- 期刊
From Concept to Practice: Operationalising Anthropotechnological Island through Linguistic and Cognitive Measurements in Malaysian Aerospace Manufacturing Industry
摘要
This paper aims to explain the themes of anthropotechnology in promoting greater effectiveness in technology transfer. For an effective transfer to occur, it is necessary to study and analyze the conditions of the technology recipient. In this paper, the cultural conditioning of technology transfer across nations were investigated by focusing on two different empirical manifestations of cultures. These manifestations of national cultures were made observable at two different levels of the social observation scale: first the linguistic manifestation of a national culture, observable at the micro sociological level, and the cognitive manifestation, observable at the micro individual level. Data were collected in the sub sector of the Malaysian aerospace industry in Malaysia. Linguistic findings show that manufacturing plants workers' performance is affected by communication gaps at the workplace through the invention of communication codes to counter occupational class divide. Cognitive psychology findings reveal that innate spatial abilities for novice drilling technicians may predict level of drilling performance; however, it should be noted that more evidence is needed to fully corroborate these findings. The concept of 'anthropotechnological islands' is proposed as the potential analytical framework to explain the micro and macro dialectics in this typical process of technological transfer across nations.