U.S. Leadership in Manufacturing A Symposium at the Eighteenth Annual Meeting, November 4, 1982, Washington, D.C., National Academy of Engineering. (1983) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
Panel Discussion: Call to Action for the 1980s
Panel Discussion: Call to Action for the 1980s
Pages 129-141
The Chapter Skim interface presents what we've algorithmically identified as the most significant single chunk of text within every page in the chapter.
Select key terms on the right to highlight them within pages of the chapter.
From page 129... ...
Irving Bluestone, Professor of Labor Studies, will reflect on the labor aspect of the changes that we have been discussing. Jordan Baruch, President of Jordan Baruch Associates, former Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Productivity, Technology, and Innovation, will look at the problem from a public policy viewpoint.
|
From page 130... ...
This utilization of the human being as a creative person, as someone who has knowledge and experience, as someone who wants to develop a sense of enhanced self-worth, self-respect and self-development, is increasingly a subject in the negotiations undertaken between management and unions and is generally referred to as "improving the quality of worklife." This concept represents a sharp departure from the eight-decade-long concept, the traditional imposition of the principle of scientific management, with which engineers are so familiar. It is a departure from that tradition in which the employees are merely order takers, and it moves instead toward involvement of the employees in the decision-making process.
|
From page 131... ...
We are faced with labor displacement in both sectors due to analogous productivity enhancement. This aspect of the productivity shifts in both the manufacturing and the service industry is much more complex in the United States than in any other country.
|
From page 132... ...
It does not include the people in the manufacturing sector who are making pesticides, who are making fertilizers, and who are making super feeds for our livestock; and it does not include those people in the service sector who are creating the knowledge on which all this is based. We have similarly bad measurements in the manufacturing sector.
|
From page 133... ...
Those barriers exist because, first, debt/equity ratios exert a constant pressure on management to maximize dividends and profits in the short run. This pressure to maintain dividends, this pressure to maintain a high credit rating, causes companies to distribute dividends even when they lose money.
|
From page 134... ...
In that regard labor has an important role to play: bringing more democratic values into the workplace which, in the final analysis, result in benefits to management in the form of improved efficiency, to the workers in improved job statisfaction, and to the consumer in a better-quality product.
|
From page 135... ...
However, one of the most intriguing transformations that occurred on the intellectual scene in the United States after World War II was the transformation of a whole bunch of processes that no self-respecting academic would ever have looked at into fascinating areas to which operations research and management science people devote their lives. That same kind of transformation, I think, has to take place if one wants to proceed with the rationalization and the understanding of manufacturing.
|
From page 136... ...
A lot of that has to come from public policy, through tax changes, through moving away from a government deficit that creates very high interest rates that make it more attractive to put money in a high fixed-income security than into something that has more risk associated with it. I am personally very optimistic about all the attention this problem has received.
|
From page 137... ...
Why teach students about the natural laws of gravity, the natural laws of friction, and the natural laws of stress and strain, but not about the natural laws of economics, technology diffusion, organizational management, and supply and demand? We are going simply to have to take over the management of industry in the country, and, to me, that is the best public policy one can charge the engineering profession with.
|
Key Terms
This material may be derived from roughly machine-read images, and so is provided only to facilitate research.
More
information on Chapter Skim is available.