In the SOWING project the emphasis is on the transformation of economic structures in the information society. The project correspondingly concentrates on questions of the organisational renewal of production and service companies and developments in the world of work. The theoretical core of the project is defined by the term "technological practice". On the one hand this describes structural movements in technology use and development in the work process: forms of the task sharing and cooperation, forms of control and the emergence cultural model. On the other hand the term covers actor-related aspects: competence, knowledge, skills and management approaches.

Technology, organisation and corporate culture are viewed as co-evolutionary processes which are in principle open to social design, but are also subject to structural conditions. Specifically the term "technological practice" extends not only to the formal organisational structures of companies, but also the formal and informal structures of labour, in order to explore e.g. the question of the manifestation of new forms of social exclusion in connection with the new technologies.

The empirical part covers three elements:

• A survey of 100 firms selected at random from the production and services sector in each of the eight regions,
• an empirical study of the market, political and social conditions in each region,
• in-depth case studies at ten selected firms in each region.

For further information see SOWING web-site: http://www.uta.fi/laitokset/tyoelama/sowing/sowing.html