Strategic Computing Education Classic Reprint

Excerpt from Strategic Computing Education How are people in your organization responding to the implementation of computer technologies? The response depends on where they sit, on their perceptions of that technology. We have interviewed hundreds of people in dozens of corporations about how they perceive their company's computer technologies; at each site the same topics recur. Figure 1 presents the recurring topics, and peoples reactions to than, based on on the view from where they "sit" in the implementation process. The quotations on the left side of the chart are from people in organizations in which an implementation effort is on the brink of success, vile the quotations on the right side of the chart are from people ere it is on the brink of disaster. It is not hard to see that those in the left hand column were "committed," and those in the right were "resistant" to the venture. Traditionally, computer applications have been confined to relatively homogeneous areas of the organization (e.g., systems used by accounting personnel, data processing). New applications are now pushing the terminal into all areas and levels, and more people are performing "computer-mediated work" (Zuboff, 1981): secretaries, managers, Personnel, customer service, marketing, etc. With on-line, discretionary systems (e.g., planning models or electronic mail), the user plays an active, not passive, role. In the past the primary criterion for the "success" of a computer application rested on technical sophistication; it now rests on the "success" of implementing the technology in new environments. Discretionary systems are blurring the boundaries of the internal computing environment, and telecommunications are blurring the boundaries between the organization and its external environment (Keen, 1981). Figure 2 depicts these boundaries and the "users." 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.