[asia-apec 505] (ICT-JOBS): Summary of the Panel Discussion (part 1 of 2)

[Roberto Verzola]

>From owner-ict-jobs at tristram.edc.org  Sat Jun 20 00:41:39 1998
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Date: Thu, 18 Jun 1998 17:27:24 +0200
From: ILO-MODERATOR <ILO-MODERATOR at ilo.org>
To: ict-jobs at tristram.edc.org
Subject: (ICT-JOBS): Summary of the Panel Discussion (part 1 of 2)
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In preparing the summary, we noted a number of particularly interesting
issues on which we would welcome comments and reactions.

1.  It was suggested that co-operation between all stake-holders -i.e. 
society as a whole - was crucial in setting rules and parameters for the
new environment and in preparing for work in an information age. We'd
like your views on:

- who these stakeholders are (suggestions made included trade unions,
business & business organizations, community development organizations,
educational institutions, communities of the self-employed, NGOs and
IGOs, including the UN family);
- at what levels they should interact. (international, national and
micro-levels were mentioned);
- How should they interact?  Through what mechanisms?

2.  We were told that the absence of significant public intervention in
the form of education and training, enterprise incubation, small-scale
financing, and directed procurement and enterprise support were among
the factors most likely to hinder those countries and localities which
were currently outside the ICT intensive economy from finding a role
within it.

- Do you agree that these are the key areas? Are there others you feel
are as/more important?
- In the ILO we are particularly interested in training and enterprise
incubation and support. We'd welcome comments and information from
people working with ICT towards these goals.

3. On women and ICT it was suggested that the generic and management
skills women acquire in doing information based work are going to be
(possibly already are) transferrable to across sectors and occupations.

  - Do our subscribers have examples of this? 
  - Is it already happening?  To developing country women? How pervasive
is it?
  - Are women themselves finding new ways of using these skills to
create their own business, individually or collectively?  How
successfully?
  -  Can ICT be promoted as a tool for retrenched women to gain access
to business information to support their activities?  If yes, who should
do so and how?

4.  Now a chicken/egg question!
  - Do firms shift automatically to the new organizational paradigm (of
flatter structures, small networked units, devolution of information and
decision-making to lower levels) as they absorb ICT or are such
structures a precondition for the successful application of ICT?

  - Are these new organizational structures limited to a small sub-set
of multinationals or are there other examples: in the business sector,
among small firms; in community organizations; in NGOs and IGOs?

 - As one of our panellists suggests the answer to these question could
provide information for organizations and communities which are trying
to make the best of the opportunities afforded by ICT, without the
benefit of the resources of the multinationals.

5.  A last point.  We were intrigued by the suggestion that employees
who are expected to think creatively and critically on-the-job will take
these (newly acquired) skills back into their communities and families. 
Any comments or examples? Personal experiences?


ILO-Moderators

.....................................................
Summary of the panel discussion (1/2)


ICT & Jobs:  Creator and/or destroyer?
   1.  With some important exceptions, panellists appeared to feel that
ICT both created and destroyed jobs.  Several panellists also argued
that its net, long term result was a propensity to create more work than
it destroyed.
   2.  An attempt was made to set the creator/destroyer issue in the
theoretical frameworks developed by Schumpter and Kondratiev, which
predict that we should now be emerging from the job suppression stage to
enter the creation stage.  But the pace and pervasiveness of ICT
resisted theoretical packaging.  In addition, the pace of change, and
the rapid obsolescence of products and skills could make new jobs risky,
which, in turn, could discourage job creation.
   3.  Several panellists stressed that ICT's impact on employment was
not determined by technology itself but was the result of social and
organizational choices made by employers and national policy-makers. 
Where the labour-force was seen less as a cost to be minimized, and more
as a key competitive asset, the creative aspect of technology was likely
to come uppermost.  Corporate values, behaviour and 'traditions', and
their response to consumer and stakeholder pressure were also seen as
important determinants of 'desirable or despicable outcomes'.
   4.  Panellists suggested that arguments for and against technology's
impact on jobs were informed by whether evidence was sought at the
macro-level of the economy (eg. through jobs research or through
industry level accounts of labour shortage (which tended to be
optimistic)) or at the micro-level where evidence highlighted the highly
differential impact that the high tech boom was having regionally,
sectorally, or on particular categories of workers including women and
older workers, and was, therefore, more pessimistic.  However, we were
warned that macro-level evidence was often no less anecdotal, or
selective, than that gathered at the micro-level and that care should be
taken in its interpretation.  
   5.  Constituency, background and personal experience were thought to
colour attitudes towards ICT.  Based on experience, some trade unions
considered it the 'job destroyer par excellence'; the 'grim digital
reaper'.  Anecdotal evidence, even from computer-literate professionals
who have lost their jobs and cannot find others, also suggested that ICT
was destructive.  A panellist from an employer background suggested that
it was a catalyst in the 'quest for perfection'.  Panellists concerned
with productivity, considered the 'elimination of non-productive jobs
... a good trend, generally', but others felt that this was one reason
why technology was feared as a job destroyer.
   6.  Reality was more complex.  While some jobs based on traditional
work processes and skills were indeed falling victim to ICT, new
products and services were creating new jobs, and even labour shortages
in some sectors.  The ease with which highly-skilled information workers
from some developing countries were able to take advantage of selective
migration quotas in advanced economies to move to high tech centres
(like Silicon Valley) were cited as manifestations of this trend.  It
was suggested that this brain drain was a far greater challenge to
developing countries bent on maintaining a pool of cognitive skills than
the pace of technological innovation and the consequent redundancy of
existing expertise.
   7.  Many panellists felt that the real issues went beyond creation or
destruction of jobs to the kinds of jobs that were being created, to
their quality and to the ways in which the labour-force (and
particularly those segments of it that were dispossessed in the course
of the transition from old work systems to new ones) could be equipped
and supported to benefit from the change.
   8.  Several panellists argued that, in the final analysis, all new
work methods and technological innovations enhance society and the
economy to a greater degree than they destroy.  Positive spin-offs of
ICT include new communications-related jobs; telemarketing which is used
to reach beyond limited local markets (as in the case of Japanese
strawberry farmers and Ghanian micro entrepreneurs); information on jobs
and new types of work which is being used to create new business
ventures including consultancy and business services; and teleworking
which could facilitate the decentralization of jobs, even off-shore. 
The flexibility of location and time offered by some of these new work
options were creating fresh opportunities, particularly for
traditionally disadvantaged workers, such as women, but were also
throwing up new challenges including growing polarization (even between
different groups of women), the erosion of bargaining power, the need
for lifelong learning and the problem of measuring (and rewarding)
intellectual capital in knowledge-based companies.

A New International Division of Labour?
   9.  The existence of an international division of labour was implicit
in many interventions. It was noted that ICT facilitates the on-line
outsourcing of work within and across national boundaries.  As the
proportion of information processing work increases in total production
costs, outsourcing work from high-wage developed countries to low-wage
developing countries becomes cost effective, and is compatible with
'lean' management practices and down-sizing.  While this trend currently
appears to favour 'English-speaking pockets' of developing countries,
and women workers, predictions about the future must be approached with
caution.  Most outsourced work (even in software development) is at the
lower end of the skills spectrum and amenable to automation as ICT
advances.  The long term sustainability of ICT-related off-shore jobs in
developing countries would be greatly enhanced if they did not depend
solely on work coming in from developed countries.  Furthermore, the
professional and technical brain drain from developing to developed
countries, referred to above, may also outweigh the advantages of
relocated employment and may even have a negative effect on the
developing countries' ability to take advantage of the world-wide lack
of cognitive skills.
   10.  Because ICT made it possible to find the cheapest sources of
labour world-wide, it was thought that developing country workers could
profit from the current movement of jobs, to the detriment of unskilled
workers in the developed world.  However, claims concerning a
technology-facilitated exodus of jobs from the OECD countries to Asia
and elsewhere were not based on statistical and other evidence.  Little
research has been done to quantify the magnitude of the exodus or the
net gain or loss of jobs.  In addition, the cross-border movement of
jobs did not benefit all developing countries, some of which were
marginalized by the global information economy.
   11.  As was the case with earlier technologies, the higher value
added manufacturing and service functions and R&D intensive areas tend
to remain in the developed countries and it was suggested that the new
international division of labour assumed old patterns.

ICT and Working Women
   12.  The international relocation of work has definitely brought new
opportunities for women, particularly in  some Asian, Latin American,
and Caribbean countries.  This is particularly true of
information-processing work. While recent trends in automation may erode
some of the comparative advantages of women in developing countries,
involvement in the global information economy has given them generic and
management skills that are transferable across sectors and occupations. 
These skills will be highly relevant as ICT becomes pervasive and spills
over into new areas such as electronic commerce.  Its pool of
computer-literate and business-oriented women workers could be an
important selling point for a country seeking outsourced, off-shore
information based work.

   13.  More generally, ICT's impact on working women has been both
positive and negative.  On the negative side, some new technologies,
such as the use of CAD/CAM in the garment industry, have made the manual
skills of women redundant, and resulted in their retrenchment. 
Similarly, women in middle and lower management and in some clerical and
secretarial areas may lose their jobs to technological rationalization. 
The age bias in recruitment patterns works to the disadvantage of older
women (and men) and those made redundant by technological advances find
it difficult to gain re-entry into ICT-related occupations and must look
to self-employment as the only viable alternative.  With greater
possibilities of machine pacing and control, the quality of jobs may
also be affected in negative ways.
   14.  More positively, studies in Asia and Africa have suggested that
ICT can become a tool for retrenched women to gain access to business
information which would support collective or own-account business
activities in the informal sector.  However, even where women have the
requisite higher level, cognitive skills, their entry into the high tech
small firm sector is likely to be constrained by a lack of start-up
capital.  Growing governmental interest in the small firm sector as a
source of employment creation, appropriate educational policies, and
targeted financial support for women entrepreneurs may help to redress
this situation.

ICT and Organizational Change
   15.  Contradictions mark the debate on ICT's impact on patterns of
work and work organization.  As several panellists pointed out, evidence
and predictions on ICT and work suggest that it could be used to
automate production or enrich it; to deskill the workforce or to build
up worker skills; to routinize work or to add value to it; to flatten
hierarchies and empower the workforce or to institute greater control
and disempower the shopfloor.
   16.  The critical divide between the two extremes of automation and
control versus information and participation appeared to be determined
by the agenda and the strategic interests of those who controlled the
technology and its introduction and use.  In short, it is not ICT, in
and of itself, which transforms patterns of work and work organization
but rather the motivations of those who develop and deploy it.  Thus,
its effects on work vary depending on whether it is used to enhance
competitivity, speed and flexibility, innovation, productivity and
efficiency, or even to enforce anti-union strategies.
   17.  Seen from this perspective, ICT is no more than a tool used to
implement and support new business and management strategies, which are
themselves shaped by other forces.  However, it does offer real
opportunities for recreating the way in which work is organized and
distributed.  For example, ICT-facilitated networking makes it possible
to reorganize and redistribute information-intensive production and
service jobs (as well as those more directly related to ICT development
and maintenance) across countries and beyond national boundaries.  This
aspect of ICT is of particular interest both to developing countries and
to high unemployment regions in developed countries but realizing its
potential to source work into these areas is dependent on the
administrative and political will to create the appropriate policy
environment and infrastructure.

Telework and other virtual forms of work
   18.  The application of ICT which attracted the fullest discussion
was teleworking which was thought to epitomize the way in which the
telematics revolution was altering patterns of work (and of financial,
trade and information flows).  It was suggested that, while definitions
and data were sometimes questionable, this was an substantial, and
growing, phenomenon which could, in time, reshape *the very notion of
work* as a 'concentration of technology, human resources and
organizational factors in a *privileged* place that we call a
workplace'.  Limited at its inception largely to tele-homework, it is
progressively expanding into a variety of flexible working arrangements
which include satellite offices, telecottages and neighbourhood centres,
telecommuting and other mobile and nomadic work using electronic
networks.  The  virtual office or company was its apotheosis.
   19.  Telework offers unique opportunities.  It can be used by
employers to retain, or to tap into, a skilled workforce which might
otherwise be unavailable.  Where work can be performed from home and
arranged to suit individual lifestyles, it could benefit both women and
men and contribute to the enhancement of social relationships and family
life.  Workers with disabilities might also profit from being
incorporated into otherwise inaccessible labour markets.  Telework could
foster the creation of new employment in isolated areas and reduce the
pull of megacities by moving work to workers.  As was noted earlier,
electronic means could also be used to promote the products of small
firms (particularly in developing countries) and isolated farm
communities, again expanding employment opportunities.  This is a facet
of telematics which is of particular interest to local governments
seeking to develop their regions and improve job creation.  However, it
was noted that almost all the available information on telework was
based on the experience and social traditions of the developed countries
raising questions about its feasibility in developing countries which
often lack the necessary infrastructure and the human and capital
resource bases.  Of more immediate interest to these countries is the
potential for job creation through off-shore teleworking which could
provide an entry-point into global markets.
   20.  On the downside, telework may increase isolation,
marginalization and social dispersion; create unprotected jobs;
contribute to gender disparity; and fragment the labour force.  We were
reminded that the workplace plays an important role in the identity and
social standing of individuals and is the environment in which visual
recognition is given, social partnerships formed and social strata
created.  Replacing it with virtual operations would eliminate the human
element and could undermine the trust-based 'social capital' of
enterprises which was vital to co-operative endeavours.  In addition, as
a panel member from a trade union background warned us, at its worst,
telework could be no more than high tech piece work.  One of the major
challenges of telework is, therefore, to identify the best trade-offs
between employment creation and the quality of the work created. 
Meeting this challenge requires innovative solutions which enhance its
positive features while minimizing its drawbacks.  The option which
appears to be gaining popularity is that of voluntary, part-time
telework which avoids 'psychological inconveniences' such as isolation
and lack of social interaction, and maximizes motivation and job
satisfaction, and with them productivity and efficiency.  We were told
that employers were aware of the importance of this trade-off and that
unions consider the voluntary nature of telework a precondition for
their involvement in experiments in this domain.
   21.  Electronic outsourcing in general, could facilitate enterprise
and employment creation, but is not without drawbacks, particularly
where the quality of jobs and job security are concerned.  While
efficiency, flexibility, speed, productivity and economies of scope and
scale are said to be the motivating factors, one panellist suggests that
*labour problems* were being outsourced along with the business
functions.
   22.  Viewed as a form of outsourcing facilitated by ICT,
*self-employment* particularly among professionals and technicians, runs
the risk of 'atomizing the labour force into self-marketing individuals
stripped of union bargaining power'.

ICT and Flexibility
   23.  ICT facilitates labour flexibility and we were warned that this
often results in marginalized and casualised jobs, and the undercutting
of labour standards.  However, the experience of some of the more
advanced corporations suggests that a greater emphasis on technological
skills must be accompanied by a similar emphasis on people and their
values if business strategies and management systems predicated on
co-operation and shared information and decision-making are to succeed. 
Organizations which see ICT solely as a key to greater flexibility and
lower costs and ignore the human dimension are likely to fail.
   24.  Where ICT and management strategies together enable the creation
of higher, multi-skilled jobs with greater content and more autonomy,
individual flexibility is an important attribute of employees who are
required to use initiative, and exercise choice and discretion in what
they do and how they do it.  Panellists stressed the need for
appropriate strategies for education and skills up-grading which would
help people to make effective use of the possibilities provided by ICT
in their current work situations and become employable across a range of
skills and occupations.

ICT and Business
   Competition, whether national or international, was thought to be
driving businesses towards ICT in their pursuit of productivity and
efficiency.  While some panellists suggested that this was a new
business imperative and that enterprises equipped to handle ICT had a
competitive edge over those which were not; we were also warned that 'an
environment of untrammelled international competition which put business
profits and survival before all else' would ensure that ICT had a wide
range of highly negative impacts.  While the fact that 'ICT was here to
stay' was not disputed, it was suggested that it was crucial that its
introduction, control, regulation and optimization was subjected to
scrutiny, by the trade unions, by the state, and by society, which as a
major stakeholder, had both the right and the duty to set the parameters
and the boundaries for ICT.  
   26.  Corporations' own values systems were an important determinant
both of the choice of ICT and of its use in the way they grow and
govern.  It was suggested that where corporations were bent on wringing
the maximum short-term competitive advantage out of ICT, without
reference to its longer term social costs, 'rape and pillage' were the
order of the day.  Others were deploying new technologies within 'a
thoughtful, ethical strategic framework' with due consideration for its
social consequences.  The strategies of a number of leading
multinational companies were cited as examples of the latter.  
   27.  New business strategies which stressed flexibility, speed of
response, innovation, value-adding design, or proliferation of goods and
services, and a tighter customer focus were thought to be motivating
corporations to use ICT.  To cope with, and support such strategies,
MNCs, in particular, were redesigning their management, marketing,
production and distribution arrangements using ICTs potential to
streamline and speed up operations.  This, rather than ICT itself was
transforming patterns of work and work organization.
   28.  Where firms were global, these new imperatives were reflected in
greater autonomy and the devolution of decision-making power to regional
management and an increased focus on building up local management skills
to replace expatriate managers who were slower to be informed about
local needs and culture.   Implicit in this organizational paradigm was
the idea of the advent of global network enterprises comprising small
units, pulled together in an associative structure, orchestrated by a
streamlined, and possibly downsized, MNC, and having greater autonomy
than before.  Over and above their implications for management
strategies, such structures have implications for industrial relations
systems and for trade unions.
   29.  Also implicit in the discussion of enterprise networks and
outsourcing was the idea of the growth of the small enterprise sector. 
While small and micro-enterprises are seen by most developing countries
as a important source of employment creation and economic growth, the
degree to which ICT has contributed to the their development, outside
the globally-linked section of the economy, is open to question.  It was
suggested that the pervasiveness of ICT could be hampered by a lack of
capital, infrastructure and management and cognitive skills. On the
other hand, examples were provided of micro-entrepreneurs using ICT as a
tool for business information and to create markets for their products.


Management Strategies
   30.  One of ICT's more important transformational facets is its
potential to facilitate access to information at all levels of an
organization, integrating more knowledge and skills horizontally around
enterprise objectives and making non-managerial personnel *owners* of
many decisions.  While this could make jobs more interesting, they also
become more demanding and stressful, particularly if training is
inadequate.  More positively, employees who are expected to think
creatively and critically on-the-job, will take these skills into their
dealings with management, the trade unions and their local communities.
   31.  ICT is likely to result in flatter organizational structures and
control systems.  Where self-management teams are already replacing
several layers of middle-management, they are throwing up issues related
to power, autonomy and control and are actually demanding greater
management skills than before.  Possibly the biggest challenge of ICT is
not how to manage its impact, but how to *transition* managers, workers,
and society away from an addiction to controlling and being controlled. 
It was suggested that shared beliefs could provide direction without
control.
   32.  There was some doubt as to pervasiveness of this new
organizational paradigm and it was suggested that it might be limited to
a small sub-set of leading multinational firms (MNCs).  The specific
contribution of ICT to reshaping organizational structures was also
questioned, with particular reference to whether firms would shift
automatically to the new paradigm as they absorb new technology, or
whether those firms which wished to make effective use of technology had
first to create the 'appropriate' organizational structure.  Answers to
these questions could provide crucial information to individuals,
communities and organizations trying to 'wring some measure of advantage
out of technology-based opportunities' without the advantage of the
capital and other resources of the MNCs.
   33.  While flatter organizational structures were likely to promote
innovation, creativity, industrial democracy, a better social climate
and greater job satisfaction, we were warned that they also eliminated a
huge array of intermediary information intensive jobs, including those
of middle-managers, foremen and supervisors.  In this context at least,
ICT 'destroys' jobs and there is no clear indication about whether the
resources set free would actually result in the massive creation of new
kinds of jobs or work.
   34.  Nevertheless, participants suggested that for ICT to achieve its
transformative potential, it was necessary to look beyond the
significant and expanding need for people with hard technological skills
(eg. programmers and chip designers) to information analysts, trainers
and other intermediaries who could 'translate' technological
opportunities into real benefits such as health and literacy.