Technology is sometimes described as "driving" industrial and social change. Yet technology has no momentum of its own; its direction is determined by many disparate considerations. If technology did have inherent momentum, one might expect production methods in a given industry to be the same throughout the world, but they actually vary considerably, for reasons that are readily apparent.
A study of an automobile company's factories in the United States and in England, conducted by Melman during the 1950's, illustrates this point. The workers in the United States used more power equipment than did the workers in England. Yet both factories made the same product, had similar engineering staffs, and had equal access to capital. Melman found that differences in the relative costs of labor and machinery operation accounted for the difference in mechanization. In the United States, an employer could buy 157 kilowatt-hours of electricity for the cost of hiring a worker for an hour. In England, the price for a worker-hour would purchase only 37 kilowatt-hours. Hence, to minimize the total cost of the product, the manufacturer bought more electricity and fewer worker-hours in the United States and more worker-hours and less electricity in England. In each location, managers selected the means of production that best maximized profits—a basic value of capitalist industry.
