Ethiopia's experience with the difficulty of making former agrarian workers fit in an industrial setting, which requires punctuality and discipline, is indeed reminiscent of something that happened during the industrial revolution/ economist.com/node/21787918?… via @TheEconomist
With technological changes at the end of the 18th century, coordination became important. Until then, "manufacturing" mostly took place at home, and an individual's productivity often fluctuated from day to day, depending on his personal circumstances /
(which could range from otheywirk to do to the occassional hangover 😉,). Large scale factories were not only created because of technological economies of scale, but because they allowed the direct supervision of workers, and the disciplining of slackers. This is a typical/
example of how changes in technology change transaction costs (of which the costs of enforcing contracts were part) which in turn change the scale & boundaries of economic entity. This was the research area in economics that was initiated by the recently deceased O Williamson
