Technological Change
For Economic Development

By Khilendra Basnyat

THE world's economy is characterised by a slow growth rate with high rates of inflation and unemployment. In addition, imbalance in international payment, prolonged monetary instability, intensified projec-tionist pressure, structural problems and maladjustment are the world's economic features.

Shortage

Problems are also stemming from the shortage of critical nonrenewable resources, disruption as well as dislocation in the functioning of the international trading and financial systems. Since international trade has lost its former dynamism, there are uncertain long-term growth prospects for the world economy.

The persistence of the above-mentioned state of affairs in the world's economy has asymmetrical impact. Due to vulnerability of their economies most developing countries have been hit the hardest. The stresses and strains on their economies are assuming alarming as well as critical proportion.
These countries are facing deterioration in their terms of trade, increasing limitation deterioration at their export to industrial countries, inadequate transfer of real resources to these countries and imbalance in external payments. Therefore, they are facing the growing burden of external indebtedness. These problems can be mitigated to some extent through technological changes.
Technological change always plays a significant role in the economic development of a nation. For example, the industrial revolution and advances in transportation and communication converted Great Britain into a global super power.

The industrial revolution represented a revolutionary improvement in production process through the application of technology. Such technology is of newly invented types of machines. This is an improvement that brought about a change in the pattern and structure of the English Society.
The overall effect of all this was an accumulation of wealth by way of profit to the English bourgeoisie. It was a dynamic wealth, which by way of further investments brought about further profit. The revolution in technology in the form of means of transportation and communication removed most national barriers in the indefinite amassing of this wealth.

In the nineteenth century, industrial capacity provided the resources that enabled Britain and later German to gain dominance. In the twentieth century, science, especially nuclear physics and space technology gained prominence for the currency of power in the United States and the erstwhile USSR. In assessing power in the information age, the importance of technology has risen. However that of geography, population and raw materials has fallen. The information revolution is making available new tools for promoting market reforms and democratic institutions. Nowadays, information technology has been utilised to promote business and market development.

Although e-commerce did not exist before 1995, it constitutes a 6 billion business that is expected to explode to $ 1 trillion by 2003. This is about 400 per cent increase in volume. Likewise, Asia is expected to net e-commerce sales of about $ 32 billion by 2003. No doubt, the globalisation of financial markets has an unfair impact on the e-business. However, private currency traders trade $ 1.3 billion a day, more than the total foreign currency of all nations put together.

International portfolio transactions by the US investors increased from nine per cent of GDP in 1980 to 135 per cent GDP in 1993. Actually, technological change was responsible for much of the economic growth in the United States between 1909 and 1949. Economists prefer to look at Total Factor Productivity (TFP) which was usually thought to measures the technological progress in order to find out a nation's economic growth.

In 1952, Japan had a per capita GNP of US $ 188 in the prices of the day. At that time, it was below that of Brazil, Malaysia and Chile. Today, it has the fourth largest GNP per capita in the world.
Much of the growth in labour productivity was driven by TFP growth. Actually, technological progress, the highly educated and skilled workforce in manufacturing and the ability to initiate technology from abroad helped Japan catch up with the United States.

Newly industrialised countries (NICs) comprising Singapore, South Korea, and Hong Kong have increased their economies considerably. It is because these countries have been successful exporters and have also imported foreign technologies. High savings as well as investment rates, low taxes, high quality education systems and institutions are the other reasons behind this success.
NICs have attracted huge amounts of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) which have enabled them to adopt and adapt foreign technologies. Generally, the ability of developing countries to attract FDI seems to rely on whether they adopt export promoting or import substituting strategies for development. Some economists are of the opinion that export-promoting countries attract more FDI, which yields social return.

In fact, East Asia still remains an attractive and appropriate place to carry out business with forward looking and innovative companies apart from well-educated and productive managers. Basically, it is the productivity of those workers and companies that will assess their future rather than corruption crises and bank failures.

While it is essential to do away with restrictions on industries, commerce and finance, it is not necessary to do away with regulations. Also, instant information makes markets work better. If the financial and economic conditions are healthy, markets that disappears overnight can also recover overnight. This will cause little or no damage to trade and investment flows. In recent years, many countries are no more using military force in order to achieve control over rivals. Rather neo-colonialism and war by other means (WBOM) are the new methods of achieving security in the world.

Actually, the digital minds-set converts knowledge and ideas into products. Hence, an organisation's ability to commercialise ideas speedily by saving time and resources increases knowledge share. This ultimately translates into an increased market share. Nations have significant role to play in implementing new monitoring and regulatory practices, especially at a time when the world is shifting to e-commerce and the Internet is being used for the transfer of huge capital.

As the continued rapid growth of global trade on goods and services depends on financial flows, the instant availability of information has a telling effect. No doubt, the use of information technology can lead to multifold profits for a country. However, such information, if not regulated can cause economic crises.

Two Players

The two main players in the world's economy are the governments and companies. Therefore, they have to be aware of the technological change in the information age and develop a digital mindset to deal with realities and to bring about economic development.

Managing Change For Progress

By Sharad K. Shrestha

CHANGE is one of the most pervasive and complex forces, and it needs to be managed. Management and administrative skills are necessary to handle the problems of change. The term innovation, change and development are interrelated. Innovative ideas bring change in an organisation, which leads to the change in the environment.

Planning

It is better to focus on the types of changes to occur in an organisation. Among them planned change is a process of change initiated in a planned manner with the stated goals. Unplanned change is not guided by objectives, shared responsibilities and participation. Disruptive change breaks the pattern of expectation of the people and creates a crisis of discontinuity. Non---disruptive change is one in which the pattern of expectations of the people remain a the same. There always remains a strong resistance against disruptive change.

Individual change deals with a behavioural change determined by the characteristics of members of the organisation or society such as personality, needs, skills, values and beliefs. Behavioural change of the people is possible through education, training and disciplines etc. The sensitivity training, survey feedback, team building and inter group development etc are some of the techniques required to use for the behavioural change of an individual or group. Organisational change is highly sought for its development.

There are various optics namely structural, process, and value optics from which the organisational change can be achieved. Structural optics is concerned with the modification of the organisation chart, rewriting the job descriptions, spelling out the procedures and clarifying matters as delegation and development of control techniques. The process optic focuses on procedural change. The value optic deals with new values which are imported into the system to have a significant impact on changing structure and process.

A manager as a change agent should understand the change process and also make others understand it in order to lead the organisation/environment towards progress. The process leads to three principal stages such as diagnosis, implementation and evaluation respectively. Diagnosis stage relates to the problem identification, and formulation of alternative. Implementation stage deals with development of decision rules, selection of solution, planning for change and putting into action. Evaluation stage focuses on assessment of effectiveness and feedback.

Resistance to change is a common phenomena. It can be enunciated in two groups namely human resistance to change and resistance to change in environment. The first group focuses on self interest and feeling of insecurity, misunderstanding and lack of trust, uncertainty, different views, unlearning old habits, low tolerance for change and lack of knowledge/information. And the second group relates to vested interests, social norms/values, rejection of outsider, systematic and cultural coherence, traditional attitudes respectively.

Different methods that have been useful in reducing resistance to change are education and training approach, facilitation and support approach, negotiation and agreement, manipulation, explicit/implicit coercion, attending good reputation, personality and positive attitude for change, prevention of trivial and unnecessary change and diagnosing the problems remaining after a change and treating them accordingly.

Objectives

Hence it can be said that moving from one state to another is a change. There is nothing permanent except change. Any change programme should be initiated in a planned manner with the defined goals or objectives of an individual/organisation for its progress/growth. Resistance to unplanned change should also be minimised through the above methods. A manager should follow the steps of change process to lead the organisation/environment to progress/achievement.

Are They Left To Split?

By RRS

COMMUNISTS are smart at digging minor issues. They do not need any weighty topic to launch heated arguments especially during their plenum. The ongoing debate over whether retaining or scraping the post of party president in the CPN-UML has reaffirmed this. The UML functionaries will not discuss any new idea. They will give continuity to the legacy of late Madan Bhandari's "Janatako Bahudaliya Janbaad."

Fundamentally, there is no political and ideological difference among the top brass. Still, they indulge in high-decibel quarrel for a post. The debate began in the name of so-called 'further democratisation' of the party.

It is internationally known that the Left leaders always tend to give a colour of ideology to their view. If we look at the history of key communist parties across the world, we find each of them, in one or another, has split into groups in the name of ideology. Marx's International broke down. Lenin's socialist party split into Bolshevik and Menshevik. Mao and Khrushev became arch enemies over the definition and interpretation of the communist revolution.

Back at home, the single communist party, established under the leadership of Pushpalal 50 years ago, has split into a dozen groups. The UML had already suffered the pains of division. But a kind of fear still looms large among the party cadres that the ongoing debate could lead the party to another accident.

However, everybody knows that the present dispute is not related with party philosophy.
Psychological, individual and personality issues are behind the scene. It is the global tradition of the communist parties that a general secretary, who holds the sweeping powers of the party, remains at the top slot for a long time. There are many cases in which great communist leaders have not stepped down from the post of general secretary or chairman until they die. Lenin, Stalin and Mao remained at the top slot till their demise. Now look at Fidel Castro of Cuba and Kim Jong Il of North Korea. It seems that they will hold on to the party's top post throughout their life.

Now comrade K.P. Oli fears whether general secretary Madhav Nepal will also enjoy the position life long although Nepal does not bear the charismastic personality and revolutionary image of those international leaders. Oli has spearheaded unilateral debate by circulating his separate opinion just a week ahead of the party national congress. Establishment has not taken part in the controversy. But it is said it is doing everything to silence the dissidents secretly.

It is sure that adding the post of president might help power-sharing to some extent. But it could not bring any drastic change in the organisational structure of the communist party. Normally in the communist party, whether it adopts presidential or general secretary system, does not make any difference. Suppose there are two posts- general secretary and president. Both cannot take sweeping powers at the same time. If the general secretary assumes the key power, the president must be a rubber stamp and vice versa.

Communist parties normally launch debate over ideology, not for post. However, this debate shows that when there is not any ideological difference, quarrelling begins on other fronts. Is it a unique feature of the communist party?