SOCI 235 Lecture Notes - Lecture 18: Robert Solow, Batch Production, Growth Accounting
10 Dec 2014
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Document Summary
The use of computers has implications for the demand for skills. They could only contribute to productivity growth if employees with the necessary skills are available. Computers reduce the cost of smaller batch production. Producers had to recognize this to use them effectively. Related to the two points above, the efficient use of computers may require a substantial reorganization of production, including shifting more responsibility in the work process to workers themselves: consider, first, the issue of skills. In almost all cases the user of a computer has to be literate. In many cases the use of a computer requires the capacity to read charts and diagrams - sometimes called document literacy. This is certainly true of operators in process industries like steel, chemicals, and pulp and paper. Shoshana zuboff has written that the computerization of work leads to the electronic manipulation of symbols . The operators watch a computer screen and respond to signals on it.
