Mr

My first intuition about this question is that the change to a more global world economy and and industries based on knowledge is the primary driver for this change. The massive development in technology forces business to react faster to changes in the business environment. I will try to explain more in depth my views.

I was on a seminar in Bergen some weeks ago [2] where the future of mobile internet was the main topic. One speaker had some interesting thoughts around the massive speed of technological change.

He told a story abut when he was an editor for a local newspaper i Bergen in the 70Ò's, one day a salesman was visiting with a technological breakthrough to demonstrate.. He stated that he had a machine that would send a pice of paper in a instant between the newspapers office and its print facilities, located a two hours drive from the office. The machine was the telefax, and the results astounded the editor. Today the 3G [3] mobile network gives people the choice to watch "the tour the france" on their mobile phones..

The editors point was that the wave of technology would be a bigger revolution than the industrialized revolution was.

Globalization and developments in technology is changing how business operate. "In a global economy, jobs tend to flow to places where lower cost provide business firms with a comparative advantage."[4]

I believe 20 years ago a manager would focus more on processes within the firm, on how the firms systems functioned and howe the firm could maximize the firms production capacity.

"Until the late 1980s, business school curricula emphasized the technical aspect of management, specifically focusing on economics, accounting, finance and quantitative techniques. Course work in human behavior and people skills received minimal attention relative to the technical aspects of management."[4]

The changes to a firms environment did not happen at the speed it does today, and so the need for workers to be adaptive to change was not as important as today.

"By 1980 there was no multinational investment in China, and almost none in India. Even Japan in that year accounted for less than 1 percent of world inward FDI stock."[6]

"Formerly large host economies including Russia, China, and even India--which retained a quasi-capitalist economy--were isolated from the world economy. On the other hand, new types of firms expanded abroad. These included management consultants, which transferred knowledge across borders, and fast food restaurants and hotels, which transferred lifestyles. They were particularly important in diffusing U.S. management and marketing techniques to other economies, although they were typically adapted in their new hosts. In Europe, firms also began to respond to European integration by building European-wide organizations and integrating previously autonomous national subsidiaries."[6]

In my own country we got in trouble in many traditional industries as low cost labor from developing countries was starting to be more competitive, we saw this in the ship building industry. "High labor costs made the Norwegian foreign sector less competitive. Thus, Norway saw deindustrialization at a more rapid pace than most of her largest trading partners."[5] Today the technology and know how to build ships is available to any country, and eg the asian countries has the possibility of using very cheap labor. The result is a dramatic decline in many industries, mainly as a result of high labor costs.

"The movement of manufacturing jobs from the United States, Britain, Germany and other countries with high labor cost to places like China, Mexico, India, Malaysia, and the

philippines has been going on for two decades"[4]

In a globalized world its not enough to only rely on maximizing your production output, the competition is tougher than ever and hole industries are faced with massive challenges overnight. (US car industry) The realization that changes happens much faster must also be a part of a workers psychology. The more people know about what to expect the better prepared they are. We all