Ecomagination

With the availability of wide range of manufacturing infrastructure, digital computing devices become increasingly affordable with vast processing power. General computing devices have been developed to reduce manufacturing costs and to increase flexibility, performance and usage base. These digital devices are set up to perform many routine tasks and can be found in almost every intelligent machine we use such as automobiles, telephone system, computers and so on.

(Note: H = Human and M = Machine) Changing Levels of Automation (Kleiner and Shewchuk, 2001)

In our daily working process, we have entered a new period where technologies are good for the environment as well as are good for business. This statements arise such kind of exciting questions: are there any company which have started to realised that consumers are using less energy that generates less revenue, so investing in more environmentally sound products which cost more to produce? Will it actually benefit the country’s economy? May be the old manufacturing and product development view of a plant’s operating goals were clear: Maximize profits by running a single product for as long as possible and then change over lines and run the next product for as long as possible. A famous phrase was pointed by Henry Ford that in customers’ point of view, they could have any product, in any colour …... as long as they wanted the product that was in stock and the colour they preferred was black.
This can make clear that may be the old “more is better” idea is starting to fade away with Less is the new more ecomagination.

Working to Live and Consume:

We know that people work in order to earn money to live; it is through paid work that basic needs are satisfied because it provides money for subsistence (food, housing, clothes, and so on). However, there is major problem to accepting this argument as it stands: can we really talk about the need to work for the purpose of subsistence when most developed societies provide a welfare system that prevents people from falling below the basic level of subsistences?
In Western capitalist economics it is not simply the case that people need to work to subsist; rather, people work to earn money to acquire consumer power. Money is the means to the goal of consumption, whether that be commidity consumption (mobile, dishwasher, houses and so on) or service consumption (Gambling, eating out, drinking, holidaying and so on). The central distinguishing feature between those people in work and those who are unemployed is that the former have much higher levels of consumer power, and consequently more choice about their lifestyles.

Work as an Obligation:

This topic reflects the importance of doing one's utmost to seek paid employmeny rather than remaining 'idle'. In the UK such an obligation to work is enshrined within the social welfare system because a person must prove they are 'actively seeking work' before they are entitled to any welfare benefits. However studies of the attitudes of the unemployed reveal that there is a widespread desire not to be perceived as 'lazy', even if remuneration levels from work are only marginally higher than unemployment benefit(Turner, Bostyn and wight, 1985). To a large extent this may be the result of the desire to be a 'good provider' for one's family. being 'in work' not only conferred economic power on the individual, it helped to forge a musculine identity-a man who was unemployed, was not only unable to provide for his family, he was also less of a man. More recently, this has been illustrated in a study of the gender-specific consequences of unemployment in a town in Britain (McKee and Bell, 1986: 141).
The loss of the male economic provider struck deep chords among both wives and husbands and a possionates defence of men's right to provide was invariably raised............ Fundamental emotions concerning self-esteem, self-image, pride, views of masculinity, respectability and authority resounded in the expressions of both men and women.
Alternatively, it might be argued that the preception of work as the means of becoming a self-reliant provider for one's family is being eroded in Western capitalist societies because of the gorwth of unemployment. It is a forceful argument, particularly when there has been an abandonment of the political commitment to achieving full employment, meaning that some of the blame can be displaced onto the Government for failing to provide enough jobs.
An attempt to assess the pervasiveness of 'work as a duty' was taken in the international survey in the international survey on the Meaning of Working (MOW,1987). The researchers examined two issues:
1) Obligation to work: the view that everyone must work to the best of their ability and thereby contribute to society.
2)Entitlement to work: the view that everyone should have the right to a meaningful and interesting job with proper trainging.
These are two seperate dimensions, and so an individual's orientation to both can be measured. The MOW researchers were able to plot the responses from each country to demenstrate how the orientation to (1) obligation to work (duties) and (2) entitlement to work (rights) can vary in different national settings. The important aspect to consider from these findings is the overall balance exhibited by respondents from each country-these differences are illustrated in figure as below:

The Information age and The Network Society:

Castell distinguishes between people who become a strategic and intergal part of the networks of capitalism and those who remain outside the network-although still needed by capital.The distinction hinges on the informational capicity of labour-hence he uses two terms for these primary and secondary groups:
1) Self-programmable labour: those who are retraniable and adaptive;
2) Generic labour: those who are exchangable and disposable.
In some respects this echoes models of labour flexibility-in particular the distinction between the core workforce and the periphery. However, it differs in one important respect: Castells is not concerned with the relationship between employees and organisations, but with the relationship between labour and value chains. This is a key distinction because it means that position of the employee in the workplace is of less importance than the location of labour in the network. And the essential factor that influences the centrality of that labour is its informational capicity: it is ability to add value through information processing.

Designs On Poverty (Nepali Wire Bridge)

I found very interesting information about the Nepali Wire Bridges a quite simple technology which has been using in Nepal for long time ago. Some the developing countries like Nepal does not have all modern technology facilities. David Armstrong writes his view on Forbes online News article “Design on Poverty” that village Internet kiosks, rural wireless networks and solar-powered electricity generation all have been touted as high-tech salvation for those living in poverty. But for the poorest of the poor, getting online market quotes or wireless access takes a backseat to simply increasing income from daily labour. A growing cadre of designers is creating smart, cheap, low-tech devices that can often provide a more immediate boost out of the poverty trap.
He also shows how Nepalese people are using simple wire as a bridge to cross the hilly areas’ river. In Nepal some 12 million people live in the foothills of the Himalayas above rivers that swell unpredictably during the monsoon season, cutting them off from the villages, markets and schools below because there is not good bridge and other facilities like Ropeway, Bridge, it is hard to use boat especially in monsoon.

Solution: A for-profit company in Nepal, Ecosystems helps villagers build wire bridges that function like ski lifts, are operated from either side of a river and can safely carry 550 pounds. The group has built 29 bridges so far, and there have been an estimated 1.6 million trips and no accidents, a far better safety record than that of traditional rope bridges. This wire bridge could cost US $15,000 to fully operate.

Job Transfer-Harmless to Developed countries:

The switching of service and other sort of jobs to low-cost countries (Like China,India,Brazil and so on) has made a big issues in the past few years in developed countries. Europe and the US are more concerned that such developments could bring a big source of unemployment in their countries and region. McKinsey Global Institute's research suggests that the fears are exaggerated. The report says that the supply of young people in low-wage economies with good educational qualifications is likely to increase substantially in the next decade, demand for employing them in their own nations in jobs transferred from rich countries is likely to be muted. Many of them lack the work-related experience and aptitude that foreign companies are looking for. The study brings the distinction between graduation and thinking skills and says in the developing world this is overlooked. The report indicates that even though many manufacturing jobs have migrated from rich countries to emerging economies over the past 10 years, due to cost-cutting pressure, the service sector is unlikely to see the same trend.

The study was covered in eight different sectors including automotive, healthcare, insurance, information technology services, retailing, pharmaceuticals, banking and software. It also analysed specific types of service jobs within each of these sectors that could theoretically be performed "remotely" in low-cost countries on behalf of consumers and industrial customers in rich countries. The degree to which individual jobs can depends on how "customer- facing" current market place. In retailing only about 3 percent of all the jobs in developed regions lend themselves to being transferred to low-wage economies. But in engineering and finance because many of the jobs in these fields are done well away from contact with customers and the theoretical proportions are much higher, at 52 per cent and 31 per cent respectively. On the supply side, there is no doubt about the large number of potentially suitable candidates for service jobs done "remotely" in low-wage nations.

The study also says that the developing world has 33m "young professionals" with degrees and up to seven years' work experience in fields such as engineering, finance and information technology & the number compares with just 15m in the rich countries the institute studie. The number of young people with professional qualifications in emerging economies is expanding at 5.5 per cent a year five times the figure for the developed world. But the report scorns the idea that young people in this category in emerging economies can just walk into a job with a multinational employer. Many are judged unsuitable because they may be in parts of the country away from big airports.

Knowledge worker and the Professional:

Knowledge as such is an effective instrument through which a human being attains enlightenment which finally liberates the human being from irrational and non-rational forces. Further, knowledge to me is also a continued practice of doing things in a planned and matured manner.Frenktel et al. (1995) defines his view about the knowledge worker that knowledge workers rely predomentatly on theorical knowledge, and their work requires a high level of creativity for which they mainly use intellectively skills. The table as follow shows how these characteristics of knowledge workers can be contrasted with those of routine workers undertaking the type of work.These two types can be seen as the far extremes- many employees will lie somewhere between these two types if the various aspects of their work are analysed according tothe dimensions suggested here. It is important to recognise tht particular job can vary between the dimensions, for instance, a landscape gardner could be considered to rely on contextual knowledge and action-centred skill (so closer to a routine worker in these aspects).

An alternative defnitions of 'knowledge worker' has been provived by Reed(1996). He rejets the notion of knowledge work being concerned solely with the act of work-in particular information processing and manipulating-which he views as far too inclusive and lacking in the theoretical precisions. Insted Reed suggests that it performed by specialists. In devising this definitions he is also keen to distinguish 'knowledge workers' from other type of experts-in particular, professionals.

Scarborough (1999) highlights three ways that knowledge workers can be distinguished:

1)Unlike traditional professionals, they cannot ,monopolise specialist knowledge and so cannot derive power from this. However, this does not mean they are powerless. Instead their power derives from their scarcity within a liberal market environment.

2)knowledge workers are more dependent on employers because 'knowledge work is less a matter of the application of predefined expertise(as with professional work) and more a joint product a human interactions with informational and intellectual assets delivered through information and communication technologies'

3)knowledge workers are more instrumental than professionals. They consider the knowledge in terms of its value rather than whether it is good in its own right.

Whereas Frenkel, Korczynski, Shire and Tam (1999) argue that knowledge workers can be distinguished from professional workers, Reed prefers to describe 'knowledge worker' as a particular type of professional. He labels this type of worker the 'entrepreneurial professional' and provides the financial and business consultants, project engineers, computer analysts and media consultants. Drawing upon this description, we can distinguish these knowledge workers by three characteristics:

*They have task-specific, highly specialised cognative and technical skills;

*They rely on a combination of embrained, embodied and embedded knowledge;

*They aggressively market themselves as purveyors of specialist expertise that can solve complex organisational problems.

To underline thier distinctiveness, a contrast can be drawn between knowledge workers and other two professional groups

1)Liberal/independent professional: (Doctors, Architects, Layers and so on)

*they have an occupational-specific knowledge/skill base;

*they rely on embrained and encoded knowledge;

*traditionally they have operated autonomously from organisations by controlling the access to the education and training required to qualify and practise. By enacting occupational closure they have been able to establish a monopoly position over their work and have gained public recognition of their expertise.

2)Organisational professionals: (Managers, administrators, technicians and so on)

*they have an organisation-specific (localised) knowledge base;

*they rely on embedded and encultured kowledge;

*at best they have built partial occupational closure, through establishing educational and bureaucratic credentials within the organisation. This produces organisational recognisation and gives them powerful positions within technical and status hierarchies.

Types of Knowledge:

Probably, it is accurate to say that almost every jobs entail some aspects of "Knowledge", the type of knowledge required according to the job and differes considerably. In this respect, the work of Blacker (1995) is partucarly very useful because he distinguishes between five forms of knowledge. The descriptions below are based on categories:
Embrained knowledge: This type is knowledge contains the abstract, conceptual and theoretical information that we have in our heads. It can be applied to solve problems and 'think around' issues in the creativity way.
Embodied knowledge: This type of knowledge contains practicle and applied ways of doing things learned from experience. Problems are solved by drawing upon previous experience and a wealth of information about the specific context.
Encultured knowledge: This type os knowledge contains shared understandings about 'how things are done around here'. This can be an essential part of the organisational culture or the workgroup's culture.
Embedded Knowledge:This kind of knowledge contains systematic routines that mean a person can perform a task or activity 'without thinking'. The task becomes 'second nature' to the person, to such an extent that knowledge, learning and skill behind it is when discussing tacit skills.
Encoded knowledge:This type of knowledge contains information conveyed by signs and symbols. This blogger is a form of encoded knowledge. Information technology has increased potential to encoding, manipulating and transmitting knowledge.
Blackler observes that these five forms indicate that 'all individuals and all organisations, not just the so-called knowledge workers or knowledge organisations are knowledgeable'
References: Blacker,F.(1995) 'Knowledge, knowledge worker and organizations:an overview and interpretation', Organisational studies, 16 (6): 1021-46

Goal Verses the World

Action Cycle:Human action has 2 aspects i.e. execution and evaluation.
Execution involves doing something;
Evaluation is comparision of what happened in the world with what we wanted to happen (our goal). These two human actions can be shown in figuare as follows:
Stages of execuaions: Start at the top with goal, the state that is to be achived. The goal is translated into an intention to do some action. The intention must be translated into a set of internal commands, an action sequence that can be performaned to satisfy the intention. The action sequence is still a mental event: nothing happens until it is executed, performaed upon the world.
Stages of evalutions: Evaluation starts with our perception of the world. This perception must then be interpreted according to our expectations and then compared (evaluted) with respect to both our intentions and our goals.
Seven stages of actions: The stages of execution from (intentions, actions sequence and execution) are coupled with stages of evalution from (perception, interpretation and evalution) with goal common to both stages:

Education and its Impact in Development:

There is a good Chinese proverb that says if you are planning for years - sows rice, for ten years — plant trees and for a hundred years—educates the people. The development of education has played an important part in Asian economic expansion. The university student study and subject themselves to assessments to gauge the level of depth of their understanding, knowledge and skills. That type of formal studying situation will test, grade and award qualifications on the basis of whether the individual has reached an agreed and measurable standard. The main thing is that studying concerned with the acquisition of knowledge, attitude and value, emotional, responses and skills. The awards and punishment levelled to them in the past will affect their motivation and attitudes towards learning in present. The 1991 population census of Nepal reported that 5,958,748 or 39.3 percent were literate amongst those aged 6 years and above. According to the 2001 population census, such literates reached to 11,481,6003. In other words, that data shows that it has been doubled in a decade. Out of these, 90.1 percent were able to both read and write while 9.9 percent were able to only read. The average literacy rate has now reached 59.6 percent. Similarly during the 1991-2001 decade, the number of the highly educated also increased. According to the 1991 census, the number of those educated at the graduate level and above was 96,977. The 2001 census revealed that the number of those receiving such high education had reached 352,2434 or an increase of 3.6 times. Out of that number, 78.7 percent were of graduate level and 21.3 percent of post-graduate level. This is a very good starting point of Nepal’s development.
The private sector was re-allowed into education after about a decade-long experience-in-failure of nationalized education under the so-called New Education Policy of early 1970s in Nepal. Dr. Tirth Raj Khaniya says his view, despite a two-decade long involvement into this field the private sector in education is still at infancy and confused. Most of the teachers in government school motivated less by professional ethics and more by party politics so that our current education cannot depend entirely on the government school, technical education and University for quality education. The books prepared in the style of the grandfather are taught by the teachers who are of the father’s age. And the poor students of today are always at loss as to what is being taught to them in government school. However, the new law has left education as a battlefield of the private and the public sectors. The policymakers have kept the government as the producer of education whereas logically it should be the buyer only.
The government current policy in which the people should have been left free to choose the type of higher education. Government should create such an environment to the people have been made to bear the expenses as well for such education could help to improve the education quality and competition between government and private school/college/university. It will make people ready to pay for such education because with this sort of education they are sure of being employed and recovering the expenses in future. However, as everybody would not be able to afford the full cost of such education, the government should develop a mechanism to make it affordable for everyone interested. Such mechanism can be a system of scholarship or loan facility or a combination of both. If it is a scholarship, it is a case of education being bought by the society; if it is loan-financed the implication is that the person who pays the loan can appropriate the benefits as he/she wishes. Nepal’s experience in sending people to good educational institutes for higher level technical education, such as Medicine and Engineering can be regarded as the example of how the scholarship system can be used.
But the problem in education in Nepal is not only the cost. In closer scrutiny, it can be found that cost is not the problem at all. If the courses offered are such that the person who receives the education is going to be employable immediately after completing the course, meeting the cost is only a matter of arranging the loan from a bank or elsewhere.
The next issue of debate in education is quality and that is related with the cost. People complain, for example, that the students who come out of the private schools pass with good marks in the examination but lack the analytical capability. In other word we can say that education always has a cost attached to it, and better the quality of education, the higher is the cost likely to be. Better teachers and better methodologies of teaching will be available at a higher cost. The implication is that, if we maintain on reducing the cost, the quality also will suffer.
Of course, we can take an example so far as Japan, where the educational priorities and the rights of citizens and residents against the local authorities to provide school education assumed a leading role in the beginning of rapid economic expansion. Let us take one good example in this issue, as a whole education consumed as much as 43 per cent of the budgets of the towns and villages between 1906 and 1911 for Japan. In this period in Japan, the progress of elementary education in particular was rapid, and the recruiting army officers noted the remarkable fact that while in 1893 one third of the army recruits were illiterate similarly by 1906 there was hardly anyone who was not literate. By 1913, though Japan was economically still quite underdeveloped and very poor. It had become one of the largest producers of books in the world publishing more books than Britain and indeed more than twice as many books as the United States. To a great extent the fast economic expansion of East and South-east Asia has drawn on the lessons of these experiences, particularly through the arrangements associated with the enhancement of human resources and skill. These developments were at once social (they deal with education and other social opportunities) and economic (they influenced economic performance), as well as legal (they were associated with creating a pattern of rights and duties which influenced the lives of citizen).
Another interesting area, which has come into importance very recently in context of Nepal, is India’s rapid success in the development of computer software (India has become the second largest software producer in the world after the United States). This process has been made possible not only by the expansion of technical education in India, but also by the comparatively flexible legal arrangements that govern these businesses compared with the much more rigid regulations that apply to more traditional commerce and industrial production, in which progress has been much slower.
References:

Prof. Sen’s lecture on "What is the role of legal and judicial reform in the development process?" The copy was provided by Focal Point for Financial Sector Reforms, Corporate and Financial Governance Project, Ministry of Finance, HMG of Nepal).

Business Age Nepal, Aprial 2002

Dr. Harka Bahadur Gurung's article about Nepal's Education and Languages.

1901 Japanese predications:

1. worldwide wireless telephone
2. worldwide colour photo instant transfer
3. Extinet wild animals
4. Green Sahara
5. Rise of China, Japan and Africa
6. Round the world trip in 7 days, global travel for everyone
7. Warship in the air
8. Extermination of flies and fleas
9. Air conditioner
10. Cultivation by electricity of tropical plants
11. Advanced voice transmitter, love talk over 10 miles
12. Picture telephone
13. Shopping by picture telephone
14. Electricity as fuel
15. Bullet train 2.5 hours between Tokyo and Kobe
16. Rubber tire trains in the air and under the ground
17. worldwide rail network
18. Natural disaster control
19. Everybody taller than 6 feet
20. Electric needle medical treatment without pain or medicine
21. Automobiles without horse
22. Animal language literacy
23. Advanced education
24. Countrywide electricity distribution
Source:Moody & Morley, How Manufacturing will work in the year 2020 "The Technology Machine" The Free Press, page:62

The Real Meaning of Innovation:

Since few days, I was busy on collecting articles, books and research papers to write my report paper. While in the mean time, I found one interesting book "How Manufacturing will work in the Year 2020" written by Moody & Morly. The authors have tried to include so many interested topic like "The real meaning of innovation".

This century has witnessed that manufacturing system in a way that was never imagined, even a few decades ago. Our civilization has migrated from a purely industrial society to global business age in which the movement of bits is as important to the economy as the manufacturing of goods.

In last few decades, manufacturing used to known as just a simple business. A plant’s operating goals were clear: Maximize profits by running a single product for as long as possible and then change over lines and run the next product for as long as possible. A famous phrase was pointed by Henry Ford that in customers’ point of view, they could have any product, in any colour …... as long as they wanted the product that was in stock and the colour they preferred was black.

Innovation which does not evoke images of doing what we have always done just a little bit better. Innovation suggests new peaks of performance, surges of wealth and growth, the creation of new markets, and creation of even more wealth and resources. The challenge for innovation leaders, who may not exactly predict the precise mechanisms to take them to the next level, is to understanding physics, computer sciences, human behaviour, and trading. Innovation leaders live with time at their back, a lingering competitive presence whose pressure magnifies the weight of everyday market and financial concerns.
Leaders of small and medium size business must struggle with resource allocation that fosters innovation; leaders in the few large innovative business, such as Motorola, must clear away the brush and attack the organisational encumbrances-fiefdoms and denial-that dishonour the energy and sprit of Galvin family founders.