ABSTRACT
This chapter explores further labour productivity in the wider context of the national productivity debate, and the ideological exploitation of the antagonistic dichotomy of capital and labour in the Marxian dialectic, with the inclusion of a third stakeholder, that which Galbraith called technostructure in multinational corporations. The argument that is sustained here is that productivity needs to be about more than the optimal combination of human and technological resources as inputs to the production of goods and services. Productivity may have little to do with the workforce, particularly in competitive markets, where there are ample opportunities for the aggregation of value to goods and services next to discerning consumers with high disposable income. Productivity is Something We Can Work on: The Case of 3M 3M is an American company that invests substantially in research and development leading to a constant supply of innovative products.
