IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hhs/cesisp/0052.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Designing Democracy: The UTOPIA-project and the Role of Labour Movement in Technological Change, 1981—1986

Author

Listed:
  • Lundin, Per

    (CESIS - Centre of Excellence for Science and Innovation Studies, Royal Institute of Technology)

Abstract

The paper describes and analyses a Scandinavian research project on trade union based development of, and training in, computer technology and work organization, especially text and image processing in the graphic industries, that was named UTOPIA and carried out between 1981 and 1986. UTOPIA gave rise to the so called Scandinavian School of System Development (Den skandinaviska skolan) where the users participation in system development have become a key element. The role of labour movement in technological change is highlighted and it is underlined that there are different incentives for technological change. Corporations developing technology usually pursued increased efficiency in production, while the labour movement and UTOPIA aimed at other goals such as translating social values regarding job skills, quality of work, and quality of products into new computer hardware and software for the graphic industries. It is argued that the UTOPIA-project may be seen as an attempt to establish an innovation system in computer system development where these kind of different values were pursued. The innovation system consisted of industry, research institutes, trade unions, and universities, and was characterized by strong labour interests.

Suggested Citation

  • Lundin, Per, 2006. "Designing Democracy: The UTOPIA-project and the Role of Labour Movement in Technological Change, 1981—1986," Working Paper Series in Economics and Institutions of Innovation 52, Royal Institute of Technology, CESIS - Centre of Excellence for Science and Innovation Studies.
    • Handle: RePEc:hhs:cesisp:0052
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://static.sys.kth.se/itm/wp/cesis/cesiswp52.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    History; history of computers; history of technology; industrial democracy; innovation systems; management; technological change; trade unions;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J50 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor-Management Relations, Trade Unions, and Collective Bargaining - - - General
    • N00 - Economic History - - General - - - General
    • N73 - Economic History - - Economic History: Transport, International and Domestic Trade, Energy, and Other Services - - - Europe: Pre-1913
    • O14 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Industrialization; Manufacturing and Service Industries; Choice of Technology
    • O30 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - General

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hhs:cesisp:0052. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Vardan Hovsepyan (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cekthse.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.