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The article discusses manpower policies in the U.S. designed to help transition the American labor force from an industrial era into jobs that are automated and technologically-based. The article discusses how to properly introduce unemployed or unskilled workers into productive society, focusing on on-the-job learning and job experience as the most important way to do so. The article describes how society, organizations, and individuals see three different meanings of job restructuring and stresses that such programs must meet the needs of both the organization and the individual. The article gives a history of the specialization of work roles and discusses the social side of job roles.

The article refers to the methodology of institutional management and the development of management knowledge in the United States with a focus on business and social conditions in postindustrial societies. The impact of technology and technological information on society and education, the effect of alienation and individualism on democracy, and the outlook for social and organizational change are discussed. The author states that a disaffected younger generation should look beyond their own aspirations and toward the common good--despite the flaws in modern society.

The article discusses individualism and social unrest in the United States and the challenge this presents to business and social institutions. Management responsibility in a postindustrial society includes: shaping management knowledge to direct idealism in a way that benefits a democratic society; enlarging opportunities for meaningful employment, especially for the disaffected college-age generation; and developing work relationships and a new social contract between employer and employee. The outlook for a leisure society, radicalism and campus turmoil, trends that led to individualism, and management theory that accommodates individualism and prevents destructiveness are mentioned.

Two major trends mark the transformation of industrial society into postindustrial society-increased social complexity and rapid social change. This article projects an image of social work in the future by describing some major problems people may face and presenting a model of an agency that might deal with them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents a letter to the editor about Richard Maisel's prognosis of increasing media specialization in postindustrial society.