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- From: kling@ics.uci.edu (Rob Kling)
- Newsgroups: comp.groupware,comp.infosystems,comp.society.futures
- Subject: Re: Article: Controversies about Computerized Work
- Message-ID: <9207240844.aa20133@q2.ics.uci.edu>
- Date: 24 Jul 92 15:45:00 GMT
- Lines: 408
-
-
- File 4 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]
-
- =======================================================
-
-
- Infrastructure
-
- Workable computing arrangements depend upon a set of supporting resources,
- which can be physical, technological or social. Physical resources include
- the space to place equipment; technological resources includes electricity
- and communication lines. The social resources include people skilled in
- using and repairing equipment and practices for allocating resources. Kling
- and his colleagues call this collection of resources computing
- infrastructure (Kling and Scacchi, 1982;Kling, 1987; Lepore, Kling, Iacono
- and George, 1989; Kling, 1992A). Their conception differs from that of
- Shulman, Penman and Sless (1990) who rigidly distinguish between the
- "technical infrastructure" in organization and the "human infrastructure"
- and neglect interdependencies.
-
- Computing infrastructure is a key element in any computerization effort
- (Kling and Scacchi, 1982; Gasser, 1986; King and Kraemer, 1986; Kling,
- 1987; Clement, 1990; Clement and Parsons, 1990; Jewett and Kling, 1990;
- George, Iacono, and Kling, 1991; Jewett and Kling, 1991; Bullen and Bennett,
- 1991). People report having better quality worklives in workgroups where the
- computing infrastructure for supporting training and consulting is best
- developed (Lepore, Kling, Iacono, and George, 1989). Further, financially
- poorer organizations, like many public schools, sometimes have trouble
- effectively using gifts of advanced computer systems because of weakness in
- their computing infrastructure. Training is one aspect of computing
- infrastructure which receives some attention. But computing infrastructure
- refers to a much richer array of resources and practices.
-
- It is common for images of simplification to dominate talk about
- computerization, regardless of the complexity of systems. Clement (1990)
- reports a case of computerization for secretaries in which managers
- characterized new systems as "super typewriters" which didn't require
- special training; they were very mistaken. Many of the popular "full
- featured" PC software packages for text processing, spreadsheets, and
- databases include hundreds of features. Narratives which focus on the
- capabilities of systems usually suggest that people can readily have all the
- advantages that all the features offer; actual behavior often differs from
- these expectations. Most people who use these powerful programs seem to
- learn only a small fraction of the available capabilities -- enough to do
- their most immediate work. Moreover, it is increasingly common for many
- workers to use multiple computer systems, often with conflicting
- conventions, further complicating people's ability to "use computer systems
- to their fullest advantage." Some of these dilemmas can be resolved when
- organizations adopt relatively uncomplicated systems, train their staffs to
- use them, and provide consulting for people who have questions. However,
- many managers believe that supporting computer use with training and
- consulting is too expensive. Training is not cheap; an organization may pay
- $500 in labor time for a professional to learn to use a package that costs
- $150 to purchase.
-
- One of the authors vividly remembers a research administrator of a major
- food processing firm who was using a popular and powerful spreadsheet to
- budget projects. He wanted to print out reports in different fonts, such as
- printing budget categories in larger bolder print. But he was puzzled how to
- do this. He knew that "it could be done" because he saw such a report in an
- advertisement. He treated his ignorance as a personal failing. He would have
- had to learn his spreadsheet's macro facility to produce this effect, and
- there was no clue in his manual about the appropriate strategy. In some
- organizations he might have turned to an information center with skilled
- consultants. But in his organization, the PC consultants were already
- overworked just installing new PCs and had no time to train users or consult
- on software use. This was not a critical problem for this manager. But it is
- indicative of the way that many organizations expect white collar workers to
- learn to effectively use computer systems on their own, with little support
- besides limited manuals and advice from co-workers. Windowing systems are
- another complex family of environments whose actual use has important
- nuances. They are sold as easy to use, but some of them can daunt
- non-specialists who try to configure them without expert help. Most computer
- systems do not work perfectly, further adding to the skills users have to
- develop and the complexity of integrating systems into their work (see Kling
- and Scacchi, 1982; Gasser, 1986; Clement 1990; Jewett and Kling, 1990).
-
- Christine Bullen and John Bennett (1991) examine the ways that people
- actually integrate computer systems to support collaborative work in groups
- (groupware) into their work. They report how several work groups have
- attempted to use some of today's best commercially available groupware
- systems with mixed results. Their informants often report that they value
- the electronic mail features of these systems as most important, even though
- each of these systems has many other advertised features, and even though a
- number of the electronic mail features were in fact not used to full
- advantage. But many groups have found other features hard to use routinely,
- or simply not worth the effort. (Also see Grudin, 1989).
-
- More significantly, Bullen and Bennett report that many groups slowly
- learned that they would have to reorganize their work in order to take best
- advantage of their groupware. For example, the usage of electronic calendars
- to schedule meetings requires that all participants keep detailed calendars
- up to date on the computer system, even if they often spend much of their
- days out of the office. Many managers and professionals hope that they can
- computerize effectively by installing appropriate equipment, rather than by
- reorganizing work when they (re)computerize. Bullen and Bennett make a
- provocative attempt to characterize those groups which are high performers:
- they are not always the most computerized. They argue that group members and
- their managers have worked hard to create work environments which have
- "clear elevating goals," and which support and reward commitment. These
- groups have developed effective social systems with coherent goals and
- related rewards as well as adopting technologies which might help improve
- their performance.
-
- There is considerable unpublished controversy about this kind of analysis,
- since many technologists and computer vendors try to convince computer using
- organizations that appropriate new technologies alone will improve working
- styles and organizational effectiveness. During the 1990s interesting
- technologies such as expert systems, groupware and graphical user interfaces
- will be written about by technologists and journalists as if they can
- significantly improve the ways that people work without requiring important
- changes in the way that groups organize their work. Careful studies of work
- with new computing technologies, like Bullen and Bennett's study, suggest
- that new technologies alone are unlikely to be magic potions which can
- automatically improve work just by appearing in a workplace. (Also see
- Jewett and Kling, 1990).
-
- Social Design of Computerized Systems and Work Settings
-
- One of the most exciting recent developments has been the efforts by a
- variety of computer scientists and social scientists to draw on the social
- sciences in designing computer systems and the social environments in which
- they are used. The controversies appear in print in a rather one-sided
- manner. Some analysts explicitly examine the social design of computerized
- systems, while others ignore these possibilities entirely.
-
- In "Understanding the Nature of the Office for the Design of Third Wave
- Office Systems," (1991) Jan Mouritsen and Niels Bjorn-Anderson examine the
- way that highly rationalistic conceptions of office work have undermined the
- ability of technologists to design "successful" office systems. There are
- many criteria for assessing the "success" of a computerized office (Kling,
- 1984), e.g., whether or not the systems are used routinely, how much they
- reduce costs, the kinds of new services they provide, and the extent to
- which they improve work by making the content more interesting or the
- process more flexible. No computerized system is likely to affect
- substantial improvement in all of these aspects of organizations
- simultaneously. The choice of which criteria to emphasize depends upon
- whose values should be held preeminent in an organization, as well as the
- range of technical possibilities. Mouritsen and Bjorn-Anderson identify
- eight themes which would enrich the range of system designs, and which
- would be more likely to lead to systems that are attractive to those whose
- work is most affected by them. Their first point is to replace the concept
- of human factors with a conception of systems users as conscious and
- reflective people who may or may not work in accord with designers'
- expectations. (For example, people may stick Post-its on their terminals in
- addition to using a flexible but sluggish text database.) Their remaining
- points amplify this idea to help designers understand the organizational
- conditions under which people work, the significance of informal
- organization, the legitimacy of world-view clashes and organizational
- politics, etc.
-
- Their article is part of a larger literature about strategies for designing
- computerized systems so as to improve the worklives of those who work with
- them (for example, Briefs, Ciborra, and Schneider, 1983; Kling, 1984; Kling,
- 1987; Hirschheim, 1985; Ehn, 1988; Winograd, 1988; Bikson, Eveland and
- Gutek, 1989; Ehn, 1991). Ehn (1991) suggests a curriculum for computer
- systems designers who want to work from a social perspective. He argues that
- mathematics is appropriate for examining the efficiency of algorithms, but
- it is an inappropriate foundation for the design of "end-user" computer
- systems. Ehn's curriculum rests on Herbert Simon's behavioral approach to
- design and uses architecture as a reference point. In contrast, Kling (1985)
- argues that urban planning is a more appropriate reference point since urban
- planners study complex social ecologies with many artifacts and diverse
- lifestyles. But Kling, Ehn and others who develop this stream of analysis
- agree that the traditional focus of systems design on mathematical
- foundations is an intellectually bankrupt approach which naively pursues the
- mirage of "rigorous methods."
-
- Many of these analysts argue that the effective design of computer systems
- must go hand in hand with redesigning the way that work is organized. See,
- for example, the case studies in Chapter 4 of Levering (1988) and Jewett and
- Kling (1990). They also argue that organizations will not reap important
- economic benefits from new computer systems without parallel changes in the
- structure of work responsibilities, relationships, and rewards.
-
- These strategies usually require that systems analysts and designers
- understand many of the work practices, schedules, resource constraints, and
- other contingencies seen by people who will use the new computerized
- systems. They also usually require that people who use systems have a
- substantial role in specifying their designs as well as altered work
- practices. One reason that stand-alone microcomputers may have been so
- attractive for many people is that they gave them more control over the form
- of computerization and changes in work than did systems which ran on shared
- computer systems. In addition, the microcomputer users worked in ways that
- made them less dependent upon having access to busy full time computer
- professionals to design and modify systems -- thus making their arrangements
- more adaptable. Many organizations implemented PC systems with a tacit
- social design that gave their workers more autonomy.
-
- The main alternative approaches tend to rely on more formal conceptions of
- information flows and work (Ellis and Naffah, 1987; Mills, Linger and
- Hevner, 1986). Mouritsen and Bjorn-Anderson are criticizing office and
- information systems designed from that perspective DD one which doesn't take
- the social nature of work and organizations as an intellectual foundation.
-
- One way to insure that systems are designed effectively for people who will
- use them is to include user representatives on design teams (Kling, 1984;
- Briefs, Ciborra and Schneider, 1983). This kind of user participation is
- particularly effective in the design of customized information systems.
- While most computers systems professionals are likely to label themselves as
- "user oriented," only a fraction of organizations in the United States seem
- to effectively integrate end-users into system design projects. In Norway,
- participation has been institutionalized through laws requiring that
- unionized workers be informed of computerized systems early on in their
- planning and design, and be given positions on design committees (Schneider
- and Ciborra, 1983). This approach gives workers much more voice than they
- often have in systems designs, but there are problems of integrating people
- with weak technical skills into design teams dominated by managers and
- technologists. It is easiest to effectively involve people in the design of
- information systems when the number of participants is small, perhaps less
- than 50, than when it is large. Some important computer systems, such as
- large airline reservations systems, police data systems, and social service
- payments systems, etc. have thousands of users. In these cases, some
- participation is better than none, but it is not a panacea. In practice,
- there are no perfect systems or systems design strategies. But some of the
- most interesting design work aims to develop computerized systems which are
- organizationally effective and which also allow people who use them to have
- a significant voice in shaping their destinies. Design strategies that deny
- system users much voice seem paternalistic at best and oppressive at worst.
- Even so, practitioners who design large systems have learned that strategies
- which effectively involve a representative and adequately motivated set of
- users in their designs is a delicate craft.
-
- New Forms of Work Organization
-
- We opened this article with the controversies about the ways in which
- computerization changes the way that work is organized. This debate used
- traditional forms of regimented assembly lines as a key point of reference.
- Another related controversy is the extent to which new computing
- technologies, especially those which support communications open up new
- forms of work. Does electronic mail eliminate organizational hierarchies and
- facilitate the formation of flexible (virtual?) work groups? Does some new
- form of computerization open novel possibilities for organizational learning
- (Zuboff, 1991).
-
- There are few empirical studies which support these speculations, and the
- existing evidence is mixed. In one intriguing study, Tom Finholt and Lee
- Sproull found that electronic mail can give groups more ability to develop
- their own culture (Finholt and Sproull, 1990). And some have argued that
- electronic mail can reduce the barriers to communication between people at
- different levels of hierarchy in an organization (Sproull and Kiesler,
- 1991).
-
- Zuboff (1988) reports an interesting case which can dim these unbridled
- enthusiasms and lead us to ask under what conditions these transformations
- are most likely to occur. In a large drug company she studied, managers
- claimed that their electronic communications were often treated as policy
- statements, even when they wanted to make an informal observations or ad-hoc
- decisions. Further, when a group of about 130 professional women formed a
- private conference that threatened male managers, participation was
- discouraged by upper managers and soon many participants dropped out
- (Zuboff, 1988:382-383). We suspect that electronic communications systems
- are most likely to facilitate the formation of groups that upper managers
- deem to be safe, except in those special organizations -- like universities
- and R&D labs -- where there are strong norms against censorship. The
- controversy between technological utopians who see technologies as improving
- human and organizational behavior and those who see social systems as
- changing slowly in response to other kinds of social and economic forces
- will not be resolved by one or two case studies. But the cases are
- instructive to help focus the debate about what is possible and the
- conditions under which computer systems of specific kinds alter social life.
-
- One of the most intriguing and popular conceptualizations is Zuboff's
- distinction between automating work and informating work (Zuboff, 1988;
- Zuboff 1991).
-
- To "automate" is to replace human activity with a machine (computer)
- which is faster, more reliable, more subject to control, etc. The
- typical goals of automation "have typically been those of cost
- reduction, efficiency, and productivity. .... Automation ...means
- applying technology in ways that increase the self acting and self
- regulating capacities of machine systems, thus minimizing human
- intervention.
- "Intelligent technology can be used to automate, but even as this occurs,
- the technology has the capacity to translate those automated
- activities into data and to display those data. Information technology
- symbolically renders processes, objects, behaviors and events so that
- they become visible, knowable and sharable in a new way." ... The word
- I have coined to describe this second function is 'informate.' 'To
- informate' means to translate and make visible; 'informating' occurs
- as processes, objects, behaviors and events are translated and made
- visible as explicit information.... As the informating process
- unfolds, the organization is increasingly imbued with an electronic
- text that implicitly represents many forms of data which were once
- implicit, private or minimally codified. Thus the work environment
- becomes increasingly 'textualized.'
-
- By textualization' I mean that an increasing proportion of the
- information in the work environment is presented through the medium of
- the electronic text.
-
- Under these conditions, 'to work' becomes more abstract, since it depends
- upon an understanding of, responsiveness to, and ability to manage and
- create value from information. In an informated environment, skills
- are refined." ... "It requires the construction of a new kind of
- knowledge, one that is more analytical, abstract, and conceptual....It
- is in terms of this second informating function that information
- technology represents a radical discontinuity in the history of work
- and the evolution of industrial technology." (Zuboff, 1991:3-5).
-
- Unfortunately, Zuboff's book (1988) and article provide only one
- unambiguous and concrete example of informating a workplace. This case
- involves a shift for equipment operators controlling a process by through
- sensory interpretations (e.g, sight, smell) to working in a separated
- control room where they had to rely upon meter readings -- a change that
- they did not greet with unbridled enthusiasm.
-
- Zuboff reports a much more convincing case of informating in her study of an
- Expense Tracking System in a paper plant (Bronsema and Zuboff, 1984; Walton
- 1989:142-149). This rich case reports how operators in paper plant got an
- important set of information about the the costs of making batches of paper
- from a computerized system that was added to their existing papermaking
- equipment. Many of the operators valued the new information and experimented
- with their equipments controls in ways that significantly reduced the costs
- of producing paper. The costs of chemcals and other ingredients in
- paper-making were previously unavailable to operators in real-time. The ETS
- is a great illustration of informating.
-
- The worm in the ETS case was the implementation process. While upper
- managers in the firm originally viewed the ETS as a risky project, they were
- pleased with the cost reductions and praised the staff who were involved.
- The managers who initiated the ETS bypassed some middle managers and worked
- directly with the machine operators to help give them a sense of ownership
- over the ETS. When the ETS proved successful, these middle managers tried to
- share in the glory of its use, and then initiated policies to limit and
- impede its use. Informating the machine operators empowered them in ways
- that threatened their immediate managers, who in turn, acted to protect
- their jobs and status.
-
- Zuboff's disntinction between informating and automating has become the
- center of significant attention and unpublished controversy. Her catchy and
- vivid imagery has stimulated some scholars to rethink their approaches to
- computerization (e.g., Walton, 1989; Morton, 1991). However, Zuboff's
- concepts are often hard to operationalize for many kinds of work. For
- example, how would one informate the job of a person who is word processing
- legal contracts? Her conceptualization of informating seems to have been
- inspired by "closed loop" process control systems where blue collar workers
- can become more analaytical when they obtain data (and training) to help
- them monitor and analyze their own work. The moral force of informating
- derives from the images of using new technologies and reconceptualized work
- to empower and enoble workers. Unfortuntately the body of writing about
- informating seems to be driven much more by zeal to inspire managers with a
- new vision than by an interest in exploring the value, boundaries and
- problematics of the concepts.
-
- The controversy about new forms of work organization is very engaging.
- Enthusiasts of the position that computerization can lead to new forms of
- work have the advantage of offering exciting possibilities. However, they
- rarely face the issues of control, and support systems which we have
- examined in this paper. When they ignore recurrent themes from previous eras
- of computerization, they risk being blindsided by perennial issues in new
- guises.
-
- Conclusions
-
- During the 1990s organizations will continue to computerize work --
- automating new activities and replacing earlier systems with newer
- technologies. Since organizations, workplaces and appropriate technologies
- differ, we do not expect to see a single logic to changing work with
- computerization. The controversies about how to change work with computer
- systems will continue to have immense practical repercussions, and not be
- automatically resolved by some new kind of computer technology, such as
- pen-based systems, or voice recognition. And the resulting choices will
- effect the lives of tens of millions of people.
-
- The relevant research is multi-disciplinary and scattered in diverse books
- and journals. This article identified some of the key controversies that
- pervade this diffuse literature -- those that pertain to control, support
- systems and social design. We have noted that many of the controversies are
- implicit, since authors often take positions without carefully discussing
- the alternative positions and debates. We have not tried to resolve the
- controversies here, even though our own beliefs shape our selection of
- topics and illustrations.
-
- The practical situation is worsened when advocates of some new family of
- technologies write as if all that has been learned from the last 30 years
- of computerization is totally irrelevant to help us understand how their
- systems can be integrated into work or serve as a catalyst for reorganizing
- work. The modest band of empirical researchers can only study a small
- fraction of the diverse array of workplace technologies, occupations,
- industries, and organizational conditions. But we have found key themes
- that generalize to new technologies, and to diverse occupations and
- industries. Despite the limitations of the current body of research,
- certain perennial themes recur. There is a body of good research to help
- inform better choices.
-