Education will become the center of the knowledge society, and schooling its key institution.
Throughout history, the craftsman who had learned a trade after five or seven years of apprenticeship had learned, by age eighteen or nineteen, everything he would ever need to use during his lifetime. Today the new jobs require a good deal of formal education and the ability to acquire and apply theoretical and analytical knowledge. They require a different approach to work and a different mind-set. Above all they require a habit of continuous learning.
What mix of knowledges is required for everybody? What is “quality” in learning and teaching? All these will, of necessity, become central concerns of the knowledge society, and central political issues. In fact, it may not be too fanciful to anticipate that the acquisition and distribution of formal knowledge will come to occupy the place in the politics of the knowledge society that the acquisition of property and income have occupied in the two or three centuries that we have come to call the Age of Capitalism.
The fear of failure has already permeated the knowledge society.
The upward mobility of the knowledge society comes at a high price: the psychological pressures and emotional traumas of the rat race. There can be winners only if there are losers. This was not true of earlier societies.
Japanese youngsters suffer sleep deprivation because they spend their evenings at a crammer to help them pass their exams. Otherwise they will not get into the prestige university of their choice, and thus into a good job. Other countries, such as America, Britain, and France, are also allowing their schools to become viciously competitive. That this has happened over such a short time—no more than thirty or forty years—indicates how much the fear of failure has already permeated the knowledge society. Given this competitive struggle, a growing number of highly successful knowledge workers—business managers, university teachers, museum directors, doctors—“plateau” in their forties. If their work is all they have, they are in trouble. Knowledge workers therefore need to develop some serious outside interest.
Postcapitalist society is both knowledge society and a society of organizations, each dependent on the other and yet each very different in its concepts, views, and values. Specialized knowledge by itself produces nothing. It can become productive only when it is integrated into a task. And this is why the knowledge society is also a society of organizations: the purpose and function of every organization, business and nonbusiness alike, is the integration of specialized knowledges into a common task. It is only the organization that can provide the basic continuity that knowledge workers need to be effective. It is only the organization that can convert the specialized knowledge of the knowledge worker into performance.
Intellectuals see the organization as a tool; it enables them to practice their techne, their specialized knowledge. Managers see knowledge as a means to the end of organizational performance. Both are right. They are opposites; but they relate to each other as poles rather than as contradictions. If the two balance each other there can be creativity and order, fulfillment and mission.
At present, the term “knowledge worker” 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.
So, knowledge does not eliminate skill. On the contrary, knowledge is fast becoming the foundation for skill. We are using knowledge more and more to enable people to acquire skills of a very advanced kind fast and successfully. Only when knowledge is used as a foundation for skill does it become productive. For example, surgeons preparing for an operation to correct a brain aneurysm before it produces a lethal brain hemorrhage spend hours in diagnosis before they cut—and that requires specialized knowledge of the highest order. The surgery itself, however, is manual work—and manual work consisting of repetitive manual operations in which the emphasis is on speed, accuracy, uniformity. And these operations are studied, organized, learned, and practiced exactly like any other manual work.
Each of the new institutions perceives its own purpose as central, as ultimate value, and as the one thing that really matters.
The new pluralist organization of society has no interest in government or governance. Unlike the earlier pluralist institutions, it is not a “whole.” As such, its results are entirely on the outside. The product of a business is a satisfied customer. The product of a hospital is a cured patient. The “product” of the school is a student who ten years later puts to work what he or she has learned.
In some ways the new pluralism is thus far more flexible, far less divisive than the old pluralism. The new institutions do not encroach on political power as did the old pluralist institutions, whether the medieval church, feudal baron, or free city. The new institutions, however, unlike the old ones, do not share identical concerns or see the same world. Each of the new institutions perceives its own purpose as central, as ultimate value, and as the one thing that really matters. Every institution speaks its own language, has its own knowledge, its own career ladder, and above all, its own values. No one of them sees itself as responsible for the community as a whole. That is somebody else’s business. But whose?
Every institution in the knowledge society has to be globally competitive.
The next society will be a knowledge society. 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,” that is, 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.
Strategy has to accept a new fundamental. Any institution—and not just businesses—has to measure itself against the standards set by each industry’s leaders anyplace in the world. Given the ease and speed at which information travels, every institution in the knowledge society has to be globally competitive, even though most organizations will continue to be local in their activities and markets. This is because the Internet will keep customers everywhere informed on what is available anywhere in the world, and at what price. E-commerce will create new global channels for commerce and wealth distribution.
Here is an example. An entrepreneur developed a highly successful engineering design firm in Mexico. He complains that one of his toughest jobs is to convince associates and colleagues that the competition is no longer merely Mexican. Even without the physical presence of competitors, the Internet allows customers to stay abreast of global offerings and demand the same quality of designs in Mexico. This executive must convince his associates that the competition faced by the firm is global and the performance of the firm must be compared against global competitors, not just those in Mexico.
The developed countries are moving fast toward a Network Society.
For well over a hundred years, all developed countries were moving steadily toward an employee society of organizations. Now the developed countries, with the United States in the lead, are moving fast toward a Network Society in respect to the relationship between organizations and individuals who work for them, and in respect to the relationships between different organizations.
Most adults in the U.S. labor force do work for an organization. But increasingly they are not employees of that organization. They are contractors, part-timers, temporaries. And relations between organizations are changing just as fast as the relations between organizations and the people who work for them. The most visible example is “outsourcing,” in which a company, a hospital, or a government agency turns over an entire activity to an independent firm that specializes in that kind of work. Even more important may be the trend toward alliances. Individual professionals and executives will have to learn that they must take responsibility for placing themselves. This means above all they must know their strengths and look upon themselves as “products” that have to be marketed.
