Computerization and the Transformation of Employment

Government, Hospitals, And Universities

Thomas M. Stanback

• Editorial: Routledge
• Año: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780429721854
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Politics & International Relations
• Categoría: Politics

This book aims to shed light on the impact of computerization on employment in terms of changes in the nature of work and career opportunities and changes in the distribution of occupations in three groups of organizations: municipal government, hospitals, and colleges and universities..

1
Computerization and Work: An Overview

As we enter the late 1980s, it is clear that the U.S. economy is caught up in a technological revolution centered on the computer and telecommunications that is altering radically the ways in which we produce goods and services, the organization of businesses and institutions, and the content of work. Among these various dimensions of change the impacts on employment are perhaps the most important and the most in need of study. High general levels of unemployment, even under conditions of cyclical prosperity, and much higher levels of seemingly intractable minority unemployment, coupled with major shifts toward white-collar and part-time work, raise new questions regarding the kinds of career opportunities a new generation of workers is facing and will continue to face in the years ahead.

In this book I examine evidence relating to the impact of the new technology on nonprofit organizations, a major sector of the U.S. economy characterized by rising costs and generally regarded as labor intensive and relatively unproductive. Three groups of organizations are studied: municipal government (as represented by New York City), hospitals, and colleges and universities.

The objectives of the study are twofold: (1) to shed light on the impact of computerization on employment in terms of changes in the nature of work and career opportunities (i.e., what a person does in a given job, what training, experience, or native aptitude is required and what opportunities exist for upward mobility) and changes in the distribution of occupations (i.e., which occupations are becoming relatively more, or relatively less, important); and (2) to assess the pace at which changes in employment are occurring as a result of technological applications and related organizational change.

The empirical portion of this book is based largely on interviews, principally with administrators and professionals at various levels of user organizations, but also, for background, with knowledgeable persons such as equipment vendors, employment agency executives, and consultants. These interviews not only yield bits and scraps of hard employment data but also provide a rich source of information on the extent to which computerization has progressed, how procedures are being changed, how workers adapt to new requirements through training or reassignment, the changes occurring in managerial attitudes, and the overall effectiveness of computer applications in getting the job done. In addition, the interviews provide information concerning the applications underway. New systems are not put into place overnight. Budgets must be approved, software written, hardware procured, strategies mapped, and workers trained or recruited. A knowledge of projects underway helps to foretell what lies ahead for some time to come.

The Nature of Technological Revolution: An Approach to Analysis

Alvin Toffler has argued that Western societies are in the initial stage of a "third wave" of change—the information revolution—centered around computer technology. (The first wave was the agrarian revolution and the second the industrial).¹ Whether or not one agrees with this interpretation of history, there is impressive evidence that the magnitude of the changes being wrought by the computer, combined with new telecommunication and video technologies, is comparable to earlier major eras of technological change (e.g., steam, electrical, automotive). The changes are being diffused throughout virtually every productive activity. If this is indeed the case, certain generalizations can be drawn from past experience that give perspective to the current experience and provide a framework for analysis.

The first generalization is that a technological revolution is cumulative and self-reinforcing. This principle is true because the revolution is driven by both technological and human factors. Technologically, the revolution is based not on a single invention but on a series of advances, each made possible by the success of its forerunners and inherent in the technology itself. Each advance offers higher levels of effectiveness and cost efficiency as well as a broader range of applications. On the human side, the revolution is driven by enthusiasm and changing expectations. As managers and workers learn new skills and begin to understand the new technology, they tend to want to use it and broaden its applications. Generations of managers emerge determined to stake their fixtures on new methods of production, and ventures centered on the new technology proliferate. At the same time, the younger workers readily accept the emergent technology and give preference to employment in the more productive modern firms and institutions.

The second generalization to be drawn from past experience is that the revolution is constrained by costs, infrastructural inadequacies, and, once again, human considerations. New technology involves extensive capital expenditures. But the funding is not always readily available even when expected returns are attractive. Application may also require the time-consuming and expensive construction of capital infrastructures (e.g., rails, highways, electrical generating equipment, and transmission lines in older technologies). Finally, on the human side, adoption of technology may be hobbled by managers who lack understanding of the potentials, by risk aversion and incapacity to effect the necessary institutional reorganization, and by the daunting problems of retraining workers and interrupting existing procedures and workflows.

The third and final generalization is that technological revolutions tend to involve considerable adaptation and compromise. The conflict between the imperative to adopt the new and the hesitancy to act are mediated by arrangements that prolong the process of change by adapting the new technology to old workflows and organizational arrangements and by using pieces of the old and new technology side by side. Historical examples abound. For example, horse-powered vehicles and farm implements operated alongside trucks and tractors on farms, and multistoried factories (relics of early belt-utilizing steam or electric technologies) were converted to utilize more modern beltless electric motors. This third generalization is of major importance as we examine the current applications of computerization in organizations. What we find in practice is likely to be only a partial adoption—an accommodation to modernization effected by melding the new and old technologies. This accommodation often gives rise to paper-driven systems in which computers provide new levels of efficiency but are underutilized in terms of state-of-the art efficiency or range of applications.

Taken together, these generalizations provide insight and a perspective from which to examine the evidence. On the one hand, we need to understand how technological advances drive organizational change and how evolving perceptions, aptitudes, and expectations, particularly those associated with a generational changing-of-the-guard in management and labor, bring pressures for adoption. On the other, we need to assess the financial, cultural, and organizational factors that inhibit change. Finally, we must recognize the role of adaptation and be sensitive to the fact that observed practices frequently represent compromises between the old and the new that in time must give way to more effective applications.

The implication of these three generalizations is that any inquiry into the impact of computer technology on labor—especially if it is concerned with the pace at which change is taking place and is likely to take place in the years immediately ahead—must assess both positive and negative factors. Moreover, such an inquiry must recognize that the forces at work act not only in a direct fashion, that is, through changing work assignments as the new technology is applied to the existing set of operations. They also work indirectly through complex processes of diffusion involving, among other things, changes in organizational arrangements and changes in missions performed. (Some applications pertain to a wide range of functions within departments of the user firm or institution, and others make possible new final services or products.)

Some Highlights of Three Decades of General Process Computer Usage

If current organizational practices and plans relating to computerization reflect technological changes in the past and managerial adaptation to these changes, it is important as a first step in analysis to examine quickly the history of past changes in computer technology, at least as they relate to administrative applications. In the following discussion I highlight the principal developments of the period extending from roughly the late 1950s to the 1980s, describing some key characteristics of several of the most widely used earlier computers, the IBM 650, 1401, 360, and 370 series, as well as certain developments in related technologies since the beginning of the 1970s.

The First and Second Generations of Computers

The first generation, which made use of banks of vacuum tubes instead of the modern-day integrated circuits contained on silicon chips, was invented in 1947, but the technology did not find its way into general administrative, governmental, and business usage until the advent of the IBM 650 almost a decade later (1955). Rapid growth followed, and several first-generation computers were introduced. An old-time computer salesman reminiscing to the author about the IBM 650 recalled that "they expected a sale of about 20 but sold over 2,000 the first year."

Nevertheless, commercial application was in its infancy in the early 1960s when the IBM 1401, the most popular of the second-generation computers (using transistors rather than vacuum tubes), was introduced. It was widely utilized for general-purpose office work, especially accounting, and in the processing of payroll, personnel, and inventory records. The 1401, like the more primitive 650 before it, was designed for use principally with keypunched cards, which converted data into electrical, digital signals.² The computer was equipped with only a limited internal processing system (about the same capacity as a small microprocessor today) and performed only one task at a time. Operation was time consuming and difficult; cards provided instructions (the "program"), and cards contained basic data introduced in sequence. Each updating or alteration of the data required that new cards be punched and introduced into the data set through resorting. Information derived from one set of computations (e.g., payroll) could be introduced into another (e.g., accounting) only by using the output cards of the first as an input to the second.

The system was totally paper driven; data were entered first onto forms and transcribed to cards by the keypunch operator.³ Processing was sequential (each batch of cards was processed in its proper order) and subject to interruptions (e.g., accounting runs could not begin until payroll and other necessary computations had been made). Because data were stored on cards and not in the memory of the machine or on disks, awkward and time-consuming resorting was necessary to update data sets with each new processing operation.

Yet the new technology was extremely useful in saving clerical labor where large bodies of data were processed. Rosters could be updated or originated (e.g., employees' names along with other information could be sorted according to any criterion for which information could be coded). Information obtained for one department could be transferred to another without laborious clerical transcription. Computations were uniformly accurate, and with properly coded instructions the computer could perform a variety of complex manipulations of the data. For example, payroll computations could be made independently for each employee that recognized differences in salary, hours worked, marital and tax status, and other deductions.

The Third Generation of Computers: The IBM 360

The third generation of computers (utilizing integrated circuits) brought major advances in the late 1960s. Among the first of these computers was the IBM 360. It was equipped with a built-in input/output control system that made it possible to access disks or tapes to bring data into the memory system. It was no longer necessary for the operator to position data in the old sequential way because the machine could be instructed through the program to retrieve information as needed. Moreover, these computers were capable of multiprocessing; many runs could be carried out simultaneously, and as a result, work programs did not have to wait one upon the other. In addition, the new computers could accept information simultaneously from multiple channels. Terminals could be operated in a number of locations for on-line operations, although hardwiring (i.e., special lines) was required, and transmission distances were limited. Data retrieval was also possible but largely in a simple preprogrammed form.

But in spite of these advances data processing operations still required a large amount of clerical preparation. Data were typically set down on paper, keypunched, and batch processed.⁴ Moreover, most information derived from the computer was departmentally oriented. Reports were periodic, issued in printout form, and designed by the computer center in a fixed format. Ad hoc reports were available only with delay and, for the most part, only at the request of higher-level executives.

The New Technology of the 1970s and 1980s

It is interesting that there is no recognized fourth generation of computers, although the Japanese have dubbed the supercomputers that they are currently developing for artificial intelligence work as "fifth generation." Since the early third-generation models were introduced, computers have developed rapidly, incorporating a number of major improvements.

The IBM 370 may be regarded as representative of the modern computers that came into use in the early 1970s. It brought dramatic advances in computational power and development of on-line capabilities with a wide range of new applications. Increased computational capability was made possible through radically new software design, the development of microchips, and major advances in hardware design that made possible different modes of computing ("virtual systems") whereby disk-stored information became an integral and instantaneously accessed part of the computer memory (instead of stored data read into the internal memory). As a result, memory became, for all practical purposes, unlimited.

Such access coupled with the increased capability for multiprocessing in turn made possible the retrieval and processing of information from different parts of the memory system. A computer could access, for example, a variety of information for a single employee such as home address, age, employment and payroll records, and vacation and sick leave experience, and could summarize or process further any and all such information.

At the same time, the new technology introduced modem on-line data processing capability utilizing the telephone and other telecommunications systems.⁵ Access to the computer for entry, retrieval, and statistical reporting was no longer restricted to the computer center but began to pass outward to the user.

Since the advent of the IBM 370 and similar computers by other vendors, there have been major advances on a broad front: the continued development of large computers; major breakthroughs in telecommunications, including the development and installation of satellite, microwave, cable, and optical fiber transmission systems and a variety of electronic switching hardware to facilitate on-line computer usage; major advances in both the theory and practice of software engineering; the introduction of powerful but less expensive minicomputers for use in industrial and scientific applications and in smaller administrative systems; radical innovations and improvements in peripheral equipment; and, most recently, the introduction of the microcomputer, or personal computer, and the development of the supercomputer.

The personal computer (PC) deserves special attention for in a sense it brings with it a new set of applications and opportunities. As one veteran management information systems (MIS) executive explained to the author, "It's an anomaly. On one hand, it's a glorified desk calculator. On the other, it's a chunk of the big computer on your desk with an extended umbilical cord." At least three features distinguish the personal computer from its predecessors: a high level of computational capability at a very low price;⁶ capability for both stand-alone and on-line operation coupled with availability of add-on disk pack storage and high speed printers; and a new variety of easy-to-use and versatile software.

The latter is particularly significant. Designed for business, professional, and recreational use in the office and in the home, the new computer opened up a broad and lucrative market for a new type of software d...

Índice

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Table and Figures
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Computerization and Work: An Overview
• 2 Computerization in the Public Sector: The New York City Experience
• 3 Computerization in Hospitals
• 4 Computerization in Universities and Colleges
• 5 Future Directions
• Appendix A: Selected Examples of Computer Applications from The Mayor's Management Report, 1984
• Appendix B: Two Case Studies of Computerization in Hospitals
• Appendix C: A Case Study of Computerization in Universities and Colleges
• Index