The Introduction of Technology in Workplaces - Essay Example

“Does The Introduction Of Technology In Workplaces Necessarily Transform Knowledge And Skill And Generate New Opportunities For Learning?”
Abstract
The modernization of human civilization led to innovation and adoption of improved technologies into our daily life and especially in production and business (UNCTAD, 2007). While most of the scholars and academicians believe that, technology opens the door of an “Eldorado” (a place of riches and opportunity), some others possess some different thoughts. The technocrats (technical experts) believe that such coexistence generates a new breed of knowledge among the workers (termed as ‘knowledge workers’) and thereby are of great benefit to the production business system (Gaimon, 1997, p.1308). However, the opposite views also exist. The following paper critically evaluates the adoption of technology in the production system and its effect on laborers.

1. Introduction
This initiated the process of urbanization. The nineteenth-century life was however harsh for the workers as the children worked either in the mines, factories, or the cotton mills. Cotton became a prime export product for the Britons. Cheap houses were provided to the workers in order to make it easier for them to attend work early and spend most of the time there. Law had to interfere in order to protect the lives of these children and make the streets hygienic. (Form, 1987)

At the very beginning of the twentieth century, Henry Ford started the assembly line production system for the first time and the production system suddenly became a comprehensive, constructive and integrated action – “The first step forward in assembly came when we began taking the work to the men instead of the men to the work. We now have two general principles in all operations–that a man shall never have to take more than one step if possibly it can be avoided, and that no man need ever stoop over.” (Ford, 2007, p.58). The efficiency of workers increased manifold – “With one workman doing a complete job he could turn out from thirty-five to forty pieces in a nine-hour day or about twenty minutes to an assembly.” (Ford, 2007, p.58)

However, the adoption of modern-day’s technology started with the advent of information technology. The common sentiment or logic behind the adoption of information technology into production systems was that this will readily increase the level of production by saving time and making an error-free production system possible. Furthermore, it was believed that the introduction of information technology into the production system will definitely impart new knowledge and innovation among the workers. Following this logic, in no time almost everywhere information technology has started to be adopted. Among them, the manufacturing industry and financial organizations are a few to name of.
Manual errors need to be minimized and the process of automation just provided the same. Technology finds its utmost significant application in the context of the knowledge economy where information is the commodity and its manipulation is the business activity involved (Gaimon, 1997).

The so-called benefits of information technology may be summed up in a few words -
• Globalization has embraced the free movement of capital and labor among the nations. Each and every day, lots of firms are setting their business far from their motherland. The gradual shift towards a market economy under globalization is almost like a saga of survival for the fittest. Only those firms, which will be capable of offering a lower price for the same quality of product, will manage to endure the assault of such economic transformation. It has been found that adoption of technology is directly correlated with reduction of production cost and thereby increases the competitiveness of a firm (Williams, 1983; Powell and Dent-Micallef, 1997).

•, In general, modern days’ technology is labor-saving (capital intensive). Therefore, on one hand, adoption of technology leads to more level of production with fewer amounts of raw material and on the other saves the labor cost. These two actions have earned technology immense popularity among entrepreneurs (Gaimon, 1997).