The accelerating speed of change in the new globalised information economy has caught many researchers unawares. Companies in the knowledge sector find their markets dissolving and reforming before their very eyes, as traditional sectors merge seamlessly with each other and new industries mushroom overnight.

The new e-businesses have their origins in sectors as diverse as telecommunications and computer manufacturing, electronic retailing and newspaper publishing, toy-making and broadcasting, record manufacturing and market research. Given that the statistical categories still have to catch up with these transformations, how can their development be tracked?

Similar upheavals have taken place on the employment scene. Whilst old qualifications have become obsolete and old job descriptions torn up, new occupations are emerging with skills which have yet to be crystallised in formal qualification systems. The website designer and the call centre operator are just two of the new jobs which have yet to figure in the occupational statistics. Yet if the new knowledge workforce is to be trained and recruited, there is a vital need for information about trends in these new types of employment.

Meanwhile, we are surrounded by hype about globalisation and the new weightless economy. Indeed, to read some of the literature, one might imagine that all jobs have become dematerialised and might fly off like butterflies at any moment to any point in the globe.

The EMERGENCE project has been set up to introduce a note of realism into the debate: to track the new developments and produce accurate information on which jobs are being relocated and which are not, and where they are being shifted, to find out which are the favoured destinations and which regions run the risk of being left out of the new information economy.

 Introduction

 Who will benefit?

 Activities

 The consortium

 The project’s work
 

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