Einführung, methodische Grundlagen und Bezugsrahmen der Arbeit

Zusammenfassung

Wir befinden uns heute unzweifelhaft auf dem Weg in eine Dienstleistungsgesellschaft, die geprägt ist von Wissen, Netzwerken und Interessengruppen, in der die Beziehungen zwischen den einzelnen Akteuren ungleich komplexer sind als in traditionellen Industriegesellschaften mit ihren klassischen zentralen Steuerungsmechanismen, und in einem „Zeitalter der Beschleunigung“ (Virilio 1995) oder der „Echtzeitigkeit“ (RealTime, McKenna 1997), in dem der Wandel durch Wissen und Netzwerke ungleich schneller voranschreitet als in dem auf Ausgleich beruhenden „Zeitalter nach Ford“ (Bullinger 1998): „We grew up in the Industrial Age. It is gone, supplanted by the Information Age. The economic world we are leaving was one whose main sources of wealth were physical. The things we bought and sold were, well, things; you could touch them, smell them, kick their tires, slam their doors and hear a satisfying thud. Land, natural resources such as oil and ores and energy, and human and machine labor were the ingredients from which wealth was created. The business organization of that era were designed to attract capital — to develop and manage those sources of wealth, and they did it pretty well. In this era, wealth is the product of knowledge. Knowledge and information — not just scientific knowledge, but news, advice, entertainment, communication, service — have become the economy’s primary raw materials and its most important products. Knowledge is what we buy and sell. You can’t smell it or touch it; even that satisfying thud from a slammed car door is probably the result of clever acoustical engineering. The capital assets that are needed to create wealth today are not land, not physical labor, not machine tools and factories: They are, instead, knowledge assets.“ (Stewart 1997, S. X)