Bosch-Font, F.; (1976) The economics of training in commercial computing in Spain. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), University of London.

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Abstract

This work studies how firms staff a new and changing industry in a rapidly developing economy. If, according to Spanish computer professionals, trained manpower is such a binding constraint, how is it that the installation of computers has grown at an average.annual rate of more than 20% since the 196O's? I show that the training issue underlying the alleged manpower shortage is part of the problem of choosing a computer technology. Training is a constraint of choice of technique. Thus, training cannot be dealt with independently from technology. The analysis of technology under Uncertainty and imperfect information cannot be adequately handled with standard tools like the micro-production function. Thus, full information and certainty are substituted by: (1) uncertainty of outcomes (2) "trial-and-error" decision-making; and (3) individuals maximize their behaviour by conjecturing about uncertain outcomes and therefore, certainty in maximization is discarded. The problem-solving nature of working activities provides the link between skills and training. This enables me to study: (1) the emergence, and specialization, of formal training; (2) the signaling value of the content of training as reflected in the similarity between the problems solved on the job and during the training period; (3) training as a decision variable in the choice of technique; and (4) the ambiguity of manpower shortages. The ambiguity of manpower shortages is mainly due to the scope for choice of technique and redesign: output and physical capital specifications, training, job redesign, hiring, promotion and wages, are combined in different proportions by decision-makers. When this flexibility in labour and tasks design is compounded by uncertainty and novelty, manpower planning can hardly be seen as an improvement to the outcomes produced by the market. My approach to training provides an efficient framework for the study of issues raised in this work about the theory of training and the understanding of Spanish commercial computing. At the policy level I show that however unwarranted manpower planning appears to be: (i) governments cannot escape having a policy in new technologies, even if only by omission; and (2) government policies in new technologies are inevitably tentative.

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