Workplace Futures and the Developmental Network State

1
Workplace Futures and the Developmental Network
State

• Seán Ó Riain
• Department of Sociology
• NUI Maynooth

2
Workplace Change in the 1990s

• Foreign Investment become even more dominant in
  shaping the organisation of the workplace
• Emergence of Technical Communities, connected to
  Local and Global Networks of Innovation
• Critical Twin Challenges of Promoting Upgrading
  while Tackling Exclusion

3
The Developmental Network State

• Shapes the Characteristics of Organisations by
• Defining Knowledge Industries
• Making Winners
• Underpinning an Associational Infrastructure to
  support networks

4
Institutions of the Developmental Network State

• State Agencies are Embedded in Multiple Social
  Constituencies
• Loosely Coupled Organizational System
• External Accountability of Agencies

5
Two Challenges to the Developmental Network State

• Competitiveness
• Flexibility

6
Learning and Upgrading Beyond Competitiveness

• Competitiveness talk focus on cost, curbing
  spending and market mechanisms
• Upgrading and innovation is the issue for
  Ireland, not cost competitiveness
• Curbing spending is undermining the system of
  innovation and learning
• Institutional thickness promotes learning

7
Creating Learning Communities Beyond Flexibility

• Shift towards Flexible Labour Markets and
  Organizational Cost Centres
• Problems of under-investment, under-training
• Turnover can result in loss of knowledge, broken
  cooperative relationships etc
• Surround workers with similar institutional
  supports that surround firms

8
Which Learning Workplace?

• Political Choice and Technical Communities
• Individualist portfolio careers or
• Embedding within collective institutions?

9
Embedding Learning Workplaces

• Networks of Institutions supporting firms and
  workers a strong developmental state
• A broader context of investment, security and
  universalism a strong welfare state
• Extend social partnership to industrial
  development institutions