Introduction

The common themes uniting all the books in this review are the effect of information technology (IT) on work, on organizations, on markets, on competition, and on the building of corporate and economic infrastructure. A recurring theme is that IT causes “discontinuities” in business trends and competitive activities. Work is not just automated, it is transformed. It is given intellectual content or emptied of meaning altogether. Organizations are downsized or changed from hierarchies into networks. Markets go out of existence as face-to-face or person-to-person telephone exchanges of information, backed by paper. They become electronic cyberspaces, backed by electronic data interchange (EDI). Industrial leadership changes hands as IT reshuffles the deck of competition and product design. In many businesses, the end product itself is now a package of information or an object combined with services based on information (insurance, consulting, marketing, finance, video, and so on).

As might be expected, IT as technology is not neutral with regard to the world of work. Rather, it is a two-edged sword: it presents possibilities for either de-skilling or empowering workers. Nor is the choice always an exclusive one. For example, Zuboff presents a sustained, in-depth study of the distinction between “automating” and (as she puts it) “informating” in computer-mediated worlds of work. Along similar lines, Walton considers the “compliance effects” (monitoring and controlling) and the “commitment effects” (dispersing power and information and promoting self-supervision) of IT on work. Likewise, Davenport agrees that IT can support either culture--control or empowerment.

The convergence of communications and computing functions in producing electronic markets is exemplified by the London stock exchange’s “big bang” (see George Hayter on page 143 of Bradley, Hausman, and Nolan) where face-to-face trading was replaced with an electronic marketing and trading system. In this context, powerful network and systems operators are the ones calling the shots rather than investors or brokers. Furthermore, such telecommunication and computing systems allow investors to trade directly with one another with little or no need for brokers. In any context, the shape of the market corresponds to that of the networks supporting it and in which it is realized.

One of the effects of IT is that it breaks the traditional distinctions between business functions. Distinct functions are replaced by unitary processes. A business process (defined as a beginning-to-end workflow that transforms raw inputs into something that has value to the organization’s customers) cuts across functional lines such as operations, distributions, and marketing, since all of these divisions share responsibility for customer satisfaction. The role of IT in making possible the redefinition of business processes presents a major challenge. This challenge is documented by the process reengineering and innovation perspectives of Davenport and Donovan. Another effect of IT on organizations is the flattened hierarchy, which presents the challenge of redesigning the organization to allow for meaningful career paths.

The executive as apprentice system architect is a sobering idea. That is where each of these books comes in. They aspire to be consultants to the CEO or CIO.

Zuboff

This striking, original, and superbly researched study addresses the effects of IT in the workplace. Eight organizations studied over a period of five years were models of technological sophistication within their respective industries, which ranged from manufacturing to international banking to telecommunications to insurance and pharmaceuticals. The author seems to have made good use of a historic window of opportunity. During this period of the early to mid-1980s, people found themselves having to work through the medium of the computer for the first time. They were ripe for questions and insights regarding the distinct qualities of their new and unfamiliar experiences. Thus, Zuboff’s methods are primarily clinical rather than quantitative.

Zuboff reflects on the difference between the effects of IT in automating work--making routine, emptying of content, de-skilling--and the effects of adding information content, requiring intellectual skills, and empowering workers with choices presented by the symbolic electronic text. The latter she calls “informating,” and she claims that the informating consequences of the computer mediation of work have not been well understood.

New technology means new metaphors. In this case, a central metaphor is that of the electronic text. In addition to being meant literally as the presentation of data on a screen, the electronic text stands for the abstract representation in software objects of states of the physical plant, customer transactions, and even financial well-being of the organization. The meaning of the data presented in the graphs and images at the workstation is not self-evident, and must be constructed. This is a new requirement of the “informated environment”: meaning must be constructed. This sets up an “epistemological crisis,” the response to which is a version of the organization where the “division of learning” replaces the division of labor. Along the way, the basis of authority of the managerial class is undermined. Access to information is siphoned off by subordinates. At the same time, possibilities of automating control and manipulation may be expanded. Work is transformed into the creation of meaning as the electronic text becomes the “surrogate for the vital details of the organization” and the methods of work involve the “application of intellectual skills to data.”

Walton

This book covers some of the same ground as Zuboff and extends the results further in a formal and academic (MBA) context. Instead of informating and automating, Walton writes of the “compliance effects” and “commitment effects” of IT on organizations. Walton explicitly invoked Zuboff’s “informating” on page 25. However, Walton contains less of the history and phenomenology of work and more on the psychology of organizations undergoing IT development and reengineering projects. What Walton calls the extended implementation process indicates that even if the technology goes in smoothly, negative results can still occur that cause staff turnover, disappointed expectations, and failure to deliver on the planned payoff. Walton’s diagnosis is misalignment of the IT and the organization.

If the employees are managed by a command and control structure and the IT is of the empowering kind, then a collision is set up. Likewise, if the IT is the kind that supports compliance effects, and the organization values the dispersal of power, information, and self-supervision, the results can be equally negative.

Walton provides a wealth of distinctions, many with psychological content. For example, electronic form mail provides fast and convenient two-way message flow. This can be experienced as intrusive and controlling, increasing the dependence of staff on management. Or it can be experienced as opening up the organization, making the organization flat and increasing the quantity of upward feedback. The different “spin” is largely a function of leadership and management. Much of Walton’s book is the elaboration of a detailed framework for the step-by-step alignment of the business vision, IT, and the organization. This is done in the interest of attaining the business and human benefits of commitment, support, and ownership as well as the mastery of IT by the staff.

Keen

According to Keen, IT is shaping the future by designing and building corporate technical infrastructure. He argues that shared database management systems, telecommunication networks, and security and system utilities are all part of the technical architecture and infrastructure that should be funded by top corporate management as a long-range capital investment. He sees the justification in corporate business strategy and the corresponding business vision. In contrast, under conditions of abdication and delegation by top management, IT decisions are made on the “basis of short-term budgets, tight cost constraints, and efforts to cut back costs” (p. 153). Keen claims this is largely the situation in corporate America today.

Keen deplores the treatment of IT as an overhead expense rather than a capital asset, and urges the completion of an asset sheet that lists all the software investments and hidden information center PCs, LANs, and departmental systems, in terms of development, operations, and maintenance. These assets add up fast. When upper management realizes that a firm’s data and software development account for a significant fraction of a firm’s real asset base, then senior executives see that IT demands a high-level corporate planning perspective.

Keen builds a useful analogy between the role of IT in an organization and a public power utility. The managers spend capital and petition state regulators (executive corporate management) to allow them to set rates that recover the investment over a period of years at a fair rate of return. Corporate IT becomes a form of internal supplier, analogous to a utility. Thus, the hardware and software make up the power plant for information services. Rather than Byzantine charge-back systems, IT represents a quasi-profit center, eliminating cost-based allocations.

Keen’s recommendation is to seek sustainable competitive advantage from the IT platform and architecture rather than from specific IT applications. If a competitive advantage is seized by purchasing an off-the-shelf package, this can be easily imitated by a competing company. According to Keen, however, if the success is built on an integrated IT architecture, competitors cannot easily repeat or imitate the accomplishment.

Allen, Applegate, Benjamin, et al.

In this anthology of Harvard Business Review classics, the papers of Michael Porter and Victor Miller (“Information Technology Gives You Competitive Advantage”) and Warren McFarlan (“Information Technology Changes the Way You Compete”) consider IT and competitive advantage. According to Porter and Miller, competing in the age of information requires assessing the information intensity of the business; determining the role of IT in the overall industry structure; identifying, ranking, and investigating how IT can create advantages and even spawn new businesses; and planning to take advantage of these opportunities. McFarlan documents how IT changes the way businesses compete. Skillfully deployed IT can present barriers to the competition’s entry to the market; raise the cost of switching suppliers; shift the balance of power in supplier-consumer relations; and provide the basis for new information-rich products.

John Donovan’s paper “Beyond Chief Information Officer to Network Manager” warns that unless CIOs successfully transform themselves into network managers, they will be poorly equipped to deal with user dissatisfaction, territorial squabbles, and technological obstacles invariably triggered by the advance of decentralized computing. What is more, the computer industry’s failure to adopt multivendor standards--in operating systems, storage, and micro-to-mainframe communications--complicates the network manager’s job enormously. Physical connectivity, system connectivity, and application-level connectivity are all challenges faced by the network manager or CIO. In this 1988 paper, Donovan poses a challenge that he only answers satisfactorily upon publication of his later book (reviewed below).

Another article of note reprinted here is Max Hopper’s “Rattling SABRE--New Ways to Compete on Information,” which describes the legendary American Airlines reservation system and its role in transforming marketing and distribution in the airline industry. Brandt Allen’s “Make Information Services Pay Its Way” details the tradeoffs in considering IT as a profit center rather than a cost center and the considerations in making this migration.

Bradley, Hausman, and Nolan

This fine anthology is witness to the convergence of computing and telecommunications. In particular, the papers gathered here were originally presented at a Harvard Business Review colloquium on the convergence of computing and communications in a context of global competition.

In a lead article on “Global Competition and Technology,” the three editors cite the demise of the mainframe over the past five years, which, notwithstanding any possible turnaround, marks the end of “the era of IBM-set standards.” They claim that software development and the programming of customer solutions is the “ultimate exportable commodity.” This is because transportation costs are near zero for IT. In addition, governments will have a hard time protecting inefficient domestic industries, since quotas and tariffs are hard to enforce against something so ephemeral as software. Thus, they envision global competition in IT without the necessity of supporting a large domestic market.

Naturally, the integration of digital systems is likely to be a recurring theme in such a context. This occurs in Richard LeFauve and Arnoldo Hax’s “Saturn--the Making of the Modern Corporation,” which presented a unique opportunity, since there were no old, legacy systems to throw away or encapsulate. Janice Hammond on “Quick Response in Retail/Manufacturing Channels” details the essentials of such a system. Near the top of the list are scannable bar coding and electronic data interchange (EDI).

William Marx’s “Building the Broadband Society” is an attempt to “vision” some of the consequence of the information age. The usual remarks (about videoconferencing increasing 400 percent due to restricted travel options during the Gulf War; ISDN; and the switch being a computer and vice versa) are to be noted with due respect. As a longtime group leader at AT&T, Marx sees only positive effects in the information age. He does not mention the information disenfranchised. Still, the democratizing effects of the free flow of information and access to communication media do indeed seem to be supported by many anecdotal examples--from eastern Europe to South Africa.

Also of note is Alan Hald and Benn Konsynski’s “Seven Technologies to Watch in Globalization.” The authors try to identify the meta-trends, including simplification at the user interface combined with technical sophistication “under the covers”; increasing computing power on the desktop and in the palm of your hand (made possible by miniaturization); and systems to support brainstorming, decision making, and collaboration among workgroups. The seven technologies include personal digital assistants (notebooks and palmtops); multimedia and interactive media; neural networks and fuzzy logic; wireless technology; interoperability standards for EDI, UNIX, and so on; object-oriented programming systems (OOPS); and virtual reality. The broad evolutionary patterns presented by these technologies are considered with a rough timetable (with dates) over which to watch them. The reader is left to judge which represent possibilities for discontinuous change in businesses and infrastructure.

Davenport

Davenport’s compact, detailed study gives us both the primer and the advanced course in one book. The reengineering effort starts with identifying business processes that are a target for innovation; marshaling change enablers (these will frequently involve applying diverse feasible information technologies); developing a business vision of process objectives (including measurable objectives); and designing and building a prototype of the new process and organization.

According to Davenport, the goal of process innovation is to provide leverage for increased productivity and gain competitive advantage for the innovating firm, and thus lift the fortunes of the organization. The role of IT in defining, enabling, and constraining the process design is the recurring theme of the book. Davenport aims to fill the gap that arises when wondering whether process innovation is a useful bridge between strategic IT investments and economic benefits.

The heart of the author’s argument--that IT can radically change the way work is accomplished--lies in providing a framework for process innovation. He addresses the disappointments that arise when IT does not lead to productivity improvements; implementation issues associated with business process reengineering; and challenges to providing customer support.

Much of the material in this book is leading edge in that it contains hard lessons learned by Davenport at organizations that endured downsizing, quality circles, and business process reengineering in the middle and late 1980s. Process innovation continues to be difficult, expensive, and time consuming. The author is to be commended for telling it like it is, and at the same time making a powerful case that the effort is worth the undertaking. With this well-written and carefully crafted study, executives and information consultants have many useful and practical distinctions to guide them in designing new business processes through IT.

Utterback

This fascinating study, thoroughly researched and well-written, shows how technological discontinuities cause the deck of competition to be reshuffled and industrial leadership to change hands. The technologies considered include many examples from (but not limited to) the IT field. In fact, some of the most interesting analogies and parallels are applied to IT from remote and distant fields with surprising and insight-producing results. Almost every page is filled with astonishing real-world facts about technologies and innovations extending from the integrated circuit, PCs, supercomputers, and RISC chips, to the QWERTY keyboard and the effects of refrigeration (in the early 1900s) on the distribution of New England ice harvested and stored all summer in special double-walled warehouses.

In this context, a technological discontinuity is one that makes possible a change in the dominant design of a product. A dominant design is itself the outcome of a kind of Darwinian natural selection (survival of the fittest), which wins the allegiance of the marketplace. This is a design that both competitors and innovators must adhere to if they hope to do significant business in a given market.

In conclusion, Utterback compares the dynamics of discontinuous changes with the child’s game of chutes and ladders. Occasionally, a player is lucky enough to land at the bottom of a ladder. This allows the player to climb quickly up to a higher level, bypassing those on the game’s twisting path of continuous, incremental progress. This is what Sun Microsystems did by embracing the RISC computing chip technology while DEC was following an incremental approach that attempted to integrate the RISC-based chip with its existing CISC-based product line. A similar discontinuity may be unfolding in the supercomputing arena, according to the author. Cray in the US and NEC in Japan have leading positions in the production of today’s fastest computers. However, companies like Thinking Machines and Intel Scientific Computers promise to outpace the traditional supercomputer architecture by hooking together hundreds or thousands of Intel-based microprocessor nodes to produce massively parallel supercomputers.

Once the dynamics of discontinuous technological change are documented, the antidote to stagnation and lethargy is not easy to find. Obstacles to successful innovation include many organizational impediments and established patterns of thinking and acting. Also high on the list of obstacles are current accounting practices, including discounted cashflow analysis, which favors modest near-term rewards over bigger long-term ones. Antidotes include such practices as organizing separate divisions and strategic alliances. These can provide the means to bridge technological discontinuities, and allow the culture and management thinking of the corporation to catch up with the technology. The challenge seems to be both to learn from history and, in an apparent Zen-like manner, to live without history.

Donovan

The strengths of this book are its enthusiasm and its breadth of coverage. In many ways, it is a brilliant, short executive summary of the opportunities and challenges presented by emerging distributed and downsized client/server systems. Incidentally, Donovan is the only author in this comparative review to consider computing architecture in enough detail to even distinguish between a two-tiered and a three-tiered client/server system. (The three-tiered, which is really n-tiered, consists of presentation, business functionality, and database layers.)

At first, one may think Donovan promises more than he can deliver when he says (in effect) that a ten-week, mission-critical prototyping project can be completed quickly enough to turn a failing company around. However, the integrity of his position is restored when he points out that the ten-week prototyping effort should be preceded by a year spent building IT infrastructure (data modeling, tool training, and environment building; see the discussion on page 107). Thus, the effort is really a year and ten weeks in duration, a time interval which seems more reasonable.

What we have here is a client/server pioneer and evangelist in the best sense of the words. Donovan is enthusiastic about making Distributed Computing Environment (DCE) middleware available to the average COBOL programmer. (In all fairness, Donovan has a major interest in a company with virtually the only available high-level tool for DCE development. However, this may be the effect of his belief, not its cause.) And now that DCE RPC code is going to be posted as shareware on the Internet, the prospect of wide use is in the offing. (The reader wonders, could this be “the next big thing”?)

In many ways, this text is complementary to the others, not contradictory. It just may be that Donovan’s cajoling and good-natured browbeating of the CEO and CIO can get them to do what everyone from Keen to Davenport has urged: take responsibility for providing the leadership required by the IT process.

Comparison

A side-by-side comparison of the books in this review shows some natural groupings. The multiauthor anthologies by Allen, Applegate, and Benjamin, and by Bradley, Hausman, and Nolan, rate uniformly high in quality and content. If one is interested in dipping into relatively short and self-contained treatments of information technology from the perspective of general management, these two books are good places to start.

Likewise, Zuboff and Walton form a pair on related topics. Zuboff develops original insights into how IT transforms the role and meaning of work in organizational and individual life. Her perspective is informed by a special empathy, based on historical research and skillfully conveyed, for what work has been like in both the industrial age and the age of the mechanical office typewriter. She shows how computer-mediated work is completely different from both of these in its effects on body, mind, and the organization. Walton extends Zuboff’s distinction between automating and informating to the implementation process of integrating IT and the organization. His contribution is a significant addition to the discussion.

Both Donovan and Davenport address the prospects and methods of business process reengineering. Donovan brings to the task as much enthusiasm and breadth of treatment as Davenport brings depth and detail. Both are admirable presentations in their own right, with Donovan targeting the busy executive and Davenport addressing the technical or business consultant wishing to explore the matter in detail.

Keen and Utterback cannot be paired. Keen belongs in the literature of strategic vision (a quality he himself possesses), and Utterback gives strikingly new and original life to the early ideas of Joseph Schumpeter on the economics of entrepreneurial initiative in that he applies them to technology. If you have ever wondered how sudden technological changes, product designs, or process innovations can emerge from out of left field to redefine what is possible in an industry or market, then Utterback is the book for you.

I learned the most from Keen’s book because he is a master of seeing old things in new ways. He coins a wealth of useful sayings and imperatives: put the “technology” back into IT; education is “preparation for moving into a new context”; today “just in time everything” is the requirement; and “a firm’s information architecture is its technical strategy.” While not difficult in itself, this is a text whose ideas are unconventional enough to warrant rereading. Every once in a while, a book comes along that changes the way a person sees things. For me, this was one such book.

Without exception, all the books reviewed here are of such high quality with respect to presentation, typography, editing, and writing style that the aim of my preceding comments was to make distinctions likely to be of use to the reader in determining what is relevant to him or her about the emergence of a dominant design. Controversial matters are engaged with the understanding that reasonable persons may disagree and that the survival of the fittest in the market is only one criterion of excellence. To put a spin on an idea of Utterback’s, we might let even those ideas that are not the most popular or widespread demonstrate their power and relevance by finding a niche in the marketplace. Given the current state of business and information technology, this is not so much relativism as it is pragmatism in the face of uncertainty.