Skill and work experience in the European knowledge economy

labour and new occupational profiles and new skill requirements (Bartlet &
Ghoshal 1993).

• the global process of industrial convergence which is helping to blur the lines that
separated traditional industries, for example, telecommunications, from newer
ones, such as media and computing, and create new growth opportunities as
technologies and markets converge (Coffee 1997).

Taken in combination, these four factors, although they may vary from one Member
State to another according to national, and even regional, circumstances, have been
responsible for exerting tremendous pressure for industrial, organisational and
occupational change. The next section of the paper provides an overview and
interpretation of the debate about the increased role of knowledge within the economy.

The new role of knowledge in the economy.

The initial interest in the relationship between economic and technological change and
the increased role of knowledge in the economy originated in the sociological debate in
the late 1960s and early 1970s about the transition from an industrial to a post-
industrial society (Bell 1973, Touraine 1969). More recently, sociologists have argued
that post-industrial societies are being superceded by information (Castells 1995) or
knowledge (Stehr 1994) societies. The common theme that links these slightly different
interpretations about the continuing pace of economic and technological change is that
they each tend to stress that scientific knowledge is now central to most aspects of
economic production, political regulation and most spheres of social and cultural life
(Delanty 2001).

Stehr (1994) provides one of the most concise explanations of the process of economic
and technological change. He conceptualises the changing nature of economic activity

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