Sociedade, Tecnologia e Inovação Empresarial - Presidente da ...

Only in the late nineties did the policy debate become enlarged toa more general discussion on work, non-work and the status of work.While many of the concepts used are reminiscent of the 60’s, thesedebates are new and do in the end not replicate those of the aftermathof the second world war, as most rich OECD societies in which theyare now taking place are now much more composed of double incomefamilies, living mostly in urban areas and occupying for nearly threequarters of them jobs in services. The old debates and the choices madein the post-war period, especially regarding the type of welfare states,do influence today’s options, but the societies are more affluent andmore educated. Therefore the issues in redefining the status and contentof work over each person’s individual life cycle are now more centredaround the kinds of training, the types of family structures preferred,the borders between public and private, personal and collective, as wellas on the division between work and non-work activities over one’slife cycle (see KBS, 1999).What should be the role of education and training is certainly partof these interrogations, but again one has to allow for the new contextin which the supply of qualified labour has been substantiallyenlarged and the use of knowledge in economic activities extended,be it in codified or tacit forms. Here too, these debates about therole of education and training seem to be too much oriented by avision centred around production processes and not taking intoaccount personal needs and well-being. Thus, following the debatesin the economics literature, the issue of education and training hasto focus on both the increase in the demand for skilled labour andthe abundance of the supply of qualified labour, both shifts inducingchanges in the effective role of training and education. Both phenomenahave obviously their share in explaining the increase in skilland more generally knowledge intensity in society. On one side, thedebate about the presumed «skill biased» nature of technologicalchange emphasized the fact that firms upgraded their skill requirementsin order to face uncertainty in the evolution of productiveprocesses in times of rapid technological change and tense competition(once the direct effect of the trade with low wage countriesDebates2 9 4Sociedade, Tecnologia e Inovação Empresarial