on is taking place in the fieldand not in laboratories or research groups. 9. Much of this development will take place within existing organizations and institutions 10. Much of that will be carried out for a variety of reasons that relate to the implementing companys or groups internal problems or objectivesnot in order to telework per se. 11. Overall, it can be expected that the bulk of developments in this area will be lead by applications and demand pull and not by technology push per se 12. That said, of course, the former will only be possible because of advances in the technology itself. 13. There is every reason to take measures to ensure that Europe develops among the world leaders in this area of endeavor. 14. Areas that lag in these respects are going to suffer substantial competitive disadvantages in the international economy. 15. As important as sheer technology advance will be the development of the adaptive capacities (organizational, management, etc.) of those groups and institutions who learn how to put these opportunities to work 16. It is fair to assume that the future will resemble the past in this respect and that the penetration of these new technologies and supporting structures, together with their expected consi-
21
N EW W AYS TO W ORK derable advantages, will not be evenly spread over the map of Europeeither in geographic, institutional or sectoral terms. There are going to be leaders and laggers, haves and have-nots. 17. This is going to be anything but trivial in the present since it is already clear that those who adapt early to these new techniques of organization are going to have very large competitive advantages over those who do not in many areas. 18. For example the Gateways, IBMs, Nokias, and Siemans of Europe are not going to need any help in this areaeither as users or as potential suppliers. They are staying abreast of these developments, have their own in-house uses and capabilities which are already quite advanced, and are already deploying the technology just about as fast as they can. And while their speed in doing this is important in international competitive terms, it will of course increase their advantages relative to small business and the public sector. 19. If experience is any guide, successful telework programs can be expected to lag in certain parts of Europe (and certainly there we can also think of the Eastern Europe brother countries who are going to need help), in the public sector, and in smaller and older businesses. 20. Failing the possibility of conversion, these laggers are likely to be under such competitive pressures that most could be expected to disappear altogether. That will of course be a choice.
22
R ETHINKING W ORK
3. WORK, TECHNOLOGY & SOCIETY: GALE OF DESTRUCTION?
3.1 The Questions Asked

The point of departure for the two brainstorming sessions was a memorandum distributed in advance, setting out the nine bones of contention or test statements which we proposed as the base for the general. In addition we proposed the following short-list of questions for consideration.
Why is it that we seem to be doing so very badly in front of this challenge? Why is the level of discourse around it so thin and uninspiring? Do we actually understand what is going on? Are we asking the right questions? Cant we figure out some way to get a better handle on the problems? Are we taking into full account all the functions of work (economic, social, personal)? Do we have a clear map (geographic temporal, demographic) of work in the future? Is the present policy-path solving problemsor laying the base for future problems? How can we get on the right side of structural change? What should the public policy targets be? How much can be expected of the public sector? Is it a major or incidental actor? What about short-term vs. long-term requirements and conflicts? What about the vital work/education link? Targets for research and action? Can there be a unifying global framework for policy and action? What more do we need to know before acting? Ideas for specific pilot and other projects The international communications link. Putting work to work ( work as a motor for environmental & other objectives)
Where do we go from here? These questions and statements served as the point of departure for the discussions, on top of which the critical views, ideas and priorities of the participants were then engaged. The objective at no point was to try to generate concrete recommendations of detail as to how all these myriad and complex problems can be fixed. Rather the goal of this project and the meeting was to see if we could
23
N EW W AYS TO W ORK put our heads together to provide the Commission and anyone else who might care to listen with some useful ideas and guidance as to how we all might begin to move toward some sort of path whereby the basic underlying issues can be better defined and better addressed. To be absolutely clear on this point, the bottom line of the considerations was not research but policy. And the intended audience for what we have to offer is not only government and administrations -- since there are many more actors who must become involved in the solution process -- the business and financial community, academic and educational institutions, professional groups, inventors, entrepreneurs, representatives of labor, churches and religious groups, the media, public interest groups, local and community institutions, and the individuals and families concerned. The hope of course is that once this task of genuine rethinking of the issues and the choices on the part of all these diverse interests has been properly engaged, the policy end will already begin to take shape.
3.2 Where do We Stand Today on the Key Issues?

It is not of course possible to portray fully and accurately all the wide variety of discussions and points of view that have resulted from this brainstorming effort by people with such varied backgrounds and points of view in the course of a single short paper. In the following section, however, I have attempted to capture what I think of as the sense of the meetings, focusing attention on a certain number of points that in my view eventually emerged as central considerations. Later versions of this paper may carry substantial modifications subsequent to the critical reading and inputs of the other Employment, Technology & Society: A New Model of Work? meeting participants.
Overall, I think it can be fairly reported that the nine bones of contention set out above were generally accepted as valid28, and that the meetings reached the general conclusion that there is indeed a need for new kinds of thinking and much broader perspectives on the issues which in most cases today are being treated in far too narrow a context. Beyond that general finding, which is consistently reflected and supported in the observations that follow, we have chosen to report in some more detail on the following general issues, to which the meeting gave quite a lot of attention, namely: Is the present crisis primarily the result of a temporary downturn in the economy, or is something much deeper afoot that may require radical action? Will we be able just to grow our way out of the problemmeaning the policy emphasis should focus above all on stimulating growth through conventional macro and other economic policies?
In the course of our studies of work and employment, we have the impression that we have raised more questions than we have answered. The reader will not find clear-cut descriptions of the level of employment, attitudes towards work, the number of salaried staff in the car industry at the end of the decade, or the statute under which women will seek to work in the 1990s. Rather, the reader is invited to traverse a variegated scene, painted in contrasting colours.27
27 28
Employment, Technology, Society - A New Model of Work?, FAST program, European Commission, 1983 There were, I might note, objections to the language, the phraseology of some of the points which was felt by some to be unnecessarily inflammatory. The author stands thoroughly chastised, and has tried to do better.
24
R ETHINKING W ORK Do we understand what the real problems are that we should be addressing? Might it not be that we are defining and thinking about our topicworkin far too narrow terms? Do we not now have to redefine work, and then begin to line up our institutions and practices with what should be the right set of concepts? Are we going to have to define what we mean by work in the 21 st century some radically different ways -- and what might this imply?
It was felt that these were useful sorts of questions to give attention to, as a step in the direction of seeing if we might be able to offer some useful counsel for eventual new directions for public policy and action, while eat the same time providing a useful backdrop against which we could next look at the telework issues that also needed comment and orienting remarks.
As the recession in Western Europe drags on, business is booming for suppliers of bad ideas on how to cut unemployment. The Copenhagen summit failed to make progress. The ECs governments merely promised to keep talking about the subject; they avoided doing anything outright harmful, but only because they avoided doing anything of substance at all. A careful appraisal of which anti-unemployment measures to adopt, and which to avoid, is still needed.29
3.3 Transient Technical Glitch or Fundamental Systems Failure?

While the meeting made no attempt during the brainstorming sessions to review or evaluate the statistical, economic and copious other available evidence on the matters we were reviewing, think I can fairly report that there was nonetheless a general consensus to the effect that the crisis we are facing is one of major dimensions, that it is deeply structural, and that it is not about to give into the sort of ad hoc and stop-and-go methods which until now have been the main stock of public policy in most places. We also noted the existence of a considerable discrepancy between the occasional rhetoric of public servants and administrators (which at times hints at the urgency of the issues) and the relatively limited piecemeal approaches which have in fact been enacted in most places). This in most cases appears to be due to the implicit acceptance by those in position of power that all or at least most of these problems will evaporate once the economy gets rolling again. This abiding faith in the power of the motor of growth is something that needs to be looked at much more closely.
Some observations from the meetings:
Our economic system is not designed to generate employment. Its aim is to create maximum wealth (output) using a minimum amount of resources (input), including labour. More and more work is being done, but by a smaller proportion of the labour force. As a result this wealth is increasingly concentrated in an ever-reducing section
29
The Economist, London, 26 June 1993
25
N EW W AYS TO W ORK of society. The system itself may be under threat as consumption patterns are affected and the value system based on each individual being gainfully employed breaks down.
While this statement will, of course, need to be supported, the basic background to this issue can be summarized in a nutshell. We know for instance that it took the better part of a century to move something like 95+ of the effective labor force out of the agricultural and resource extraction sectors and into manufacturing, the employment El Dorado of the 20th Century (though, as we all know, there are still a few problems back in the agriculture/employment nexus that have yet to be resolved). But it then took only a few decades for us to start to see corresponding cutbacks on the requirement of industry for labor, a painful and by many unanticipated process which already has gone quite far but still has quite some way to go (for example: can you think of a single major European industrialist who would not like to be able to get rid of at least 50% of his labor force in the next few years?) And now the same ineluctable process is already raging in many parts of the service sector, but much faster than the earlier generational substitutions and still with a LONG way yet to go there. Although I am not an economist I have run across the problem on several occasions lately as conventional techno-economic evaluations capture hopelessly little of the true potential of bright ideas for improvement. In general, we are stuck with the concept of economy of scale which like a black hole drags everything into disaster. This has been particularly evident recently in our efforts here to find non-food outlets for surplus agroproduction. We have come up with a scheme which allows the direction of the surplus into the energy and fiber market with little or no additional investment saving 75% of the subsidies as compared to current practice (with Finnish low energy and high farming prices, in some other countries it would be profitable as such). But it still seems difficult to convince people as it is a loss making operation unless you can put values on maintaining a living countryside with meaningful jobs. I cannot resist commenting on your assertion that we are confronting a phenomenon of technology-pushed unemployment. This is a value-loaded assertion which can easily slide into a Luddite attitude to new technologies. The industrial revolution can be just as well seen as a period of employment expansion enabled by new agricultural practices which released labour from farming, as a revolution in which new technologies destroyed old jobs. The current structural change can also be one of rapid employment growth in information services, enabled by new information technologies, as developments in industrial technologies have liberated people from the 9-to-5 straight-jacket of centralized production.30 If the old social contract, protective labor arrangements built up in Europe over many years, is rapidly breaking down with the disarray clear for all to see, the simplistic jobs jobs jobs approaches of the other side of the political spectrum are, if anything, even more clearly insufficient to the challenge. We have not yet got sufficiently into focus the real cost to society of failing to come up with the solutions that we all need. The global bill for present arrangements is very much greater than commonly understood and needs to be extended to include not only such obvious items as the cost of the dole to both the public and private sectorsto take into account the opportunity cost of all those people and skills who are not hooked into society, the cost to society of all those loose canons who are
30
Peter Johnston (Commission of the European Communities), extract from a letter, 22 November 1993
26
R ETHINKING W ORK unleashed on the public once they no longer have an active civil role (prisons, much of the justice and policing system, the direct and indirect costs of crime, etc.), and the list goes on. The point is that once we have this broader base of understanding (and the dollar figures that go with it), the sense of urgency and priority will be greatly advancedand at the same time, this new knowledge will give us a better base for figuring out what to do about it. The bottom line was a general consensus that we cannot afford to exclude the potential usefulness of much more radical measures, though prior to rushing to any hasty extremes we might do better to look more closely at some of the things that are working in specific places and making this information more broadly available not only to government but to all the other institutions and groupings concerned.
Some Alternative Points of View Worth Considering

To ensure that this exchange does not take a stupid, knee-jerk neo-Luddite turn, let us open this overview section of the words of Fernand Braudel in his Civilisation Materielle, Economie et Capitalisme, it can help us sharpen our instincts and appreciation of what is actually going on:
The task of keeping Paris residents fully supplied with water permitted 20,000 water carriers to live (badly) by carrying water on their back up the stairs of thirty or more multi-story buildings each day. It was a revolution then when the Perrier Brothers installed two enormous fire pumps at Chaillot in 1782, strange machines which pumped the water of the Seine up to 110 feet above the level of the river. But if these machines are going to multiply, one then asked, what was going to happen to the 20,000 water carriers?31
When the mechanization of agriculture forced millions of workers off farms in the late 19th century, urban manufacturing industries were waiting to absorb them. And when automation of the factories forced a second mass dislocation of bluecollar workers in the 1950s, service and white-collar industries were able to take in much of the surplus labor. Today, new technologies are beginning to force a similar dislocation. The problem is, no new jobs are waiting.32
Fernand Braudel, Civilisation Materielle, Economie et Capitalisme. My own loose translation from page 260 of the French original, Armand Collin, Paris, 1979 32 Jeremy Rifkin, president, Foundation on Economic Trends, 1993.
31
27
N EW W AYS TO W ORK
Memories of the fierce, sometimes bloody fights to improve the conditions of labor in the 1920s and 30s linger insistently. Industrial countries went through intense strains to fashion the network of agreements, legal guarantees, security payments which transformed jungle capitalism into modern economies. The French speak of acquis social, for which there is no obvious translation, but everybody understands that these were hard-won gains. The dilemma for industrial countries is that the way these economies now function, the recognized need to improve productivity and competitiveness seems to be incompatible with full employment.33
A dark vision haunts some of Western Europes most thoughtful decision makers, as they ponder the worsening jobs crisis. What these decision makers fear is the specter of Europes long term unemployment - especially the jobless young - being shunted to the margins of civilized society, causing many to turn to crime or drugs, or racism and the extreme political fringe. Impoverishment, growing violence, social and political instability - that could all happen, says Konrad Seitz, Germanys ambassador to Rome and a specialist on industrial policy. The jobless, says Stephen Pursey, head of economic and social policy at the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions in Brussels, begin to lose faith in the institutions that surround them. They start to question whether its worth voting in elections, he says. They start looking for someone to blame and turn to politicians to with messianic solutions, often those who blame foreigners. Weve been this way before in Europe 50 years ago. Nearly half of the European Unions unemployed have been without jobs for more than a year, and by the end of 1994 young people will represent more than a quarter of the 20 million jobless. Sociologists have long contended there is a link between joblessness and urban crime.34
There exist large discrepancies between the amount of work needed and the number of jobs. In other words, there continues to be a vast array of unmet consumer needs and few are prepared to pay for jobs that would enable such needs to be satisfied. A contradiction emerges whereby we find ourselves depending on a system which relies upon the expansion of consumption, yet by removing jobs, cutting wages, or refusing to satisfy potential growth areas of consumer need, consump35 tion is flat, or even regressive.
Flora Lewis, International Herald Tribune, Paris, 29 October 1993. Herald Tribune, Paris 14 March 1994 35 Charles Leadbeater and Geoff Mulgan, "The End of Unemployment: Bringing Work To Life", Demos 2/94
33 34International
28
R ETHINKING W ORK
3.4 Will Economic Growth Alone Do It?

The meeting next addressed the often voiced view that economic growth offers the best, possibly even the only way out of all these problems.
Some Observations from the Meetings
Our analysis suggests that the basic An astonishingly large and increasing number of human beproblems we are ings are not needed or wanted to make the goods or to profacing turn out to be vide the services that the paying customers of the world can of a nature that is afford. Since most people in the world depend on having a not susceptible to job just to eat, the unemployed, the unemployable, the undegood news of the remployed, and the subemployed - a term used to describe sort so often sought those who work part-time but need to work full-time, or who for and cited in the earn wages that are too low to support a minimum standard economy pages of of living - have neither the money nor the state of mind to the media or quarkeep the global mass consumption system humming. Their terly government ranks are growing so fast that the worldwide job crisis threatens not only global economic growth but the capitalist statistics. The imsystem itself.36 plication of this admittedly somewhat counter-intuitive and quite unanticipated state of affairs is that this is one problem of contemporary society that we are not simply going to be able to grow our way out of. It is not that we can afford to despise growth, which can make its contributions, but other, more fundamental and more far-reaching approaches are going to have to be sought out and harnessed if we are to make the necessary inroads. I agree that in structural change, there is no link between traditional economic growth (or growth in traditional activities) and employment growth. This point is made in a negative sense in the OECD report and the Commissions White Paper (economic growth in Europe has not been associated with employment growth), but also needs to be made in the complementary senses that growth in the future will not automatically generate new jobs, but that growth in jobs might be possible even without economic growth. Conventional economic thinking has it that growth is largely attributable to technical change which gives rise to new products, services and production techniques generating a virtuous circle of high labor productivity, incomes, demand, output and employment growth. Certainly one of the more appealing ideas in todays received economic wisdom is that growth is a way out of all sorts of economic, environmental and other social problems. Judging from the source of the voices, this is an idea which appears to be more strongly felt among those who are likely to be the main beneficiaries of the growth in question (for example large industrial groups, financial institutions and government) than others who are perhaps not quite so sure that it is going to help them out with their problems. However this may be, there can be no doubt that despite the cautions sounded by at least some of the expert observers, the knee-jerk call for economic growth per se as one of the main motors for job creation tends to go largely unquestioned.
J. Barnet, "The End of Jobs", Harper's Magazine, September 1993
36Richard
29
N EW W AYS TO W ORK
The economy has tended to follow a cyclical pattern of The spurts of growth which have taken place here and growth and recession. Whilst there in various European countries over the past ten macroeconomic policies are years have had very diverse impacts on employment, and today aimed at reducing this it is not possible to derive clear-cut conclusions. The continuous ebb and flow of question is how far a resumption of growth in output would the economy through the inlead to an increase in employment. Are we not, in fact, troduction of stabilizing measwitnessing a change in the nature of the links between growth and employment? The absence of statistical eviures (keeping inflation low, redence is grounds for caution, the more so as various exducing currency fluctuations, planations are being put forward.37 increasing cooperation and convergence between the worlds leading economies), growth is only likely to remove cyclical unemployment - compensating for losses suffered during periods of recession or low growth. It is unlikely to have a dramatic impact on more deep-seated structural unemployment. Certainly ways must be found to increase the employment intensity of economic growth so that more jobs are created than has been the case in the past. This is of course rather easier to say than to achieve in practice. However technological, demographic and social changes have brought about new opportunities, new areas for growth, which thus far remain to be exploited. None of them however are going to provide endless opportunities for a poorly educated work force. The processes of new job creation, though, are neither instantaneous nor necessarily convenient to the existing labor force with respect to location, sector or skill requirements. Alternative strategies to complement economic growth must be found in order to get people back to work. Gone are the days, though, where growth alone be relied upon to solve the unemployment problem. Where have all the jobs gone? There are two processes at work: outsourcing by large organizations reduces the payroll of permanent salaried staff, but does not reduce the amount of work to be done, or the number of jobs. It changes the nature of employment, and shifts the balance from large organizations to small ones. In addition, the frequency with which people need to change jobs is increasing, even within large organizations, as products and services evolve more rapidly than in the past: the 2% per month job turnover in the US is a foretaste of what is to come in Europe. Job creation depends less upon the growth rate than on the social and organizational context in which this growth takes place. Despite the importance of the stakes, the current debate continues to be disturbingly thin. The fact that most politicians and economists continue to focus on growth as the main engine of recovery and conversion is one of the major limiting factors in the present debate (which in our view is not yet much of a debate, because of this). The much-needed inroads are not being made, above all because the wrong basic questions are being asked, for just these reasons. Here and there interesting points of detail and eventually promising approaches are being uncovered, but the fundamental issues remain to be addressed. What makes this even more embarrassing is that we had ample advance notice that this was the direction in which society was going. Beginning with Adam Smith and on through a steady stream of thoughtful observers of society and the economy, the inevitaEmployment, Technology, and Society - A New Model of Work?, FAST program of the European Commission, 1983
37
30
R ETHINKING W ORK bility of this basic thrust has been pointed out again and again over the years. And if some governments, economists and polemicists continue to haggle over the fine detail or even the inevitability of this basic underlying trend, we should not be overly impressed by their penchant for caution and definitive proof. The basic facts are out there for all to see, and we cannot really afford to wait until that happy day when everyones data and interpretation all point in the same direction.
One of the major failings that we can spot in many attempted policy exercises is an (often) inadvertent narrowing of the debate, in a way which quickly excludes the possibility of uncovering any fundamental solutions or adjusted policy paths. This turns out to be particularly damaging since it is in most cases done in a largely unconscious manner. As a result the dice are loaded from the outset of what should be an open and honest debate by the choice of a limiting word or concept. But since this is most often done without any particular intent or sense of awareness, those responsible for the analysis are themselves entirely blind to the limitations which they have imposed on their own investigation. To make things worse, we see few signs on the horizon that anyone is learning from this lesson.
Some Alternative Points of View Worth Considering

Over the past four decades there has been no simple correlation between growth and unemployment, and no guarantee that demand expansion creates sustainable jobs.38
Europe is in a pathetic state, says Francois Perigot, head of the CNPF, Frances employers Federation. We are living beyond our means. We have lost our technological edge. We are not prepared for the future or for international competition. Perhaps the cruelest paradox is that European economic recovery is not itself likely to make much of a dent in the battle against the jobs crisis... Theoretical solutions abound, from the job-generating infrastructure investment plan contained in the recent White Paper prepared by Jacques Delors, president of the European Commission, to the mantra-like chant about deregulating Europes jobs market that one hears from the government of Prime Minister John Major in London. But there is little consensus these will be easy to achieve. Indeed, the Europeans acknowledge that if governments and business are unable to tackle the problem soon, they will face the specter of mounting social unrest. If we are honest with ourselves, the drive to restore industrial competitiveness is hostile to employment. Mr. Perigot and his counterparts elsewhere admit that between now and 2000, Europeans may simply have to learn to accept a high bedrock level of joblessness. Most businessmen assume the jobless rate is unlikely to drop much below 9 percent or 10 percent until late in the l990s. Mr. OSullivan, who helped draft the Delors plan, echoes the view of many in Europe. I have seen no evidence that achieving more competitiveness will solve unemployment, he said..39
38 39
Charles Leadbeater and Geoff Mulgan, "The End of Unemployment: Bringing Work To Life", Demos 2/94 IHT, Paris 11 March 1994
31
N EW W AYS TO W ORK
La relance de lemploi par la seule croissance est donc un dangereux mirage. The global economic system is fragile because it depends on growth fueled by the expansion of consumption, but the fierce drive to eliminate work and cut wages is clearly not the way to bring spenders to the car lots and shopping malls. Except for cigarettes, Coke, and a few other products, most of what the global production system disgorges is consumed by fewer than 2 billion of the more than 5 billion people who now live on the planet.40 The lack of decently compensated jobs under decent working conditions is a global deficit so vast as to require fundamental rethinking about the global economic system itself. The global machine for producing goods and services in ever greater quantities depends upon a growing population of consumers with enough money in their pockets to keep the system going. (...) The vast majority of the 8 billion human beings expected to be living on the earth in the first quarter of the next century will be neither producers nor consumers in the new global economy.41 Technical change has always involved a process of job destruction and skills obsolescence in some sectors, put pressure on the existing social structures, and given rise to changes in the international division of labour. However, the experience of previous waves of technical change and economic cycles has been that job loss (in agriculture and industry) has been more than compensated by a parallel process of job creation in new sectors (services). Limits to jobs? Europes problem is not so much the limits to jobs, but rather that there is too much work and not enough paid jobs. Just as there are more lives which are not easily packageable into 40-hour weeks, there are more and more jobs which are equally unpackageable. 42
Richard J. Barnet, "The End of Jobs", Harper's Magazine, September 1993 Richard J. Barnet, "The End of Jobs", Harper's Magazine, September 1993 42 Making Europe Work, A report for the Roundtable of European Industrialists, Brussels
40 41
32
R ETHINKING W ORK
Economic growth is no longer capable of providing remunerated work for all those who seek it. (The return to full employment is not going to take place tomorrow in the current conditions nor will it remain within the patterns of the past). 43
A Proposed Conclusion on the Growth Option(For discussion and comment):

Here is our proposed interpretation of the evidence provided by the meeting and the various sources consulted: 1. Whatever links may once have existed between economic growth and job creation have now been radically redefined, while the notion of a direct causal linkage (the motor argument, whereby growth necessarily creates jobs) can now be put aside once and for all, at least in the context of the post-industrial economies. 2. This does not mean of course that we can afford to give up on growth. Economic growth is going to help in at least two ways. First, it can work as a capacitor and provide (some) new jobs (but at what skill levels? and what quality, from the worker/employees long term stand point?) -dealing thereby with that part of the problem which is cyclical and short term. However it will not suffice to cope with the long term structural trends, which are going to require quite a different pallet of approaches. Second, and this is important, we will need growth in order to finance and lead the bridging operations that are going to be required as we refit the entire economy for the new work paradigm that is going to prove the needed stable base for our societies in the longer term. 3. Successful growth may carry with it a few dangers in this respect that we shall need to keep an eye out for. First there is the danger of good news, i.e., that by inflating the production and macro indicators it may distract us from the important work that we need to do. It also carries with it the very definite -- 100%, no doubts about it! -- risk of a two speed society. 4. These findings suggest that a major impetus should be given to a new generation of limits to growth studies, this time around probing deeply into the details of the growth/jobs linkand further that this is going to require a major overhaul in the statistical systems of most places which supply at present insufficient data about the asymmetrical relation between growth and jobs. 5. Another point that needs continuing attention is the tendency of many of those involved to accept a certain creeping inflation in the base or normal unemployment level. Yesterdays 2-3% benchmark has already comfortably doubled in most policy books and it is not out of the question that a complacent profession might be about ready to accept yet another doubling as normal. 6. Until more definitive results are in, we propose the following as a reasonably considered guideline: there is no way that any conceivable rate of economic growth within the OECD region could erode more than, say, 25% of the unemployment problem. That leaves us with at least threequarters of the problem to be solved by other means. And quite possible even a bit more! 7. But that is not the end of the matter. There is growth and growth, and we know enough now to begin to be at least a trifle suspicious about growth proposals. Only certain kinds of economic activity will lead to increased employment. Accordingly, to the extent that we turn to growth proposals for ways out, it will be necessary to inspect carefully the real job creating potential of those
4343
Growth, Competitivity, Employment, White Book, European Commission, Luxembourg, 1993
33
N EW W AYS TO W ORK proposals. And not just any old jobs, but the kinds that are needed to enhance individual, family and social well-being more broadly. 8. Putting these several pieces together gives us what can become one of the pillars of our strategy that economic growth is a useful tool in the restructuring process that now needs to be engaged, but (a) that it is not THE answer, (b) not even the MAJOR answer, but a potentially useful element of the much broader policy packages that now need to be identified, confirmed, and put into place.
Some of the elements of a global strategy for reorganizing work are beginning to take shape, but politicians everywhere continue to promise prosperity without confronting the international dimensions of the problem. We have yet to summon the courage and imagination to face the human assault on human beings that we call the job problem.44
In conclusion, while it is perfectly understandable that one wishes to do something in the face of the sort of strongly felt social pressures such as we are facing today, it is important the things that we eventually chose to do should have a chance to achieve their serious objectives. Any program that depends mainly on growth to obtain its objectives cannot hope to have even that chance.
And for The Third World... Nothing to Offer?

This thinkpiece purposely limits its scope to the OECD region for several reasons. First, because it is proposed merely as a starting point in the debatean essential first challenge to the old ways of thinking about and doing things. Second, in the belief that in situations where one is confronted with pressing and at least in part self-willed problems of any sort, surely the best place to start a housecleaning effort is at home. Third, for better or for worse, the world of work as we know it todayand as the countries of the Third World are increasingly coming to live itis a way of organizing life that stems in the main from the experience of the western countries over the last two hundred or so years. Given the steadily increased interdependence of west and east, north and south, it is obvious that the new patterns of work and daily life that are currently emergingfor the most part willy-nilly are going to have to take into account these interdependencies. Certainly a lot of stupid and short-sighted arguments are being trotted out in the north-south work controversy. The scope of a world-wide rethink of work is thus an essential task, an inseparable element of the whole. In the meantime, however, perhaps the best way to begin is to confront vigorously and with imagination the issues in our own countriesand then, armed with more knowledge and hopefully more humanity, we can begin to implement new patterns of behavior which will make sense and be sustainable from a world perspective.
44
Richard J. Barnet, The End of Jobs, Harper's Magazine, March 1993
34
R ETHINKING W ORK
3.5 Do We Need to Rethink Work?

The sense of this part of the meeting is that we badly need to reexamine our definitions and perceptions of what work is all about. Three of the original bones of contention list dealt with this; we repeat them here with minor variations because they appear to provide a fair picture of the meetings overall position on these parts of the issue:
The point of departure for any serious remedial program cannot be to treat work as if it were only labor, i.e., just one more freely substitutable part of the process of production. Work is a great deal more than that. It is the main vehicle that puts into the hands of citizens the means to obtain the goods and services they want and need in their daily lives. It is the vital motor (through demand pull) for keeping the productive side busy. But work has many other important roles too, of a psychological and social nature, none of which are getting sufficient play in the present debate. Moreover, what we call work in the 21 st century is going to differ as notably from what we have come to know over the last two centuries as did the model of the Industrial Revolution from its predecessor. These differences need to be understood and factored into the debate.
What is disappearing today is not just a certain number of jobs or jobs in certain industries or jobs in some parts of the planet, but the very thing itself: the job, as such, is vanishing today, like some species that has outlived its evolutionary time. A century from now people will remark how fixated we were on this game of musical jobs in which, every month, new waves of people had to drop out. They will look back and marvel that we couldnt see more clearly what was happening and how long we kept trying to play the new game by the old rules. By then it will certainly be clear that the job was a social artifact, the product of a particular time and place: 19th Century Europe and America. It was invented to do the work in the newly emerging factories and bureaucracies. But it has become so deeply embedded in our consciousness that most of us have forgotten its artificiality. We seldom consider that before 1800 (and long after that date in many places) societies did just fine without jobs. People worked just as hard but they worked on shifting clusters of tasks, in a variety of locations, on a schedule set by the sun and the needs of the day. 45
The meeting also concluded that the real crux of the problemand the absolutely essential point of departure for the needed rethinkis that the issue of work in society requires more than just getting a few people off the unemployment roles and into some temporary economic respite that some may call a job in some sort of minimalist statistical + survival sense. We need to understand much better what work is all about, and then to use that understanding as the underpinning for the new structures that we now need to devise and put into place. The main themes for this section of the considerations came from an article which one of the members of our first Paris group, Flora Lewis, had recently written and which is cited elsewhere in its
45
William Bridges, "Where Have All the Jobs Gone?", Fortune Magazine,October 1994
35
N EW W AYS TO W ORK entirety.46 I repeat several of the key phrases here on the grounds that they do a good job of capsuliz-
Most urgently, we need a theory that redefines labor and how to set its value. The difference between work and play is now essentially defined by money, whether you are paid for what you do or pay for doing it. ... Industrial society has made labor a crucial element of identity. You are what you work at. That is why being unemployed is such a blow, even if the safety net is adequate. Being without a job is being made to feel a nobody. But at least in the transition phase of this new industrial revolution, there are not going to be enough jobs for all. ... So a new analyst, a new theory, a new understanding of the role of labor is required.
ing this part of the meeting. So that we are better able to sort out claims that country X is creating lots of jobsand that by doing so is fulfilling its obligations to its citizens, no matter what the quality of those jobs, we took some time to consider together what this thing we call work is all about. Of course this terrain has amply been covered in the literature, but here are some of the reasons the meetings cited as to why people work or why they prefer to work at one job rather than anotherreasons that need to be taken into consideration when making policy: We should rethink what we mean by a job, and how we go about packaging the average life times work for the average individual. It is far from absurd to speculate that the division of life into three discrete stages of education, work and retirement will continue to be broken down. Companies and other organizations will be obliged to respond in some way to these changes. 47 In the course of the discussions at the two workshops the table presented below was compiled to establish the different essential components which constitute work. As well as the traditional economic elements, particular attention was given to the non-market aspects. It can be instructive to consider how certain kinds of jobs which we may or may not wish to create through public policy initiatives compare with the above criteria. It might eventually be possible to use this table to permit a comparison of different kinds of jobs from a variety of angles and points of view.
THE MARKET COMPONENT
QUASI-MARKET COMPONENT
THE NON-MARKET COMPONENT
46 47
Flora Lewis, International Herald Tribune, 18 May 1993 Making Europe Work, A report for the Roundtable of European Industrialists
36
R ETHINKING W ORK
To earn money (earn your living) For present requirements (basic needs) and wishes (consumption) For future requirements and contingencies (savings, investment in various forms) To supply (in return for that compensation) needed goods and/or services to society (or some part of it)
To qualify for corresponding social benefits (insurance, health care, pension, etc.) To get whatever percs that might be offered Training and/or educational benefits (work-related, present and future jobs) Does it open up opportunities for non-monetary (e.g. barter) exchanges
Self-esteem (including fulfillment of ones own end of social contract) To have security Roots Training and/or educational benefits (for personal satisfaction and development) As a central life-organizing device around which to structure the rest of their time As a means of social contact To the extent that it may leave time free for family and personal activities How is this job going to influence my health? My personal development? What is going to be its cost to my family? In terms of the amount of time it takes me away from them? (On both gross and net basis). In terms of the net income it is going to bring in after all job related expenses are accounted for (travel, child and other family care in absence, clothes, etc.)?
While the above points are neither original or compete, it nonetheless can be instructive to consider how certain kinds of jobs which we may or may not wish to create through some combination of public policy sticks and carrots do in terms of the above criteria. It might eventually be set up as part of a grid which could permit the comparison of different kinds of jobs from a variety of angles and points of view. If what one wants to create is jobs that score well on all of the items on the list, how do jobs for hamburger flippers look on this scale? Someone with a secure government job? A worker on the assembly line at BMW? A single mother with two children and a BA in literature? A Old Etonian working in The City? Coal miners in the Lorraine or East Germany? Software engineers in Silicon Valley or Silicon Glen? A drug dealer? His eleven year old lookout? A prostitute? A French marinpecheur? A Norwegian fisherman? German metalworker? A fifty year old redundant manager? A criminal? Someone permanently on the dole? A prisoner? A bored pensioner? Somebody whose only chance for a job is in a place that requires his moving from his home town? A blind person? Your own dear mother? Or is all this a trivial distinction? Who are we? What do we need? What are we looking for? Two generations ago, looking out for that then-distant day which already is today, John Maynard Keynes wrote in an essay entitled Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren:
37
N EW W AYS TO W ORK
Now it is true that the needs of human beings may seem to be insatiable. But they fall into two classes - those needs which are absolute in the sense that we feel them whatever the situation of our fellow human beings may be, and those which are relative in the sense that we feel them only if their satisfaction lifts us above, makes us feel superior to, our fellows. Needs of the second class, those which satisfy the desire for superiority, may indeed be insatiable: for the higher the general level, the higher still are they. But this is not so true of the absolute needs - a point may soon be reached, much sooner perhaps than we are all of us aware of, when these needs are satisfied in the sense that we prefer to devote our further energies to non-economic purposes.48
We will do well to keep Keynes firmly in mind when we consider that today virtually all of the people on the above list will get hold of resources to live onone way or another! An eleven year lookout for a drug dealer in some cities can, for example, make around a thousand dollars a week: about five times as much as a full time job at MacDonaldsif he could get it! In most OECD countries it cost anywhere from $20,000 to $40,000 a year just to keep someone in prison. You are getting the idea? And it just might not be as far-fetched as you may think at first to consider what they do as work and the money they get hold of as their wage. If you work your way through the above list from any of the above professional perspectives, you will see how each of them scores in each of the above. Try it for yourself while you are at it. It can be a sobering activity.
Some Alternative Points of View Worth Considering:

So that the reader does not associate this entire analytic exercise with any specific political value set or orientationother than the fact that the author feels that the problem is real, that our fundamental concepts of democracy are not just window-dressing, and that the response will in the final analysis be found in people (which make some view them as the key part of the answer and not the problem!) --- every attempt is made here to present views and opinions from many different political and other perspectives.
48
J. M. Keynes, in Essay in Persuasion, Norton, London, 1936
38
R ETHINKING W ORK
Labor as a process consists in the energies and intelligence of a person engaged in production. Labor as a commodity consists of an object produced for sale - in this case, the labor power, or working capacity of a laborer. The normal market price of the commodity labor power is a wage that will permit the commodity to be regularly produced - that is, a wage sufficient to allow the worker who owns and sells his working capacity on the market to purchase a conventional standard of living.49 Who would do the dirty work? The answer was that once dirty work was paid according to its social importance there would be no shortage of candidates for the job of miner or trash collector. Charles Fourier, the French utopian socialist, who predated Marx by a few decades, had a more imaginative answer: in his hotel-like socialist communities (rooms to fit every pocketbook), the dirty work would be done by children, who love getting dirty. I mention Fourier to show that we had some sense of humor about socialism. What we did not have was a sense of tragedy. The global job crisis is the product of a value system that prizes the efficient production of goods and services more than the human spirit and of an economic strategy riddled with contradictions. Contemporary society is built on a social system in which the individuals livelihood, place, worth, and sense of self are increasingly defined by his or her job. At the same time, jobs are disappearing.501
There is a notable tendency in both the press and policy circles to confuse work with jobs. They are definitely not the same, and the differences are important. As one American observer recently put it in an article entitled Where Have All the Jobs Gone?:
Americans are obsessed with jobs. The employment statistics count jobs. We argue over whether NAFTA will cost jobs. The newspapers carry stories about new rounds of job-cutting at IBM, General Motors, Sears, Bank of America, and a thousand smaller companies, as well as in the public sector. Its not surprising that were so job-minded. From the time we were kids, getting a job has been held up to us as the first step out of childhood and into the real world. Weve been told that a good life depends on having a good job, one with advancement and security. Thats why it is so distressing that jobs are disappearing today: going overseas, being replaced by computers, and getting weeded out in cost-saving campaigns. But jobs are not just fewer in number; they are also disappearing in more qualitative sense as well. We have hardly noticed this phenomenon, , even though in the long run it may be more significant than numerical job losses. 51
But Jack Wuest, executive director of a program in Chicago called the Alternative Schools Network, has observed: Over 75 to 80 percent of minority youth are not ever counted in the official unemployment rate because they are not even looking for work. They often live in neighborhoods where there are no jobs to be found. ... And when you cant find a job, its easy to find trouble. ... There is a violent crime emergency in the United States, and there is an employment crisis. The policy makers seem unable to understand the ways in which the two things are linked, and the degree to which the former is driven by the latter.52
50 51 52
William Bridges, "Where Have All the Jobs Gone?", 1993 Bob Herbert, IHT, 2 December 1993
39
N EW W AYS TO W ORK
A people divided: The main employment problem facing Europe is not so much the total number of jobs available, but the widening gap between the educated and the uneducated. The alarming fact is that for the entirely unskilled or for individuals with obsolete manual skills, this gap might be unbridgeable. People must be educated so that they are able continually to be re-educated. 53 The call by liberals has been for more social program funded by government money, she told be recently. The moderates want more job opportunities to lure males away from drugs and violence. The conservatives want to re-establish traditional values of marriage and hard work - all in an attempt to end the problems faced by inner cities. And the emphasis has been on the African-American male - as the missing father and as the perpetrator and victim of violence. ... It occurs to me, Ms. Allen added, that perhaps we are focusing on the wrong group. Our efforts should be aimed at reaching not the males but the females. If, under some ideal situation, we could bring millions of well-paying jobs to the inner city, I dont believe hard work for a decent paycheck is going to be more alluring than guns, drug money and sex without responsibility. ... As long as women tolerate this behavior in men, it will continue. ... She offers only the tentative suggestion that unless we can again induce young women to take on the task of civilizing young men, social chaos may be both unavoidable and irreversible. It is a sobering thought.54 In the third archetype, the state, instead of trying to suppress the informal economy would attempt to exploit its more desirable features, and mitigate its less comfortable implications. For the dual economy does offer a considerable advantage. In the formal economy, we are subject to conflicting goals; we want to maintain the number of jobs, and we want our industries to be organized efficiently so as to be able to compete effectively for international markets. Yet in encouraging efficient industrial production we may well reduce employment. The dual economy allows us to circumvent this contradiction; we can look to the formal economy to provide efficient material production, and to the informal economy to provide services which, since they are not widely traded, need not be efficient in their use of labour.55 In 1976 or 1977 I discussed the problem of alternative ways of life with Ivan Illich. He maintained - in accordance with his view of the destructive role of professionals that intellectual should refrain from creating concrete visions of possible future societies. I - on the other hand - argued that the lack of articulated alternatives made it difficult for the general public to visualize the emergence of real alternatives to present societies. ... Later I found that U. Himmelstrand (in a paper from 1980) had given a good description of an attitude that I had been trying to make my own: I suggest that more or less visionary social scientists can play a role in transforming the society to build a better future only if they immerse themselves in such contexts of class or group struggle, refraining from enacting the grandiose role of architects of the future, and rather help critically and constructively to evaluate and modify the solutions advanced from below by practitioners.56
Another analyst has looked at the contrasts of attitudes between Europe and the United States:
53 54 55 56
Making Europe Work, A report for the Roundtable of European Industrialists, Paris, 1988 William Raspberry, IHT, 30 November 1993 J.I. Gershuny, The Informal Economy: Its role in post-industrial society, Futures, February 1979 Emin Tengstrom, Samskap - A New Swedish Institution?, Sweden, May 1981
40
R ETHINKING W ORK
The But as with all such basic polarities, it is easier toadmiringly at criticize themlabourto trouble with success: Europe and America look identify and each others than come up Europes are better at avoiding poverty; Americas create far more put markets. with constructive proposals how to overcome them, that is, how to jobs. Yet Humpty grappling with a again. Certainly, Europe may have much will be from both are Dumpty together common problem.we can see elements thatto learn part of any such reconciliation. but what, you could be forgiven for asking, can Europe teach America on this subject -For example, a greater amount of workplace participation could contribute year, with recovery already well under way and unemployment (nevAmerica? ... Lastto healing both the instrumental-expressive and the public-private split: such participation would enhance a survey found that nearly 20% of American er high by European standards) falling, work satisfaction -make work less purely instrumental - and would also introduce an element of publicness into the private work workers thought they were likely to lose their jobs over the coming 12 months. Anotheffort.58 er 20% expected to be laid off temporarily. ... It is not hard to see why many Americans are anxious about their jobs - and why the promise of greater economic security is so compelling. ... Flexibility means that losing your job, and finding a new one if you do, are both easier. In the late 1980s, 2% of Americans became newly unemployed each month; only 0,4% of Europeans were so unlucky. In their different ways, both systems are failing. The pressures driving down the demand for unskilled labour - new technologies and, much less significant up to now, international trade - are hardly likely to diminish over the coming years. Even assuming that governments do nothing in the meantime to make matters worse, coping with this trend can only grow more difficult in the future.57
On a more philosophical level it seems that we have been able to create a lot of nonsense work, in my opinion partly by an overbelief in rational decisionmaking, partly by underestimating the importance of creativity on the one hand and improvisation (chance) as a source of creativity on the other. By overemphasizing (and oversimplifying) the concept of productivity we are often playing out humans from positions where they would perform best, and moving some of them to important positions where they perform badly, or where their creativity may have fatal results (I guess one could say that the Mile Island accident was an example of a situation where human creativity outsmarted a functioning fail safe system in an ingenious way).59
One member of the group wrote after the meeting: Certainly the idea to be gotten across is that the qualitative aspect of work and jobs is so important that it is virtually impossible for any country or company to claim victory in its job creation problem, without first having run down that list or something awfully like it to review what their real accomplishment has been in all these areas. In closing I would like to call attention to what I believe to be a major barrier to the sort of creative thinking which is now called for if we are to get beyond the boundaries that we ourselves have imposed on this situation. The key phrase is labor force, but there are a number of other let us call them crypto-expressions which, innocent, ordinary and practical as they may seem, nonetheless quickly serve to lock us into the old ways of thinking that we must now get beyond. This is the mental image of the factory, which I would point out is nothing more than a transposition of the earlier image of the
57 58
59
The Economist, 12 March 1994 Albert O. Hirschman, Shifting Involvements: Private Interests and Public Action, Princeton University Press, New Jersey Keith Richardson, Rethinking Work - Initial Comments, 24 November 1993
41
N EW W AYS TO W ORK cotton plantation or any other of the myriad forms of mass agricultural exploitation that use the same basic principles of caste, class and hierarchisation. The idea of course is one that was thoroughly delectable to Marx since it was the base for most of his most lambastic critical writing. My point is that, in truth, I cannot see or feel the difference between most of the 1994 usages of terms such as labor force, workers, the work place, making Europe work, et al, and Uncle Karls threatening urban proletariat and working masses. Personally, I find the former just as obscuring and, in our present circumstances, just as unhelpful as the latter. The many illustrious theologians and philosophers who have held forth on human conduct, starting with the dispute about the comparative merits of vita activa and vita contemplativa, generally did so with the aim of recommending one particular life-style as most pleasing to God, most desirable from the point of view of society, and most rewarding for oneself. I have tried to cultivate an empathy for both the weaknesses and the strengths of opposite styles and, as a result, my point of view has been shifting as my story moved along; ... Now I have long believed that some pattern of change from one style to another is not only inevitable, but outright useful and desirable, that there is no one best way. Here I am in a small, but rather good company. 60 Which brings us to the following capping statement by Heilbronner, which strike this observer as
The crisis of intervention calls attention to the critical situation of our current socio-political dilemma, one not unlike that which preceded the merger wave at the beginning of the twentieth century. Today as then, evidence of a deep structural challenge can be discerned within the system, but the challenge is more feared and misunderstood than accepted and welcomed, and has progressed only far enough to realize the limitations of the older structure, not far enough to force a solution for its problems.61
good counsel.
3.6 Toward New Systems of Work
60
Albert O. Hirschman, Shifting Involvements: Private Interests and Public Action, Princeton University Press, New Jersey 61Robert Heilbronner, The Nature and Logic of Capitalism, Norton, 1985, pp 72, 172
42
R ETHINKING W ORK
The negotiation of change: the decisive feature of the 1980s. It is clear that we shall make progress in the countries of the Community not by totally questioning all aspects of work, nor by expecting the sudden shattering emergence of new models. It is rather a question of organizing a slow, gradual and deliberate transition towards a model of work still to be discovered, more complex and more open, than those we have known, and in which the key words are information, communication, and flexibility. Under the pressures of increased unemployment, the severe economic conditions and technological change, this transition will become both more necessary and more difficult to accomplish. This is why we believe that the transformation of industrial society in the 1980s will be characterized by a critical period of negotiation between the social actors, bearing particularly on the relationships between man and machine, on the organization and duration of work, on the alteration of working statues, and on the rhythm and forms of technological change. ... Undoubtedly the success or stalemate of such negotiations will largely determine the long-term position of European countries in international competition.62
In the opening pages of this working paper, the not terribly original idea was put forth that among the main challenges facing policy makers at all levels of society todayand no less for individual citizens and familiesis that of finding new ways of concording this millennia old human activity that we call workhalf demon, half saviorwith the realities of a fast-emerging and radically different post-industrial society. And while some may protest that we have not yet seen the end of industry as a significant force in society (i.e., all those activities involving the physical transformation of materials into products that are then sold on the marketplace), the statistical evidence as well as even plain everyday observation of what is going on around us both amply bear out the conclusion that the real action in the future is going to be elsewhere. We have spoken here and elsewhere about whether all this is bad news or good news, and concludedto our own satisfaction at leastthat in the final analysis it is actually extremely good news which has, for various reasons, none of which actually necessary, taken on the appearance of very bad news. What we can see and fret about is the burning phenomenon of unemployment and its ravages on people, families, cities, enterprises and nations. But what we dont seem to have quite yet been able to get within our sights is that this is really nothing more or less than the (admittedly uncomfortable) harbinger of what should be one of the greatest achievements of our contemporary civilizationthe passage from a society of brutalizing scarcities to one of plenty. One of our first challenges will be to make this major break with the path and understand fully what the implications of our new found wealth are, and what they might be made to become. The above cited 1983 FAST paper Employment, Technology, and Society - A New Model of Work? provided such valuable clues for orienting government policy and decisionsinformation, communications, flexibility -- that one is obliged to wonder why it was never quite managed to take the pace it deserved in the policy process over all of this past decade. That perhaps is a legitimate critique of our process of information assimilation, decision making and governmentmuch as our colleague Joseph Coates pointed out: The irony of these studies is that even when problems were earmarked as long as 20 years ago, little visible and almost no significant section was taken to prepare for yesterdays tomorrow, that is, for today.63 The burgeoning contemporary literature on complex adaptive systems had its origins in cybernetics and general systems theory in the 1960s. While examining large, complex systems, scientists sought to identify a simple set of principles that could help explain complexity that was otherwise unfathomable. The still-emerging result of this work is a branch of scientific inquiry known as complex62 63
FAST program of the European Commission, 1983 Joseph Coates, From my Perspective: Preparing the Urban Future, Elsevier Science Publishing, 1992
43
N EW W AYS TO W ORK ity theory, which has significant things to say about the functioning of complex systems in biology, economics, culture, the physical sciences, computation, and other realms. The focal point of complexity theory is not things, as conceived by Newtonian physics, but relationships among agents as they emerge over time in a complex environment that is itself changing, or co-evolving, in response to various agents. Unlike Newtonian physics or neoclassical economics, complexity theory helps explain unique historical contingencies: why one path of development (in an organism, a business, a marketplace, a political system) emerges instead of another, for example. Equally important, complexity theory can give a crudely accurate overview of the whole, which can supplement a highly detailed but narrow portrait of component parts. Unfortunately, the worrisome social impacts of information technology seem far more amenable to complex description than concrete reform...64 The irony is that out best, most thoughtful recommendations are going to be along these same lineswhich suggests to me that perhaps the greatest single challenge before us as a group who would like somehow to influence policy and thinking in this important area, will be to find way to avoid our own work and conclusions to avoid being similarly ignored. To my mind, this suggests that at least part of the problem resides in the fact that for intellectuals, it often is seen as enough to get their ideas somehow down in writing. The problem is that in our societyan era of information overload, too many long reports, books and reams of statisticscounsel, good and bad, tends to get lost in the avalanche. In the final pages of this paper, we address this matter again. For the time being, perhaps we can just keep it in mind as we continue to build up our information, perceptions and arguments.
In order to reverse the disastrous course which our societies, bedeviled by unemployment, are taking, the European Union should set itself the target of creating 15 million jobs by the end of the century. It is the economy which can provide the necessary pointers. We are thus setting out a number of broad guidelines which have a predominantly economic basis, although it will be seen that they cannot be dissociated from the major trends which are effecting society itself: an economy that is healthy, open, decentralized, competitive and based on solidarity. However, these efforts would be in vain if we did not once again make employment policy the centre-piece of our overall strategy.
65
Some Comments from the Meetings

In historical terms, having a job is a relatively recent socio-economic invention of the industrial age. Today, having a job means conducting a regular set of duties, with regular pay and regular hours - and having a fixed place in an organizations structure. This can be summed up by stating that until relatively recently, people didnt have jobs, they did jobs. These traditional organizational conditions are changing fast under the influence of (among others) new technology. This is bringing about the disappearance of the conditions of mass production
64
The Second Annual Roundtable on Information Technology, The Promise and Perils of Emerging Information Technologies, Aspen, 4-8 August 1993 Growth, Competitivity, Employment,
65
White Book, European Commission, Luxembourg, 1993
44
R ETHINKING W ORK and bureaucracy that have been creating jobs for the past 150 years. Technology enables us to customize production. Smaller, start-up firms take over profitable niches. Public services are privatized and the government bureaucracy is thinned. Technology can help the re-organization of work. Long-term unemployment is being caused by the fact that the organization of work (based on the industrial and not the new information age) is out of synch with todays production methods. In fact, there is more and more work to be done but less and less jobs. The traditional work configuration is responsible for squeezing jobs out of the system. The answer is to change the way work is organized so that it can run hand in hand with modern production techniques. Telework is an example of how technology can facilitate that difficult transition by opening up new possibilities of work formulae - the building blocks of the new organizational system. We must be sure to give at least equal attention to qualitative aspects of job holdings/employment, and not only the usual statistics. Also sub-employment The burden of the failure of public policy (social contract) is highly asymmetrical, and strikes certain groups in society much more harshly than others. Moreover, those who are most strongly impacted (negatively) are those with the least voice and influence on policy (and their own destinies).
Some Alternative Points of View Worth Considering:

The family and domestic work, as is well-known, constitute the cornerstone of the differences between men and women, both in time and in space: female jobs are often an extension of their domestic roles - services, ago-food industry, dressmaking, education; the tasks of salaried female staff resemble quite closely aspects of domestic tasks (the typists prepare, as it were in the kitchen, the reports and documents, the secretaries look after the household of their bosss activities, while in the kindergarten and schools they bring up the children etc.); the more the salaried work resembles domestic work, the less it is valued, and the less it is paid (for example, household help). So long as the division of tasks with the family and of socio-economic functions does not change, there will be no real struc-
To understand the currently embryonic transformations, one has to examine and assess as far as possible the major long-term historical trends within a culture and within a society. These may be of great significance, particularly in the fields of attitudes and values, where, indeed, we should not expect to occur in the space of one generation many profound changes, such as (for example) the differences between the work of men and of women: their reasons, their nature and their methods.66 In 1980, our society as a whole devoted only 9% of its total time to work, and the average annual duration of full-time work has been practically halved in the past 150 years (falling from 3800 hours in 1830 to 1825 in 1980); but there seems little prospect, in the next 15-20 years, of technological or social innovations of the type which will significantly reduce the central role of work 67
tural changes in the differences between the work of men and of women. ...
66
Employment, Technology, Society - A New Model of Work?, FAST program, European Commission, 1983
45
N EW W AYS TO W ORK
The organization of the future is likely to be job-free. This trend is already beginning to show its face in some of the more fast-moving companies where jobs as we know them today are disappearing. If one is to look at how work is actually done within such cutting-edge organizations, one comes across cross-trained work teams in which job descriptions and job categories in the traditional sense have ceased to exist. Virtual organizations can be found, linked together by cellular phones and fax machines. There is an increasing regular use of temporary workers. In short, one finds organizations that are getting enormous amounts of work done with a minimal reliance on jobs. Such organizations are few and far between today, but we can expect them to increase in number in the future.
With the disappearance of the conditions that created jobs, that way of packaging work is no longer appropriate. We can no longer afford to think of the organizational world as a pattern of jobs (...). Instead, we need to think of it as a great, wide field of work needing to be done.68
Towards a more fluid system: project-oriented work The alternative to having a job need not be unemployment or retirement or starting a business of ones own. It will involve working within a fluid system that is designed to bring its resources to bear on whatever work needs to be done. Work is likely to be far more project-oriented. People will thus be hired and assigned to a project, which will change over time as their responsibilities and tasks change with it. Unlike the traditional regular pattern of a job, the more project-oriented form of work will require a great degree of versatility and adaptability to new and different tasks. People may also be required to work on a variety of different projects - which may or may not be associated with each other - under several different project or team leaders. Tasks will no longer be defined by a job description but will be dependent upon the demands of the work project itself, the work that needs to be done. Technology has not only resulted in a breaking down of the traditional organization of work itself (the nature of work) but office technology in particular is already dissolving the old walls that kept the traditional organizational structure in place (the place of work/work environment). Telework is just one example of a way of working that is adapted to such changes. The welfare state is bankrupt. One may have to replace its role for oneself (perhaps by decentralized self-services?) Prosperity has made possible some questioning of the value of work (people were rejecting the rigid linear model). The employment crisis slows down and transforms this movement, as people seek to retain at least the partial shelter provided by the rigid model, while still seeing ways to overcome its deficiencies, and find some way to satisfy their need for autonomy. We may therefore foresee: A revaluation of non-paid work (domestic work, mutual help, do-it-yourself) within the framework of a more general trend of the expansion of activities for the use and exchange of goods and services outside the money economy; A search for a greater diversity and flexibility of working statutes. There is a trend towards a multiplicity of statutes (full-time workers, part-time, temporaries, fixed con-
67 68
Employment, Technology, Society - A New Model of Work?, FAST program, European Commission, 1983 William Bridges, "Where Have All the Jobs Gone?", 1993.
46
R ETHINKING W ORK tract workers, workers called in as necessary, la carte, illegal, paid, etc.) and towards an increased number of transitions from one statute to another or even towards working under several different statues.
Towards a new socio-economy as regards working time, in the double sense of a reduction in its duration, and a modification in the relationships between working and non-work time. It is here that we encounter the problem of the division of working time, and the question - which is of great current concern and of great importance for all the actors concerned - of knowing whether the reduction of working time creates jobs and consequently, can contribute to the improvement of the labour market situation. ... Cette mobilit du travail est prsentement au coeur du dbat politique et elle se pose aujourdhui presque dans les mmes termes qu laube de la premire rvolution industrielle: le problme est moins une question de flexibilit des salaires que lacceptation par le corps social dune reconfiguration des rapports sociaux induite par de nouvelles formes dorganisation et de nouvelles formations. (...) En dautres termes, il est probablement ncessaire de lier la problmatique dune mutation technologique celle dune mutation de lorganisation sociale et politique. (A Stekke,
Industrial society has tended to empty work of affective and expressive elements and to make it into a purely instrumental relationship: you work in order to make an income work is thus conceived purely as a cost incurred for the purpose of a wholly separate benefit. Love, on the other hand, stands in the dichotomy for the affective relationships that are ideally thought to be wholly expressive, that is, undertaken for their own sake with no thought of any utility beyond the one to be gotten out of the act of loving. Writing about the work-love polarity in Anglo-American society in these terms, a noted sociologist found that [t]his cultural opposition has dominated the structure of Western thought for centuries and has limited the number of moral and psychological solutions for the dilemmas of human existence. Like the private-public split, the divorce between work and love is thus felt as impoverishing and stultifying. 69 Even in large organizations people will be working in smaller, less hierarchical groups, where they will take more responsibility for the outcome of their work as well as being
st
judged more directly on their performance. (...) The 21 century model may be closer to self-employment for all: self-development through a range of different jobs and organizations. All economic activities are ever more being modeled on services rather than manufacturing, software rather than hardware. Increasingly people will not see the expression of their work in a physical product but in intangibles, such as consumer satisfaction. 70 Today, skills and knowledge have become the currency of the modern economy. investment in the hard infrastructure of transport and telecommunications links will generate some jobs, but probably fewer than investment in less tangible, softer assets like organizational innovations or education. All the institutions involved in generating those soft assets - families and schools, companies and the state, the tax system and the training system - will have to adapt and to learn new priorities.71
1994)
69 70 71
A.O. Hirschmann, Shifting Invovlements, Princeton Univ, Press, Princeton, 1972 Charles Leadbeater, Geoff Mulgan, "The End of Unemployment: Bringing Work To Life", Demos 2/94 Charles Leadbeater, Geoff Mulgan, "The End of Unemployment: Bringing Work To Life", Demos 2/94
47
N EW W AYS TO W ORK
4.
THE CHANGING SHAPE OF WORK
4.1 Tomorrows Work

It is safe to bet that our attitudes toward and the organization of work twenty or thirty years from now will be radically different from what we know today. Without wishing to get into either crystal ball gazing or elaborate techno-scenarios, let me see if I can quickly sketch some of the rudiments of a credible pattern of work organization as we can expect to see it develop in, say, the year 2010 (in leading situations) or 2020 (perhaps more generally). This think piece confines itself to only back-of-the envelop kinds of numbers, though I so do believe that they correspond broadly to the orders of magnitudes in question. They are, I think, at least enough to make my point and eventually fuel the debate. Before we embark on this inquiry, it may be useful to recall a few historical benchmarks that it is easy enough to lose sight of in the rush for fast solutions:
Currently our society as a whole devotes barely 10% of its total time to remunerated work. All the rest is spent in something else. Unemployment in the European Communityi.e., officially recognized joblessness on the part of those registered as seeking employmenthas increased by an order of magnitude over the last thirty years, from barely two million in the early sixties to more than ten times that today. Unremunerated (or under-remunerated) work (such as domestic tasks, volunteer work, communes, networks of mutual help, uncompensated overtime, slave labor of various sorts) is equal to a significant portion of the above total (and perhaps about as much). It is also worth noting that most of this activity is not covered by the social security net that benefit the formally employed. The black or gray economy engages anywhere from as little as five percent of the labor force (usual conservative estimate) to up to 30% or more of the official labor force (with large variations from country to country, place to place, and time to time).
48
R ETHINKING W ORK These workers alsoand they are workingare generally outside the social security net 9unless covered by some other route).
Over the last two centuries, the average work year in Europe has fallen approximately in half, from about 4,000 hours to closer to 2,000 hours today. This translates to an average decrease of 10 hours per worker per year, roughly a day a year on average. Over this same two-hundred year period, while work time was being cut back by something on the order of a third of a percent per year, the value of real output was going up by an average of one to two percent each year.
It is perhaps worthwhile to reflect on these broad tidal flows, which help give us a considerably broader perspective compared to that which can be encountered in most current studies and discussions on the subject. Several points in particular come immediately to mind.
First, the message comes through distinctly that the two contrary century trends in employment and productivity have been fully assimilated by society over this period. I personally find this quite reassuring as we look to the future. But we can also see that the tempo of the economy is very rapidly accelerating, meaning that there is ever less time available to us for any remedial measures or system adjustment that may be required. It also suggests that something fundamentally different is going on this time around.
Against this very rough global background, I would now like to sketch out two contrasting profiles of work. The first characterizes in a nutshell the familiar picture we know and accept today, the other offers what I believe to be a highly credible characterization of the direction that we can expect to be heading in the several decades immediately ahead. It is my belief that if we spend enough time in dissecting and thinking about the basic patterns, we can discern valuable clues concerning both future trends as well as some potentially useful ideas concerning what public policy should perhaps be trying to achieve. Or at least, some of the things that we should be looking at more closely.
4.2 Todays Work Profile

With only minor variants, the dominant pattern for most people in Europe and the OECD region today is life which is organized entirely (or almost entirely) around the central facts of work: 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, 11 months a year, and for a work life 50 years. This pattern works out to somewhere in the area of 2,000 hours a year of work on average, or roughly 100,000 hours over a working life time (with a bit of time out for some illness, unemployment, etc.). Still in terms of this broadbrush characterization of work life in 1994, we might also note, if we figure an equivalent of 140 million people with jobs in Europe today, we are dealing with something on the order of 300 trillion hours of labor input. This is the ballpark quantum of labor needed to keep the economy moving at its present levels. This will be a useful number (and concept) to bear in mind as we move ahead in this little analysis. But it is not just the sheer number of hours, days, months and years that determine todays work system. Other factors come into play as well, as the following list of Facts of Work Life - Current Perspectives may help explain. These constitute what might be thought of as the dominant patterns or perceptions of work in our society today.
49
N EW W AYS TO W ORK
Facts of Work life: Current Perspectives

A society of scarcity Economic system based on allocation of scarce resources between competing ends Generally unfettered market economy Widely varying degrees of social protection depending on country, profession, etc. Tax system heavily dependent on work income (thus discouraging work at margin) Rigid work patterns Permanent employment One full time job Unique (primary) source of income/survival Single employer Salaried labor (hourly wages, piece work) Central place of work Fixed hours (nine to five) Narrowly defined work statutes Specific task oriented Continuous flows Product driven Repetitive tasks Ever increasing specialization of tasks Taylorism Rigid hierarchies of management and supervision Follow instructions of superiors No/limited potential for personal development or career advancement Adversarial relationship with management/owners (Frequent) job changes viewed as undesirable Company values dominate social values (e.g. environment) Consistent age, racial, sex discrimination Sex-oriented task partitioning Central organizer of workers and familys time Determines social status (employer, type job, sector, location, income level) Increasing (conspicuous or relative) consumption orientation Many incentives for black labor
50
R ETHINKING W ORK

Highly divided (schizoid) attitudes about ethics of black labor A great deal of tax worrying Substantial tax evasion or finagling (increasing) Acceptance (highly variable) of little or no relationship between levels of compensation and value, danger, effort levels required for that job Work delineated from education/leisure Condescending values toward unpaid work - .................
While this listing is of course incomplete, it nonetheless sketches a clear picture of todays work environment. And what is no less important here is that each of these facts of work life is, in fact, highly mutable, and indeed many are already in the process of transformation. For the great majority of the 400 million people with jobs within the OECD region today, this is indeed the dominant pattern. But, if you are an entrepreneur, executive, doctor in private practice, university professor or knowledge worker, the odds are that you will already note how poorly a number of the things on this list describe your current life-style. For the mass, these changes are still very much at the margin. However, it is my belief that a number of them are going to come together into the new patterns that will define the work life that most of us are going to live with one generation or so out. Lets experiment with this thought just a bit more.
4.3 Tomorrows Work - A 2020 Profile

We choose this time horizon of 2020 not because it can hope to have any pretense of exactness, but because it is a convenient generation out into the future. Also this is the kind of time frame over which we can anticipate that changes which today can already be observed in a number of leading edge situations will become familiar, accepted and eventually evolve into, if not the, at least a popular and widely practiced model. Here is one not-unimaginable profile of work for our fictive target year 2020. Before going into the basic arithmetic of the concept, though, let me first distinguish the two types of work that I think we are going to see in this future society. I will call them Work 1 and Work 2. This is, I believe, a critical distinction in this process of redefining work. Work 1 is what we think of today as productive labor. It is all these hours of human effort and presence which are necessary to keep the great economic machine that we have created up and running (for example, our 300 trillion hours today). It is, it must be noted, a somewhat static concept, because its main concern is to keep that machine moving so that it generates all the goods and services that society needs and wants (and will somehow find a way to pay for) today. Work 2 is a somewhat more amorphous concept, one which has not until now had much impact or relevance to most of the jobs that exist in society, at least not at its lower reaches. Work 2 is a concept that will be more familiar to upper casts of management, academics and to some of those involved with leading edge sectors of the economy (where brains, ideas and moving targets are most
51
N EW W AYS TO W ORK important). Work 2 is thus a compendium of, in todays parlance: education, training, personal culture, physical, intellectual and spiritual well-being, discretionary use of time, etc. It spills over into what some consider leisure activities and certainly into virtually all forms of education, formal and informal. Viewed from another angle, Work 2 could be thought of as todays investment in the future of human capital. For present purposes, I am simply going to posit that in terms of numbers of hours in the future Work 2 will become at least as important as Work 1. This is, of course, not a surprising outcome if we consider how our society and economy are becoming increasingly dynamic and future-oriented. It also suggests, in parallel, something about the quality of that future labor force. Let me now briefly profile how Work 1 may look to many in the year 2020. It might involve for each worker an average 20 hours per week, 40 weeks per year, and an average work life (still) of 50 years. Work 1 thus ties up almost 800 hours per person per year on average, in itself is an interesting figure to consider given present trends and preoccupations. (Work 2 similarly involves another 20 hours per week, etc., with an additional 800 hours per year on average.) From the vantage of the organization of daily life on a planet with 24 hour cycles and in light of our cultural history and habits, it can be noted that the two Works together provide a stable core for its organization. Forty hours per week, forty weeks per year are organizable and sustainable, given what we know about human behavior. As will be seen, however, this central core of daily life will in the future be much more flexible in its organization in many respects, including both in time and space, than was the case in the past. What is perhaps most strikingly different about this new work pattern is that it will be associated with an entirely new situation of 100% employment in society. This (my blind prejudice for now, and something concerning which I realize that I shall have to convince you a bit) most notably boils down to the future acceptance of two things which are not yet in our received wisdom. The first is the understanding that everybody has a right to a job, irrespective of age, sex, race, education level, health, etc. The second, directly related to the above, is that all of todays domestic work and other forms of labor, remunerated fairly or not, will become both (a) fully and fairly remunerated and (b) supported by all related social services (health insurance, social security, pension, etc.). These two elements become twin pillars of the new Social Contract which I expect will emerge as the dominant pattern in the first half of the 21st century. It remains to work through the numbers on this, but as a first approximation let me assume that by implementing this new Social Contract we are expanding the remunerated and productive labor force by roughly half (200 million in Europe). Putting this together with our 800 hours/year of Work 1, we have a situation where we will be running the machine of the future economy in the European countries with about half as many hours of direct human input (roughly 150 trillion as opposed to todays 300 trillion hours). One way of summarizing this is: Basic physical survival, Work 1a, can be taken care of by either a small proportion of workers or a small proportion of the time of a larger set of workers. Work 1b, physical services, such as gardening, flipping hamburgers at MacDonalds, etc., also employs a diminishing fraction of the population as more of even these activities are automated or priced out of existence. So what are the rest of us to do? Take in each others intellectual washing, as Joseph Weizenbaum put it? Thus the design of your Work 2 becomes the dominant issue.72
72
Personal communication via CompuServe from Jack Niles commenting on earlier version of this draft.
52
R ETHINKING W ORK Is this going to be a problem? I think not. Virtually all of the basic trends are already moving in these directions; moreover the end result is, in my view, entirely manageable. Better than that, it suggests a clear profile of the extremely high quality labor force that will be the necessary hallmark of 21 st century society. I do not think we need to worry about the wheels of the economy slowing to a crawl in this new work profile. Technical progress, management innovations and the quality of the labor force are going to be fully up to the challenge . . . If we start to prepare for it today.
4.4
Some Facts of Work Life in the Year 2020
We can now go back to our earlier listing of attributes of current work life, facts and perceptions, and reflect a bit on how each of these can be expected to evolve over the next decades. Here are what we see to be the new emerging values:
FACTS OF WORK LIFE - 2020 PERSPECTIVES

A society of abundance Market forces drive production side of economy Basic survival of all assured with or with a job Open work patterns Flexible career path associated with every job Much more flexible work arrangements More complex compensation arrangements Possibility of simultaneous jobs with different employers Greater range of possibilities of work locations Flexible hours (daily, weekly, etc.) Decentralized work locations Objective (not product) driven Flexible work flows Flatter hierarchies Self-regulation work habits Flexible teams Networking Increased macro view of inputs of work input Intra-preneurship New incentive arrangements Less clear lines between work and education Blurred lines between work and non-work (avocations, hobbies, etc.)
...........
While the reader will be able to complete this catalogue of variations as well or better than I can the underlying ideas to retain from this presentation can be summarized as follows:
53
N EW W AYS TO W ORK
The work patterns of the future are going to be markedly different from those we have known until now. We shall need to plan for these future forms and not for those that we have grown comfortable with in the past A new Social Contract can be expected to emerge. Much of its content can already be anticipated (at least in its broad outlines) This reorganization of work is not, necessarily, a society-threatening development. To the contrary, if guided by imagination and a sense of responsibility, it can create the preconditions of a society which is going to be truly richer, not only in things to be consumed but also in the tempo and quality of everyday life.
It is not the purpose of this short piece to consider ways in which we can actually confront these challenges, though these are matters which will be given full attention as the program moves ahead. For now, let me close simply by saying that there will be many ways of going about this process, and my own strong preference is for finding the simplest and most robust way of doing this. To my mind this suggests working with the price system, revising tax structures, cutting out barriers to human ingenuity, and providing positive support, as opposed to a myriad of complex command-and-control measures and other complicated authoritarian or interventionist policies. But the details of that discussion will have to await another day.
4.5 A Real World Policy Target: Redrawing a Deficitory Public Enterprise

Most of this paper has been given over to general considerations about the society and the economy of a fairly high level of abstraction. Let us change speed and take a minute to reflect on the case of a typical deficitory public employer to see if we can find any new insights, ideas or approaches that might somehow be usefully fed into this rethink at the global macro level. Let us consider the case of a long established public utility, say a national airline that for years has been run according to a pre-Brussels formula whereby deficit financing by the public sector was not considered a problem. There are numerous real world examples that might be chosen. Let us consider briefly, by way of example, the case of Air France, not in an attempt to point a finger but only because it is in many ways a perfect microcosm of the whole dilemma we are considering here, and which lots of bright people have been trying to do something about, with no apparent end in sight. Point of departure: Air France is held by some critics to be a bloated, overmanned and inefficiently managed public sector institution which (a) is unnecessarily soaking up taxpayer money, (b) is manifestly unable to compete economically in its mainline business, and , given the new rules of the road from Brussels, can no longer legally be kept afloat with grants, loans and other forms of financial legerdemain from the French government. This is a tempting characterization and indeed quite a popular one in the press and to many peoples way of thinking about these issues these days (unless it happens to be their job one is talking about). This is, however, a very dangerous point of view, because once you have accepted it you have locked yourself pretty much into your solution set, i.e., undiluted doses of re-engineering, streamlining, rationalizations, layoffs, etc. If you think about it, however, it just may turn out that in actual fact this optimal remedy is altogether likely to be MUCH worse than the putative problem itself. (I wont worry this point today,
54
R ETHINKING W ORK but I am sure that it will be clear enough for now. At the very least we can assume it is clear enough to all those good people whose jobs are threatened, the labor unions who themselves are washing about desperately for new formulae, as well as an increasing number of other concerned citizens who are asking themselves increasingly what is going on.) This movement towards decentralization, supported by the new technologies, is taking us towards a veritable Knowledge Society. The corollary to decentralization is information sharing and communications. The European dimension would give the Knowledge Society the best possible chances of taking off. The Commission is therefore proposing, in the context of a partnership between the public sector and the private sector, to accelerate the establishment of information highways (broadband networks) and develop the corresponding services and applications. ... The educational system, labour laws, work contracts, contractual negotiation systems, and the social security form the pillars of the various national employment systems and combine to give each of them a distinctive appearance. In each case, the entire system must be mobilized to improve the functioning of the labour market. This goes to show, once again, that there is no miracle solution: nothing short of coordinated action by the various players responsible for the component of these systems can affect the necessary transformation.73 Before taking this any further, I would like to comment on what might be thought of as the excessive fragility of our system in these respects. When policy makers and financial institutions finally come to an agreement that there is a major problem afoot, the first half decent idea that turns up tends to get more than perhaps its fair share of attention. The jargon of the day simply takes over at that point and, presto, a whole new world of work (or unwork) is created. Certainly in the case of Air France, but also increasingly in the whole range of what were once publicly owned and managed (and financed) systems, the search for fast solutions is on. And the range of intellectual models being considered is, for the most part, altogether mismatched to the complexity of the situations faced and the importance of these decisions to a very large number of peoplejobs included. Suppose instead of opting for any of these convenient and presently popular buzzword approaches, we take the time and trouble to turn the whole problem on its head. It would help for starters if we had in hand a really sufficient Knowledge base (including statistics) that could help us understand what the real costs to the community of that knee-jerk efficiency solution might be(see body of text for more on that). Such a Knowledge base would allow us to make some pretty interesting estimates of the cost to society of, say, tossing ten or twenty thousand people out of work just like that. What would the dole cost be? health cost? cost to local communities where all these people live? opportunity cost of all that lost talent (and believe me, most of it is going to be lost... those people are not going to be sucked back into the economy by the next upturn in the cycle)? etc. etc. If we have the necessary details on all that, we will be that much better placed to make truly intelligent and responsible decision. Suppose the policy decision is to bring together all the concerned public agencies (all of them!) and give them an opportunity to work directly in close and continuing collaboration with what is supposed to be the problem (i.e., Air France and all of its people, skills, Knowledge, resources and institutional leverage) and let this new coalition to come up with the solution. We then begin a massive shift of perspective. AF, instead of being seen as a tired, bloated, uncompetitive air carrier, is turned around and given a chance to operate as a flexible collection of tens of thousands of skilled people and resources that are already carrying out an enormous range of diverse tasksand capable of doing even more and better.
73
Growth, Competitivity, Employment,
White Book, European Commission, Luxembourg, 1993
55
N EW W AYS TO W ORK
Taking this approach, it might make sense to redefine the company not only as: 1. one of the worlds pre-eminent air carriers in need of further improvement 2. an entrepreneurial incubator capable of defining and developing a wide variety of new businesses, profit centers and activities and 3. an educational institution of great (if until now only partly understood and used) potential. This would bring us to a three level approach to the task at hand.
First, we do indeed go ahead with identifying and implementing all of the core reforms that are necessary so that the company can compete vigorously and successfully in the world of deregulated competition (though, hopefully the group would stand aloof of the more frantic and quite unsustainable idiocy that we are seeing practiced by nearly all of those terribly foolish and short-sighted companies who are quite literally selling their future for such short term concepts as market share, etc.). Second, we turn the company into a living example of our entrepreneurship incubator-cum-educator. This latter function would of course qualify for a certain amount of public support, not as good money pored down the rat hole of incompetence, ineptitude and public cowardice, but for well defined societal functions (such as education, local development, etc.) that are both serving people in their daily livesand in preparing them to take a full and more active role not only as Knowledge workers but also as responsible citizens, parents and members of the community. Third, we would undertake immediately to shift the entire employee base to something like our proposed work 1/work 2 structure, meaning that the work week is actually extended (not shortened), the 25/25 hour shift of productive (i.e. presentoriented) time and future-preparation time would be immediately respected. We would do this on two grounds: first, because we have confidence in this overall design and in the employees of our company to make good on it; and second, because of the shock value which it would necessarily bring with it (without which a changeover to the new ways of thinking, organizing work, contributing, etc., would probably be impossible).
With this proposed new way of organizing work, we are admittedly challenging the foundations of the present (soon to be the old) system. It constitutes no more or less than a totally new social contract. For it to work, it would have to have the total support not only of government and the higher reaches of management, but of all those who work in the company. It would be foolish to underestimate the difficulty of creating this consensus. Nor would we think of our proposal as a cookbook recipe that will, as it presently stands, going to constitute the only way of going about this. Nonetheless the broad design seems to me to be appropriate and worth trying, at the very least in cases which are proving resistant to the present range of formulae. In this way, in fact, it might even turn out that some of the most troubling work issues we face, will turn out to lead the way for the future not just of those firms or groups but of society as a whole. As an incidental remark in the present context, in cases such as these, as the institution in question seeks new roles and ways of organizing itself, as it becomes a context within which new ideas are born, tested and advanced, the telework component and potential can be expected to increase radically. At the very least, the more wired the institution, not only in its various offices and extreme, but right
56
R ETHINKING W ORK down to the homes and even the cars of all those working there, the potential for generating and following up successfully on these new ideas will be greatly enhanced. It is apparent that Europe, through the diversity of the social practices which it conceals, constitutes and extraordinary laboratory. We would cite as proof the example of the interest shown by researchers gathered in seminars in discovering how the Italian pension funds are financed, or the system of social subscriptions in Denmark. One step which can be quickly taken is to derive greater benefit from the potential offered by this laboratory. 74 This brings us to our bottom line, what I think we should be putting forth as one of the main themes of our final report and recommendations to the Commission and whoever else might care enough to give it time. And that is that our institutions are among our most precious resources and social heritages, and that we should think more than once before putting something that has worked pretty well over a number of decades onto the scrap heap. It is not that theyand in this instance Air France, though we could equally well have been talking about Basque National Railways, the Irish Post Office or any of thousands of such groupings of people and resources and social and economic leveragedo not need to be rethought and perhaps radically restructured. It is rather that they give us a much better place to start than, say, the dole line, or some intellectuals, politicians or administrators hasty game plan.
Wheres the other ladder? - Why I hadnt to bring but one; Bills got the other - Bill! Fetch it here, lad! - Here, put em up at this corner - No, tie em together first - they dont reach half high enough yet - Oh!, theyll do well enough; dont be particular - Here, Bill! catch hold of this rope - Will the roof bear? - Mind that loose slate - Oh, its coming down! Heads below! (a loud crash) - Now, who did that? - It was Bill, I fancy - Whos to go down the chimney? Nay, I shant! You do it! - That I wont then! - Bills to go down there - Here, Bill! the master says youve to go down the chimney! 75
4.6 Policy ArchitectureNot Lists

What we call here architecture is a critical concomitant of wise policyand something which is just about impossible to find in the current debate over employment. In this context we use the term to point up the need for overall structural integrity and a certain coherence for policy, a underlying scheme and consistent philosophical framework within which the myriad necessary details and variationsplanned and spontaneouscan find their natural and effective place. The opposite of this architectural approach is the shopping list, the dominant option for the moment. It is not necessary to cite any specific instances in this respect, since this does tend to be the
74 75
Employment, Technology, Society - A New Model of Work?, FAST program, European Commission, 1983 From Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
57
N EW W AYS TO W ORK dominant mode of policy making these days. The shopping list approachwhich often is committeedriven and indeed usually the natural result of that particular kind of cerebral and social process typically ends up by offering a catalog of, say, fifty five (or five hundred and fifty five) good things that someone should do or keep an eye on. Inevitably when such lists are complied by intelligent and concerned people (which is most often the case), there will be a number of potentially useful concepts on the list. Some typical examples of this have been identified briefly in the preceding section. The list approach inevitably leads not only to a large number of things that need to be done, but also and just as inevitably will normally involve suggestions which require considerable institutional and legal support (and sizable expenditures of public moneys). Often this can mean quite a bit of policing to make sure that each bit of policy is properly respected. In addition it seems that there is a strong bias to activity by various types of government units, which is of course natural enough to the extent that these are the same people who usually were involved in the list making process in the first place. In the final analysis, the problems lies not in the quality of the best of these ideas, but rather in the fact that they are inevitably not coherent, not easy to see and understand (as a whole), often laced by numerous internal contradictions and anomalies, and not, as todays jargon puts it, synergistic. Thus, if you take the time to think about it, you will find upon inspection that Measure 13 and Policy 33 really go in quite opposite ways. Each may be a decent sounding concept in itself and even potentially useful, but it is just that out there in the real world of insistent overlaps and interdependencies, they do not work together in a harmonious and mutually reinforcing wayas they should. Too little, too simple, too discordant, insufficiently coherent and not nearly synergistic enough in the complex world we live in to make the difference. Which brings us to the next question. If architecture is clearly so important and shopping lists equally clearly are never going to be able to do the job, why is it that we are getting so many of the latter and so few of the former? When you think about it, this is not hard to understand. The advantages of the shopping list approach are several, and almost all of them accrue to their compilers. For example... this approach requires considerably less intellectual effort, since it permits its composers to spend all their time flailing away on various points of detail, without having to face the much more demanding task of creating the global structure that is needed to bring all these bits and pieces into a coherent, implementable whole. (This is, in fact, the ultimate product of the nowcreaking Cartesian or reductionist mindset which has driven most of our formal analytical (and administrative) thinking over the last several centuries and which indeed is at the heart of the problem we are facing today.) So we are led to a situation in which each of the many proposed ideas is, perhaps, , a decent enough one in itself, but the enterprise as a whole is rife with internal contradictions, bereft of synergy, and in general an unimplementable mess. In some (rare) cases it is probably fair to say that the great appeal of the shopping list may lie precisely in its cumbersomeness and it unimplementability. Its first great advantage is that it can serve to get the commissioning agencies or institutions off the hook. They have been asked to respond to an important social and economic challenge, and by god they have. There it is, all 742 pages of it. It says we care and we are doing something about it. But of course that is not at all the real underlying message. A definite political convenience to the shopping list approach is that it provides a forum to addressin words at leastquite a vast universe of issues and interests, so that voters and interest groups can thereby find themselves in the resulting final agglomeration. Thus, when I as a farmer, merchant, industrialist or laid-off 55 year old female steel worker read the report or some part of it, I
58
R ETHINKING W ORK can see proof positive that my government cares about me. There I am... the report has pronounced my name, indicated that it has understood my problem, and somehow suggested that something was going to be done about it. This, of course is a very clever (malin) element of the shopping list strategy. But surely the greatest advantage of the shopping list is that it lets its compilers avoid coming to grips squarely with the basic structural issues and forces which underlie the entire out-of control dilemma of the jobs-work-unemployment situation that we collectively face today. If we find the will to accept the challenge, the task before us is no more or less than of an epochal re-rigging our entire social and economic system. These last are of course strong and unsettling words, , and not necessarily the sort of thing that brings joy to the hearts of any administrative or political apparatusor at very least certainly not one which is not fully prepared for this kind of fundamental rethink. No one, of course, has any great difficulty any longer with at least the words post-industrialthough the reality of its implications in practice is often much more difficult to come to grips with, at least from the perspective of public policy. No, the real thorn of course is in that expression post-capitalist, which is still a red flag for many. Even though the once supposed alternative flavor (a.k.a. Communism) lies dead as a doornail in all but the most muddled minds and places. The demise of European/Russian Communism relieves us of an enormous ideological and political burden, a burden that has been very confusing. That policy-shaping fear, which haunted us for over four decades, is behind us. We now can begin to think more clearly and coolly about our longterm economic prospects and their supporting economic and social ideologies. In the past everything that was different from what Communists practiced or advocated enjoyed our thoughtless, unquestioning support. Now we must examine our economic system more closely and see if anything is irreparably awry and must be reconceptualized. As I see it now, todays capitalism is empty of ideology and intellectually impoverished. Most economists and political thinkers are hanging on to obsolete categories.76 Uncomfortable though it may ring in The City, the basic truth is still there. In order to deal effectively with the underlying issues of work in the 21 st century, we are going to have to make a major overhaul of our existing capitalist system. The goods news is that we are not going to have to throw it away. That and the market economy that go with it are clearly wonderful and powerful tools that we shall very much need in the years ahead. The challenge will be, however, to put these tools into the broader context which is more appropriate for the world as we have now made it. The challenge at the heart of all this is, of course, how to retain the benefits of the hugely efficient productive system that we have built up the last two centuriesthe machine that is the economy, the very source of the cornucopia of plenty that we now could all profit fromwithout gutting society and ourselves in the process. The challenge is not, as Nikita Khrushchev once thought it was, to bury capitalism, but to put its enormous reactive potential to work for society as a wholewithout becoming victims of its remorseless downside in the process. Jacques Ellul had it right years back when he wrote of technology that it makes a good servant but a bad master. Which is of course exactly what we face with technologys twin brother, capitalism. Turning capitalism from master to servant is with no doubt going to be the great challenge to our civilization as we enter the next century. Interestingly enough, our concerns about the role of work in
76Joseph
Coates: Technological Forecasting and Social Change
59
N EW W AYS TO W ORK society can play an extremely useful role in this process of developing the new perceptions, and in turn the new social and economic arrangements, that will be needed carry us over to this new era. To accomplish this next is going to require a virtual Renaissance, a kind and degree of new thinking and creativity that will serve to usher in this new era. There is no doubt that the market is an astonishing solution to the problem of creating a workable economic system. Markets are systems of coordination but are not social orders in themselves. A market vitalizes and integrates a societys economic energies, but the energies emerge from a prior and low foundation - in the case of capitalism, its imperious and never satisfied drive to expand capital. It is this drive, featured in every financial report and anxiously followed in every days financial news, that sets the market in motion, and it is the effects of this drive, transmitted through the market, that impart to capitalism its powerful historical vitality. Capitalism is thus as intimately entangled with planning as is with the market. Its entanglement is called not planning but economic policy, and I need hardly add that economic policy is very different from central planning. It is planning nonetheless - that is, a deliberate effort to bring about some outcome different from that which would otherwise emerge from the market process. 77 That and no less is the dimension of the challenge. Given its magnitude and complexity, anything less will certainly fail. As we gear up to figure out what we should be doing next to get things moving in the right direction, we might do worse than recall another of the lines of Shaws that went: The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man. We are already entering a world which is radically different in many respects form what it was in the past, and it should surprise none of us that some major retooling in now in store for us. Fortunately, the adaptive powers of both parliamentary democracy and our overall economic framework have shown themselves to be considerable, so we need not think in the cataclysmic terms that Marx, Bakunin and other doomsayers of the past foretold. That said, this is going to be a challenging and at times quite uncomfortable transition. And one of the things that is sure to make it interesting is that we cannot be sure in advance as to where the good ideas are going to come from. So we must cast our net very wide indeed and be ready to consider concepts and propositions from all sides. Fortunately, we will have our new architecture to help ensure the coherence and integrity of the overall structure and all its many parts. As that fine FAST report told us more than a decade ago now: It is clear that we shall make progress in the countries of the Community not by totally questioning all aspects of work, nor by expecting the sudden shattering emergence of new models. It is rather a question of organizing a slow, gradual and deliberate transition towards a model of work still to be discovered, more complex and more open, than those we have known, and in which the key words are information, communication, and flexibility.... Undoubtedly the success or stalemate of such negotiations will largely determine the long-term position of European countries in international competition.
77
Robert Heilbronner, Reflections - After Communism, The New Yorker
60
R ETHINKING W ORK
5. R ECOMMENDATIONS & C LUES TO THE F UTURE

This final chapter of Rethinking Work is in large part aimed at informing and encouraging the European Commission in its three-year long quest for solutions to the problems of work and employment in Europe, on the grounds that the Commission has been instructed on repeated occasions by its member states to help them deal with these pressing challenges. Up until now, truth to tell, the Commission like virtually all of the responsible bodies across Europe -- has not been able to make the contributions that have been expected of it. It may be cold comfort, but as well all know they are not alone in their failure to address these issues in a meaningful manner. This brings up my second closing point, and that is that virtually all of the ideas and recommendations set out in these pages apply equally to national and regional bodies across Europe as well. The Commission has however, and this I truly believe, an especially important dynamizing role to play, in good part because it is a bit less locked into the worst of the anomalies and innovation-suppressing structures of the public sector which are, as much as anything else, at the core of the problems. Likewise, as a new institution with an as-yet far from fixed mandate, it has possibilities of flexible adaptation that most of the older national institutions simply do not have. Thus, as things stand, I see the Commission with an enormous opportunity, but we also know that the solutions to these problems are going to require changes and resources from many other parts of the political, economic and social map as well. This means of course that the Commission may be able to take a leading role, but that many other institutions and forces must also be mobilized if the needed breakthroughs are to be made. A final thesis that I advance here, which may not be particularly popular in many government quarters, is that it is unlikely that the Commission will be able to fix these problems until it first fixes itself. Let me see if I can clarify this point, since it is a central one to my argument. In the struggle for new ideas and new practices the Commission, like virtually all of the public sector institutions across Europe is heavily encumbered by its own past and its working style. In order to make the kinds and levels of contributions needed to provide major breakthroughs, it is going to have to move away from its present and decidedly old style, laberynthian, technocratic, European centralized bureaucratic m.o. and move toward a new exemplar of public sector pathfinding, Knowledgebuilding, activism, participation, negotiation and concertation. In due course the same changes will have to occur at the other levels of government across Europe, but it strikes me that the fastest way to achieve this transition will be if we can get a strong new European model for the rest to follow. 78 Thus the following is offered as a measured set of guidelines and positive counsel concerning what I personally believe to be an enormous opportunity for this, after all, new and in many ways struggling public institution to help it find its rightful place in the scheme of things at a time of great change and unmet needs across Europe and the world.
There are of course examples of major and sometimes successful overhauls of the sort we have in mind of public agencies here and there across the OECD region, but these are still very much the exceptions and not the rule. Moreover, cruel irony, the very pbulic agencies most directly concerned with creating and maintaining the work environment as broadly defined here have been among the most resistent to these forcs of change themselves. Hence a good part of our dilemma.
78
61
N EW W AYS TO W ORK This final chapter is my best attempt to set the state for what I very much hope will quickly evolve into a vigorous public debate in many places, including but not limited to Brussels I advance a simple listing of twenty seven action recommendations that I propose will help the Commission not only to make some much needed contributions in these important matters. In the next section, I provide a first layer of additional background for these recommendations, bearing in mind that at this point my intention is to encourage new thinking and not, in these few pages, to sort out all the details of what needs to be done next. That can follow in a later stage.
5.1 New Approaches for the Commission and the Public Sector
One of our principal points of departures here is the understanding that Europe is a place of great cultural, historical, legal and other diversities. These diversities are not only a joyful part of Europes patrimony which in our view are vital to preserve, but also could now be harnessed to facilitate innovation, experimentation and creative adjustment to the pressing challenges that we currently face in the domain of work and unemployment. Seen from this perspective Europe can be thought of as providing a very large living laboratory which is there for trying and evaluating new ideas (garden may be a happier metaphor) not technical formulae to be mindlessly imposed by some all-knowing sovereign central authority, but concepts and measures that come out of the existing and immensely varied fabric of individuals, institutions and relationships that together constitute Europe. Within the context of the concerns of this paper we should clearly be doing everything that we can to exploit these different-nests in creative ways (the new European policy model), as opposed, say, to trying to engineer and/or legislate Europe-wide solutions to the problems of unemployment, the role of work, etc., of the sort that the media and some out of office politicos are clamoring for (in effect, the now-old policy model). With this by way of background, it is now recommended that the Commission should consider extending and deepening the Rethinking Work program in order to encourage creative adaptation, experimentation, variety of response, and in general do everything possible to ensure that these responses are defined and implemented by those individuals, institutions and groupings most directly concerned. The role of the European Commission under this policy model will be to interact creatively with a large number of partners and cooperating institutions to .. 1. Encourage and enhance this variety of response in many and various ways 2. Enhance the ability of those most directly concerned (individuals, employers, neighborhoods, community groups, cities, regions, etc.) to find and implement new and imaginative solutions to their own problems. 3. Identify and help remove barriers which are presently hindering both innovative and more conventional responses to these problems 4. Stimulate, support and underwrite innovative (including non-conventional) approaches to building work and community. 5. Identify some of the more blatant (if tempting) pitfalls and blind alleys which are receiving attention, whether in terms of global policy approaches or specific measures 6. Develop and make effective use of new concepts of networkingboth to improve the Knowledge base for dealing with these issues and to facilitate the international flow of information and cross-border collaboration
62
R ETHINKING W ORK 7. Encourage and support a certain number of striking demonstration projects which involve those groupings, etc. that are directly concerned and which demonstrate new approaches which may provide useful models for enterprises and groupings in both the public and private sectors. 8. Find ways to ensure that these attempted innovations are fairly monitored, evaluated and reported on, with techniques of analysis that allow the needed time and flexibly for success 9. Communicate through the full range of available means and technologies the accomplishments and shortcomings of both the best and the worst of what is going on. 10. Finally, the best way to make real headway in all of the above will be to Lead by Example, with the Commission to redefine its own structures and practices to reflect the new and we believe much more powerful and effective models of work which are now available and appropriate both to the 21st century and to the functions of an institution with responsibilities that go as far as yours do. The three main paths of activity that we now propose for the Commission, and indeed for government institutions across Europe and the OECD region more broadly, involve a thorough rethink and rehab of their thinking and practice in the following areas: 1. Research Support: The goal of this component is to provide improved intellectual support (analytic structures, statistics, arguments, etc.) for a certain number of promising but tillnow insufficiently well identified concepts and approaches. In virtually all cases this work should probably be closely linked with the activities being carried out under the two other program headings. What we propose here is not that these various concepts be impetuously supported or justified by favorable or biased reviews, but rather that they be given the additional statistical and other support needed to permit them to enter into the policy debate with backing required to ensure that they get a full and fair hearing. 2. Communications/Concertation: The activities under this wing of the program are intended to support the push toward a much wider range of approaches and developments, putting to advantage the great diversity of conditions, cultures and attitudes that are found in Europe, while encouraging decentralized actions and responses. From this vantage the main contribution of the Commission is, therefore, not so much as a decoder, doer, law giver or paymaster, but rather an institution taking imaginative and responsible advantage of its unique turntable potential to map and promulgate developments at the leading edge. (There will be plenty of room for innovation in this domain as wellsee Annex on New Tools.) 3. Action and Field Support: Under this third wing of the program we propose that the Commission place emphasis on its potential as a catalyst, as a potential instigator and as a qualified supporter of attempted innovations in a society of men and institutions which by their very nature are inherently inertial and conservative, thus systematically biased against new ways of doing things. Once again the themes of networker, facilitator, communicator and local initiative are stressed, as opposed to the old models of legislator, decision taker or enforcer. This theme of Europe as its own laboratory (garden?) of diversity is central to the potential power of all aspects of this program, getting us a long way from the old central government cum technocrat model. (The potential impact of the one exception to this pattern, the suggestion that the Commission might also chose to Lead by Example, is briefly explored in the following pages.) A common element of the following proposalswith one resounding exceptionis that they are all by and large to be undertaken by groups, institutions and actors who are external to the Commission,
63
N EW W AYS TO W ORK close to both the problems and the opportunities themselves. It is to be hoped that all such efforts will be oriented to patterns of analysis and concertation that will be quite the opposite of the usual ivory tower academic research, and thus able to lay the base for concrete action programs and follow-up with committed local resources (as opposed to becoming dependents on centralized EC funding). We suggest that the program as outlined here be given at least five years of backing and support. Virtually none of the issues that need to be addressed can be handled within the framework of any short-term initiative, and it can be expected that in the final analysis many years will be required before the needed adjustments can be entirely engaged. Thus patience and continued application will be a necessary virtue in this case. The following summarizes what I think are some initiatives and project ideas that are worth considering as a point of departure. They are presented at this stage as rich ideas, notions that may be of promise in themselves but also of a nature that will help open up the debate and lead others to promise more and quite possibly much better ideas.
5.2 Recommendations for Proposed Work in Society Program

Research Support Component
R1. R2. R3. R4. R5. Major Overhaul of Taxation System (and in particular concept of swinging focus away from work-related charges, instead on resources and energy) Develop System of Job Quality Indicators (Current statistical systems are not providing the level of differentiation and support needed for policy purposes) Verify and Deepen the Age of Plenty Thesis (This radical thesis needs further statistical and other support if it is to enter into the policy debate) Probe the Potential of the 2000 Hours Thesis
Barriers to Work Research. Identify barriers hindering both innovative and more conven-
tional responses to these problems (international, national, regional, local, sectional, size, other). What is keeping individuals, various groupings, employers from doing better? What can be done about it? R6. R7. R8. R9. R10. Identify New Tools Needed To Support Analysis And Decision Making In Age Of
Plenty
Develop Lifes Work Course Curricula (for schools, universities, employers, other) New techniques of Knowledge Building (or Accretion) (See Section 5.1.1 of draft) Bleaching the Black Economy (Techniques for turning the table on traditional attitudes and barriers, and harnessing these vital forces of innovation and participation) Alternative Courses Of Action For Large Firms Under Competitive Whip (First what is going on? then why it is happening? then look for incentives for different kinds of decisions and trade-offs. Directly involve concerned firms in workshops, joint research, demo projects, etc.)
Communications/Concertation Recommendations
64
R ETHINKING W ORK
C1. C2. C3. C4. C5.
Use all available means and technologies to broaden range of institutions, interests and approaches involved in these issues Make aggressive use of innovative distance work approaches to cumulate Knowledge and support of this program, and bring more expertise to bear. Explore and enhance ECTF overlaps with all aspects of program (as existing EC resource) Creative links with fora on Internet, CompuServe, other existing Knowledge networks EC Work War Room Proposal (Under this concept, the EC both sets up its own and tries to stimulate a multi-level network of national, regional, local information/communications centers to keep close tabs on attempted innovations, monitoring the results, sharing information, etc.) Rethinking Work Oscars programs (at different levels) Joint Rethinking Work brainstorming/exploratory sessions with Aspen Institute Cooperative Program with Global Labs (educational, idea tracking) A major Rethinking Work/Knowledge Building program
C6. C7. C8. C9.
Action and Field Support Recommendations

A1. A2. A3. Establish more free-wheeling Work and Society program within EC (in parallel with other on-going White Paper efforts, using networking, etc.) Cooperative Industry Research and Action Programs with ERT, ICC and international, national and other business and industrial groupings and associations Develop system to award employers for provision of high quality employment (through tax write-offs, etc.,will need research support, but lends itself to immediate demo projects) Support field demonstration projects to test new ideas or paradigms Solicit proposals, prepare and support 2000 Hours Demonstration Programs (including Basque Rail, Irish Post Office, other public sector agencies looking for new formula under pressures for massive change. Also for private sector.) Demonstration projects for 2000 Hours projects at selected schools, universities Invite proposals for Telework demonstration projects capable of making major contributions in terms of job creation, citizen education, and retooling economy in socially desirable ways
A4. A5.
A6. A7.
Organize at various levels annual Work Oscar Programs and Award Ceremonies, which will bring attention to and some form of interesting compensation (financial and other) to ten best programs/initiatives over the last year -- with another set of equally well publicized awards for the ten worst or most ill-guided attempts or actual moves over the year. Emphasize humor, irony, accuracy, high visibility, maximize media impact, etc.
65
N EW W AYS TO W ORK A8. Investigate potential of Commission making use of 2000 Hours approach for own work
66
R ETHINKING W ORK
5.3 Some Additional Background, Comments and Expansions

There is nothing that is intended as final or definitive in the above listing. While I believe that there are some very good ideas in it, perhaps its main use will be as a stimulus for additional project and action ideas that might help get the debate off center and moving toward what could be more powerful and appropriate concepts and approaches. Eventually it will be necessary to provide further supporting background on these ideas, which are a bit cryptic in their present form. If however such presentations are provided in oral form before appropriate groups, the process of presentation and discussion itself can be highly useful in refining and deepening this list and the ideas on it. Some additional information on what we believe to be the least familiar or evident of these ideas follows.
R1. Overhaul Of Taxation System

At least a quick word needs to be given to the first of these research recommendations: the concept of providing in-depth research support as needed to advance the concept of re-structuring the tax system(s) within Europe to take the burden of taxes and other charges away from jobs and work, shifting either all or some significant part of it instead to resource-based taxes. What is important to note about this proposal is that:
In and of itself, it could shift the entire economic, social and innovative structure of society in a direction that would allow us to make HUGE INROADS into the challenges which concern us here. More than any other single measure, it could get us back in control of the viscous spiral of technology improvement/job removal which is our current fate. Such a shift, if massive enough, would take care of such a large proportion of the total problem that the remainder of what would be needed could be thought of as (in relative terms) fine tuning. This is not to say that it would deal with all of the problems of refitting work for the 21 st century, but that, one way or another, it would certainly move the system in the right direction. Such an approach wouldalmost incidentally in the present contextmost probably also redress much the greater part of the environmental and ecological pressures that we otherwise are making so little headway on. There is growing support for such measures among leaders of the scientific community, but a great deal less certainty concerning what needs to be done next to vent this good idea so that it can take a serious place in the current policy debate.
Probably the greatest single barrier impeding the serious work needed to prepare this concept for practical application, has been the inability of its proponents invariably collapse under the practical questioning of those who object that its application within any given restricted area, on the grounds that such a country or region would find itself at a major and possibly debilitating disadvantage in the competitive international economy. Two quick points need to be made about this particular track of reasoning: (a) it is not necessarily certain that such would indeed be the case; and (b) it just may be that some interesting things can be done within those broad lines at lesser levels of aggregation (say a smaller
67
N EW W AYS TO W ORK country with the wealth of human resources and political cohesiveness to move in this new direction, or some smaller unit). The main point is that more work is needed to probe and prepare these ideas further and in more practical ways.
Some Thoughts on Implementation

It could be prudent to consider the idea of re-ordering these various recommendations and suggestions and putting them into three or four categories of increasing radicality or riskiness. If the Commission sees itself as a risk-minimizer, then it may prefer to confine its activities to the first of the following categories. But if there is enough confidence in the soundness of these approachesand/or the gravity of the situationthen perhaps more aggressive approaches may be worth at least trying. One such classification system might be as follows: 1. Cautionary Steps:
Examples: A1-Work in Society program, C2-Use of new Distance Work techniques to support program, C3-Expanding use of ECTF for program support, C7- Joint exploratory sessions in 1994/95 with Aspen Institute, R5-Barriers Research, A2-Joint Industry Research and Action Programs, A7- Recasting of Telework Demonstration projects to reflect these findings, C6-Rethinking Work Oscars programs, ... 2. Ground Breaking Steps: Examples: R2-Job Quality Indicators, C3 and C4-Knowledge Networking through existing media, C8Global Labs cooperative project, R3-Age of Plenty, R4-2000 Hours and R6-New Tools research programs, R10-New Courses of Action for Firms... 3. Pioneering Steps: (Forging Ahead) Examples: C5-EC Work War Room proposal, A5 and A6-2000 Hours demonstration projects, A3-Incentives/demonstration program to encourage local employers to..., C9-Major Rethinking Work/Knowledge Building program, 4. Radical Steps: Examples: R1-Launch studies, provide support as possible for major revisions of tax system, A8Commission Leading by Example retrofit, In a similar vein, these various projects and program involve different time scales or horizons. Bearing in mind that it has taken us two hundred or more years to get to the present impasse, it would be foolish to think that we would be able to bulldoze our way out of it in a few months or years. Therefore, there will be every reason to gear up for a long term program of reconversion. We would suggest three rough ranges which need to be kept in mind:
Short Term Measures: Those which might Which could have impacts within a year or so (i.e., implying TODAY as the starting point) Medium Term: Up to 5-10 years (rebuilding companies, institutions) Long Term: 50/60 years - Kondratiefs, 2 generationsprepare future generations
68
R ETHINKING W ORK And if in all this we still are not able to be as wise as the proverbial American Indian elders whose decisions were considered for their impacts over seven generations to come, this should nonetheless be our ultimate goal. And how very different from todays pace.
An EC Leadership by Example Program (2000 Hours program)

The Commission might find it useful to examine in great detail for its feasibility, eventual advantages and implementation difficulties the idea of developing some major branch of the Commission (or maybe ALL of the Commission) as a 2000 Hours living laboratory project. This would have the Commission actually leading the way, including running into its expected full share or problems with personal, administrative hierarchies, ways of thinking, union resistance, etc. An innovative, spectacular and attention-getting move on the grounds that if you say it might be good for others, you should be willing too try it yourselves. If you think about it, by the way, it might really offer you an interesting way out of some of the work-relations and efficiency binds that you presently find yourself in up there. And if that is too much to ask, why not a run-up project to see how something along those lines might best be done?
WORK IN SOCIETY PROGRAM
The old FAST report already provided a first sketch of what we believe would have been, and would still be, a valuable contribution. Their idea was somewhat different in terms of many points of detailalso the ways of carrying out such projects have evolved enormously since back thenfrom what we propose, but it makes a useful point of departure. There is a need for an integrated view of the implications and consequences for sectors, products, types of occupation, regions etc. For this purpose, it would be appropriate for the Community to equip itself with an instrument for information, analysis and monitoring of the different studies carried out in the member countries of the Community on the crucial theme of the relations between technology, growth and employment. The initiatives suggested on research into the long-term needs of the European economy and societies constitute one of the main preconditions for a combative and purposeful common policy of technological and social innovation, with the aim of exploiting in Europe the potential for creating between now and 1995 some 4-5 million new jobs in connection with the development of new applications of the information technologies. Bearing in mind the limitations of the present set of analytic tools and approaches in the face of these pressing issues (e.g., economics, model building, labor studies, etc.), we propose that the Commission set out to encourage new techniques of study, Knowledge exchange and eventually joint action on issues involving the changing role of work in the society . The focus of this activity should be on the priority problems of unemployment and well-being in Europe, but without closing off the program to Europes responsibilities to the rest of the world or to the complex interaction between Europe and the rest. Pillar 1 (Complex Systems Approach): The point of departure for this activityand what sets it off from most of the rest that is currently going on under this headingwould be to handle this as a truly cross-disciplinary complex systems study. (We like to use the term riotously interdisciplinary, interactive and open ended, to contrast this with specialist or reductionist approaches which are the usual key building blocks of such analytic exercises.) Key words to distinguish this from the more familiar studies approaches would include such phrases as: systemic complexity, chaos, indeterminacy, interaction, delayed loops, boundary crossing, boundary effects, learning curves, organic interaction, learning organisms, complexity.... These suggest
69
N EW W AYS TO W ORK the orientation which we believe is required and now needs to be supported, and should make it very clear how this approach will differ from the more familiar discipline based and other activities which are presently being carried out as part of the search for better understanding and improved policies. This activity on the part of the Commission need not start from zero. There is already a base of activity which can be creatively consulted and in various ways integrated and supported. Note, we are not talking about setting up a new department or free-standing institution or activity within the Commission or elsewhere, though there may eventually prove to be a need for such initiatives in a supporting or orchestrating-cum-interpretation role. The extent to which one or more central or coordinating units will be required will become apparent if the correct course of preparation and establishment (i.e., feedback intensive implementation and trials) is pursued. The ingredients for such a networking effort already exist, albeit still in a fairly rudimentary form. The present report is, for example, already available through the ECTF. Pillar II - Building a Knowledge Network: It is further proposed that this could be conducted as a networking activity par excellence and should bring together many currents and parts (other programs, projects, institutions, centers, nodes, participants, topics, disciplines). To this extent it would be very different in a number of key respects usual in-house efforts or traditional approaches which involve using specific consultants, contractors or even fixed groups of collaborators. The network is to be left wide open, simply because there is no way of knowing at the outset where the best ideas and inputs are ultimately going to come from. The network and associated process need to be managed of course, and this is no inconsiderable task. There are however a number of examples of good open network management which can help in configuring a strong program.
79
The EC Rethinking Work Program or Network (or whatever it is finally called) might have three sets of closely related functions: A Forum Research - program management and policy function An Own Research and action program A Networking Function (communications, contact coordination) Bearing in mind the critical importance of the external actors in this case, the whole thing must be held together by a core activity of communications and coordination, which can be supported and enriched by a process of interaction, meetings, exchange projects, travel, communications, and eventually publication and information distribution functions. (Another key ingredient of this could be the Knowledge Building proposal which is also set out here). The activity must become an instrument of efficient communications. But much more important, its ultimate objective is to stimulate, create, support and make widely known the results of a continuing flow of external, internal and collaborative projects which address the common goals of the program. Most of the various action and research projects themselves will be autonomous or collaborative undertakings which not only give promise of achieving their targeted individual contributions, but
79
The network overall could be accessible by any size or type computer, as long as it is properly equipped with modem etc. The basic main node configuration however will require at least a fast 486, 14.4k modem but preferably ISDN or similar standard of telecoms performance. Software might be something like Lotus Notes which is good for groupware, though this is fast evolving.
70
R ETHINKING W ORK also can be creatively structured to take full advantage of the resources and support of the network, while at the same time extending and improving the quality and effectiveness of the network. For these core activities we propose a metaphor, which will hopefully clarify our strategy. ARCHIPELAGO: The Network metaphor is archipelago: a sea with many islandsthe islands being the separate, independent institutions and individuals who are united by the common network. FLOTILLA: The Forum Research metaphor is the flotilla: an expression hopefully will help indicate the great variety of the projects that we anticipate will reinforce and help each other advance toward the broadly shared goals of the program. In combination the two metaphors convey an undertaking that combines great variety and independence on the part of those involved, together with common purpose, shared long term goals and a stubborn commitment to their success. It would of course make no sense to engage this process without quite a broad time horizon. Lacking any better idea on this for now, we would propose that the program be launched now with a structural skeleton that might carry it out for ten or fifteen years (how long is it going to take us to build up this new Knowledge base?). That said, knowing the foibles of human inertia and selfperpetuating institutions, we would propose a sunset clause requiring that this activityto the extent that it has any central existence and fundingbe entirely rethought and justified as of that date. (The Internet might be a good analogue for the type of open ended approach which might be most powerful and appropriate in this context.)
THE EC WORK WAR ROOM INITIATIVE
The objective of this project is to improve the flow of information both internationally and within the member countries on leading attempts to deal with specific aspects of the work problem as set out here. The basic idea is that there are a lot of good ideas out there in the field, but that many of these are getting caught in the corners. The EC network helps to get them out and circulating. The term war room is admittedly a rather unhappy one, but it has been chosen as a working title for this proposal on two grounds. First, it suggests the level of urgency of the issues at stake. Second, it somehow implies a meticulous mapping and information function, perhaps to be supported at the right time by sound logistics and timely deployment of resources. It should be born in mind, though, that the objective is not to set up a command function, but rather to improve information flows. The crux of the idea is to set up an international expert information network making use of state-of-the-art IT and telecommunications technologies to achieve a War Room which case in a first instance be run out of Brussels, replicated with corresponding units (National War Rooms) set up in whichever countries that wish to cooperate (anybody in Europe, not just EU countries). These in turn could connect with nodes which are set up in cities, regions, companies, associations, universities.... i.e., basically anybody who might be either the source of an innovative work concept, or who might be on the lookout for one. Each node of the network will be linked by best available IT technology to get up and going. One of the functions of the Commission (and the cooperating national organizations) might be to turn this network into a test bed for high tech concepts. It is felt that this is a positive exercise since it not only permits more people and institutions to know more about what is going on, to have a richer pallet of choices for themselves, but also could
71
N EW W AYS TO W ORK have a positive feedback loop that might help to reinforce and strengthen good ideas, as well as help weed out the weaker concepts. The network is also thus a potential source of free consulting help. Think of this as a new form of media, something which is perhaps better adapted to these important socio-economic requirements at a time of rapid and far-reaching change, as opposed to the conventional print and news media. In a first instance a skeleton version could be got up and going as something along the lines of an Internet or CompuServe (for example) Forum. There is a lot of range for creativity here, but lets not forget that we could already get this up and running within days or at most weeks as a core pilot project (using our existing networks). Thus there is no reason to wait around a whole lot before starting to refine the various parts of this concepts. This is a proposal that could be appropriate as an EC initiative on the following grounds: 1. It targets perhaps the most critical problem before Europe today. 2. It involves IT heavily 3. The project is consistent with (a) what the EC should be doing and (b) the basic principles which have been set out in this report 4. The ECs contribution is mainly in the form of devising the right strong concept, providing the right level of backing to get it up and running, 5. There will be good reason for public agencies to sponsor and aid telework demonstrations in areas in which they can provide new and sound models for small businesses, public sector institutions and others who are out of the mainstream of technology development. 6. Public sponsorship for telework demonstrations should probably be as intersectoral and inter-agency as possible. Invariably a broad spectrum of public institutions will need to be involved, and a new model of cross-sectoral support needs to be developed and given high visibility. 7. These demonstrations will need to be closely monitored and fine tuned to achieve best resultsand that the results should be quickly made available to small business, fledgling entrepreneurs, and public institutions (including education and training) not only in the form of the usual written reports and conferences but taking advantage of new techniques of communication and education as well (see closing annex of this report for some idea on this). 8. Experience to date would suggest that the Commission should have no need to sponsor or pay for related technology development work, and certainly not in partnership with large or established industrial or other groups.
5.4 Work, Technology and Society: Why We Need Alternative Approaches

Given the importance of the issues and the strikingly insufficient performance of just about everything that has been tried over these last several years in most places by way of remedial policies, somebody, somewhere should be trying some radically different tacks to the problem. And giving them the resources and publicity that they should be getting. The following proposal for study, concertation and action is made on the assumption that presently on-going remedial efforts and supporting research (of which there are a great many) will be main-
72
R ETHINKING W ORK tainedthough hopefully they will be sharpened and improved to take into account some of the points that have been made in this overview. I am thus by no means suggesting that this new stream of more radical and far-reaching activity and initiative should replace all presently on-going efforts and be consecrated as the only remedial path. That would be pretentious and absurd. Rather, my assertion here is that this general approach is sufficiently different from what is presently going on in most places, potentially useful enough, and the stakes sufficiently great, that at least some resources should be devoted to it. Here are a few closing general thoughts before we get to the detail of the proposals: Confronted with what is clearly a major watershed of technology and society of millinaire dimensions and absolutely zero ambiguity, our politicians, administrators, industrialists, labor unions and the rest are nonetheless giving their time to considering remedies most of which in the final analysis consist of little more than marginal adjustments of existing policies and institutions. This is a clearly cosmic mis-match of disease and medicine. How are we to handle this urgent challenge? Clearly we want and need a society that works. And, equally clearly, the one have now is rapidly breaking down in some very important respects. Major remedial action is thus required... and fast! Based on the ideas set out for your consideration in this paper, I suggest that we now need to go back to basics and take apart the very concept of work in a very thorough-going manner, figure out exactly what we want from it, and then put it back together again in a way which will permit us to achieve our basic objectives. We obviously need to start with a clean sheet of paper, rather as Richard Dawkens put it so well in The Selfish Gene a few years back: There is only a certain amount of change that can be achieved by a direct transformation in the swords to plowshares manner. Really radical change can be achieved only by going back to the drawing board, throwing away the previous design and starting afresh. When engineers go back to the drawing board and create a new design, they do not necessarily throw away the ideas from the old design. But they dont literally try to deform the old physical object into the new one. The old object is too weighed down with the clutter of history. Maybe you can beat a sword into a plowshare, but try beating a propeller engine into a jet engine. You cant do it. You have to discard the propeller engine and go back to the drawing board. The obvious analogy/tool of choice for this task will be something that is the socio-political equivalent of reengineering (or process innovation as it is sometimes called). There is of course a certain splendid irony in this choice, since it is precisely this approach and its variants which are among the most job-threatening practices that are presently in process in industry and the service sector. It is, however, a powerful tool and one which can be refined and extended to these issues as well. Without worrying the details overly, the point that needs to be emphasized for now is the drastic change in environment, the scale of the issues, the sense of urgency... and the need to begin with that clean sheet of paper. The first step in this process will be to begin to ask some altogether different questions. We are going to need to probe different issues, different structures, different dimensions, different time horizons, and even different value systems. We must keep in mind that it is not going to be simple to get the right questions. Also, we should never forget that the process of getting the right questions is very different from that of getting answers. It requires different skills, different attitudes, different cerebral processes and different time horizons. It is also quite a bit harder. A major goal must to line up tactics (i.e., the remedial measures we must already begin to introduce) with strategy (i.e., what is going to make most sense in the long run). The objective should be to
73
N EW W AYS TO W ORK make sure that we have the best possible understanding of the over-arching structural issues and forces, so that whatever remedial policies and short term measures are selected will line up intelligently with what is needed in the long run. Such an approach is needed to avoid the embarrassing prospect of later having to double back, possible at high economic cost and social disruption, to compensate for hastily enacted remedial measures which were possibly worse than a no-policy policy. Much more sweeping questions are called for in this case. For example we need to address the following fundamental issues in order to find a way out of the otherwise unsolvable double-bind that we find ourselves in:

Does every citizen have a right to work? If not everybody, who does, who doesnt, and why? How many hours of work will be needed in any given year to ensure that the productive apparatus of society generates everything that is needed for a prosperous, stable and democratic society? How many hours of work a week, year, lifetime will be appropriate for the average citizen to contribute, to enjoy, in post-industrial society? Should every job, at every level of society in Europe offer a career path and built-in continuing educational opportunities? Does it make sense to try for a policy which would yield the broadest base possible of well educated, flexible, serene, responsible, capable citizens? Is this (the above) what is likely to be the real profile of tomorrows citizen/worker? Or is this just utopianism? Are the social maintenance costs (net) for such a citizenry higher or lower that present arrangements? Should we be rethinking the links between work, education, leisure....? What about the links, if any, between work and the welfare mentality? work and crime? work and prisons? Disease? Health? Despair....? What is the time scale appropriate to any remedial program... months, a few years, a generation or more? What might a new work demonstration project(s) look like?
These are, of course, only a few examples. In matters as complex and in many ways unfamiliar as this, we need to be on the lookout for the process that is going to stimulate and broaden such questioning. This is clearly not something that we should be trying to jam into a PERT chart for Phase I of a project, do and then go onto other things. It must be accepted as a continuing and in many ways assuredly uncomfortable and disrupting thing. Uncomfortable as this might prove, the problems that we are facing are so grave that we really have no responsible choice but to try. The follow-up program which now needs to be launched should attempt to provide a more rigorous and much more far reaching view of both the problems and the potential solutions. It should be fully plugged in both to the leading (and the lagging) edges of thought and practice around the world. At the very least, it should provide an idea bank and major international reference point for less conventional proposals and perspectives (as opposed to the main line ideas which are presently receiving ample attention in the specialized government agencies, research programs, etc.).
74
R ETHINKING W ORK The program should aim to interact with whoever wishes to exchange ideas and materials with it. This fully open focus is absolutely essential to the success of the whole venture. There is no way of knowing in advance where the good ideas are going to come from. A highly reserved, strictly in-house project would risk to be captured by individuals, political restraints, bureaucrats and others who, in their drive for prudence or some sort of party line, could fundamentally cripple the spirit of free inquiry which is vital to such an unconventional problem solving effort. The program should be, to the extent possible, value free, non-ideological, open to ideas from all sides, ready to share information and perspectives with anyone who wants to. Without being an effete exercise in intellectual history it also must be fully plugged in to the best and brightest thinking of the past on this subject, of which there is a great deal, e.g., Adam Smith, J.S. Mills, Marx, Keynes, Schumpeter, Galbraith, Bolding, Hayek, Dan Bell, Friedman, Heilbronner, Hirschman, Kenneth Arrow... to give you a flavor for the rainbow of people and perspectives who have already helped us in the run up to this. Non-ideologicalwhatever it takes to help us move closer to what is needed! Much useful ground work has been laid over the last two hundred years; these and others have seen the problem coming. It would be idiotic to neglect this valuable material and perspective in our haste to find solutions to todays pressing problems. There are many ways in which this challenge can be faced. Certainly for those with a university background, there will be an understandable temptation to define whatever is to be done primarily as an excuse to carry out yet more research. Others may see it as an exercise that could in time yield the stuff of a good book or publication. My immediate reaction to this has several parts:
First, a great deal of valuable preparatory research and thinking has already been done in this and related areas Second, the issues are pressing to the point where we really do not have the luxury of time to carry out an awful lot more academic research. Third, there is a large body of information available as a basis for at least a first round of policy decisions. This information consists of two main parts, both of which need to be kept in view: A huge body of statistics and descriptive information from many sources and in many and often highly disparate qualities and forms (though much of this information will have undoubtedly to be reorganized and viewed through some radically different lenses). A rich legacy of past work and thought, which can help us to put these matters into their broader historical and economic context, itself an invaluable step at a time when most analysts are treating these events as if they were devoid of any historical content or interest.
What we need to do now is to pool all our brains and talents, and sense of responsibility and humanity, in order to define an iterative process of questioning, Knowledge building and experience that can be launched -- perhaps making use of techniques closer to the approach of the architect-builder of another time rather than his 1994 equivalent. Instead of taking the time and resources to develop some sort of final master plan and engineering blueprint, what we are going to have to do is engage the design-build-design some more cycle of the master builders of old. So even if you may not particularly believe in what some of you will surely regard as somewhat extreme premises, a program along these lines just might prove useful as a means for uncovering a few useful ideas or perspectives that otherwise might not have come out of the more conventional approaches. Thus, perhaps the most important objective of this project will be to stimulate and broaden the debate on these matters. In the final analysis, its main contribution may prove to be not so much
75
N EW W AYS TO W ORK as an intellectual accomplishment, as having provided a versatile and dynamic platform for questioning, new thinking, stimulation and communications. Alternatively, it may even provide the beginning of a whole new approach to policy in this important area of technology and society. But that, of course, remains to be seen. * * *
Let me conclude by making it clear that I realize this will be not only an extremely challenging path of inquiry and action, but that it is also certain, at least at times, to be a rather uncomfortable one. Let me give an example. There is no doubt in my mind that the only way out is going to require that we learn to cut the Gordian knot that has for centuries linked income to work. These two are going to have to be, to some extent anyway, de-coupled. (There is an interesting analogy here with the energy/growth delinking which we saw in the sixties, to the surprise of most of us. We can, I think, be encouraged by this earlier parallel.) This last (de-linking of income and work) is in many ways a chilling prospect. It goes against the grain of so much of our accumulated thinking and reflexes here in the West. Dealing with it will be no easy process. Now, this can be done in a hasty, dogmatic (and inevitably dangerous) way. Or it can be moved toward prudently, subtly, deliberately and with a full understanding of the peripacies of human nature and motivation. John Kenneth Galbraith put it this way in a discerning passage written more than a decade ago: There is here the basis for the most important single difference in modern economic attitudes. For economists of classical or neo-classical disposition there is still a fixed, unchanging norm. To this, economic life, whatever the interim disturbances and interferences, has a controlling tendency to return. Economic science refines and improves Knowledge of basic institutions and relationships that are constant. Opposing this view is the belief in a continuous change of which economists and economic ideas must adapt, the legacy of Hegel and Marx. Economic institutions - trade unions, corporations, the economic manifestations and policies of the state, class conflict - are all in movement or are a source of movement. The cost of believing in equilibrium - of seeing the study of economics as a search for improved Knowledge of a fixed and final subject matter and thus as a hard science like physics or chemistry - is to be an ineluctable march to obsolescence.80
5.5 Some Closing Thoughts

The impatient reader may be wondering why we havent managed to go further in this attempt to open up the discussion, but as the more patient of you will understand this is a massive area of inquiry and there is a great deal of ground that needs to be covered. What you have in these pages is quite clearly no more than a rough first cut at the issues, but we have to start somewhere. And as you move these matters about in your mind in the coming months, here are a few last thoughts that you may wish to consider. They represent nothing more than personal predilections, but I sincerely think there are here some important points that give us something to build on.
80From
Kenneth Galbraith, Economics in Perspective, Houghton Mifflin 1987, pp 124, 125
76
R ETHINKING W ORK
Growth is better than no growth (but we are never going to solve the problems of work through growth alone) A job is better than no job (but not all jobs are created equal) Variety is wealth (but most of modern society works against it) Experimentation is vital (but there are many barriers which prohibit freedom to innovate) Information (sharing) is important (and IT and TC will be critical) We can almost certainly accomplishment more in smaller units than in larger ones Individuals are smarter than governments (so lets shift the initiative to them) Small projects are better than big projects (i.e., LOCAL initiatives) Past government policies have created a large number of anomalies that are holding back individual actions and initiatives Negotiation is critical
Let me leave you with one final thought. If I and the many other thinkers, writers and doers cited in these pages have made at least a portion of the case for action and new thinking in these pressing matters, which after all concern all of us, what are YOU going to do now to assume your part of the responsibility?
I see no reason why a sustainable world could not be dem wise regulation), dynamic, decentralized, flexible, diverse cause of Earths limits, we are going to have to redesign o might as well design it to be the world we really want. 81
81
Donella Meadows, author of Beyond the Limits, Chelsea Green, Post Mills, Vt., 1993
77
N EW W AYS TO W ORK
6. A NNEXES AND R EFERENCES
78
RETHINKING WORK
6.1 Annex A: The Paris Brainstorming Sessions

Meeting I (French Senate)
Salle de la Commission des Affaires Economiques Luxembourg Palace (The Senate) 25-27 November 1993, Paris Summary of Meeting Objectives:
This first meeting was convened by EcoPlan within the context of a joint project with the European Commission: New Concepts of Work in an Knowledge Society. It is part of a larger continuing program on the problems of work in society initiated by EcoPlan in 1992 under the title, Rethinking Work. These first sessions aimed to harness a brainstorming format to build on the Knowledge, insights and interactive capacities of a small but distinguished and varied group to explore a wide range of ideas about the changing nature of work in post-industrial society. The objective was not so much to find answers for the difficult issues that it was addressing, as to ensure that better questions are asked by policy makers and others concerned. It is hoped that these meetings will not only serve the Commissions objectives for greater insight into prospective future patterns of human activity, but also give the participants, and others who are following this process from a distance, an opportunity to define useful new projects, collaborative initiatives and exchanges, on the basis of a better understanding of both problem and alternative solution paths.
Participants
Richard Alba, Professor of Sociology, Mannheim University, Mannheim, Germany Dana Allin, Associate Director, Aspen Institute, Berlin R. U. Ayres, Professor of Economics & Environmental Management, INSEAD, France Boris Berenfeld, Global Labs - Technical Education Research Center, Cambridge, Mass. F.E.K. Britton, Managing Director, EcoPlan International, Paris Christopher Jensen Butler, Dept. of Political Science, Aarhus University, Carolyne Drevon, SMG Consultants, Paris (Reorganizing Work) Leif Edvinsson, Director of Intellectual Capital, Skandia, Stockholm, Sweden Timothy Fenoulhet, DG XIII, CEC, Brussels Jennifer Jarratt, Future of Work Program, Coates & Jarratt, Washington, DC Allan Johansson, Non-Waste Technology Research Unit, Espoo, Finland Flora Lewis, IFRI, France (International Journalist/Political Scientist) Philip J. Murtagh, Norcontel Telecom, Dublin, Ireland Robert Pestel, CEC, Brussels F. Schmidt-Bleek, Director, Environment Studies, Wuppertal Institute, Germany Jan Visser, Distance Learning Unit, UNESCO, Paris Wolfgang Zuckermann, Author and Social Scientist, EcoPlan, , France
79
T OWARD A T HIRD W AY
Meeting 2 (UNESCO)
UNESCO Conference Center (Salle VII) 9-11 December 1993, Paris Summary of Meeting Objectives:
This second meeting was organized as a measured dialogue between two informal panels, each with a defined bailiwick of primary concern, to contrast and compare their visions of the future. To open several members agreed to make brief presentations in an attempt to summarize the state of the art of futures thinking in most telework projects and programs. Discussions were not only given over to charting the status of thinking and actual progress in this area of activity, but to considering a certain number of more general, future-oriented points concerning telework. For example... What are the specific targeted goals behind telework (for individuals, employers, communities, suppliers, nations, regional institutions such as the Commission)? What is the time frame for telework planning today (on the part of each of these constituencies)? How far out into the future do these projects tend to look? What kind of future are they considering (extrapolative or other)? To what extent are radically different patterns of work organization considered? How do telework projects look at and try to incorporate education? Is telework a goal, or a transition strategy? How will we view telework in, say, twenty years time? The Work Futures panel then took the lead in an attempt to shed some light on the growing range and potential ramifications of new ways of organizing work in post-industrial society, with attention to the chance that the range of likely prospects and variations is perhaps rather greater than that which has been targeted in most telework projects till now. The group then collectively reflected on the implications of these perhaps radically different new values, structures and work arrangements for communications technologies and services in general, and for telework in particular.
Participants: Telework Futures Panel: Ashok Boghani, Director of Telecom program, AD Little, Boston Brendan Finn, European Transport & Telematics, Dublin X Peter Johnston, DG XIII/B, CEC, Brussels Mikel Murga, Leber, Spain (Reorganizing Basque Rail) Philip J. Murtagh, Norcontel Telecom, Dublin, Ireland Work Futures Panel: Eric Britton, Managing Director, EcoPlan, Paris Faye Duchin, Director, Institute for Economic Analysis (Leontief center), New York Michael F. Jischa, Technical University Clausthal, Germany Emin Tengstrom, Vice Rector, Gothenburg University Jan Visser, UNESCO, Paris (Distance learning) Observers/Control Check: Timothy Fenoulhet, DG XIII, CEC, Brussels Wolfgang Zuckermann, Author and Social Scientist
I. T HE O RIGINAL R EPORT
80
RETHINKING WORK
NOTE ON THE PARTICIPANTS AND WHAT THEY BROUGHT TO OUR TOPIC
A brainstorming and, ultimately, advice-giving exercise of this sort can only be valid to the extent to which the assembled group is able to consider these issues from the broadest social and economic perspectives. For a topic like work in society, it is clearly of utmost importance that the considering group be able somehow to mirror the full reach of the problems and opportunities. We took note of the fact that the councils of debate and decision have traditionally been dominated by a relatively narrow group of actors: invariably male, university educated, in the thirty to fifty year age bracket, more often than not Caucasian, securely employed, without overriding physical handicaps, generally law abiding (tax finagling excluded of course), and almost always in the top ten or less percentile in terms of their economic situation, place and quality of residence pension and health arrangements, etc. The concerns and perceptions of such a narrow slice of the populationsuch a privileged eliteare clearly rather different from those of the enormous range of people and circumstances that need to be addressed in this particular case. We have to ask ourselves how can people with such relatively narrow backgrounds living in relatively comfortable cocoons be expected to grasp the plight of the rest of society: the long term unemployed with no hope of work even vaguely in sight, the poor mother of three whose husband has long since vanished, the bed-ridden, the victim of continuing racial disfavor, the tough kid in the ghetto, the fifty year old farmer, coal miner or fisherman who is living in a society that no longer wants his services, the middling student, the junkie, the prisoner who is perhaps perfecting his skills in a penitentiary..... Before letting you know how we managed to avoid, to the extent possible, the unfortunately limited model that usually dominates such meetings, it will be only honest to point out that on the surface at any rate our crowd looked like one more rerun of the usual contingent. We were not able to get the fifty percent representation of females that I had targeted (though we tried hard), nor did we do particularly well in terms of racial spread (though there were several with interracial marriages or adoptions). The age range was satisfying (mid-twenties to mid-seventies), while a number of the participants had had long periods of unemployment (according to several different models and compensation-protection arrangements). About a quarter of the participants had already engaged more than one completely different career, and several had already retired from one or more.. We succeeded in getting a strong mix of nationalities (keeping to Europe which was of course the focus here) and succeeded well there, and did well on the professional and educational backgrounds, with disciplines that ranged from advanced degrees and sophisticated work in physics, chemistry and mathematics, across quite some range of social sciences (including economics), with one Latinos, a musicologist, several with social work backgrounds and experience, a number of teachers, and several members with considerable work and living experiences in ghettos and the Third World. A number of the participants had lived in war situations for extended periods and at least one had worn a yellow star. Several had started independent businesses and a surprising number who had worked for extended periods as craftsmen, artisans, and manual laborers. Several had been in jail or prison for political reasons, or come from families where a parent had been imprisoned or otherwise excluded from society for reason of race, religion, political or ethical considerations. It was notable that most seemed to have family members or close friends who have been personally struck by this new and much more massive wave of joblessnessgiving this round a much more familiar ring than perhaps would have been true had we organized such a meeting, say, a decade ago. Putting it in other terms, we would say in conclusion that the anguish has now moved up into the middle and upper middle classes, making this round of the problem rather more likely to be felt and given attention in the counsels of power. For most of us unemployment and a changing world of
81
T OWARD A T HIRD W AY work is something that we have known and are living every day. As Dr. Johnson reminded us more than two hundred years ago: Depend upon it, Sir, when a man knows that he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully. Despite the fact that we believe that we were able to cope rather well with this part of the challenge, even our relative success points up one part of the challenge to which the latter part of this paper gives some attention. How in fact can we do a better job of opening up such processes to a wider range of perceptions and inputs? One part of the answer for the future has to lie in the Internet experience, which is providing some clear guidelines as to how this can actually be done.
82
RETHINKING WORK
7. ANNEX B: ORGANIZATION AND CONTENTS OF THE READER

The intent of the Rethinking Work Reader was to bring together a collection of articles and excerpts from a wide range of sources and points of view which are meant as an ideal airplane or train companion for the participants (or anyone with a serious interest in our twins topics and who suspects that there might be just a bit more to it can be found in the present debate). The objective was to construct a prism, a series of lensesand very different lenses they are indeed! -- through which we can together view the many aspects of the twin topics of this meeting. To accomplish this, the Reader was organized into five main parts as follows: I. Background and Introduction: This section briefly introduces and explains the Rethinking Work program, the present project for the European Commission (New Concepts of Work in an Knowledge Society), this meeting, and the Reader itself.
II. Press Articles and Editorials: A selection of recent press articles and editorials (almost all from English language sources) which point up the considerable divergence of views and attitudes that presently prevail. III. Background On Telework Futures: A set of seven extracts for a total of about one hundred pages of materials introducing and providing useful background and perspective on the topic of telework or distance working. These materials have the advantage of providing overviews of what is going on in the United States as well as Europe, which is particularly important in this case since it is in North America where the main inroads have been made until now. IV. Background On Work Futures: The 210 pages of articles and extracts in this section have for the most part been arranged in chronological order. We find that it is at once a more powerful if a bit more difficult way of accessing these materials. For the reader in a hurry for solutions or current information on the hot topic of the moment it may be a bit frustrating. But because it requires a certain amount of patience to step back and consider the issues from a broad historical perspective, we think that in the long run this is a more useful approach, especially in light of the objectives of our program. V. Comments From Participants: Comments and guiding suggestions received from participants and others who have showed themselves to be interested in participating in the exchange of ideas and materials behind this program in the last weeks. Useful both as thoughtful reminders of things we need to keep our eye on and as criticisms which we should be prepared to deal with or at least to answer. The contents of the Reader are reproduced on the following page, which is followed in turn by a series of short synopses of the various articles and extracts.
83
7.1 Contents of Reader

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. Background and Introduction Press Articles and Editorials Telework Going To Work: What A Waste Of Time And Money (5 Pages) Telework: Visions, Definitions, Realities, Barriers (31 Pages) Benefits Of Substitution Of Transportation By Telecommunications (13 Pages) Rural America: A Future Of Decline And Decay Unless... (3 Pages) Why Kids Love Computer Nets (5 Pages) The Promise And Perils Of Emerging Information Technologies (29 Pages) 10. Development Of Advanced Communications And Telework Stimulation In The Context Of Economic Growth And Job Creation In Europe (11 Pages)
8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. IV. Rethinking Work The Passions And Interests: Arguments For Capitalism Before Its Triumph (5 Pp.) The Informal Economy: Its Role In Post-Industrial Society (14 Pp.) Samskap - A New Swedish Institution (10 Pp.) Shifting Involvements: Private Interest And Public Action (9 Pp.) Employment, Technology, And Society - A New Model Of Work? (25 Pp.) Making Europe Work (13 Pp.) Future Work: Jobs, Self-Employment And Leisure After The Industrial Age (16 Pp) The Active Society (4 Pp.) After Communism (8 Pp.) Working Less And Living Longer: Long Term Trends In Working Time & Time Budgets (30 Pp.) Preparing For The Urban Future (3) The Work Of Nations: A Blueprint For The Future (12 Pp.) Economic Predictions (8 Pp.) OECD Employment Outlook (8 Pp.) Moving The Census Into The 21st Century (5 Pp.) Europes Tough New Managers (4 Pp.) From Value Chain To Value Constellation (5 Pp.) The Jobless Recovery (4 Pp.) The End Of Jobs (6 Pp.) Travail Et Socit: Courants De Pense Contemporains (10 Pp.) Where Have All The Jobs Gone (11 Pp.)
V. Comments From Participants
84
RETHINKING WORK
7.2 Background Reading in Support of Telework Futures Panel

Joseph Coates short article, Going to Work: What a Waste of Time and Money provides a quick entry into this first half of the meetings agenda. The perspective is 1993 American, but there is much that can be generalized from his snappy overview. Lars Qvortrups Telework: Visions, Definitions, Realities, Barriers (31 pages), prepared as part of a 1992 OECD publication, Cities and New Technologies, provides a good general overview of the state of the art of telework, including putting it into its humanistic and social science context. The article ends with a comprehensive bibliography which makes a useful working tool in itself. Ashok Boghanis Benefits of Substitution of Transportation by Telecommunications (1992, 13 pages) was prepared subsequent to a major multi-client study which he led for Arthur D. Little, Can Telecommunications Help Solve Americas Transportation Problems. The focus extends not only to telecommuting but also teleshopping, teleconferencing and electronic transportation of information. His look at costs and benefits is strictly in the US context, but provides useful analogies for Europe as well. The second brief piece by Joseph Coates, Rural America: A Future of Decline and Decay Unless... (from Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 1993, 3 pages) is a useful reminder of the potential role of new telecoms systems in arresting the decline of outlying areas. The article from Fortune entitled Why Kids Love Computer Nets (Sept. 1993, 5 pages) has been included as a mind-stretcher, to get the attention of the meeting a bit beyond the strictly work oriented focus of the preceding papers, and as a reminder of the fact that work in the futurein the OECD countries at any rateis going to be much more tightly linked to education than at any time in the past. From the vantage of the Rethinking Work program the article is good value in that it describes the Global Lab project that was reported by Boris Berenfeld at the first brainstorming session at the French Senate in late November 1993. The Aspen Institutes recent report on The Promise and Perils of Emerging Information Technologies (August 1993, 29 pages) offers a thought provoking overview from several rather different perspectives. And while it is perhaps a bit unfair, given the number and quality of ideas set out in their paper, we would nonetheless like to single out for mention the three pillars of John Seely Browns little philosophical model intended to guide anyone out to design or deploy information systems for groups. It is worth pointing out that this emphasis on (a) open-ended and (b) learning systems contrasts with the heavy end-state orientation and rigid blueprints of many past attempted innovations. 1. Focus more on relationships than things (Information technologies can and should change relationships between people, and in turn the fundamental features of a complex system.) 2. Honor emergent behavior (Allow the emerge of competing agents or models or technologies and enhance their interrelationships)
3. Under design systems to let new truths emerge. (Use intelligence to under-design a system and assist the emergence of new ideas). Peter Johnstons paper Development of Advanced Communications and Telework Stimulation in the Context of Economic Growth and Job Creation in Europe (11 pages with annex) provides a useful summary of both the European Commissions activities and the overall reasoning behind these initiatives, giving us a useful bridge into the collection of papers and extracts on Rethinking Work which follow.
85
7.3 Background Reading in Support of Work Futures Panel

The articles and extracts in this section have for the most part been arranged in chronological order. We find that it is at once a more powerful if a bit more difficult way of accessing these materials. For the reader in a hurry for solutions or current information on the hot topic of the moment it may be a bit frustrating. But because it requires a certain amount of patience to step back and consider the issues from a broad historical perspective, we think that in the long run this is a more useful approach, especially in light of the broader objectives of our program. * * * This section opens with two brief extracts from The Passions and Interests: Political Arguments for Capitalism before its Triumph, a book written by Albert Hirschman in 1977 which reminds us that the circumstances we are facing were not exactly unanticipated by earlier generations of economists and social observers. His reminders of the importance of trying to understand systems of ideas and socioeconomic relations and the rich intellectual patrimony left by writers and thinkers of the past will be useful to hold in mind as we cast about for new ideas and solutions to the problems we now face. J.I. Gershunys 1979 article for Futures, The Informal Economy: Its Role in Post-Industrial Society, argues that a wide range of services once produced in the money economy are increasingly provided informallyon a self-service basis. He then goes on to probe governments ambiguous attitudes toward the informal economy, and searches for a new approach from the state which might take better advantage of the creative capabilities of this sector of growing importance. Emin Tengstroms short paper Samskap - A New Swedish Institution, written back in 1981, looks at the role and potential of the informal economy. This humanistic view of the issues and consideration of alternative solutions provides interesting perspective, reminding us that there are going to be other routes than traditional economic policy worth bringing into the debate. The two extracts from Albert Hirschmans 1982 book, Shifting Involvements: Private Interest and Public Action, takes a thoughtful look at structural shifts in services and consumers attitudes from a longer term perspective, and then goes on to consider briefly the divorce between work and love and the limitations of the rational actor models which characterize so much of mainstream economic analysis of our time. In 1983 the FAST program of the European Commission took an intriguing look at Employment, Technology, and Society - A New Model of Work? which today, ten years and close to ten million more unemployed people later, still makes provocative and useful reading. And if we say that we find more value in the analysis than in the policy prescriptions chosen at the time, this is perhaps a reflection of our somewhat lesser degree of interest in Community-led technology R&D programs. James Robertsons 1985 book Future Work: Jobs, Self-Employment and Leisure after the Industrial Age, looks at the issues from quite another perspective. His concept of ownwork is a broadside at what he calls conventional economists and politicians, as is his primary concentration on alternative economics: environmental and community-level impacts. The quite original ideas he advances are, in our view, worthy of careful reflection and do indeed help enrich the debate. One year later in 1986 the European Roundtable of Industrialists prepared a brochure entitled Making Europe Work which ends with their suggested checklist of prescriptive policy measures. It is interesting to consider the extent to whichdespite the importance of the sourcemany of those ideas have still to be integrated into public policy discussions in most places, never mind policy itself.
86
RETHINKING WORK In January of 1988, Ronald Gass, then director of the OECDs Directorate of Education, Employment, Labor and Social Affairs, wrote The Active Society, a brief memo to his staff asking that they help him rethink the sometimes conflicting objectives of full employment and social protection at a time of growing structural change and new pressures in society. The noted economic historian Robert Heilbronner published an article entitled After Communism in The New Yorker in September 1990 which recaps the experience of the then-Communist countries with rigid central planning, and the need for new policy models, East and West. Jesse Ausebel and Arnulf Grueblers long 1990 paper, Working Less and Living Longer: Long Term Trends in Working Time & Time Budgets, is reproduced here in its entirety on the grounds that it adds an element of very long term (century trends) analysis and perspective to the debate. In the haste for quick solutions, this underlying structural forces are often left out of the debate. Robert Heilbroners second New Yorker article, Economic Predictions, appeared in June 1991. It provides a masterly overview of the uses and abuses of economics as a guide for economic policy over the last two centuries. His final sentence is certainly worth pondering: I tell them it (economics) is half science and half morality play, and the hope of attaining whatever goals we seek will depend at least as much on economists thinking like moralists as predicting like scientists. Joseph Coates brief article (extracted here), Preparing For the Urban Future, is a useful reminder that futures studies often have built-in aiming deficiencies. He suggests that we should at least be trying to learn from the errors of such studies in the past (a point which does not fall on deaf ears). Robert Reichs, The Work of Nations: A Blueprint for the Future, is of course a work to be reckoned with, not least if we bear in mind his present professional preoccupations. Interestingly enough his book has two sub-titles, depending on which page one looks. The second is Preparing Ourselves for 21st Century Capitalism. We leave it to the reader to reflect on the implications of this twin sub-title. His The Problem Restated as well as the now-famous concept of the rise of the symbolic analyst are both food for thought. The OECD Employment Outlook is an annual assessment of labor market developments and prospects in Member Countries. The Executive Summary of the June 1993 edition is reproduced here. Joseph Coates short piece Moving the Census into the 21st Century appeared in Technological Forecasting and Social Change earlier this year. It has been included as a reminder of the point set out in our manifesto which stated: In examining the issues we are consistently looking at the wrong things (and often measuring even those wrongly). This is disguising the true dimensions of our dilemma. Richard Norman and Rafael Ramirezs article in the Harvard Business Review of August this year, From Value Chain to Value Constellation, reviews the process of rethinking work from quite another perspective, reminding of how far-reaching the process of reorganizing business can take us in this chain. Paul Hofheinzs Fortune article of September 1993, Europes Tough New Managers, is a paean to the hard hitting aggressive, American-style management that certainly defines at least one part of the problem before us. His chilling last words ring in the ear: A this moment, European managers are gearing for the competitive challenges of the 21 st century. And they are doing it fast. John Judas thoughtful The Jobless Recovery appeared in The New Republic in March, critiques President Cliftons economic program as set out in his 145-page book A Vision for Change for America. Judis introduces the important concept of the new crisis of disaccumulation and concludes with the sentence, ... the underlying crisis caused by simultaneous growth and unemployment will continue to haunt Clinton and the country for the remainder of his first term, if not for the remainder of the century.
87
T OWARD A T HIRD W AY Richard Barnett of the Institute for Policy Studies published The End of Jobs In Harpers Magazine in March 1993. One sentence give us the stark message of his analysis: An astonishingly large and increasing number of human beings are not needed or wanted to make the goods or to provide the services that paying customers of the world can afford. Travail et Socit: Courants de Pense Contemporains is a working paper prepared for internal use by the Forward Studies Unit of the European Commission as part of the process that has generated their just-issued White Paper. We find it useful both for what they have chosen to look at and the manner in which they have tried to summarize the broad positions of each of the authors and works covered. William Bridges privately communicated the following advanced copy of Where Have all the Jobs Gone for our review and comment. He has kindly permitted us to share his analysis with you. His view of the future is essentially optimistic, and there can be no doubt that he is looking at one of the leading edges of the future work paradigm. But this, as we all know, is only a part of the problem. (The Bridges article has just appeared in Fortune magazine).
88
RETHINKING WORK
7.4 Selected Press Articles and Editorials

These two dozen short articles tell a story, a story of problems, perplexity and vast differences of opinion and points of view. They are worth reading carefully. Taken together perhaps their overwhelming message is that this is a challenge of many parts, of great systemic complexity --- and that as a result it is not going to be easy to deal with it on a piecemeal basis. Among the outstanding recurrent themes that come up here and need to be kept in mind:

The sheer magnitude of the problems Their universality The rate at which they are accelerating in many parts of the world Their underlying structural nature. The extent to which they bite deeply into so many peoples daily lives and their asymmetrical nature which strikes certain groups and places much more heavily than others Their implications on family and community. The particular dilemma of the growing number of people who are being cut off more or less permanently from prosperity, and thus the moral implications of policy making in these matters The deep, vital and incontrovertible links to such issues as trade, international competitiveness, capital mobility, ethics, productivity, technology, organizational innovations, ignorance, the new permanent underclass, womens issues, crime, the penal system, health care, race, youth, political instability, fear, and anxiety about the future. The importance of global thinking, multi-part solutions and the ability to get the various parts of the solution to working in synch The only partly understood but probably vital link between work (i.e., providing for the current requirements of individuals and society today) and education (our ability to provide for them in a satisfactory manner tomorrow) -- suggesting that, even if we know nothing else for sure about it, the work of tomorrow must have a great deal more education in it for those who are going to live well in the world of the future.
89
7.5 ANNEX C: 101 Work Policies Someone, Somewhere is Thinking about or Promoting
This annexanother thinking exercisesimply lists a hundred or so of the very large number of approaches and measures that are being talked about and/or tried in various places. What is interesting about most of these ideas is, perhaps above all, that almost all of them in themselves are tempting to various degrees. One listens to what their proponents have to say and there is (on my part anyway) a very definite tendency to think well, they just might be able to do something with that. It is presented here in no particular order. There is, as you will quickly see, considerable doublecounting, overlap and clear contradictions. In fact, a certain number of these proposals have been put forth in exactly contrary variants, as will be seen below. For better or worse though, in most places that is the state of play. As it stands, the list is a catchall and as such is intended to stimulate thinking about these issues and approaches. All suggestions for yet other ideas and measures will be most welcome.
I. MACRO-ECONOMIC POLICIES
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. Since unemployment is cyclical, dont worry about ititll right itself with the economy Create jobs through massive infrastructure investment programs Increase public spending in general Ease monetary policy (to stimulate the economy, create jobs, etc.,) Increase interest rates (to stimulate savings, fortify the economy in the longer run, etc., etc.) Jump-start programs for economic growth Civilian public investment/redeployment of military economy Improve international competitiveness of industry, etc., to create more jobs HERE Import surcharges Export credits and incentive programs Raise import barriers against low wage (or other) foreign competitors Prevent out-migration of jobs to low wage/low income countries Scupper GATT Set import ceilings Barrier free trade only for nations complying with a code of ground rules Lower taxes on savings and investment Tax/increase price of competing imports to reflect social/environmental standards of own country. Shift tax burden from jobs to energy/resources Encourage consumer spending Encourage capital investment (Also: Discourage capital investment) Initiate full scale Marshall Plan for East Europe and former SU Target high growth sectors for public assistance, support, facilitation Increase transportation costs Facilitate job shifts out of manufacturing and into service sector Create new infrastructures to support new work patterns (e.g., electronic highway, etc.) Encourage recycling and environmental industries Create rural cities as new motors for employment and socio-economic development
90
RETHINKING WORK
II. LABOR MARKET, WAGE, EMPLOYER.... POLICIES 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. Encourage EC Social Chapter Replace Social Chapter with laissez faire competitive policies Recognize and protect producer (worker) interests Labor market changes Facilitate jobs changes (increase flexibility of labor market) Reduce labor costs Abolish minimum wage Lower minimum wage (Also: Increase minimum wage) Promote intrapreneurship Facilitate mixed compensation arrangements (e.g., more pay vs. more free time) Job sharing New combinations of self- and formal employment Cut work week (Also: Extend work week) Reduce working days/weeks (with or without hourly changes) More holidays (Also: reduce the number of holidays) Create sabbaticals programs across economy Increase annual vacations (Also: Decrease annual vacations) Institutionalize 4-day (3 day) week After-school jobs programs Summer jobs programs Abolish temporary work/agencies Stimulate temporary work/agencies Promote early retirement (Also: Discourage early retirement) Flex-hoursannualisaiton of total work hours (instead of day or week) Stimulate distance working - Telework Encourage work centers/satellite offices Promote telecommuting Help in finding housing for moving workers Grants or tax breaks for frictional costs incurred as result of workers moving to take new job Switch jobless benefits to employers who take on hard core unemployed Lower minimum wage for younger workers, other categories Reduce employment protection provisions which make hiring/firing more difficult for employers. Outlaw or limit overtime work Reduce payroll taxes Reduce employers payroll charges Improve labor market flexibility Decrease welfare benefits Fix maximum wage Improve access to jobs for women Keep women in the home (Kirche, Kueche, Kinder) Oblige domestic firms to repatriate jobs from overseas subsidiaries Close borders to immigration Encourage out-migration, return of non-citizens to native country
91
71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. Fight black labor/parallel economy Bleach black labor Encourage informal sector Cut back on volunteer labor Outlaw mutual help networks (Work exchanges) Proscribe do-it-yourself arrangements Tell/encourage people to work harder (and reverse) Stimulate self-employment Stimulate pilot projects/demonstrations Benefit from Europes wide diversity of conditions and practices (laboratory of alternative models
III. TRAINING, EDUCATION & INFORMATION PROGRAMS: 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93. 94. 95. 96. 97. 98. 99. 100. 101. 102. 103. 104. Improve quality of work force Educate work force (as opposed to training) Affordable university Gear ca. 100% of young people for continuing education/college School-to-work apprentice programs for young people who do not go to college Apprentice programs Life-time learning in the marketplace Training programs (- Sponsored by government; - Sponsored by industry) Electronic bulletin boards Create Enabling Work Networks) aimed at employers & people (Kits, coaches, telecoms, support groups, etc.) Training/retraining vouchers for school leavers Improve placement services - Advice for unemployed Create innovation centers Promote entrepreneurial incubators Target job creation programs aimed at: (young, school leavers, old, women, long term unemployed, etc.) Alter perceptions of womans work (i.e., jobs that are extensions of domestic tasks) Realign domestic tasks within families Encourage and publicize the development of alternative models of work Sharpen definitions of unemployment Improve understanding of unpaid work Examine changing relationships between working and non-working time Examine links between joblessness and crime Compare prison/jail costs with welfare - training - job guarantee programs Examine links between joblessness and mental and physical health problems
92
RETHINKING WORK
7.6 ANNEX D. TOOLS TO GET THE JOB DONE

(OR EVERYTHING THEY DIDNT TEACH US IN UNIVERSITY, OR AT LEAST MANAGED TO MAKE US FORGET WHEN WE GOT A JOB IN THE BUREAUCRACY)
In addition to the usual regime of research, studies, reports, debriefings and conferences which have taken over as the main tools of trade of university educated policy advisors over the last three or four decadesall of which of course highly respectable and having their uses but also their limits and abuses (including that by virtue of their language and the way in which they are framed and used, they inevitably become more or less captive or privileged information for the few) -- we should be prepared to try other less academic approaches of Knowledge-building, communications and, finally, mobilization of opinion and resources, all of which ultimately needed if information and ideas are to be converted to useful reality. Even though we navigate daily through a perceptual world of three spatial dimensions and reason occasionally about higher dimensional arenas with mathematical ease, the world portrayed on our information displays is caught up in the two-dimensionality of the endless flatlands of paper and video screen. All communications between the readers of an image and the makers of an image must now take place on a two-dimensional surface. Escaping this flatland is the essential task of envisioning information - for all the interesting worlds (physical, biological, imaginary, human) that we seek to understand are inevitably and happily multivariate in nature. Not flatlands. 82 Instead of always automatically accepting that the right next move is necessarily to generate yet more paper (for limited consumption, and in a society that increasingly wont or cant (or does not have time to) read, never mind act on what they read!), we should doubtless be giving more thought to such tools and approaches as...

82
Insisting always on the use of simple language Standing around and watching carefully what is really going on Not excluding humor, wit, jokes, irony (& the possibility of bad taste) from policy discussions Active investigation & learning from post mortems of project experience, both successful & other Polls, surveys, samples, feedback monitoring schemes Imaginative use of small samples Socioeconomic analysis and studies of daily life experience A day in the life of ... profiles, scenarios, stories, rapportages & other literary treatments Imaginative linking of statistical analysis and individual, family or group profiles or scenarios Writing books and articles for the general public (as opposed to specialist or academic readers) Childrens books, art, programs (including active involvement of children) Architectural and other renderings to illustrate alternative futures and options Cartoons, posters, drawings and other forms of lively graphic expression and characterization Photographs and photo essays Film and video scenarios Editorials and op-ed pieces Games, educational and others, using a wide variety of media Contests, competitions to elicit more vigorous participation in all stages
Edward R. Tufte, Envisioning Information. Graphics Press 1990, p 12
- Radio and television programs
93
More brilliant use of commercials, spots, etc., to achieve educational and social objectives Artificial intelligence, simulations, etc. Use of the school system as a resource, to carry out surveys, mini-studies, etc. Using town halls, museums and other public places as centers of exposition and debate Powerful public speaking (by intellectuals??) Public debates and discussions Innovative techniques of conflict resolution (including iterative programs using video) Cross-project and cross-country support by policy gurus, networks Town meetings & other fora of responsible behavior, consensus building & group decision Process-oriented projects involving the semi-structured use of things like brainstorming sessions, roundtables, confrontations of opposing points of viewall oriented to attain specific objectives Demonstration projects (properly prepared, carefully monitored & flexibly fine-tuned for results) Active networking at all levels of society, and using an increasing variety of media Electronic bulletin boards, networking, conferencing, new group work/groupware techniques New techniques of Knowledge building (including opening up of process to public participants)
Since the policy issues we are facing are truly complex and challenging, why should we allow ourselves only one hand (or one side of the brain) with which to tackle them?
94
RETHINKING WORK
8. ANNEX E: S TUDIES , R EPORTS AND P OLICY - A R EFLECTION ON THE E FFECTIVENESS OF PAPER
This situation nicely illustrates an observation of Daniel Bell, the Harvard futurist and sociologist, to the effect that government is too big for the small problems of our society and too small for the big problems. . Several years ago the noted futurist Joseph Coates and a group of associates in Washington carried out a critical review of a large number of futures studies that had been commissioned and/or carried out by quite a wide range of regional and local government bodies across the United States. They found that these various advisory reportsand the processes behind themhad some interesting things in common. Here were some of the accomplishments and pitfalls that he pointed up. 1. The various study groups doing the Year 2000 studies had a clear, sharp view of the trees but proved weak in seeing either the leaves or the forest, that is, in seeing the micro or the long-term macro factors. 2. The mid-range of issues concerned with housing, education, and welfare were clear and well understood, although not necessarily effectively engaged from a public policy point of view. 3. The various studies also tended to weak in their embrace of unequivocally bad news -weak to the point of rejecting Knowledge. 4. There was almost no carryover from one study to the next, hence, the opportunity was consistently lost for buildup in sophistication, technique, and the opportunity to get a running start on a particular Year 2000 study. 5. The studies failed to provide for mechanisms to monitor consequences of their own work and to provide or propose mechanisms for follow-through. There is therefore no assurance that the study groups efforts would be of any avail. 6. Finally, to the best of our Knowledge, no significant publication in public administration, government, political science, or public affairs made a point of reporting on these studies to give them broader ventilation. This would have helped to advance the collective enterprise. 7. The irony of these studies is that even when problems were earmarked as long as 20 years ago, little visible and almost no significant section was taken to prepare for yesterdays tomorrow, that is, for today.83 As we seek to lay a base for rethinking attitudes and polices in the areas of work and employment, we will do well to bear Dr. Coates cautionary list in mind. We should, at the very least, be able to take advantage of the lessons of the past.
83
ibid ,
95
9. ANNEX E: R ETHINKING W ORK AND THE ECTF F ORUM

Background Note on Access to Computer Forums and Databases
While some researchers, administrators, policy makers and citizens already make regular use of these new means of communication and exchange, for most of us these innovative techniques are not yet very well known. With this in view, arrangements have been made to place the present report together with a number of other meeting materialson the ECTF CompuServe Forum. Using the forum you will be able to download the latest copies of this and other working papers and documents that have been prepared for or stimulated by the Berlin Assembly, and to exchange ideas and suggestions with the authors and organizers. While it is already possible to enter into real time discussions via conferences, in the months immediately ahead we intend to concentrate on using the forum as a living bookstore of specialized information and as a bulletin board for posting comments and ideas. Although we expect that the facility will be used in this relatively simple way at first, we envisage that new ideas and types of use are going to emerge from it as we all gain experience. What you need to take advantage of this new facility today is a computer, phone, modem and subscription to the popular CompuServe service. Once you have your equipment properly installed and have gained access to CompuServe via the local telephone number, your next step is to plug into the ECTF Forum with GO ECTF. On first access you will need to Join the Forum, which costs nothing - it just means registering your name to permit full access. (The Message and Library areas are described below. You should leave a message in Forum Business if you are experiencing problems setting your software to access the Forum correctly.)
TELEWORK EUROPA FORUM ON COMPUSERVE
Aims of the Forum The enhancement of social & economic opportunities within the teleworking environment. The provision of an enjoyable and stimulating environment for personal and professional enhancement.
Goals: The use of telematics and telework practices for maximum efficiency and effectiveness in Europe. The expansion of trade and business through the use of telework. The establishment of a broad base of telework throughout Europe.
96
RETHINKING WORK Objectives: To promote the use of telematics (the practical application of telecoms and IT) To expand telework activities across Europe To increase awareness of the potential of telework within the business process To assist in the development and provision of education and training in the disciplines of telework To provide the necessary technical assistance that will allow users to use the Forum effectively Policies: Ideas and information will be freely exchanged with any and all parties interested in the promotion of all aspects of teleworking The maintenance and expansion of the Knowledge base available and assisting members in the use of the library resource All Forum users will be assisted in the effective use of telematics technologies Establish and maintain links with appropriate forums and providers
Message and Library Sections Available: 1 FORUM BUSINESS. Weekly new file listings, announcements, problem-solving for new and expert users, training - everything to do with the day-to-day running and use of the Forum. 2 TELECHATTER. A place for general discussion on subjects slightly connected with teleworking and telematics which do not fit in anywhere else! Beware: rambling topics! The teleworkers pub/cafe/corridor... but no related library. 3 BUSINESS ISSUES. The business implications of teleworking. Does it save money? Does it improve staff motivation? Increase efficiency? Is the Global Small Business now a practical reality? What are the management implications? 4 TELETOOLS. Discussion and files on new products & services of interest to teleworkers. Technical issues on technology related to telework. 5 PEOPLE/SOCIETY. A place for discussion and files on more strategic and academic issues relating to the impact of teleworking on society. Psychological and social issues, legal and regulatory issues, questions of public sector policy, traffic reduction, rural development etc. 6.MARKETING. A place to discuss work opportunities related to teleworking as well as marketing issues. How can teleworkers find business and better market their products? Files here contain work opportunities and CVs. 7 EVENTS/PROJECTS. Announcements and discussion about dates for the teleworkers calendar. A place to find out about new events organized by the ECTF and other organizations. Discussion about EC and National teleworking programs and projects on teleworking & telematics, and files containing reviews of events 8 RACE - GENERAL. Contains discussion on forthcoming events, such as workshops and conferences, as well as announcements of interest to the wider Telecommunications R & D community, such as calls for proposals. 9 TELEWORK 94 EVENT. is set aside for discussion, announcements etc., about the New Ways to Work European Assembly in Berlin, Nov 3-4, 1994.
97
T OWARD A T HIRD W AY 12 ACTS EVENTS/WKSHOPS. The new Programme, ACTS, is part of the 4 th Framework, which will be the focus of collaborative R&D in telecommunications. A workplan has been published and events and workshops will be held to publicize the new programme and call for proposals. 13 PARTNRS/PARTICIPS. -ACTS matchmaking to form projects 14 TRIAL INFRASTRUCT. - ACTS National Host mechanism details 15 BELGIAN TWORK ASSOC. is a public area for meeting members of the Belgian Telework Association, who are using CompuServe to develop their organization. Feel free to join in discussions, especially if you are keen to develop a similar organization in your region. 16 EUROCONSULTANTS: Single Market advice, electronic project management across Europe, and online consultancy about European projects. New Section 17 TELECOTTAGES. Variously know as telecentres, telematics centers, EVHs, CTSCs and telecrofts, telecottages lead the way in introducing information technology to the rural population. By supporting small local businesses and teleworkers, these centers are set to bring about a social and economic change that may have as profound an effect upon the countryside as the industrial revolution - in reverse! Many countries now have TC associations and this section aims to bring together news, views and discussion on telecottages from the European Union and further afield. 18 ACCESS. This is a space for exchanging information, ideas and views on innovations and the search for better ways of organizing transport (i.e., physical movements of people and goods), electronic communications and land use in and around cities. Since much transport is workoriented, the telework theme takes on particular importance. Other concerns of this forum include: (1) sustainable transport and social-technical systems and (2) the need for finding bridging strategies and policies which will permit the rapid transition to healthier and more livable communities. All of us welcome you to the Forum and hope you enjoy and are stimulated by the contents! Please leave feedback for us so that we can make sure the Forum is meeting your needs. Remember, its your Forum! Read and write messages, upload and download files, suggest changes and improvements - the sysops are always grateful for feedback and ready to offer assistance.
98
RETHINKING WORK
10. A NNEX G: E XAMPLES OF F EEDBACK FROM F ORUM

To give the reader a flavor of the sort of exchange that is possible through these services, I attach several notes that came in over CompuServe by colleagues in various places and with some rather different points of view, who had reviewed an early draft of this report. The following are, of course, also of direct interest for their content as wellwhich is why they have been selected for reproduction here. One of the more interesting characteristics of these new techniques of Knowledge building is that they permit concepts to be deepened and developed independently, by people with often contradictory views. This of course is absolutely indispensable in circumstances such as we are addressing here.
July 6, 1994
Dear Eric, I was very interested to read your report, Rethinking Work, in its entirety. Congratulations on your success in embracing an incredibly complex topic. I cant resist throwing in a few comments. First, I try to keep my own thoughts on the future of work in perspective by periodically going through the layers of the problem first: Population: The world is currently at about 5.8 billion (thousand million) and growing at about 1.7% annually. Slightly over 20% of the population is in developed countries and the proportion is falling. The fertility rate is below the replacement level in OECD countries. The developing countries are developing their own technological expertise; even though the experts constitute a small fraction of the population, their numbers are significant and are growing at a rate faster than that in the OECD countries. Economies: In the developed countries, information work is the predominant form; about 60% of the U.S. work force and probably close to that in western Europe. Physical sustenance and mobilityfood, shelter, clothing, transportationare provided by less than 20% of the work force and the fraction is shrinking. In most developing countries, agriculture is still the dominant source of jobs/tasks butas technology diffusesthe trend is definitely toward repetition of the rise and subsequent fall of the industrial revolution in these countries (hooks in here to the environmental, resource depletion and energy consequences of all that). In most economies, the societal link between work and survival (at whatever level) is firm and largely unquestioned. That is: no worker in the household means no survival for the household. Information Technology: Moores Law dominates: every year the average information handling power per ECU of the state-of-the-art versions of computers increases by about 28%. This will continue at least into the early 21st century. Telecommunications hardware advances at a similar, but
99
T OWARD A T HIRD W AY somewhat slower pace. That is, sophisticated computers and telecommunications are now priced at a level that many upper middle class families can affordand will be economically feasible in less than ten years for what are now considered to be economically marginal households. Infotechonomy: The combination of the above two provides for a growing location independence for the tasks to be performed by a growing proportion of job holders. This location independence can be local (telecommuting), regional, or global (teleworking at various scales). Telecommuting is well documented, I have written a few hundred thousand words of it myself. Less well documented is broader scale teleworking, particularly of the trans-border variety, but it is clearly increasing. Further, there is a gap between the skills needed to be an expert user of infotech and the training/abilities of prospective users. To some extent, the gap is narrowing as the machines get smarter. Yet, the gap may be widening at the upper end. The information elite vs. the information deprived will be a continuing issue globally. One way of summarizing this is: Basic physical survival, Work 1a, can be taken care of by either a small proportion of workers or a small proportion of the time of a larger set of workers. Work 1b, physical services, such as gardening, flipping hamburgers at MacDonalds, etc., also employs a diminishing fraction of the population as more of even these activities are automated or priced out of existence. So what are the rest of us to do? Take in each others intellectual washing, as Joseph Weizenbaum put it? The design of Work 2 becomes the dominant issue. I have often said that it is fairly easy to forecast the demise of certain job types, such as (traditional) secretaries, clerical workers, typewriter manufacturers, etc.structural unemploymentbut difficult to forecast and describe the jobs that have yet to be invented. However, it is clear to me that a major source of future employment is a direct consequence of a primary human attributecuriosity and information technology. The more information we get, the more we want to have. The more data we get, the greater our difficulty in sorting it out and converting it to information. We have to invent those jobs. One of the key drivers of this change will be what I term evanescent and dispersed organizations; organizations that form and flow, connecting and collecting expertise in response to changes in market/environment conditions. Many of the project teams that have resulted from Peter Johnstons initiatives typify that form of organization, including two with which I am involved. The member units, even the leadership of the group, change as conditions warrant. There may be some constant components, to help insure stability and some form of group identity, but many will be entirely ad hoc. Large multinational companies have been doing this for some time (Benneton as an example) but even small organizations such as my own can play. In fact, there are obvious advantages to global evanescence, particularly in areas where rapid response is crucial; keep shifting the tasks East (or West) as the clock moves on. Another example is the recording production company that uses ISDN lines to connect studios in London, Barcelona, and Los Angeles for radio and TV commercials, movie sound track, and CD production. Or Huw Bayhnams Crossaig that produces medical journal publications for Elsevier, among others. The good news is that these organizations exist already. The bad news is that they mostly comprise the information adept. The benefits have yet to accrue to the less skilled. These examples also illustrate another key point: location independence also means border independence. A primary potential impediment to the establishment of these organizational forms at the supraregional scale is the lack of uniform technology standards and regulatory/tariff barriers to transborder data flow. The putative advantage of these barriers may be to protect against the lower wage demands of the experts in developing countries. The disadvantage is that they impede flow within Eu-
100
RETHINKING WORK rope. Unfortunately, I have no numbers concerning the extent of these barriers, so I cant comment quantitatively. As you suggested, we also have to produce a major culture shift in attitudes toward work/jobs. Step One is getting people to realize that we are no longer in the midst of the industrial revolution, where centralization was mandatory. This has always been the major hurdle to overcome in initiating telecommuting projects and it will continue to be the primary barrier to development of teleworking. As to the forms of telework, Lars Qvortrup didnt get it exactly right in his paper. Im sending you a copy of the original article on the topic, published in 1975. My more current ideas on dispersion include more complexity than in the 1975 version, but the gist of it is there. With regard to telecommuting and teleworking, I coined the terms in an attempt to come up with words that were more intuitive than the telecommunications-transportation-tradeoff. The key requirement for a new word to be accepted is resonance with the general understanding, not consonance with the past. Telecommuting has made it to the dictionary (at least in the U.S.), but teleworking hasnt yet. In the late 1970s, the Economist excoriated telecommuting for its welding of Greek and Latin parts. Tragic but practical, and English is a practical language. This has been a collection of random thoughts stemming from your report. I hope that they are of some use to you. My major overall comment is that we all need to become more quantitative about these issues as soon as possible. Otherwise we are quickly reduced to general hand waving. Best wishes for your continued success. Jack M. Nilles
To: Eric Britton, EcoPlan Thanks to Peter for sending me a copy of this interesting document. I feel I missed out in not taking part in the brainstorming! Given the length and structure of the document its difficult to find the right way to comment at a detailed level, but I would like to offer three main thoughts: Its a shame your discussion groups didnt include: * Anyone from UK, who has participated directly in the process of restructuring the public sector and the liberalisation and marketisation process. Living through this directly (as opposed to observing it in the academic sense) has cast a quite interesting and informative light on these issues. I realise the UK is a bit odd as seen from Paris, France, but some of us think we are in the Union! Anyone directly engaged in industry and commerce as their primary focus. While the futurists, researchers and observers certainly have a lot to tell us, those of us at the coal face sometimes see things in a sharper perspective! Floating the ideas in the ECTF Forum on CompuServe - might have got a broader perspective from people who dont go to the meetings!
I do hope if the CEC continues to support this work you will seek to fill these gaps. At the core of all this you quite rightly question our received understanding of what is meant by work and by jobs. I applaud you for drawing attention to the way these concepts are treated by press and politicians as though they
101
T OWARD A T HIRD W AY were the same, which patently they are not. However, I dont think you bring out sharply enough a particular, and deeply significant shift, which Ive tried to summarise in a few lines below: The terms jobs and employment carry the strong implication of an employer and an employee. The implicit assumption is that the employer decides on the job (he creates it, in the much abused term, and he decides its scope, payment and other terms), and the employee does work for the employer. He applies for the job, and if successful, works as directed by the employer. This underlying model of work is now inappropriate and misleading. I offer three examples - large enterprises, small firms and the self employed.
Large enterprises:
Even in the case of full time employees working in large enterprises, there is a shift towards a much higher level of self determination, what Peters calls empowerment. Coupled with frequent if not continuous reorganisation, the empowered employee constantly reinvents his job - if hes not good at this he will be among the next wave of people out of a job!
Small firms:
In UK, 90% of net new jobs are in very small firms (less than 10 staff). Thats because small firms create most of the new jobs, while large enterprises (more than 1000 people) shed jobs faster than they create them (down 30% in the last two year period measured). In these very small firms (2-9 people) a very high proportion of the employees are entrepreneurs, directors and managers or professionals, they see themselves as employers, not as employees. They set the rules or agree them amongst themselves, especially in the growth sectors, the Knowledge intensive areas - you dont give instructions to know how workers, you agree directions to move in.
Self employment: Some self employed people do still dance to an employers tune like an old style employee. These are the contractors who rely on intermediaries to get them work or jobs. But a high proportion of self employed people take a much more self determining approach, they seek to understand the market and what it needs, they dress up their skills in product and service terms, they are one man entrepreneurs. These are the more successful self employed people. Bringing this together, the old style concept of creating jobs FOR people, breaks down. We need to help people equip themselves to invent or create jobs for themselves. This is a radical shift in perspective that I dont feel comes through clearly enough in your paper, especially when you quote, with apparent endorsement: <We should rethink what we mean by a job and how we go about repackaging the average life times work for the average individual> This takes the line of what can we do for them. It wont work. In other places you rightly challenge the concept of the labour force, but I feel the consequences arent faced squarely enough. Overall theres a little too much suggestion of changing the system and not enough of encouraging people to grow with the market. Surely more self determination is by and large a good thing? Ill stop here and resist the temptation to get into telework aspects. For me telework as such gets somewhat too much attention. Its the nature of the work being done, and the relationship between the person, the task, and the source of payment thats of most consequence. I cant however resist one comment, bringing all this back to the technology: Dont lets lose sight of the CENTRAL (no apologies) role of the technology in all this. If enterprises implement open electronic networking (people to people) effectively, then telework is a natural consequence. If the market generally
102
RETHINKING WORK adopts open electronic networking, then people with marketable skills will be able to market them at a distance. But telework WITHOUT the technology is like roller skating down the autobahn Its possible, but its stupid, unenjoyable and possibly dangerous. Trying to make telework successful in substantially redistributing work BEFORE we get the market generally to wake up to the use of the networks is leading to a lot of frustration. I hope the November conference will manage to put sufficient emphasis on todays practical value of the technology and not combine today work issues with tomorrow technology. The USA already has 6 million subscribing networkers BEFORE the superhighway, Europe has a few hundred thousand. Let me know if I can help! Horace Mitchell Dear Eric, Here is that comment that I wanted to share with you on your draft: Unemployment and factor costs Economists will argue that a major (if not the only) determinant of job creation propensity is relative factor costs. In particular, it is natural to postulate that the relative cost of labor vis a vis capital and resource inputs. In comparing the job creation records of different countries, one notes that capital now moves easily across national boundaries and, in consequence, monetary capital costs (interest rates) tend to be similar in developed and developing countries except for risk premia. The latter are insignificant in east Asia, for instance. Similarly natural resources traded on world markets tend to have similar prices across national boundaries. Only in the case of physical capital (construction) and labor do we find significant costs differences. An obvious question that arises in connection with the current discussion of employment is the following: to what extent can differentials in job creation performance across national boundaries be explained in terms of relative labor/capital/resource cost differentials (including social security taxes and other indirect costs) alone? Stating the question another way, to what extent must other national differences be invoked to explain the observed differences in employment growth rates? To motivate this question, it is worth noting that the major quantifiable factor cost difference between the U.S. and Europe is apparently now the cost of labor. By the same token, it is plausible to suggest that the competitive advantage of East Asia may also be explained in terms of relative factor costs. A statistical analysis would seem to be the appropriate tool for investigating this question more deeply. Regards, Robert U. Ayres, INSEAD
Dear Mr. Britton,

.....
Focus on the large problem, the mainstream of economic activity, following the spirit of the 27 September paper. How will more than 100 million Europeans work? What will they do? Who will buy their output? What purchasing power will they acquire in return?
103
T OWARD A T HIRD W AY New ideas should be examined according to their relevance to the big questions. It is rather important not to be distracted by suggestions which seem unlikely to affect more than a minority of working people Keith Richardson
Dear Eric, Your brief on Rethinking Work provided inspiring reading as always. Although I am not an economist I have run across the problem on several occasions lately as conventional technoeconomic evaluations capture hopelessly little of the true potential of (my) bright ideas for improvement. In general, we are stuck with the concept of economy of scale which like a black hole drags everything into disaster. This has been particularly evident recently in my colleagues and my efforts to find non-food outlets for the surplus agroproduction. We have come up with a scheme which allows the direction of the surplus into the energy and fiber market with very little or no additional investment saving 75% of the subsidies as compared to current practice (with Finnish low energy and high farming prices, in some other countries it would be profitable as such). But it still seems difficult to convince people as it is a loss making operation unless you can put values on maintaining a living countryside with meaningful jobs. On a more philosophical level it seems that we have been able to create a lot of nonsense work, in my opinion partly by an overbelief in rational decision-making, partly by underestimating the importance of creativity on the one hand and improvisation (chance) as a source of creativity on the other. By overemphasizing (and oversimplifying) the concept of productivity we are often playing out humans from positions where they would perform best, and moving some of them to important positions where they perform badly, or where their creativity may have fatal results (I guess one could say that the Mile Island accident was an example of a situation where human creativity outsmarted a functioning fail safe system in an ingenious way) Regards, Alan Johannson
Eric, Just a few thoughts on the draft recommendations, thanks for sending them to me: 1. European perspective/Commissions role I agree entirely about the potential value of the EUs diversity and how important it is to stimulate bottom up creativity, but I suggest this needs to be balanced by some approaches that actively drive towards declared visions. Sadly, 90% of the human race prefers to be pointed in clear directions; it will take generations of education and such to bring us to the point where everyone is self directed. So we need to search for and stimulate the creative entrepreneurs, while providing direction to the rest.
104
RETHINKING WORK Another issue here is the need to take advantage of the EUs critical mass. The US administration appears to have a clear(ish) vision of enticing industry and the market to bring broad band to homes, schools, factories etc., so that the creativity of people is unleashed, believing that this is an essential underpinning to future economic success. I believe your document is incomplete unless it states as an absolute, underpinning requirement, the need for the EU to have a really vigorous programme to get Europe networking. Unless we do this, we will not have the basic economic strength to afford the luxury (I dont mean that, really) of enjoying lots of experimentation with new methods of work. If (for example) the UK moves ahead fast on interpersonal networking and other countries (because of slow liberalistaion for example) move much slower, Europe as a whole will not be able to take advantage of our critical mass or our cultural strength in diversity. I think your paper should spell this out. 2. Relevance to Directorates A matter I found rather puzzling was how the paper as a whole relates to the structure of the intended audience - presuming this to be the Commissioners and their directorates, as well as the parliament. It might be helpful to indicate how (for example) DG XIIIs particular role maps to the requirements and recommendations? Certainly with UK Government there would be a risk that a paper which covered such a panorama without spelling out who was responsible for what actions could just get lost in the system 3. Specific recommendations I like the work war room proposal. However, being a marketing man at heart, Im always concerned at programmes that focus on work rather than on outputs of work. Theres a risk of make work, which is always very dispiriting. 4. Issues (a) Technology versus jobs? Theres one important point in the notes that I really must take issue with: <. . . could get us back in control of the viscous (sic) spiral of technology improvement/job removal which is our current fate>. This was a very popular issue in the 1970s but Im aware of NO evidence that technology innovations lead to a net reduction of jobs. The USA has embraced new technology much more vigorously than Europe and the USA has created many more jobs than Europe. Certainly new technology changes work requirements and some old style jobs disappear. Locally and at particular times this can increase unemployment. But overall, the period of the 1960s1990s, which has been one of continuing technological advance, has also been one of substantial growth in the total number of jobs in both the developed economies and the developing economies. If you produce a paper that blames technology for unemployment I think you are setting the clock back a generation. This point is supported in the Pink report on page 39 where you quote Thoreau knocking the insane desire to implement early telecoms between Maine and Texas and between the old world and the new. Certainly I know of no one who is advocating technology for technologys sake, in or out of the supplying industry. But this flavor in your report could be very damaging if it gave an excuse for holding back on cabling up Europe, overall the present focus on having telecoms catch up with IT yields mainly benefits. Certainly is Europe holds back while the US and the Pacific Rim forge ahead, we will be very sorry we spurned these particular pretty toys in twenty years time! (b) Telework - N America setting the pace
105
T OWARD A T HIRD W AY Reading your telework recommendations sent me back to the main (pink) paper, where you quote the Reader as saying: <telework futures . . . it is N America where the main inroads have been made until now . . .> Few people actively working in the commercial telework field (as opposed to research programmes) would agree with this. The USAs main focus has been on telecommuting as an anti-transport activity, led by environment actions by some states. The US also has an active home based working interest (which most US commentators see as quite distinct from telecommuting, and where US tax and other matters make this quite different from most of Europe. USA has less corporate teleworking right now than (say) UK and a much shorter history of corporate teleworking. It has no telecottages programme, although there is some evidence of modest investment in the telecentres idea. Where the US DOES differ from Europe is in the acceptance and speed of growth of open electronic networking. But this is a very broadly applicable technology, telework is just one of its manifestations. In a sense, Europe is driving telework without the technology, the US is driving the technology, with telework as a minor aspect of the end results. Your paper reflects this misconception and a US-dominated view of telework in several places. (c.) Emphasize teletrade? At risk of repeating myself, I feel having looked at it again, that the pink paper and your recommendations would be greatly straightened by drawing out teletrade as a distinct aspect of networking and as distinct from telework. Telework focuses the attention of the place of work, whereas teletrade focuses on the PURPOSES of work and the mechanisms by which those purposes are fulfilled. Thanks again Eric for sending me this paper. Horace Mitchell
Eric, I cannot resist commenting on your first assertion that we are confronting a phenomenon of technology-pushed unemployment. This is a value-loaded assertion which can easily slide into a Luddite attitude to new technologies. The industrial revolution can be just as well seen as a period of employment expansion enabled by new agricultural practices which released labour from farming, as a revolution in which new technologies destroyed old jobs. The current structural change can also be one of rapid employment growth in information services, enabled by new information technologies, as developments in industrial technologies have liberated people from the 9-to-5 straight-jacket of centralized production. Peter Johnston
Eric... ... Thus, current trends entail the risk of generating or expanding ethnic underclasses and of doing so to groups that have limited or no real political rights. This could prove a dangerous, destabilizing situation in some societies (I would certainly make this argument for Germany). Perhaps the most effective way of countering it would be to increase the political voice (to borrow a term from Albert Hirschman) of ethnic minorities, so that they are able in an effective way to represent their own interests at those levels, where according to the subsidiary principle, important decisions are to be made. How this would be done might vary from one country to another - in Germany, for example, it probably requires a fairly radical change in the basic principle (the so-called tus sanguinis) governing citizenship.
106
RETHINKING WORK Richard Alba
Dear Eric: ... Accepting your hypothesis that teaching - training - learning may occupy as much as 50% of a persons life in the future Accepting the (my) hypothesis that re-arranging our economies such that they can function within natures guard rails in mandatory - or else we will shift the ecological equilibria sufficiently to disallow life as we know it - and in particular man (create man-made fossils, including man).
We will have to vastly increase the resource productivity - in part by social contract in order to increase the attractiveness of goods and services with low environmental impact potentials on a work-wide scale; forget that time is supposedly money; learn to re-learn on a life long bases; become much more flexible in our approaches toward work and the way we exercise mental and physical mobility; learn to create and enjoy different service delivery machines; learn to consume Beethoven instead of luxury cars, and arrange Tina Turner concerts instead of Formula I races, and use tele-communication intelligently to enrich people and facilitate at low material and energy inputs per unit output; provide work (work that is a lot more fun than - seemingly - today, more rewarding, and much more broadly defined) to everyone who really wants to work, and give those who wish to step aside sufficient resources (or access to such) so that they do not bodily suffer.
In my view one of the central question is: what kind(s) of growth can we offer those in this future who want to grow within ecological boundary conditions and how do we make the opportunities for such growth available within a market economy? The corresponding question is: how do we internationalize this approach? F. Schmidt-Bleek
MEMO From:
July 05, 1994 Jennifer Jarratt (CIS 72233,430)
To: Eric Britton, EcoPlan, (CIS 100336,2154) Subject: Rethinking work There are a lot of interesting and inspiring ideas in the draft. Also much truth in the conclusions, I thought. I found myself trying out some of the ideas in conversation to see how they fit with other ideas. I read the whole thing with fascination, especially having been part of the process. I thought your characterization of the issues especially sharp and acute, and I liked the broad sweep of people that you brought into the debate through their writings and comments.
107
T OWARD A T HIRD W AY I work in a think tank though, and Im paid to read and think things. Is the rest of your audience willing prepared - able to read this topic at this length? It seems to me that the final report could be restructured to convey both the problem description and the conclusions more quickly to the reader. Whats wrong, how we got there, where we are going, and what people think we should do could all be laid out in three pages or less. It is not clear to me who should read this report, why they should read it, and what they should do once theyve read it. I also believe that there are a number of unexamined assumptions underlying this report. One is based on the role of government. Not necessarily from any particular political point of view, but what their structural role in society appears to be - or ought to be, It appears to me from reading this draft that the governments in Europe recognize, define, and rank social problems that they think citizens need help with. Then they come up with possible solutionsnot always with much public input. In contrast, it frequently seems in the U.S. that the people have to tell the government there is a problem and make it pay attention. Any proposed solution becomes the subject of public debate. It may well end up being decided by special interests and the people with money and power, of course. I also wonder at the use of quotes from so many authorities in the text. Is this based on a cultural difference, for example, French readers preferring to see new ideas and conclusions bolstered by accredited authorities? Are they in there to bolster legitimacy and credibility? If so, they really do not seem necessary - concrete examples might be better. Things that people, governments, companies, and so on, are actually doing. Everything that these authorities say (in your text) is worthy, and some are extremely interesting, but I wouldnt mind simply being referred to their books and articles, so I can look them up for myself. Id rather read synthesis and conclusions from you that would take me a step further along in doing something about the future of work. You say that academics look on work like this as an opportunity to do more research or to write a book - isnt this what the authorities you quote have already done? It seems hard to condemn todays academics for wanting to do the same thing. Are you putting a moratorium on future ideas? It seems to me that the output of a think tank session, or a series of them, should made useful to decision makers with a set of next-step conclusions. I think youve put your finger on an interesting policy problem on p. 79, when you talk about the case of Air France. In a sense its all right for corporations to lay off thousands because they are putting those people back on the market. In the case of a government subsidized business, however, the government lays off people and merely shifts them or the burden of them from one part of its budget to another - they are still a burden on the taxpayer, its just a question of whether they are a larger one or not. There are several areas I thought are not sufficiently covered. Some of these are: What will the rest of the world be doing in relation to work, and what is likely to be the impact on workers of the EC? % A great many other factors are likely to influence the future of work - genetics, for one, urbanization, for another. Also the poverty of governments - the same factors that are pricing out of reach much work that needs to be done, are making it harder for governments to afford to put more people to work. The shift of work from industrial to white collar, in the advanced nations, has tended to give educated women more positive job/employment opportunities. And in some areas, left men with fewer. I dont think you have covered in enough detail the restructuring of work and the workplace that is coming about because of the increasing participation of women - and the implications of dual-income parents in the work force.
108
RETHINKING WORK We have to look at the values and attitudes people have about work, and what they have learned and absorbed about work from government policy, and from employer attitudes, over the years. For example, Nancy Badore, who worked with Ford on their work force revitalization, talks about the extent of the contribution a free people can make to their work as vastly different in responsibility, skill, quality, and so on, from the constrained output of the industrial factory worker. One of the prime requirements of success in the emerging Knowledge Society appears to be the ability to learn from the information that is available. That is why so many U.S. companies today are experimenting to discover how to teach their organizations to learn continuously. And it is clear, at least to some, that in the education business we should no longer be teaching people stuff, but teaching them how to learn stuff - useful stuff. Perhaps one of the big issues in the EC may be how to create a learning community, a learning state, a learning country. You begin to describe, (on p. 50) an innovation laboratory that is a mix between Epcot and the Xerox Parc in Palo Alto. Maybe these are necessary innovation, idea, and practice generators that ought to be seeded into European communities - and elsewhere for that matter. Somewhere, perhaps, we ought to acKnowledge that attitudes and values will be a slow-moving part of whatever change process is put into effect. We ought to be wary of policies designed to protect traditional rights, values, occupations, ways of doing things, seniority, and so on, because these will have the effect of slowing or negating other efforts for change. Perhaps we should stop focusing on work at all and instead turn our attention to how to afford and use leisure, for individuals and for their societies. That may be the more interesting side of the question - let work take care of itself. Leisure, which should come to be called just living well, is more likely the central responsibility of citizens in the future. As you say, the old concepts of work and the structures that support work, are hopelessly outdated. The workplace may be moving faster into change than some sections of the report suggests. For example, many of the Facts of Work Life - 2020Perspective (p. 72) are already true today. All of them are true for some people working in some organizations that have taken the need for restructuring of work seriously. Furthermore, most of the changes you describe cannot be only top-down. People cannot be told that their work, and their working lifetimes must be more flexible. They have to figure a lot of this out for themselves. Weve put so many years into telling the worker what to do and how to it, that it will take some time for people to learn how to do things differently. These are my initial reactions to the draft. I think its an exciting effort, even to rethink work, and more power to the debate!
109
T OWARD A T HIRD W AY figure out how to make this fit in ... replaces???
C4. REDRAWING A DEFICITORY PUBLIC ENTERPRISEA PROPOSAL AND ACTION PLAN84

Most of this paper has been given over to general considerations about the society and the economy of a fairly high level of abstraction. Let us change speed and take a minute to reflect on the case of a typical deficitory public employer to see if we can find any new insights, ideas or approaches that might somehow be usefully fed into this rethink at the global macro level. Let us consider the case of a long established public utility, say a national airline or rail system that for years has been run according to a pre-Brussels formula whereby deficit financing by the public sector was not considered a problem. There are numerous real world examples that might be chosen. Let us consider briefly, by way of example, a composite which will be defined in very general terms so as to be able to take into consideration the specific cases of Air France and Basque National Railways, not in an attempt to point a finger but only because it is in many ways a perfect microcosm of the whole dilemma we are considering here, and which lots of bright people have been trying to do something about, with no apparently end in sight. Point of departure: Air France/Basque Rail is held by some critics to be a bloated, overmanned and inefficiently managed public sector institution which (a) is unnecessarily soaking up taxpayer money, (b) is manifestly unable to compete economically in its mainline business, and (c), given the new rules of the road from Brussels, can no longer legally be kept afloat with grants, loans and other forms of financial legerdemain from their respective governments. This is a tempting characterization and indeed quite a popular one in the press and to many peoples way of thinking about these issues these days (unless it happens to be their job one is talking about). This is, however, a very dangerous point of view, because once you have accepted it you have locked yourself pretty much into your solution set, i.e., undiluted doses of re-engineering, streamlining, rationalizations, layoffs, etc. If you think about it, however, it just may turn out that in actual fact this optimal remedy is altogether likely to be MUCH worse than the putative problem itself. (I wont worry this point today, but I am sure that it will be clear enough for now. At the very least we can assume it is clear enough to all those good people whose jobs are threatened, the labor unions who themselves are washing about desperately for new formulae, as well as an increasing number of other concerned citizens who are asking themselves increasingly what is going on.) Before taking this any further, I would like to comment on what might be thought of as the excessive fragility of our system in these respects. When policy makers and financial institutions finally come to an agreement that there is a major problem afoot, the first half decent idea that turns up tends to get more than perhaps its fair share of attention. The jargon of the day simply takes over at that point and, presto, a whole new world of work (or unwork) is created. Certainly in the case of Air France, but also increasingly in the whole range of what were once publicly owned and managed (and financed) systems, the search for fast solutions is on. And the range of intellectual models being considered is, for the most part, altogether mismatched to the complexity of the situations faced and the importance of these decisions to a very large number of peoplejobs included. Suppose instead of opting for any of these convenient and presently popular buzzword approaches, we take the time and trouble to turn the whole problem on its head. It would help for starters if
Taken from the 2 June 1994 report of EcoPlan International to the European Commission, Rethinking Work - New Concepts of Work in an Knowledg Society.
84
110
RETHINKING WORK we had in hand a really sufficient Knowledge base (including statistics) that could help us understand what the real costs to the community of that knee-jerk efficiency solution might be(see body of text for more on that). Such a Knowledge base would allow us to make some pretty interesting estimates of the cost to society of, say, tossing ten or twenty thousand people out of work just like that. What would the dole cost be? health cost? cost to local communities where all these people live? opportunity cost of all that lost talent (and believe me, most of it is going to be lost... those people are not going to be sucked back into the economy by the next upturn in the cycle)? etc. etc. If we have the necessary details on all that, we will be that much better placed to make truly intelligent and responsible decision. Suppose the policy decision is to bring together all the concerned public agencies (all of them!) and give them an opportunity to work directly in close and continuing collaboration with what is supposed to be the problem (i.e., the two groups and all of their respective collections of talented people, skills, Knowledge, resources and institutional leverage) and let this new coalition to come up with the solution. We then begin a massive shift of perspective. Instead of being seen as a tired, bloated, uncompetitive air or rail carrier, each company is turned around and given a chance to operate as a flexible collection of tens of thousands of skilled people and resources that are already carrying out an enormous range of diverse tasksand capable of doing even more and better. Taking this approach, it might make sense to redefine the company not only as:
1. Preeminent carriers with major assets in need of further improvement 2. an entrepreneurial incubator capable of defining and developing a wide variety of new businesses, profit centers and activities and 3. an educational institution of great (if until now only partly understood and used) potential.
This would bring us to a three level approach to the task at hand.
First, we do indeed go ahead with identifying and implementing all of the core reforms that are necessary so that the company can compete vigorously and successfully in the world of deregulated competition (though, hopefully the group would stand aloof of the more frantic and quite unsustainable idiocy that we are seeing practiced by nearly all of those terribly foolish and short-sighted companies who are quite literally selling their future for such short term concepts as market share, etc.). Second, we turn the company into a living example of our entrepreneurship incubator-cum-educator. This latter function would of course qualify for a certain amount of public support, not as good money pored down the rat hole of incompetence, ineptitude and public cowardice, but for well defined societal functions (such as education, local development, etc.) that are both serving people in their daily livesand in preparing them to take a full and more active role not only as Knowledge workers but also as responsible citizens, parents and members of the community. Third, we would undertake immediately to shift the entire employee base to something like our proposed work 1/work 2 structure, meaning that the work week is actually extended (not shortened), the 25/25 hour shift of productive (i.e. presentoriented) time and future-preparation time would be immediately respected. We would do this on two grounds: first, because we have confidence in this overall design and in the employees of our company to make good on it; and second, because of the shock value which it would necessarily bring with it (without which a change-
111
T OWARD A T HIRD W AY over to the new ways of thinking, organizing work, contributing, etc., would probably be impossible). With this proposed new way of organizing work, we are admittedly challenging the foundations of the present (soon to be the old) system. It constitutes no more or less than a totally new social contract. For it to work, it would have to have the total support not only of government and the higher reaches of management, but of all those who work in the company. It would be foolish to underestimate the difficulty of creating this consensus. Nor would we think of our proposal as a cookbook recipe that will, as it presently stands, going to constitute the only way of going about this. Nonetheless the broad design seems to me to be appropriate and worth trying, at the very least in cases which are proving resistant to the present range of formulae. In this way, in fact, it might even turn out that some of the most troubling work issues we face, will turn out to lead the way for the future not just of those firms or groups but of society as a whole. As an incidental remark in the present context, in cases such as these, as the institution in question seeks new roles and ways of organizing itself, as it becomes a context within which new ideas are born, tested and advanced, the telework component and potential can be expected to increase radically. At the very lest, the more wired the institution, not only in its various offices and extreme, but right down to the homes and even the cars of all those working there, the potential for generating and following up successfully on these new ideas will be greatly enhanced. This brings us to our bottom line, what I think we should be putting forth as one of the main themes of our final report and recommendations to the Commission and whoever else might care enough to give it time. And that is that our institutions are among our most precious resources and social heritages, and that we should think more than once before putting something that has worked pretty well over a number of decades onto the scrap heap. It is not that theyand in this instance Air France and Basque National Railways, though we could equally well have been talking about any of thousands of such groupings of people and resources and social and economic leveragedo not need to be rethought and perhaps radically restructured. It is rather that they give us a much better place to start than, say, the dole line, or some intellectuals, politicians or administrators hasty game plan. It is apparent that Europe, through the diversity of the social practices which it conceals, constitutes and extraordinary laboratory. We would cite as proof the example of the interest shown by researchers gathered in seminars in discovering how the Italian pension funds are financed, or the system of social subscriptions in Denmark. One step which can be quickly taken is to derive greater benefit from the potential offered by this laboratory. 85
85
Employment, Technology, and Society - A New Model of Work?, FAST program of the European Commission, 1983
112

Rethinking Work: New Ways To Work in A Knowledge Society

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Rethinking Work: New Ways To Work in A Knowledge Society

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

European Commission

email postmaster@ecoplan.org www.EcoPlan.org/21stT

8/10, rue Joseph Bara

75006 Paris, France

A T HINKING E XERCISE (interim electronic edition for comment)

A Thinking Exercise (interim electronic edition)

A T HINKING E XERCISE (interim electronic edition for comment)

2. Telework As A Harbinger ................................................................................................................................................ 13

Facts of Work life: Current Perspectives ...................................................................................................................................... 50

5. Conclusions & Recommendations .................................................................................................................................. 61

A Thinking Exercise (interim electronic edition)

6. Annexes and References ................................................................................................................................................... 78

A T HINKING E XERCISE (interim electronic edition for comment)

A Thinking Exercise (interim electronic edition)

Flora Lewis, International Herald Tribune, Paris, 18 May 1993

A T HINKING E XERCISE (interim electronic edition for comment)

Richard J. Baronet, The End of Jobs, Harper's Magazine, March 1993

II. 1994 P ERSPECTIVES

A T HINKING E XERCISE (interim electronic edition for comment)

Eric Britton, EcoPlan, Paris 25 October 1994

II. 1994 P ERSPECTIVES

A T HINKING E XERCISE (interim electronic edition for comment)

II. 1994 P ERSPECTIVES

1.2 A Base Case We Can Usefully Bear in Mind

Source: Liberation, Paris, 17 October 1993

A T HINKING E XERCISE (interim electronic edition for comment)

1.3 Lets Look Back (and Think) -- Before Leaping Ahead

II. 1994 P ERSPECTIVES

A T HINKING E XERCISE (interim electronic edition for comment)

1.4 Ten Bones of Contention

II. 1994 P ERSPECTIVES

4. We Have a Grossly Inadequate Understanding of What Work Is All About.

A T HINKING E XERCISE (interim electronic edition for comment)

II. 1994 P ERSPECTIVES

A T HINKING E XERCISE (interim electronic edition for comment)

1.5 Project Preparation and Organization of the Meetings

II. 1994 P ERSPECTIVES

1.6 Report Organization

A T HINKING E XERCISE (interim electronic edition for comment)

II. 1994 P ERSPECTIVES

2.1 The Telework Agenda

A T HINKING E XERCISE (interim electronic edition for comment)

II. 1994 P ERSPECTIVES

A T HINKING E XERCISE (interim electronic edition for comment)

2.3 Some Alternative Points of View Worth Considering

II. 1994 P ERSPECTIVES

Lars Qvortrup, Telework: Visions, Definitions, Realities, Barriers

A T HINKING E XERCISE (interim electronic edition for comment)

II. 1994 P ERSPECTIVES

Telework: One profile of recent European experience at the firm level

A T HINKING E XERCISE (interim electronic edition for comment)

II. 1994 P ERSPECTIVES

2.4 Twenty Tentative Conclusions on Telework and Its Prospects

A T HINKING E XERCISE (interim electronic edition for comment)

II. 1994 P ERSPECTIVES

3. WORK, TECHNOLOGY & SOCIETY: GALE OF DESTRUCTION?

3.1 The Questions Asked

A T HINKING E XERCISE (interim electronic edition for comment)

3.2 Where do We Stand Today on the Key Issues?

II. 1994 P ERSPECTIVES

3.3 Transient Technical Glitch or Fundamental Systems Failure?

Some observations from the meetings:

The Economist, London, 26 June 1993