Showing papers on "Deskilling published in 2002"

Enterprise resource planning systems and organizational change: transforming work organization?

Abstract: Enterprise Resource Planning Systems (ERPs) are computer-based technologies that integrate data across an organization and impose standardized procedures on the input, use and dissemination of that data. This paper argues that ERPs are an increasingly important source of organizational change with major implications for the organization and management of work. ERPs are potentially associated with the following changes in the organization of work: downsizing and delayering of organizations; decentralizing responsibilities for various tasks while further concentrating control; increasing the range and depth of skills for some jobs while deskilling and routinizing the tasks inherent in other jobs; and the intensification of work in many jobs within the organization. ERP implementations, therefore, need to be managed carefully. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Copyleft vs. Copyright: A Marxist Critique

Abstract: Copyright was invented by and for early capitalism, and its importance to that system has grown ever since. To oppose copyright is to oppose capitalism. Thus, Marxism is a natural starting point when challenging copyright. Marx's concept of a 'general intellect', suggesting that at some point a collective learning process will surpass physical labour as a productive force, offers a promising backdrop to understand the accomplishments of the free software community. Furthermore, the chief concerns of hacker philosophy, creativity and technological empowerment, closely correspond to key Marxist concepts of alienation, the division of labour, deskilling, and commodification. At the end of my inquiry, I will suggest that the development of free software provides an early model of the contradictions inherent to information capitalism, and that free software development has a wider relevance to all future production of information.

Effects of globalisation on employment and poverty in dualistic economies: the case of India

Abstract: Although it is too early to evaluate the long-run socio-economic effects of economic liberalisation and privatisation, along with the overall globalisation process, on a dualistic economy like India's, the paper will first examine the often-raised concern that these economic changes have, in general, led to the erosion of living standards of the poor; increase in regional disparities in terms of industrial benefits; deterioration or, at least, a sluggishness in employment generation; greater casualisation; feminisation and deskilling of the work-force; and growing uncertainty and hidden hardships associated with recent patterns of economic changes; etc. It then intends to look into the kind of ripple effect all these will cause in the unorganised segment of the Indian economy which includes major part of the agricultural sector, rural non-agricultural and urban informal sector activities.

Urban Transformations: Power, People and Urban Design

Abstract: Urban Transformations: Power, People and Urban Design, Ian Bentley, London, Routledge, 1999, 298 pp. £55.00 Ian Bentley is one of the team that wrote Responsive Environments (1985). This is a book that has become the standard text for urban design education in Britain, and its concepts and language now directly influence practice, with planners and architects everywhere debating, for example, the 'robustness' or the 'legibility' of their schemes. This new book, completed 14 years later, updates and further justifies some of the concepts used in Responsive Environments, while it also explores very directly why the concepts have not been readily adopted in development practice, and how they might be encouraged in the future. Urban Transformation develops through a discussion of four themes presented in 12 chapters. The first theme considers the type of conceptual framework that would help us to understand the evolving process and product of urban development. To this end a number of frameworks are unceremoniously debunked. These include, for example, theories suggesting that development results from the spirit of the age; as a result of determining environmental factors; from uncontainable technological innovations; because form had to follow function; from the creativity of heroic architects; or as a result of the uncontrollable workings of the market. Central to this critique is a rejection of all theories that do not seek to put people in the driving seat of change. The book prefers to adopt Giddens's structuration theory to explain how struggles between actors in the development process are resolved and subsequently why they result in particular development outcomes. This leads on to a discussion about the significance of 'types' or categorisations of what typically gets developed. Distinction is made between deep types such as notions of 'public space', which are made up of shallower types such as squares, streets and parks, which again contain surface types such as lamp posts, bollards or pavements. These types embody precedent and cultural norms but are also the starting point for innovation where, rightly or wrongly, they are either gradually redesigned (for example, an open street system evolves into a managed hierarchy of routes) or, in certain situations, reversed (for example, 'streets on the ground' to 'streets in the sky'). The book then carefully explains how and why designers, and in particular architects, derive a critical element of their professional satisfaction from these acts of creativity, while such acts also allow architects to distinguish themselves as they advertise their services to clients. In the second part of the book the relationships between these development types and the process of capital accumulation are explored. The focus initially is on how conditions aff ecting particular transformations in the capital accumulation process have impacted on the form of developments, including, for example, the deskilling of builders, the use of vast quantities of cheap building materials, the search for larger plots of land to achieve economies of scale, or the adoption of prefabrication. The discussion then goes on to explore how resulting patterns of development also in Puence patterns of consumption, for example, how the car has made possible suburban development which itself has led to the demand for everyone to have their own fridge and television. Three types of development are then explored in more detail using the concepts, namely buildings used for employment, retail developments and housing. The role of professionals is then examined in more detail as they struggle to justify their involvement in this process by constructing increasingly atomised notions of what they should be doing. Emphasis here is placed particularly on the culture of architects regarding themselves as both experts and artists, and how this ideology allows them to make sense of their actions while also allowing them to cultivate cultural credentials even if the bulk of their work turns out to be designing supermarkets and laying out car parks. …