Foreword of the book: Technological innovation and occupational structure in medium and large companies in Paraguay in Post Covid-19, by Heikel and Palau (2022)

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By José Tomás Sánchez

 In­no­va­tion is in­ces­sant trans­for­ma­tion. Al­though the need to “in­no­vate” is usu­ally part of the con­ven­tional dis­course, the truth is that in­no­va­tion is not a ro­man­tic process since it al­ters lives. Strictly speak­ing, in­no­va­tion is an­other way of re­fer­ring to the con­cept of “cre­ative de­struc­tion.” This was made pop­u­lar by the econ­o­mist Joseph Schum­peter, to ac­count for the emer­gence of eco­nomic, tech­no­log­i­cal, and or­ga­ni­za­tional processes which, as they de­velop, also leave a trail of de­struc­tion in their wake. This move­ment is ac­cen­tu­ated in mar­ket economies and, even more so, in times of cri­sis that push to in­no­vate for the need of sur­vival, adap­ta­tion and im­prove­ment. That is why it is es­sen­tial to know more about the in­no­v­a­tive processes that oc­cur in key fields of eco­nomic, po­lit­i­cal, and so­cial life in our coun­try; but in Paraguay, re­search in these ar­eas is still scarce, de­spite the neg­a­tive im­pli­ca­tions of ig­nor­ing these phe­nom­ena. Is­sues as fun­da­men­tal as changes in em­ploy­ment, which have an im­pact on the life of so­ci­ety, have not been ap­proached with a min­i­mum of rigor. In this con­text, the re­search “Tech­no­log­i­cal in­no­va­tion and oc­cu­pa­tional struc­ture in medium and large com­pa­nies in Paraguay in the Post Covid-19 pe­riod”, a pa­per by María Vic­to­ria Heikel, Rafael Palau and team, con­tributes to shed light in the midst of a wide­spread ob­scu­rity on such a strate­gic topic.

This study ad­dresses the changes that are oc­cur­ring in the oc­cu­pa­tional struc­ture of Paraguayan com­pa­nies due to tech­no­log­i­cal in­no­va­tion. It an­a­lyzes changes in the jobs, in the tasks and in the train­ing re­quired for these po­si­tions. It deals with the dy­nam­ics of changes, dis­con­ti­nu­ities, adap­ta­tions, and char­ac­ter­is­tics of job po­si­tions in re­cent years. It dis­ag­gre­gates the ef­fects of in­no­va­tion on em­ploy­ment by in­come level, gen­der, and sec­tor of the econ­omy. The pa­per also in­cor­po­rates the im­pact of the COVID 19 pan­demic on the la­bor mar­ket, in­clud­ing the last ma­jor “shock” that af­fected the coun­try and which has not yet been stud­ied much. Fi­nally, the text in­di­cates im­por­tant trends that are de­vel­op­ing in the la­bor mar­ket, such as the la­bor ac­tiv­i­ties that will in­crease or de­crease de­pend­ing on whether they are cog­ni­tive or man­ual, rou­tine or not, and whether they are linked to tech­no­log­i­cal in­no­va­tions in­tro­duced by com­pa­nies. It is a pa­per that clearly shows the pre­sent and fu­ture chal­lenges for work­ers, com­pa­nies and gov­ern­men­tal in­sti­tu­tions re­lated to the field of em­ploy­ment.

This work shows the importance of universities directing their efforts towards institutions that can provide resources for research (such as CONACYT), that teachers and students have the incentives to propose research projects with the possibility of their full development, and that the questions and debates that arise in class do not have to wait to become a thesis to be developed as research made for publication

The re­search is writ­ten in an easy, clear, and con­cise man­ner. It leads the reader to learn as he/​she reads, to see him/​her­self in the world of work as he/​she de­vel­ops the analy­sis, and to won­der about the pre­sent and fu­ture of so­ci­ety as he/​she reaches his/​her con­clu­sions. This work should be read and stud­ied by the man­age­ment of com­pa­nies, unions, gov­ern­ment in­sti­tu­tions, civil so­ci­ety, teach­ers, and stu­dents of so­cial sci­ences, as well as jour­nal­ists and opin­ion lead­ers in gen­eral. The em­pir­i­cal as­pect, with the se­lec­tion of com­pa­nies and jobs for re­search, is un­doubt­edly a strength and an ex­am­ple for the coun­try’s acad­e­mia. This study is also in­serted in a vast in­ter­na­tional and na­tional bib­li­og­ra­phy, which makes it a source of con­nec­tion with other stud­ies to fur­ther ex­pand the top­ics cov­ered. Un­doubt­edly, all so­cial sci­ences will ben­e­fit from this re­search.

Let us re­mem­ber, in case it is not ob­vi­ous, that do­ing em­pir­i­cal work in Paraguay re­quires, in ad­di­tion to the an­a­lyt­i­cal skills of the so­cial sci­ences, other de­tec­tive skills. In gen­eral, the data are hid­den, the sec­tors in­ves­ti­gated do not usu­ally open their doors, there are few aca­d­e­mic works to rely on and the sec­ondary sources are usu­ally in­suf­fi­cient. This makes the ef­fort made by Heikel and Palau even more re­mark­able. And since we are in a coun­try with scarce re­sources for re­search, it is also a duty to rec­og­nize the im­por­tance of CONA­CYT in fa­vor­ing con­di­tions for re­search that would have been dif­fi­cult to carry out with­out its sup­port and, con­se­quently, to high­light the de­vel­op­ment of this in­sti­tu­tion to get to know us bet­ter as a so­ci­ety.

Fi­nally, per­son­ally, I am very proud to have seen the process that this pub­li­ca­tion un­der­went. Heikel and Palau’s ideas ma­te­ri­al­ized in the fi­nal pa­per of the De­sign and Eval­u­a­tion of Pub­lic Sec­tor Pro­grams and Pro­jects course, which I taught as a pro­fes­sor in 2020, in the Mas­ter’s Pro­gram in Gov­ern­ment and Pub­lic Man­age­ment at the Amer­i­can Uni­ver­sity. As a pro­fes­sor, I have al­ways pushed for stu­dent pa­pers to be an­a­lyt­i­cal ef­forts that have a good re­search ques­tion, an em­pir­i­cal ba­sis and help us learn more about our coun­try. I have also en­cour­aged stu­dents to do their work in for­mats that are like those used by agen­cies that al­lo­cate funds for re­search, so that they can ap­proach ex­ist­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties to de­velop their pro­jects. But it had never hap­pened that the work car­ried out by my stu­dents ended up be­ing awarded funds. Un­til there was a co­in­ci­dence be­tween pro­fes­sion­als of the qual­ity of Heikel and Palau, the hunger they had for re­search and the fact that a CONA­CYT call for pro­pos­als was open. It was up to me to fa­cil­i­tate the way. It had al­ready filled me with sat­is­fac­tion that they had de­cided to ap­ply for the call, and I am now so proud that their work has been pub­lished. I am grate­ful for the op­por­tu­nity to have been a teacher of these pro­fes­sion­als.

The pub­li­ca­tion of this re­search should greatly in­spire uni­ver­si­ties. This work shows the im­por­tance of uni­ver­si­ties di­rect­ing their ef­forts to­wards in­sti­tu­tions that can pro­vide re­sources for re­search (such as CONA­CYT), that teach­ers and stu­dents have the in­cen­tives to pro­pose re­search pro­jects with the pos­si­bil­ity of their full de­vel­op­ment, and that the ques­tions and de­bates that arise in class do not have to wait to be­come a the­sis to be de­vel­oped as re­search made for pub­li­ca­tion. The work of Heikel and Palau is an ex­am­ple that should be made known so that the knowl­edge and learn­ing ex­pe­ri­ence tran­scends our class­rooms.