James Rule
State University of New York at Stony Brook
Phone: (516) 632-7713
Fax: (516) 632-8203
E-mail: jrule@ccvm.sunysb.edu
Key words: Computerization; Employment; Productivity; Rationality
The currently funded NSF research is a study of the assimilation of
computing in a representative sample of greater New York private-sector organ
izations. The study now under way is the second element of panel study begun
in collaboration with Paul Attewell in 1985. In 1985, Attewell and I carried
out a representative sample of some 184 computerized firms, stratified by
industrial sector, firm size, level of computerization and a number of other
variables. In 1993, the second NSF grant enabled us to return and interview
some 97 of these same organizations.
The interviews, carried out both on site and by phone, mixed survey
like items with more discursive field interviewing. They aimed at documenting,
first of all, basic background data on the organizations: size, product or ser
vice type, sales, composition of labor force, etc. The interviews also aimed
at documenting the extent and nature of computer activity taking place in each
organization; here, too, both qualitative and quantitative measures were used.
Our aims have been to chart rates and forms of growth in computing use
among these rather ordinary organizations and the relations between computing
variables and other variables such a size of organization and change in sales.
Also of great interest has been the role of computing in the over-all agenda
of organizational activities.
We find that, as expected, computing use has grown steadily across our
sample between the two data points. The forms of reliance on computing in this
sample fall mostly into a small number of basic types: inventory control, job
tracking, accounting, etc. No more than a small minority of the computing ap
plications uncovered in our interviews have the revolutionary effects on organi
zational mentalities or agendas heralded in some of the more flamboyant pronoun
cements on the effects of computing on organizations. Instead, most computing
innovations represent incremental advances on earlier, non-computerized organizational activities. Nor do we find any statistically significant effects of
computerization on staffing levels or efficiency measures. Instead, we are con
sistently struck, in the interviews, with how little idea decision-makers seem
to have as to the measurable effects of their decisions to computerize on bot
tom line considerations.
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