Notebook: Managers And Machines
Kuch, T. D. C.
"We are still only in the beginning of the office-machine age. Only when the machinery and the social organization of the office are fully integrated in terms of maximum efficiency per...
...This was for years the primary selling argument of computer-manufacturers, but as it is realized that this is mostly an illusory hope, other rationalizations have been brought up...
...seems to be, if not one that a computer could come up with, at least one that has no guarantee of success if arrived at by a manager and his coterie of experts...
...publication...
...Victor Serebriakoff in Chiaroscuro, Summer, 1962...
...Also, as the language is problem...
...The emphasis on "routine" is IBM's...
...They feel threatened...
...The emphasis on "you" is mine...
...Top-level management, then, while ostensibly buying or renting a computer for reasons of greater efficiency and economy, is, perhaps unconsciously, motivated by considerations of strengthening their own positions, and having more control over what goes on (we shall see that this does not happen...
...It is reassuring, though...
...publication...
...The computer] must have a source of randomness and a sensing system which enables it to check the validity of its hypothetical prediction systems...
...Primary among these is the pitch which typically goes "The 315 provides the power and speed necessary to furnish facts and figures to management in time to be used in effecting sound decisions...
...In addition to this, we have the fairly reasonable assurance that computers will continue to be improved at the fantastic rate they are being improved today, so that we might well come to the time when a computer could, on its own hook, decide that halitosis should be profitably combatted by its owner's corporation: At present the output of a computer is, all too often, a great indigestible mass of data...
...Any change entered into the system...
...So the manager's idea that halitosis is saleable, in some form or other, • Letter to the author, 7th August, 1962...
...But the implication of "allowing management to simulate the effect of alternate decisions" is clearly that the decision itself will be made by the computer...
...It is these executives who are to be placated: Using Project Control Methods, it is possible to realize the following important advantages: 1. It will aid management in the planning and scheduling of the project...
...White Collar, p. 82...
...The pamphlet is titled "IBM Management Operating System for the Process Industries...
...the only gainers will be some of those in the middle: the technicians who build and repair the machine...
...Not that obsoleted executives will be discharged, of course...
...n A technical writer for IBM (presumably not the author of the MOS brochure) commented on seeing a draft of this article, "I must admit that I do not agree with your article, but then I rarely agree with anything DissENT has to say...
...I feel that your view of what top-level executives do is too narrow...
...IBM's description of this function sounds like nothing so much as the Deist conception of God...
...Several factors lead to the current hidden or not-so-hidden anxieties of managers...
...And even if it weren't, what kind of function is the manager left with, anyway...
...publication...
...In one giveaway passage the anonymous writer states -. the system can automatically determine and implement routine control measure for all phases of the manufacturing cycle...
...oriented and not machine-oriented, the resultant computer-program will be slower, less efficient, and more costly...
...it is plain that this word is not the proper one here...
...you don't sell a machine to a man whose functions it will usurp...
...Evidence that executives are becoming aware of all this is found in a new, five-color, illustrated brochure published by IBM which attempts to combat the idea of the obsolescence of executives by emphasizing their irreplaceability...
...From this plan, the system automatically determines requirements and checks them against inventory...
...The executive still has a place, some where...
...that privilege is reserved for workers and clerks, preferably of minority groups...
...And even in this area the executive rightly feels danger...
...It was stayed briefly by the wave of protest which ultimately overwhelmed the new Menzies Government's attempts to outlaw the ComC. Wright Mills wrote, in another context: Going from problem to problem and always deciding, like Tolstoy's generals, when there really is no basis for decision but only the machine's need for command, the need for no subordinate even to dream the chief is in doubt—that is different from working out some problem alone to its completion.** The "trauma that awaits us," then, awaits the people on top as well as the people on the bottom...
...The solution of this problem lies in constructing a problem-oriented language that "looks like" English...
...Only with MOS—can you so accurately gauge, in advance, the effect of a given course of action...
...It has not, however, been openly admitted that cybernation can replace, and in fact is replacing those who refer to themselves as "top-level manageC. Wright Mills, White Collar (1951) ment...
...They have many jobs to do other than what you claim the machines are supplanting them for, even if it is only to decide to convince the American people that 'halitosis' should be in the dictionary and is a real social problem...
...Computers make the decisions in many firms, and the executive's function is to initial those decisions, and take credit for them...
...the executive will merely lose control of the decisionprocess, almost as appalling a prospect to the corporate mentality...
...surely not an appetizing prospect for any executive who wants to be Immanent, rather than Transcendent...
...is immediately reflected in all other control data...
...Some of them get the feeling that the decisions themselves might be made more effectively • From a National Cash Register Corp...
...by a computer...
...Up-to-the-minute" reports are also considered invaluable...
...This compensation for change is made automatically, according to prearranged plan—your plan...
...The brochure makes its point so emphatically, however, that it is apparent IBM is running scared...
...and then they will no longer be at the top...
...This type of computer is in its infancy, but I predict that the next 15 years will see tremendous developments in this field.* In Australia no less than in other Western nations, radicalism took a beating from the apathy of the fifties...
...Irving Howe's "Cybernation: the Trauma that Awaits Us," DISSENT, Spring, 1962...
...At the start of the cycle, for instance, the system combines current and historical sales trends with forecast formulas to produce a finished products plan...
...The executive's decisions are based on these reports, and the more reports the better...
...4. It will provide management with a continuous timely progress report ...• 3) Thus the Committee is cajoled into getting a computer...
...From a Bendix Corp...
...2. It will allow management to simulate the effect of alternate decisions under consideration...
...not only factory-workers and clerks are affected, but also the "middle managers" (cf...
...the COBOL statements are of necessity so particularized that no toplevel manager has any business reading • From a Service Bureau Corp...
...COBOL [COmmon Business-Oriented Language] gives the business executive the ability to obtain first-hand knowledge of business programs processed by the G-20 computer...
...but where is that...
...And this trauma will only be questioned by those on top on that unlikely day when they begin selling artichoke-hearts on the street corners...
...This ability, as has been pointed out in one of the professional journals of electronic data processing, is quite useless...
...Computers do indeed make business decisions faster, and in many cases better, than salaried functionaries...
...It is these people, who, by more or less overt suasion, actually determine the decision...
...The threat of cybernetics to jobs has been apparent for some time...
...the role of the executive is only that of formulating possible solutions to be tested...
...But "your plan," to be optimal, is one that has been dictated by a computer...
...The Committee is soothed by computermanufacturers' representatives, who vie with each other in describing the advantages to top-level management of having their particular computer...
...his technicians can formulate problems for the computer, but he can't, not knowing the language...
...To this objection we might reply by citing two other writers on the subject...
...1) A firm's decision as to whether or not to buy or rent a computer is in the hands, typically, of a "Feasibility Committee," composed of executives who know almost nothing about corn puters...
...The rot set in after the fall of Prime Minister Chifley's Labor Government in 1949...
...Only when the machinery and the social organization of the office are fully integrated in terms of maximum efficiency per dollar spent will that age be full blown...
...it should read "it...
...A computer is the best possible device for obtaining a multitude of reports in the morning telling how many hundred automobiles were sold yesterday, to whom, for how much, and what should be done about it...
...them...
...Many a $50,000-a-year man is simply not needed around the office any more...
...They receive reports from, and interview, people who do know something about computers...
...The executive can then read the list of computer-instructions and, more or less, understand them, or, what is more important, feel that it is not entirely a foreign tongue...
...Immense savings in dollars are sometimes mentioned...
...I foresee computers which will reduce this to comprehensible generalisations, or even better, to action-instructions...
...In "Executives Who Can't Manage"** Ernest Dale points out that top man agers have lost their ability to think in terms of the consumer, and instead rely on experts (who may or may not be human beings): "The Edsel and its potential market were studied by every conceivable type of expert, and yet the new car fell flat on its chassis...
...2) Top-level management's contact with the business is to a great extent through statistical reports...
...MN Atlantic, July, 1962...
Vol. 10 • April 1963 • No. 2
