NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #16

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Xref: sparky comp.groupware:634 comp.infosystems:375 comp.society.futures:490 Path: sparky!uunet!zephyr.ens.tek.com!uw-beaver!micro-heart-of-gold.mit.edu!wupost!sdd.hp.com!usc!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!ucla-cs!ucivax!gateway From: kling@ics.uci.edu (Rob Kling) Newsgroups: comp.groupware,comp.infosystems,comp.society.futures Subject: Re: Article: Controversies about Computerized Work Message-ID: <9207240843.aa20048@q2.ics.uci.edu> Date: 24 Jul 92 15:43:44 GMT Lines: 315 File 2 of 5: Key Controversies About Computerization and White Collar Worklife Rob Kling* and Charles Dunlop** *Department of Information & Computer Science University of California at Irvine, Irvine, CA 92717, USA kling@ics.uci.edu ** Department of Philosophy University of Michigan - Flint Flint, MI 48502 ======================================================= July 24, 1992 -- Draft #2C To appear: Computer-Human Interaction Ronald Baeker, John Buxton and Jonathan Grudin (Ed.). Morgan-Kaufman, San Mateo, Ca. 1992. [Copyright: Rob Kling, 1992] ================================================= File 1 or 5: Key Controversies About Computerization and White Collar Worklife Rob Kling* and Charles Dunlop** *Department of Information & Computer Science University of California at Irvine, Irvine, CA 92717, USA kling@ics.uci.edu ** Department of Philosophy University of Michigan - Flint Flint, MI 48502 ======================================================= July 24, 1992 -- Draft #2C To appear: Computer-Human Interaction Ronald Baeker, John Buxton and Jonathan Grudin (Ed.). Morgan-Kaufman, San Mateo, Ca. 1992. [Copyright: Rob Kling, 1992] Common Modes of Analysis: Utopian and Social Realist Technological Utopianism and Anti-Utopianism Every year thousands of articles and dozens of books comment on the meaning of new computer technologies for people, organizations, and the larger society. A large fraction of the literature about computing describes emerging technologies and the ways they can expand the limits of the possible. Faster, tinier computers can make it easier for people to access information in a wider variety of places. Larger memories can make more data accessible. Richer display devices can help people communicate more readily with computerized systems through pictures and text. High speed networks, such as Usenet and Internet, link thousands of computer systems and users together in ways only dreamed of in 1970. The remarkable improvement in the capabilities of equipment from one decade to the next generate breathless excitement by researchers, developers, and entrepreneurs, as well as by the battalions of journalists who document these events in the daily newspapers and weekly magazines. Accounts of the powerful information processing capabilities of computer systems are usually central to many stories of computerization and social change. Authors write about these changes in technology and social life with different analytical and rhetorical strategies. Some authors enchant us with images of new technologies that offer exciting possibilities of manipulating large amounts of information rapidly with little effort -- to enhance control, to create insights, to search for information, and to facilitate cooperative work between people. Much less frequently, some authors examine a darker social vision in which any likely form of computerization will amplify human misery -- people becoming very dependent on complex technologies that they don't comprehend, or computer systems taking over interesting work while people do more routine work. Both kinds of stories often reflect utopian and anti-utopian themes -- genres of social analysis which are about 500 years old, and which predate the social sciences by about 350 years. Technological utopianism places the use of some specific technology, such as computers, nuclear energy, or low-energy low-impact technologies, as key enabling elements of a utopian vision (Dunlop and Kling, 1991 Section I). Technological utopianism does not refer to exotic technologies, like portable pocket laser printers or voice recognition on wrist-size computers. It refers to a kind of narrative that makes technologies, even simple ones, the key elements to ways of life that the author portrays as fundamentally good. An interesting example of technological utopianism is found in "The Mechanization of Office Work" by Vincent Giuliano (1991). Giuliano examines the shift of office technologies from pen and paper through typewriters and mechanical devices, and again through interactive computer-based systems available on every desk. He argues that the social organization of office work is evolving through three stages: (a) an informal "preindustrial" office; (b) a highly regimented "industrial" office; and (c) a flexible "information-age" office in which operations are much more integrated than in the industrial office. There are major technological differences in Giuliano's illustrations of these archetypical offices. His preindustrial office relies on telephones, paper, and organized files. His industrial office relies on batch-run computerized information systems, as well as paper and telephones. And his information-age office relies on desktop computing linked to interactive data-bases on every desk. Giuliano (1991) characterizes the information-age office as one which exploits new technology to preserve the best aspects of the preindustrial office and avoid their failings. At its best, it combines terminal-based work stations, a continuously updated data base, and communications to attain high efficiency along with a return to people-centered work rather than machine-centered work. In the information-age office the machine is paced to the needs and abilities of the person who works with it. . . . The mechanization of office work is an essential element in the transformation of American society to one in which information work is the chief economic activity. Giuliano portrays information-age office work in utopian terms DD flexible, and efficient, cooperative and interesting. His argument illustrates technological utopianism because it assumes that better technologies necessarily create better jobs. This does not mean that Giuliano is completely "wrong". But it can lead the critical reader to ask whether advanced computer systems might not also be compatible with the informal pre-industrial office or formalized and regimented industrial office organizations. Giuliano's article also illustrates the typical confusion between (a) information-oriented work and (b) the use of specific technologies. All of his illustrations refer to offices which are exclusively devoted to information-handling in some form. But there is no substantive rationale for labeling any of these office forms as "information-age" offices. The label glamorizes the kind of office technology that Giuliano would like to see widespread -- interactive computer systems linked to integrated data bases. Giuliano overlooks the fact that there was a substantial information work force in the United States by 1900, and it approached 30% of the work force by 1950 -- long before electronic computer systems of any kind were routine fixtures of white collar work (see Kling 1990). Other analysts who examine computerization and work articulate visions whose bleakness contrasts strongly with Giuliano's technological utopianism. Technological anti-utopianism is almost a mirror image of technological utopianism. In a technologically anti-utopian narrative, technologies are a key cause of human suffering. For example, Langdon Winner portrays newer forms of office automation in these vivid terms: To enter the digital city one must first be granted access. Having "logged on," one's quality of participation is determined by the architecture of the network and its map of rules, roles and relationships. Technical professionals are usually greeted by a computerized version of the social matrix, an organizational form in which there is at least superficial equality and ready access to information and one's coworkers. They experience computer networks as spheres of democratic or even anarchic activity. Especially for those ill at ease in the physical presence of others (a feeling not uncommon among male engineers), the phenomenon of disembodied space seems to offer comfort and fulfillment. Here are new opportunities for self-expression, creativity, and a sense of mastery! Some begin to feel they are most alive, most free when wandering through the networks; they often "disappear" into them for days on end. Ordinary workers, on the other hand, typically face a much different set of possibilities. As they enter an electronic office or factory, they become the objects of top-down managerial control, required to take orders, complete finite tasks, and perform according to a set of standard productivity measures. Facing them is a structure that incorporates the authoritarianism of the industrial workplace and augments its power in ingenious ways. No longer are the Taylorite time-and-motion measurements limited by an awkward stopwatch carried from place to place by a wandering manager. Now workers' motions can be ubiquitously monitored in units calculable to the nearest microsecond. For telephone operators handing calls, insurance clerks processing claims, and keypunch operators doing data entry, rates of performance are recorded by a centralized computer and continuously compared to established norms. Failure to meet one's quota of phone calls, insurance claims, or keystrokes is grounds for managerial reprimand or, eventually, dismissal. A report issued by the Office of Technology Assessment revealed that by the late 1980's, four to six million American office workers are already subject to such forms of computer-based surveillance. Such systems do not, as utopian dreams of automation prophesied, "eliminate toil and liberate people for higher forms of work." .... For those who manage the systems of computerized work, the structures and processes offer a wonderfully effective means of control. (Winner 1992, pp:57-58 ). Technological utopian and anti-utopian analysts suggest that the changes they foresee are virtually certain to happen if a technology is developed and disseminated. Their arguments gain rhetorical force through linear logics and the absence of important contingencies. This causal simplification is, in our view, a fatal flaw of utopian and anti-utopian speculations. They explore the character of possible social changes as if they were the only likely social changes. Clear and fairly coherent stories sometimes don't match important patterns of computerization. For example, the information-age office is the only office type that Giuliano associates with computer terminals; and computer terminals are located on virtually every desk. It is also the only office that his diagram depicts as having plants. There is one photograph of a computerized office in Giuliano's article. It is an insurance claims office which combines an industrial work organization of a matrix of desks in an open area with the information-age elements of a terminal on every desk . . . and plants! Oddly, Giuliano doesn't comment on the way that this glimpse of the world undermines his clean topology of three ideal types. Utopian and anti-utopian analysts share important common conventions. Their narratives are usually future oriented, universalize experiences with technologies, homogenize experiences into one or two groups, and portray technologies as totalizing elements which dominate important social interactions. They take extreme, but different, value positions. They portray computerization with monochromatic brushes: white or black. The technological anti-utopians' characterizations of the tragic possibilities of computerization provide an essential counterbalance to the giddy-headed optimism of the technological utopian accounts. The romances and tragedies are not all identical. For example, some anti-utopian writings examine the possibilities of computerized systems for coercion, while others emphasize alienation. Although utopian and anti-utopian analyses often purport to offer visions of where computerizatio is taking us, it is worth noting that their literatures are not merely descriptive. Rather, they often seek to stimulate or inhibit their respective future scenarios (Kling and Iacono, 1991). Attractive alternatives to utopian analysis should be more credible in characterizing conflict in a social order, the distribution of knowledge, the ways of solving problems that arise from new technologies, and resting upon less deterministic logics of social change. Most important, they would also identify the social contingencies which make technologies (un)workable and social changes benign or harmful for various social groups. Social Realism One approach with these features is social realism. Social realism uses empirical data to examines computerization as it is actually practiced and experienced. Social realists write their articles and books with a tacit label: "I have carefully observed computerization in some key social settings and I will tell you how it really is." The most common methods are those of journalism and the social sciences, such as critical inquiries and ethnography. Social realism gains its force through gritty observations about the social worlds in which computer systems will be used. Social realists do not all agree on the basic categories for conceptualizing technology and work: they differ in some key theoretical assumptions, such as the role of conflict in workplaces (Kling, 1980). In "Reading 'All About' Computerization (in press), Kling examines the strengths and weaknesses of social realism as an approach. In the following sections, we will emphasize controversies which are anchored in social realist accounts of computerization and changing work. Control and Coordination Issues Gender and the Organization of Work The controversies about gender differences, computerization and work are not explicit in the literature. Those analysts who are most interested in gender issues write about them or focus on female-dominated occupations. But the majority of books and articles about computerization and changing work ignore gender differences. The debates about gender differences focus on two kinds of issues: (1) occupational structures in which a majority of women's jobs are more routinized and in which the men have disproportionate opportunities to be offered the best jobs; (2) gender differences in cognitive and social style which lead men and women to prefer different software designs. We will focus on the first issue. Discussions of women and computing often focus on clerical work because about one-third of the women in the work force are clerks. (Clerks are amongst the heaviest users of computerized systems.) Conversely, about 80% of the 18 million clerks in the United States in 1988 were women. Women work in every occupation from janitors to Ambassadors for the Federal government, but they are not equally represented in the higher status and better paid professions. Less than 30% of the nation's one million programmers and systems analysts were women in 1988. But the nation's 14.6 million female clerks vastly outnumbered the nation's 300,000 female programmers and systems analysts in 1988. The typical female computer user today is a clerk who processes transactions -- payroll, inventory, airline reservations, etc. Iacono and Kling (1987) examine how the dramatic improvements in office technologies over the past 100 years have sometimes made many clerical jobs much more interesting, flexible and skill-rich. But the authors also observe that these changes, especially those involving increased skill requirements, have not brought commensurate improvements in career opportunities, influence, or clerical salaries. They examine the actual changes in clerical work that have taken place over the last 100 years, from the introduction of the first typewriters through whole generations of office equipment -- mechanical accounting machines, telephones, and photocopiers. Each generation of equipment has made certain tasks easier. At the same time, clerical work shifted from a predominantly male occupation, which provided an entry route to higher levels of management, to a predominantly female occupation which has been ghettoized. Iacono and Kling criticize Giuliano's technological utopianism by arguing that a new generation of integrated computer-based office systems will not automatically alter the pay, status, and careers of clerks without explicit attention. These observations take on more force when one remembers that the vast majority of working women are concentrated in a few occupations (Stromberg and Harkness, 1988). Between 1950 and 1980, the fraction of women's jobs in clerical work rose from 27.4% to 33.8%. The fraction of women's jobs labelled "managerial" increased at a disproportionately much more rapid rate, from 4.3% to 6.8%. In 1980, one working woman in three was a clerk, and one in 15 was a "manager". Between 1950 and 1980, more women entered various professions. The change in professional employment rose from 12.2% of women's jobs in 1950 to 15.9% in 1980. About one working woman in seven was in a professional occupation, but women were most highly concentrated in nursing, social work, library jobs, and school teaching. Women have become much more visible in technical professions in the last 25 years. In 1966, about 0.4% of the B.S. engineering degrees were awarded to women, while in 1981 about 10% of engineering degrees were awarded to women. In 1981, about one third of the B.S. degrees in computer and information science were awarded to women. However, one should keep in mind that the clerical work force is about 15-20 times as large as the segment of the work force devoted to professional engineering and computer work. Consequently, the way that clerical work is computerized affects a huge percentage of working women.