The Politics of Technological Change, An Empirical Study

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Excerpt from The Politics of Technological Change, An Empirical Study: July, 1988 Developments in manufacturing and information technologies over the past decade have given rise to a substantial body of research and debate about the implications of technological change for employment, skill levels, and economic competitiveness. On one side, "postindustrial" and socio-technical theorists suggest that numerous factors - including technological developments themselves - are presenting business organizations with the opportunity (or, in the minds of some, the necessity) to fundamentally recast themselves in the direction of greater flexibility and responsiveness to market conditions. These attributes, they suggest, can only be achieved through a sea change in organizational approaches to the design and deployment of technology and human resources (cf., Piore and Sabel 1984, Walton 1987, and Hirschhorn 1984). It is argued, for example, that the potential benefits of new "informating" technologies (Zuboff 1982) can only be realized through the grant of greater autonomy and responsibility to employees formerly handcuffed by Taylorist definitions of automation, and, according to Hirschhorn (1984) and others [most notably Davis and Taylor (1976)], the greater complexity and sensitivity of new manufacturing technologies actually demand greater - not lesser - involvement, commitment, and skill from production workers. In short, technological and organizational "possibilities" are increasing in number. What remains at issue is whether managers (especially American managers) will grasp those possibilities. On the other side, analysts working from marxian labor process theory suggest that neither technological developments nor hopeful scenarios are likely to shake managers from a philosophy and a practice aimed at cost reduction, deskilling, and enhancement in control over the work process. They point to the shopfloor use of new technology and question whether anything has changed - even with the appearance of so many possibilities. In particular, Braverman's (1974) depiction of the "control imperative" argues that managers use technology to deskill the labor force and thus render it more subject to external control. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.