Theories of the Information Society, Third Edition - Cryptome

REGULATION SCHOOL THEORY
simultaneously with the enhancement of authority to those who remain and who
are able to be successful in this new world (of which more below).
There has been a shift away from mass towards high-value production and
services. This stimulates differentiation, innovation and the contribution of knowledge
to economic matters generally, and to work more specifically, since
specialised markets are constantly being sought, novel products being permanently
developed, and their symbolic import and/or technical sophistication
always increased.
The Fordist era of mass production is giving way in a globalised, but increasingly
specialised, market to flexible customisation, something that is sensitive to
market needs and sensibilities. Products are increasingly knowledge and information
intensive. The design on the T-shirt (and the marketing that goes with it) is
more valuable, for instance, than the actual materials used in manufacturing it.
In addition, operation in a global market places a premium on those capable
of defining niche markets across the globe, of spotting opportunities wherever
they might occur, of cutting costs by dexterous accounting or management skills.
All of this prioritises the contribution to products and services of those most
capable of adding value. A mere capacity to fabricate is no longer sufficient; the
crucial factor is the ability to increase the worth of the good and/or the success
of the organisation. More generally, this shift towards high value increases the
contribution of what Lester Thurow (1996) calls ‘brainpower industries’ such as
biotechnology, media production and computer software, since these are the only
sure bet in a global economy where cheap labour is abundant, but incapable alone
of offering sophisticated new products which yet may come at prices lower than
asked today, since once designed and developed the costs of production are
minimal.
Combined, these factors result in the prioritisation of certain types of occupation
– those which manage and operate across global networks, those which are
capable of offering design intensity, those which can provide high added value
to products and services through scientific excellence, imaginative skill, financial
acumen or even effective advertising.
To Robert Reich (1991) these are the 20 per cent or so of all occupations that
he terms ‘symbolic analysts’, who hold together and advance the ‘enterprise networks’.
They are the people who are ‘continuously engaged in managing ideas’
(p. 85) and who are in possession of the ‘intellectual capital’ crucial for success in
the twenty-first century. Symbolic analysts ‘solve, identify, and broker problems
by manipulating symbols’ (p. 178) and are represented in occupations that place
stress on abstraction, system thinking, experimentation and collaboration. They
are problem-solvers, problem-identifiers and strategic brokers located in jobs such
as banking, law, engineering, computing, accounting, media, management and
academe.
What all these jobs hold in common is that they are informational. Of course
they hold expertise in particular areas, but precisely because they operate in a
world of constant and frenetic change their greatest quality is their high-level
flexibility, hence a capacity to adapt their generalised abilities to ever-new circumstances.
Information labour is always capable of retraining itself, alert to the latest
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