Page 35 - Introduction to Business
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CHAPTER 1 What Is Business? 9
• Upwardly mobile, since knowledge will enable everyone who has acquired a
good formal education to move up
• Offered the potential for success
Together, these three characteristics will make the global society highly com-
petitive for businesses and individuals alike. This effect is already illustrated clearly
by the volume of knowledge-based services that are being outsourced to India.
Information technology, although only one (the others include biotechnology
and nanotechnology) of many features of the new society, is already having a
tremendous effect: It is allowing knowledge to spread near-instantly and making it
accessible to everyone. Given the ease and speed at which information travels,
every institution in the knowledge society—not only businesses but also schools,
universities, hospitals, and, increasingly, government agencies too—will need to
become globally competitive, even though most organizations will continue to be
local in their activities and in their markets. This is because the Internet will keep
customers everywhere informed about what is available and at what price any-
where in the world. This new economy will rely heavily on knowledge workers,
which at present describes people with considerable theoretical knowledge and
learning: doctors, engineers, scientists, and teachers. The most striking growth,
however, is anticipated in knowledge technologists: computer technicians, soft-
ware designers, clinical lab analysts, manufacturing technologists, and paralegals.
Just as skilled manufacturing workers were the dominant social and political force
in the twentieth century, knowledge technologists are likely to become the domi-
nant social, and perhaps also political, force over the next decades.
reality Have you seen any changes in business activity in your hometown over
CH ECK the past five years? If yes, what is the cause of these changes?
EXHIBIT 1.2
Brains, Not Brawn
Distribution of total employment by occupation, United States (percent)
1988 1998 2008*
Executive and managerial 10.3 10.5 10.7
Professional 12.5 14.1 15.6
Technicians 3.2 3.5 3.8
Marketing or sales 10.3 10.9 11.0
Administrative support 18.5 17.4 16.6
Services 15.5 16.0 16.4
Agriculture 3.5 3.2 2.8
Production, craft, and repair 11.9 11.1 10.5
Operators, fabricators, and laborers 14.2 13.2 12.7
*Forecast.
Source: From “A Survey of the Near Future,” The Economist, November 3, 2001, p. 9. Copyright © 2001 The
Economist Newspaper Ltd. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission. Further reproduction prohibited.
www.economist.com.
Copyright 2010 Cengage Learning, Inc. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part.
