首页
外语
计算机
考研
公务员
职业资格
财经
工程
司法
医学
专升本
自考
实用职业技能
登录
外语
The Next Society The new economy may or may not materialize, but there is no doubt that the next society will be with us sho
The Next Society The new economy may or may not materialize, but there is no doubt that the next society will be with us sho
admin
2013-02-05
14
问题
The Next Society
The new economy may or may not materialize, but there is no doubt that the next society will be with us shortly. In the developed world, and probably in the emerging countries as well, this new society will be a good deal more important than the new economy (if any). It will be quite different from the society of the late 20th century, and also different from what most people expect. Much of it will be unprecedented. And most of it is already here, or is rapidly emerging.
In the developed countries, the dominant factor in the next society will be something to which most people are only just beginning to pay attention: the rapid growth in the older population and the rapid shrinking of the younger generation. Politicians everywhere still promise to save the existing pension system, but they--and their constituents--know perfectly well that in another 25 years people will have to keep working until their mid-70s, health permitting.
What has not yet sunk in is that a growing number of older people--say those over 50--will not keep on working as traditional full time nine-to-five employees, but will participate in the labor force in many new and different ways: as temporaries, as part-timers, as consultants on special assignments, and so on. What used to be personnel and are now known as human resources departments still assume that those who work for an organization are full-time employees. Employment laws and regulations are based on the same assumption. Within 20 or 25 years, however, perhaps as many as half the people who work for an organization will not be employed by it, certainly not on a full-time basis. This will be especially true for older people. New ways of working with people at arm’s length will increasingly become the central managerial issue of employing organizations, and not just of businesses.
The shrinking of the younger population will cause an even greater upheaval, if only because nothing like this has happened since the dying centuries of the Roman Empire. In every single developed country, but also in China and Brazil, the birth rate is now well below the replacement rate of 2.2 live births per woman of reproductive age. Politically, this means that immigration will become an important and highly divisive issue in all rich countries. It will cut across all traditional political alignments. Economically, the decline in the young population will change markets in fundamental ways. Growth in family formation has been the driving force of all domestic markets in the developed world, but the rate of family formation is certain to fall steadily unless bolstered by large-scale immigration of younger people. The homogeneous mass market that emerged in all rich countries after the Second World War has been youth-determined from the start. It will now become middle-age-determined, or perhaps more likely it will split into two: a middle-age-determined mass market and a much smaller youth-determined one. And because the supply of young people will shrink, creating new employment patterns to attract and hold the growing number of older people (especially older educated people) will become increasingly important.
Knowledge is all
The next society will be a knowledge society. Knowledge will be its key resource, and knowledge workers will be the dominant group in its workforce. Its three main characteristics will be:
-- Borderlessness, because knowledge travels even more effortlessly than money.
-- Upward mobility, available to everyone through easily acquired formal education.
-- The potential for failure as well as success. Anyone can acquire the "means of production",
i. e, the knowledge required for the job, but not everyone can win.
Together, those three characteristics will make the knowledge society a highly competitive one, for organizations and individuals alike. Information technology, although only one of many new features of the next society, is already having one hugely important effect: it is allowing knowledge to spread near-instantly, and making it accessible to everyone. Given the ease and speed at which information travels, every institution in the knowledge society--not only businesses, but also schools, universities, hospitals and increasingly government agencies too-- has to be globally competitive, even though most organizations will continue to be local in their activities and in their markets. This is because the Internet will keep customers everywhere informed on what is available anywhere in the world, and at what price.
This new knowledge economy will rely heavily on knowledge workers. At present, this term is widely used to describe people with considerable theoretical knowledge and learning: doctors, lawyers, teachers, accountants, chemical engineers. But the most striking growth will be in "knowledge technologists" ~ computer technicians, software designers, analysts in clinical labs, manufacturing technologists, paralegals. These people are as much manual workers as they are knowledge workers; in fact, they usually spend far more time working with their hands than with their brains. But their manual work is based on a substantial amount of theoretical knowledge which can be acquired only through formal education, not through an apprenticeship. They are not, as a rule, much better paid than traditional skilled workers, but they see themselves as "professionals" . Just as unskilled manual workers in manufacturing were the dominant social and political force in the 20th century, knowledge technologists are likely to become the dominant social--and perhaps also political--force over the next decades.
The new protectionism
Structurally, too, the next society is already diverging from the society almost all of us still live in. The 20th century saw the rapid decline ’of the sector that had dominated society for 10,000 years: agriculture. In volume terms, farm production now is at least four or five times what it was before the First World War. But in 1913 farm products accounted for 70% of world trade, whereas now their share is at most 17%. In the early years of the 20th century, agriculture in most developed countries was the largest single contributor to GDP; now in rich countries its contribution has dwindled to the point of becoming marginal. And the farm population is down to a tiny proportion of the total.
Manufacturing has traveled a long way down the same road. Since the Second World War, manufacturing output in the developed world has probably tripled in volume, but inflation adjusted manufacturing prices have fallen steadily, whereas the cost of prime knowledge products-health care and education-has tripled, again adjusted for inflation. The relative purchasing power of manufactured goods against knowledge products is now only one-fifth or one-sixth of what it was 50 years ago. Manufacturing employment in America has fallen from 35% of the workforce in the 1950s to less than half that now, without causing much social disruption. But it may be too much to hope for an equally easy transition in countries such as Japan or Germany, where blue-collar manufacturing workers still make up 25--30% of the labor force.
The decline of farming as a producer of wealth and of livelihoods has allowed farm protectionism to spread to a degree that would have been unthinkable before the Second World War. In the same way, the decline of manufacturing will trigger an explosion of manufacturing protectionism-even as lip service continues to be paid to free trade. This protectionism may not necessarily take the form of traditional tariffs, but of subsidies, quotas and regulations of all kinds. Even more likely, regional blocks will emerge that trade freely internally but are highly protectionist externally. The European Union, NAFFA and Mercosur already point in that direction.
The future of the corporation
Statistically, multinational companies play much the same part in the world economy as they did in 1913. But they have become very different animals. Multinationals in 1913 were domestic firms with subsidiaries abroad, each of them self-contained, in charge of a politically defined territory, and highly autonomous. Multinationals now tend to be organized globally along product or service lines. But like the multinationals of 1913, they are held together and controlled by ownership. By contrast, the multinationals of 2025 are likely to be held together and controlled by strategy. There will still be ownership, of course. But alliances, joint ventures, minority stakes, know-how agreements contracts will increasingly be the building blocks of a confederation. This kind of organization will need a new kind of top management.
In most countries, and even in a good many large and complex companies, top management is still seen as an extension of operating management. Tomorrow’s top management, however, is likely to be a distinct and separate organ: it will stand for the company. One of the most important jobs ahead for the top management of {he big company of tomorrow, and especially of the multinational, will be to balance the conflicting demands on business being made by the need for both short-term and long-term results, and by the corporation’s various constituencies: customers, shareholders, knowledge employees and communities.
The new society will be much more important than the new economy only in the developed countries.
选项
A、Y
B、N
C、NG
答案
B
解析
文章第一段中提到,在发达国家和发展中国家,新的社会形式比新的经济形式(如果有的话)更加重要。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/m3I7777K
0
大学英语六级
相关试题推荐
A、Ithasbeenthebestsellerforweeks.B、Itadvisespeopletochangethemselves.C、Itisbeingsoldataverylowprice.D、Itd
A、Creatingspeciallanguage.B、Sellingavarietyofproducts.C、Providingacomfortableenvironment.D、Openingstoresinbusyar
Leadershipisthemostsignificantwordintoday’scompetitivebusinessenvironmentbecauseitdirectsthemanagerofabusiness
Forthispart,youareallowed30minutestowriteashortessayentitledTheWaytoSuccessbycommentingonAbrahamLincoln’s
A、BecauseAsianmen’spotentialforpurchasehasn’tbeendeveloped.B、BecausetherichAsianmendon’thavetohidetheirwealth
A、Internationalprogramsthatsaveparents’money.B、Domesticprogramsthatchargelittleornofees.C、Programsofferingfreeh
A、Sheisdepressedthatshecannolongereatthem.B、She’lleatthemandthenexercise.C、Shethinksitisawisechoicetoavo
A、At8a.m.today.B、At5p.m.today.C、NextMondaymorning.D、NextMondayafternoon.D推理判断题。对话最后女士表示期待男士的加入并希望在下星期一下午见到他。由此可知
A、Improvetheirteachingeffect.B、Modernizetheirteachingequipments.C、Teachstudentsdifferentlanguages.D、Keepcontactwit
A、Themusicishardtoforget.B、Themelodyisnotstrongenough.C、Hecouldhardlyunderstandthemusic.D、Heneedstohavehis
随机试题
在教学目标制定时要强调用精确、具体、可操作的形式来表达教学目标,以及反映教学活动实施的预期结果和学生身心方面的行为变化。这属于()
冷热流体在换热时,并流时的传热温度差要比逆流时的传热温度差大。 ()
根据下列案情材料,按照《法律文书写作》教材I中的要求,拟写第一审刑事判决书。2001年×月×日,××市中级人民法院由审判长李×生、审判员刘×文、张×江依法组成合议庭,由孙×河担任书记员,公开开庭审理了王×东杀人一案。×市人民检察院检察员洪×仁出庭
LD同工酶结果在急性心肌梗死时最典型的改变是
运用比较法估价,选择可比实例应符合的基本要求包括()等。
( )比较适用于工作范围很难确定、专业施工技术要求高且急于开工的工程。
固定资产贷款的借款申请人须提交的材料文件包括()。
资料同上。下列有关乙公司非货币性资产交换的会计处理,不正确的是()。
右图反映单位体积空气所能容纳的最大水汽量与气温的关系。完成下列问题。通过上述实验可以推知,相对湿度的变化主要取决于气温,其一般规律是()。①气温高,相对湿度小②气温低,相对湿度小③清晨相对湿度最大④午后相对湿度最大
(2007下监理)在面向对象方法中,对象可看成是属性(数据)以及这些属性上的专用操作的封装体。封装是一种_____(1)技术,封装的目的是使对象的_____(2)分离。(2)
最新回复
(
0
)