ABSTRACT
While techno-industrial innovation has characterized economic development, as well as social and industrial change, in an intensive way for at least a decade, the development of technology assessment (TA) as a societal process has emerged only in the last few years. Apart from the USA, other countries such as Sweden, France and the Netherlands have been in the forefront of the institutionalization of TA in recent years. The European Community (EC) held a conference in collaboration with the Dutch Government in 1987 aimed at making TA a more widespread process and procedure. But the most advanced European industrialized country, West Germany, still lags behind its competitors. In November 1986 the German Parliament’s Enquête Commission on TA concluded that TA, at that time, was
an inadequate evaluative mechanism. However at the same time, the German Regional Governments of NorthRhine-Westphalia, Hessen and Baden-Württemberg tried to come to terms with TA. Equally, in Japan, two central units and a larger number of commissions with more specific functions are engaged in the development of a long-term scenario for Japan’s economy. During 1986 and 1987 UNESCO presented a programme that involved many different aspects of TA and it organized workshops to develop the tools of social technology assessment in developing countries (Naschold et al. 1986; Dierkes et al. 1986).2
