Economics and technological change: Some implications for the study of the building industry

Abstract

This paper is a preliminary attempt to indicate a unified theory of economic and technological change in the building industry. It is limited to a consideration of that part of industrial change which might be termed “deliberate”, that is, cases where analysis and identification of situations and trends has helped form conscious strategies, albeit that the outcomes of those interventions and actions may not have corresponded to what was intended or foreseen. We reject the idea that the building industry is only the unconscious and passive object of external forces acting upon it, and offer instead an interpretation in which various elements of the industry (sometimes powerful “leading” firms acting alone, more often, sets of similarly placed firms, or formal/informal groupings or organisations of firms) and of government move towards a “view of events” which then underpins and shapes the policies, strategic development and choices of government and of firms, which in turn influence the direction and pace of economic, organisational and technical change in the industry. It follows of course that we do not regard the building industry as “the last refuge for the application of perfect competition theory”, nor as a locus classicus for theories of exogenously induced change based on one or another kind of simple determinism (whether determination by the “logic of scientific discovery” or by the “logic of changing user demands”). Deliberate change at the level of the industry or more accurately, the set of building industries must be regarded as “policy” and much of this paper reviews implicit or explicit attempts to define such policies. The paper is principally concerned with work in and on the UK, notably over the last 30 years or so, although it is hoped that the theoretical ideas may have wider application. Students of industrial change appear to approach the phenomenon either by explaining economic change through technical change or vice versa. We regard such a separation as unhelpful generally; in studying building activity it leads to the omission of a major aspect of industry, the building process. Rosenberg (1982) and Stoneman (1983) review very thoroughly the current awakening of