ABSTRACT
The future of the American economy focuses on topics like the competitiveness of General Motors, or of the American automobile industry, or, more broadly, of American manufacturing, or, more broadly still, of the American economy. Americans thus confront global competition ever more directly, unmediated by national institutions. Routine production services entail the kinds of repetitive task performed by the old foot soldiers of American capitalism in the high-volume enterprise. Routine producers typically work in the company of many other people who do the same thing, usually within large enclosed spaces. Symbolic analysts solve, identify, and broker problems by manipulating symbols. Some symbolic analysts have taken refuge in job titles that communicate no more clearly than this, but at least sound as if they confer independent authority nonetheless. The 'flat' organization of high-value enterprise notwithstanding, there are subtle distinctions of symbolic-analytic rank. Of course, there still exist organizational backwaters in which career advancement is sequential and predictable.
