IMPORTANCE OF THE HUMAN FACTOR IN THE KNOWLEDGE-BASED SOCIETY

Abstract

The paper approaches the paradigmatic changes of the current economic situation, in the context of post-modernism and its challenges, which reconsiders human society according to new criteria. One of the characteristics of post-modernism is the development of information and communication techniques, which allowed the occurrence of the „knowledge-based society” whose consequence is the effervescence of fast barrier-free knowledge, absolute freedom of debates, equality of opportunities before the virtual space, but also the relativisation of information, the increases of the danger of manipulation, misleading, or even falsification of the truth. New challenges occur thus in social life, and especially in the economic one, where the human factor becomes increasingly important for the evolution of society. In this context, education seems to play the decisive part, but an education focused on real values, where the truth and the ethics prevail before efficiency and performance.