Proceedings of 8th European Assembly on telework (Telework2001)

41ConclusionsMatti Salmenperä, Director, Ministry <strong>of</strong> Labour, FinlandLadies and gentlemen, for three days we have discussed the new ways <strong>of</strong> work and the challengesand opportunities that IT-technologies involved in this process pose to the development <strong>of</strong> workinglife. In this context we have also looked into the issues <strong>of</strong> the local, regional and sustainabledevelopment potential, which through these new ways <strong>of</strong> work only expects to be realised. Becausethe conference has been arranged in Finland, it is therefore quite natural that the perspective hastended to be a <strong>European</strong> one, and has been linked up with the enlargement process <strong>of</strong> the <strong>European</strong>Union, too. Our findings are, however, mostly global in their nature. At the core <strong>of</strong> our discussionor at cross roads <strong>of</strong> the issues addressed is nothing less than the nature <strong>of</strong> work.During the conference it has been pointed out several times that the physical elements <strong>of</strong> work arelosing ground while the knowledge based components are gaining it. At the same time those parts<strong>of</strong> work that in their nature are routine can increasingly be transferred to machines. The picturethat unfolds with these developments tells us that the important elements <strong>of</strong> future work are in thedirection <strong>of</strong> advanced knowledge, qualified technical skills and interactive social capabilities. Thisnaturally means that work will become intellectually more challenging, more unpredictable anddifficult to control. The amount <strong>of</strong> information at hand grows steadily but also in an unorganisedmanner leading to a peculiar phenomenon: information entropy. As information is by definition theresource that keeps entropy from growing we have a contradictory, even chaotic situation at hand.That might explain why some have even resorted to chaos theories to explain what is happeningto work. According to these courageous explanations, unorganised flood <strong>of</strong> information cyclicallyculminates in innovations which - while creating new order - also renew the processes <strong>of</strong> work. Thedevelopment is by no means holistic: Individuals and organisations may drift on to very differentavenues <strong>of</strong> development. This can easily be explained by the massive differences in regional andcompetitive factors.Admittedly, the evolution <strong>of</strong> work, as I have just described, can be an overestimation in parts<strong>of</strong> world and in many jobs. While the pressures <strong>of</strong> globalisation and competition are hard, amultitude <strong>of</strong> buffers also brakes down the development. One major buffer is the persistent universalpoverty and unemployment that efficiently limits the necessary education. The digital divide is afact that will not go away without targeted and effective international and national policies andtheir implementation.