From: Rob Kling <kling@ics.uci.edu>
Subject: Re: Controversies about Computerized Work
Newsgroups: comp.society
Date: 24 Jul 92 15:40:06 GMT



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.