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postindustrial society

Written byRobert C. Robinson
Robert C. Robinson
Adjunct Assistant Professor, The City University of New York; Visiting ScholarColumbia University. He contributed an article on “Postindustrial Society” to SAGE Publications’ Encyclopedia of Governance (2007), and a version of this article was used for his Britannica entry on this topic.
Fact-checked byThe Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree. They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors.
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postindustrial society, society marked by a transition from a manufacturing-based economy to a service-based economy, a transition that is also connected with subsequent societal restructuring. Postindustrialization is the next evolutionary step from an industrialized society and is most evident in countries and regions that were among the first to experience the Industrial Revolution, such as the United States, western Europe, and Japan.

American sociologist Daniel Bell first coined the term postindustrial in 1973 in his book The Coming of Post-Industrial Society: A Venture in Social Forecasting, which describes several features of a postindustrial society. Postindustrial societies are characterized by:

  • A transition from the production of goods to the production of services, with very few firms directly manufacturing any goods.
  • The replacement of blue-collar manual labourers with technical and professional workers—such as computer engineers, doctors, and bankers—as the direct production of goods is moved elsewhere.
  • The replacement of practical knowledge with theoretical knowledge.
  • Greater attention being paid to the theoretical and ethical implications of new technologies, which helps society avoid some of the negative features of introducing new technologies, such as environmental accidents and massive widespread power outages.
  • The development of newer scientific disciplines—such as those that involve new forms of information technology, cybernetics, or artificial intelligence—to assess the theoretical and ethical implications of new technologies.
  • A stronger emphasis on the university and polytechnic institutes, which produce graduates who create and guide the new technologies crucial to a postindustrial society.

In addition to the economic characteristics of a postindustrial society, changing values and norms reflect the changing influences on the society. Outsourcing of manufactured goods, for example, changes how members of a society see and treat foreigners or immigrants. Also, those individuals previously occupied in the manufacturing sector find themselves with no clearly defined social role.

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There are a number of direct effects of postindustrialism on the community. For the first time, the term community is associated less with geographical proximity and more with scattered, but like-minded, individuals. Advances in telecommunications and the Internet mean that telecommuting becomes more common, placing people farther away from their place of work and their coworkers.

The relationship between manufacturing and services changes in a postindustrial society. Moving to a service-based economy means that manufacturing must occur elsewhere and is often outsourced (that is, sent away from a company to a contracted supplier) to industrial economies. While this gives the illusion that the postindustrial society is merely service-based, it is still highly connected with those industrial economies to which the manufacturing is outsourced.

Robert C. Robinson