Abstract
In a recent speech the President of Tanzania observed that ‘Working towards the goal of ‘people-oriented development’ means … allowing our national objectives to determine what type of technology we adopt or adapt from the North’.2 Because Tanzania, following the Arusha Declaration of 1967, has relied extensively upon public enterprise, and since the government has had the chance to influence directly the technology chosen by these enterprises, one might reasonably expect to find in the latter a fairly close reflection of national objectives. Yet what evidence is available suggests that this has not occurred: on the contrary, the degree of coincidence in manufacturing parastatals appears to be remarkably slight.
This is a revised version of a World Employment Programme Research Working Paper, Number 125, Technology and Employment Programme, International Labour Office, Geneva, October 1983.
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Notes
J.K. Nyerere, South-South Option, Third World Lecture, 1982, Third World Foundation, Monograph 10.
W.E. Clark, Socialist Development and Public Investment in Tanzania 1964–73 (University of Toronto Press, 1978), p. 140.
F. Perkins, ‘Technological Choice, Industrialisation and Development: the Case of Tanzania’, D. Phil thesis, University of Sussex, July 1980, p. 408.
F. Perkins, ‘Technologj, Choice, Industrialisation and Development Experiences in Tanzania’, Journal of Development Studies, Vol. 19, January 1983, p. 211. As we show below, however, the significance of these results is weakened by the inclusion of public enterprises whose technologies were chosen by the former,
The most complete exposition of the theory is to be found in H. Leibenstein, Beyond Economic Man (Harvard University Press, 1976).
The theory is applied to development problems in H. Leibenstein, General X-efficiency Theory and Economic Development (London: Oxford University Press, 1978).
H. Leibenstein, ‘X-efficiency Theory and the Analysis of State Enterprises’, paper prepared for the Second Boston Area Public Enterprise Group Conference, 1980.
Louis T. Wells, ‘Economic Man and Engineering Man: Choice of Technology in a Low-Wage Country’, in C.P. Timmer et al., The Choice of Technology in Developing Countries, Harvard Studies in International Affairs, No. 32, 1975, p. 85.
F. Stewart, Technology and Underdevelopment (London: Macmillan, 1977).
D. Williams, ‘National Planning and the Choice of Technology: The Case of Textiles in Tanzania’, Economic Research Bureau Paper No. 75. 12, Dar-es-Salaam, June 1975.
R. Vernon, ‘Introduction’, in R. Vernon and Y. Aharoni (eds), State-Owned Enterprise in the Western Economies (St. Martin’s Press, 1981), p. 10–11.
The United Republic of Tanzania, Structural Adjustment Programme for Tanzania (Dar-es-Salaam: Ministry of Planning and Economic Affairs, June 1982), p. 42. The nominal control system is based on a hierarchical structure, at the base of which producing parastatals are located. They are, in effect, subsidiaries of parastatal holding companies, which in turn are responsible to a parent ministry. In theory, the relations between the different layers of the structure are such as to ensure that national objectives are closely incorporated in all decisions for technology.
IBRD, Tanzania: Basic Industry Report, Annex V, December 1977, p. 121.
IBRD, Tanzania: Appraisal of th Morogoro Industrial Complex, Industrial Projects Department, March 1977, p. ii.
Tanzania lndustrial Studies and Consulting Organisation, Maize Mill at Korogwe: A Feasibility Study for the German Agency for Technical Co-operation Ltd, Dar-es-Salaam, 1978, p. 1:8 (emphasis added).
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© 1986 Sanjaya Lall and Frances Stewart
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James, J. (1986). Bureaucratic, Engineering and Economic Men: Decision-Making for Technology in Tanzania’s State-Owned Enterprises. In: Lall, S., Stewart, F. (eds) Theory and Reality in Development. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-18128-5_13
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