KNOWLEDGE ECONOMY AND INFORMATION SOCIETY

(Code: BMAN 62052)

Academic Year 2006-07

M.Sc. in Science and Technology Policy and Management, MBS

Non-Core Module

Second Semester

Credit Rating 15 credits

Contact Hours 30

Study Hours 120 private study = 150 hours total

Day & Time Monday, 10.00am – 13.00pm

Venue Level 10 Teaching Room (10.02)

Contact Persons: Ian Miles (Harold Hankins room 8.19); Phone: Ext. 57360,

Email: Ian.Miles@manchester.ac.uk

Lawrence Green (Harold Hankins room 8.16); Phone: Ext. 50924,

Email: lawrence.green@manchester.ac.uk

Lecturers: Professor Ian Miles, Dr Jonathan Aylen, Dr Kieron Flanagan, and Dr Lawrence Green

1. Aims

The course provides an introduction to academic, business and policy concepts surrounding “Knowledge Economy” and “Information Society”, examining key elements of technological, social and economic change in this context. These terms, “Knowledge Economy” and “Information Society”, have come into wide use. They are deployed frequently - and often interchangeably - by policymakers, journalists, and other commentators as well as by scholarly researchers and managers in industry. They are used to signify distinctive and substantial changes, taking place around the turn of the millennium, in the economy and society of developed countries and emergent economies alike. (Though even this is disputed by some commentators - who say, for example, that change is perennial, nothing much is really new about the present period. Such commentators often reject the two terms outright, and their criticisms need to be considered.) There are many different accounts of what the main and distinctive elements of these changes might be. Such elements include: new modes of business and institutional organisation (“knowledge-based economies”, “post-Fordism”, “the control revolution”), rapid increases in capabilities for information processing and communication (the “IT revolution”, the “e-economy”, the network economy), new information- and IT-based industries (“information economies”, “content is king”).

This course explores the issues raised by these various accounts of Knowledge Economy and Information Society. This course will draw upon both theoretical and empirical material, including macrostatistics and case‑studies. It should provide students with improved understanding of the issues raised; the concepts and theories that may be used to understand them; and the implications for policies and strategies in public and business affairs. More broadly, the course will also mean considering how relations between technological and socioeconomic change can be understood, as well as examining approaches to management and policy issues concerning Information Technology.