Bela Gold

On the adoption of technological innovations in industry: Superficial models and complex decision processes

Attention is directed first to the external as well as the internal contexts within which prospective innovations are evaluated. Turning to the actual decision-making processes, a review of the evaluational bases for decision is followed by consideration of how these lead to actual decisions and often to subsequent revisions of the original decisions. The final section is concerned with some common shortcomings of prevailing approaches to evaluating the post-installation effects of technological innovations in industry. It also offers some suggestions for improving such efforts and for using such improvements to enhance the effective appraisal of future innovations.

Industry Growth Patterns: Theory and Empirical Results

Efforts to develop an effective theory of economic growth seem to be yielding progressively more meagre results in recent years. That this may reflect the limitations of continued concentration at the level of entire economies is suggested by mounting evidence that input—output and other economic relationships may differ significantly among major sectors of production and distribution. Resulting national statistical aggregates would then represent only the passive resultant of disparate changes among such components. Growth studies may accordingly be enriched by seeking to develop models which encompass the adjustment patterns of products, firms, industries and regions as well as their interactions in shaping changes at higher levels of aggregation. By way of supporting such efforts, this chapter will concentrate primarily on the growth patterns exhibited by industries, with only peripheral attention to exploring the growth patterns of firms and products.

The impact of technological innovation—Concepts and measurement☆

Past studies of the economic effects of innovation have been based on inadequate conceptual foundations and their findings may therefore be invalid. In particular, too superficial and too narrow a view has been taken of the impact of innovation on inputs, outputs and production flows. The author argues the need for a deeper and more comprehensive framework for the analysis of innovation, showing resultant interaction among all the inputs and outputs of the system under study. For this, more effective measurements than have hitherto been available are required of output levels, inputs, productivity and unit costs. The paper then examines the deficiencies of currently used indices and indicates the conceptual requirements for more meaningful measurements of innovatory effects.

Robotics, programmable automation, and international competitiveness

Presents some foundations for policy analysis, including: the place of robotics within current and prospective advances in manufacturing technology; the effects of increasing robot utilization on productivity and costs and the resulting effects on international competitiveness. The author considers the problems and policy implications of seeking to accelerate the development of robotics and related advances in manufacturing technology to accelerate the diffusion of such advances within domestic manufacturing industries and to mitigate any potentially burdensome social and economic effects of such developments.

The Framework of Decision for Major Technological Innovations

Our surprisingly limited understanding of the processes whereby technological progress is effected may be traced in part to the long prevailing belief that each major technological advance was essentially unique, being ascribable either to inexplicable genius or to an extraordinarily lucky accident. Oddly enough, however, growing realisation of the organised structure of science and increasing success in extending its boundaries have likewise failed to enrich our grasp of how technical advances take place— no longer because these are still regarded as incomprehensible, but because they are now assumed to be quite transparent. Thus, technological gains are widely regarded as the virtually inevitable product of organised research and development, with reasonably regularised yields roughly proportioned to the resources applied and effects centred around the guiding objectives of improved products and lowered costs.*

Potentials and limitations of robotics: Guides to managerial evaluations

Abstract This article primarily focuses on: the place of robotics within current and prospective advances in manufacturing technology, the impacts of increasing robot utilization on the productivity and costs of users, and resulting effects on the international competitiveness of domestic industries.

Measuring the quality of economic forecasts

Most evaluations of forecasts have hitherto been primarily based on measure of statistical accuracy. Attention is drawn to the need for concentrating instead on the forecast components bearing on managerial decisions and on the economic effects of such decisions. The method suggested highlights the changing locus of the most influential errors over various time horizons. It also takes account of the economic consequences of under-estimates and over-estimates in forecasting, as well as of the penalties of belated correcting actions. Finally, some broader implications of this approach are discussed.

Tracing Gaps between Expectations and Results of Technological Innovations: The Case of Iron and Steel

A DETAILED empirical study of the actual economic effects of research and technological advances in a major industry offers instructive insights into the problems and intriguing potentials encountered in digging beneath the convenient assumptions and logical deductions of micro-theory. More important, it also helps to clarify the network of interactions and the pattern of results engendered by technological advances, which are increasingly being regarded as the major source of gains in economic growth and standards of living, of offsets to resource stringencies and pollution problems, and of improvements in the competitive position of industries and even of entire nations. There are a number of advantages in focusing such an inquiry on iron and steel manufacturing. It is, of course, a large and strategically important component of the structure of industries. It is also under tremendous competitive pressure both from foreign steel producers and from domestic industries producing substitute products. In addition, it faces major problems in respect to the availability and price of raw materials, energy and capital as well as in respect to environmental protection demands. Perhaps less widely recognized, iron and steel manufacturing and its associated industries have experienced a long and continuing involvement in a wide array of technological advance, thereby providing extended perspectives for appraising the ways in which, and the extent to which, such innovations have helped to overcome some burdens while generating others.

A productivity study in a chemical plant

This paper describes a case study in the application of a productivity analysis model in a plant producing industrial gases. Although the process is a relatively simple one, several inputs (labour, electricity, capital and some materials) and several outputs (liquid and gaseous oxygen, gaseous nitrogen, argon and a hydrogen-nitrogen mixture) are involved. The case study demonstrates how measures of total input and total output can be applied and analyses the performance of the plant over a 15-month period in terms of a variety of managerial control ratios.

Practical Productivity Analysis for Management: Part II. Measurement and Interpretation

Abstract In Part I, a framework for the analysis and measurement of productivity was provided, along with a sample of some empirical findings obtained with this framework. In this paper, the array of factors which must be examined in order to account for the observed findings is reviewed. Problems encountered in the application of this framework in different kinds of plants are discussed, including problems with the development of managerial ability to interpret the results of the analysis.