Volume 3, Number 4 (Fall) 1968
Piore, Michael J. 1968. "On-the-Job Training and Adjustment to Technological Change." Journal of Human Resources 3(4):435-449.
In the absence of technological change, on-the-job training takes place in the process of production. When change occurs, training also takes place in the process of innovation, installation, and debugging of new equipment. Analytically, training, production, and innovation should be viewed as joint products of a single process. The joint product, single process relationship entrains mechanisms which act to prevent structural imbalances in the labor market. The relationship also suggests that imbalances are unlikely to appear as job vacancies matched by workers unemployed but unqualified to fill the vacant jobs. Finally, the nature of on-the-job training and its role in adjustments to technological change suggests new interpretations of labor productivity and job vacancy data.
The author is Assistant Professor of Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The author is indebted to John T. Dunlop and Peter B. Doeringer and to his colleagues at M.I.T. for their advice and criticism throughout the development of these ideas. The research reported in this paper was part of a project sponsored by the U.S. Department of Labor under the authority of Title I of the Manpower Development and Training Act of 1962 as amended. Points of view or opinions stated in the paper do not necessarily represent the official position or policy of the Department of Labor. The present findings are based upon open-ended interviews conducted in 1964 and 1965 with engineers and with personnel and industrial relations specialists in 18 manufacturing plants and at 11 corporate headquarters. Plants in the following industries were visited: aircraft engines, electric consumer appliances, electric power generating equipment, electronic parts and equipment, food processing, automobile parts foundry, heating equipment parts foundry, men's shoes, women's shoes, toilet articles, and machine tools.
© 2003 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
US ISSN 0022-166X