COMPUTERS’ EFFECT ON MANAGEMENT

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29784, 29 March 1962, Page 17

COMPUTERS’ EFFECT ON MANAGEMENT

(New Zealand Press Association)

WELLINGTON, Mar. 27. All the accepted textbooks on management could be obsolete in five years because of information and technological knowledge being brought about by toe introduction of computers, said toe president of toe International Committee of Scientific Management (Mr A. Lederer) when he addressed a meeting of Wellington businessmen today.

"The art of managenent today is a social science,” he said. “Managers are an integrating force in the social structure.”

The education of managers was important, he said, and every country was concerned with the problem of educating managers now and not waiting for evolutionary process to produce than in 20 years’ time. Mr Lederer said the international committee was conceived by toe President of Czechoslovakia (Mr T. G. Masaryk) in 1927. It had been set up to accelerate the exchange of knowledge and experience in management

throughout the world and that was still its purpose.

The committee was divided into three world areas— European, Pan - American, and Indo-Pacific. New Zealand had an important part to play in the latter, being grouped with India, Hong Kong, Singapore, Korea, Japan, toe Philippines, Australia and perhaps, later this year, Burma, Even if New Zealand did not directly participate in the advancement of knowledge by toe introduction of computers, her people would be recipients of the knowledge created.

"You might be called upon to become the repository of all toat is left of Western civilisation.

“If you say the problems of the outside world don’t concern you, then go into your shell and stay there. But if you think you can learn by what others are doing and share their problems, you can continue to participate in this exchange of knowledge and experience,'* he said.