Paper, submittet at 6th International Conference on Cyberspace (6th
Cyberconf), Oslo, 5.-8.6.97. It was not presented, though (there was no
reaction on this paper from the conference's organizers).
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für die deutsche Version..
Opportunities and risks of Cyber-Working in Germany and EU.
Introduction
Before the industrial revolution took place, it was natural for most of
our ancestors that workshop place and home were combined. This changed
with the development of entrepreneurial enterprises.
Tele-Working establishes every home to be a place to work. Some people
estimate the potential of changeable jobs to be from 20 to 40%.
Definition
There are two common definitions: the narrow one only accepts workers,
who have more than 600 miles (1000km) between their home-address and their
workshop place.
The broader and in this paper used definition allows everyone to be
a Cyber-Worker, as long as he's working at home for some days and only
checks back his office from time to time. To be able to work he heavily
uses modern communication technology and equipment, eg. telephone, fax
and data-transmission.
Important new information and communication technology: history, current
development, future expectations
In Germany, we have 19 PC (per 100 inhabitants, Data taken from Info
2000: 1996), which is shortly above the Western-European average. Leading
are USA (39), Switzerland (33) and Norway (30), for example. The earnings
of those modern technologies happen in the USA or Japan. Profit/Sales rate
is for Intel 25%, for Microsoft 20%, for Hewlett-Packard 9% (912 Mill US-$
profit, 10.3 billion $ sales). So Germany (and also Europe) is behind in
international accepted standards, hard- and software development, and moreover
it has a very weak content (film, music, etc.) industry.
Tele-Working: Overview
1. Companies can reduce their fixed costs, because less office space is
needed. But it is required for every company to decide which tasks should
stay in-house because of importance, security, etc.
2. Advantages of Cyberspace-Workmanship: Reduced traffic, relief of
overcrowded municipal areas, a homogeneous distribution of jobs throughout
an area, and growing equality of the workers' opportunities, because of
the lower force to mobility.
3. Employees enjoy a new time management. Family and job can more easily
be combined. But there are disadvantages, like the loss of the office as
a place of integraton and making friends.
Michael Paul (1994: 90) writes about a study with Florida (USA) telecommuters:
72% of the persons asked need less money for transport, 18% of them reduced
their spendings for clothes and 36% for food and beverages. 75% of their
superiors think that the work performed is of higher quality and all thought
that after the installation of cyberspace jobs more work was done. Paul
finally writes "Workers like telecommunting" (1994: 90).
Conclusions
Tele-Working opens the first real global labour market, with extreme cost
disadvantages for countries with high salaries. So, I expect not to gain
new jobs because of tele-working in germany. Nearly 50% of our 4.7 M jobless
have no finished education, almost 1/3 are unemployed for longer than 1
year. Tele-working requires the cyber-workers to use and know modern technology.
Moreover germany competes at low-level-services (orders, booking, administration
tasks, accounting) with cyber-workers worldwide.
So it's recommended for germany to concentrate all efforts on education
and liberalization of the telecommunication sector.
What has been the price for oil in the industrial society, became the
price for telecommunication. The latter in germany, compared with the leading
competing countries, is much to high.
Literature:
-
Info 2000 (1996): Deutschlands Weg in die Informationsgesellschaft; Bericht
der Bundesregierung
-
Paul, Michael J.; Gochenouer, John E. (1994): Telecommunications, Isolation,
And The Erosion Of Privacy, in: IPCT, Vol. 2, No. 3
Last changes of text content: 16.10.97
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