In the Age of the Smart Machine
Wilpert, Bernhard
WHEN ALL THE CHIPS ARE DOWN IN THE AGE OT THE SMART MACHINE Shoshona Zuboff Basic Books, Inc., $19.95, 468pp. Bernhord Wilpert The rising flood of books on the organizational, economic, and...
...As workers become skilled in the use of '' smart machines,'' their knowledge will undermine traditional authority structures...
...Based on several years of research in organizations as diverse as newspapers, pulp mills, insurance companies, and banks, Zuboff argues that all of the dilemmas presented by computerization and the available options for resolving them have two fundamental characteristics, both intrinsic to information technology: automating and informating...
...This perspective corresponds to Zuboff s second option, which she describes as the creation of a post-hierarchical learning environment...
...it can be centralized or decentralized...
...The second option leads in the opposite direction of decentralization and the formation of an open organization that democratizes skills in the interests of maximizing the informating function of the new technologies...
...that is, it exploits the automating function of the smart machine to foster traditional managerial privileges...
...Zuboff is aware that her own observations and interview material are embedded in two important historical processes: the changing role of the human body in blue- and white-collar jobs, and the evolution of managerial thought...
...In the Age of the Smart Machine touches here on a discussion that has its counterpart in a lively debate among European industrial sociologists...
...This strategy is likely to have only a short-term success, as Zuboff argues, because the autonomous processes of the new information technologies can be slowed down, but eventually they will blur the boundaries of knowledge and responsibility between workers and managers...
...Her suggestion that organized efforts be made to specify the rights and entitlements of those who work in these new conditions has as yet found little support in the U.S...
...Shoshona Zuboff tells her story with such acuity and convincing evidence that anyone whose work life is organized around "smart machines" will find it hard to put the book down...
...The second, or informating, aspect of computer-mediated work not only translates work operations into an explicit electronic text (the program), but it even generates new information and a data base revealing the past and present state of any given work operation...
...and in responsibilities and remuneration...
...Zuboff's otherwise rich and revealing book is a bit short on prescriptions on how to steer the processes of introducing new technologies in the workplace...
...in data sharing and, therefore, control of information...
...industrial relations, however, almost all Western European countries have statutory rules and regulations that require the representation within companies of employee groups...
...Most managers are likely to favor the first possibility and try to maintain the traditional division of labor by emphasizing an ideology of control that minimizes training efforts for workers...
...In arguing that "the history of work has been, in part, the history of the worker's body," she shows how the role of the body as the source of energy and skill has been transformed by the advent of the smart machine...
...A playful use of computer conferencing techniques has led to both an increase in intra-organizational communication and the creation of zones of freedom, which the French industrial psychologist Gus-tave N. Fischer has described as forms of "clandestine self-management...
...Such data becomes transparent: it can be shared...
...These are meant to articulate the workers' interests in company negotiations, mediation, and conflict resolution, including those involved with introducing new information technologies...
...In 1982, the Club of Rome expressed this in the title of its report, "Microelectronics and Society: For Better or for Worse," a title that also suggests why many such publications quickly pass into oblivion...
...the other, more promising, is "a more comprehensive understanding [by the worker] of one's work in an elaborated language that introduces the possibilities of questions, choice, and innovation...
...in the division of labor...
...Data banks and electronic texts increasingly expropriate the skills of both industrial and service workers...
...And concomitantly workers experience loss of control and loss of ac-(Continued on page 89) {Continued from page 87) tion-centered, sentient, and tacit competencies acquired over long years of being on the job...
...These new concepts reflect changing managerial assumptions which hold that greater local work autonomy and more wholistic job descriptions are self-reenforcing and present opportunities for increased productivity because they take advantage of higher skills, greater work competence, and stronger motivation...
...it can be manipulated, that is, changed or linked to other data bases...
...Another interesting aspect of information technology discussed by Zuboff is the functions and dysfunctions found in the different uses of telecommunication...
...Two possibilities follow: one is the increasing impoverishment (deskilling) of work activities...
...As one worker put it: the computer "takes the human factor out of running the machine...
...Bernhord Wilpert The rising flood of books on the organizational, economic, and societal impact of new technologies signals the widespread mixture of apprehension, fear, hope, and enthusiasm associated with technological change...
...Is it too early in the history of smart machines to offer specific advice...
...New "intellective" competencies then become necessary...
...Not so In the Age of the Smart Machine, which explores the dilemmas and options posed by computer-mediated information systems in the workplace...
...Work-itself becomes abstract...
...The dilemmas for managers in such a project are fairly evident: drastic changes in managerial (especially middle-managerial) roles...
...Munich: Beck, 1984) point to the emergence of "new production concepts" in key industries-auto, chemical, and machine tools...
...In contrast to U.S...
...In their recent study, Michael Kern and Horst Schumann (Das Ende der Arbeit-steilung...
...The logic of automating is to extend the trajectory of the machine in replacing "the human body with a technology that enables the same process to be performed with more continuity and control...
...The first possibility leads in the direction of centralization and control...
...The ingenuity of the human mind in staking out subversive zones of independence, freedom, and self-control seems to thrive even under conditions of the total infor-mating environment that often begets the fear of the totally transparent "glass man...
Vol. 116 • February 1989 • No. 3
