Question

Give some examples of technological developments that could feed through into significant growth in productivity. What policies would you advocate for increasing productivity? Explain why. What is the relationship between immigration and productivity growth?

Answer 1

There are many technological developments that have fed into the significant growth in productivity. The first example is automation technologies that has channelized the capital investment into machineries and helped reduce the dependence upon manual work. It contributed to improve in technology. The second example of technology is the emergence of ERP applications that integrated different functions, SBUs and other components and make them work under the real time environment. It added efficiency, productivity and reduced the delivery lead time. The third example is the development of different quality management practices such as TQM, Lean Sigma and JIT that reduced wastage of different kinds, improved quality and contributed to increase in productivity.
The first policy will be to promote quality management practices. Saving wastes, directly increases the productivity level in the operations. For example, use of Six sigma and lean sigma reduce the wastes as well as defective products to the minimum level. It increases the productivity. The second policy is to adopt technology that can be from open source or incremental technology, with necessary customization according to the conditions of the firm. It will bring economies of scale and productivity level increases with reduction in per unit cost level. The third policy is to develop the culture of entrapreneur culture in the organization. It will make organization to be a place where different budding technologies will emerge.
Immigration has a direct and positive impact upon the productivity growth. With immigration policy, people with specific and key skills are allowed to give immigration to work in the country. These people with superior skill level, when work in the organization, will contribute in increase in the productivity.
So, higher level of immigration, will contribute into higher productivity level.