Development and Utilization of Human Resources; A General View.

Participation in industrial change is a hot issue in countries experiencing rapid social change. Major problems include the number of large, highly centralized organizations; people's changing values; work-education and industrial-welfare gaps; the absence of forms to replace unacceptable authoritarian control; the effects of electronic information and communications systems; the bureaucratization of trade unions and professional associations; and the development of "specialist power." We face the colossal task of redesigning major parts of the industrialized world, to set in motion the learning and development process that may spring us from our self-created trap. First, one technology cannot any more be taken as given; second, we must debureaucratize the work organizations and their interrelated institutions. Modern technology makes possible much smaller, simpler, and efficient factories, superior in social terms; they require changes in our basic ideas of work and education. To prevent technological and economic planning from taking precedence over social criteria, a participative design process must take place, in which the roles of specialists are changed. It is possible to choose between basically different forms of work organization. (Author/AJ)