Organizing Work in an Information Age

Abstract

The 1970s and 1980s have not been the best of times for workers in the United States. Productivity has grown slowly and real wage rates have declined over much of the period. Moreover, slow growth of productivity and real wages has been particularly frustrating when it is considered that the 1970s and 1980s have witnessed rapid progress in microelectronics and other technologies that potentially could improve standards of living substantially. In this paper I will argue that the neoclassical economic perspective is inadequate for understanding and solving the problem of sluggish economic growth in the face of rapid technological progress. This is so both because the neoclassical perspective on the economy has long been unrealistic and, more importantly, because it ignores nonindividualistic work incentives which appear to be vital in examples of successful economic adaptation to new information age technology (e.g., in the case of Japanese manufacturing). If we in America are to develop an economic perspective more suited to the needs of the information age than the neoclassical perspective, moreover, I will argue that we will need economic beliefs that are more consistent with our