Browse Books

Reviewer: Joseph L. Podolsky

I probably should not admit it, but I usually read very little of the research-based papers in our most scholarly journals. I skim quickly over the data collection and methodology sections and aim directly for the discussion and conclusions. Only if I disagree with or question the authors' results do I go back and study the methods or data. Hirschheim, however, has accomplished, for me at least, something rare; he has written a practical and informative book while still retaining the scholarship befitting a member of the Oxford University faculty. As stated in the title, he examines the technology of office automation from a social and organizational perspective. But he does more: he examines that unique artifact of industrial society, the office, from what I consider to be a cultural anthropological viewpoint. This is not a book for someone who wants to know more about word processors or graphics software. In fact, the technical aspects of office automation are mentioned only in Chapter 2, A Background to Office Automation. This chapter does include an illustration which describes all the various office automation technologies in a complex set of concentric circles and circle-segments, but practical advice on hardware and software is not the purpose of this text. This chapter does mention some benefits of office automation, but, again, a reader seeking to justify the technology would do better studying [1]. But for those of us who want to think about the office, its work, its effect on people, this is the book. It is full of “structures” into which ideas can be organized. For example, Hirschheim quotes one study which shows that an office contains three basic elements—people, paper, and files—and that these elements are involved in five processes: people to people communication, people to paper communication, paper to paper transfer, paper to file transfer, and files to people transfer. The word “paper” may need liberal interpretation in these days of cathode ray tubes and magnetic media, but the ideas hold. Hirschheim describes social and ethical issues and presents models and methodologies for studying these and other topics within the office. He describes and critiques some of the models used by other researchers and finally offers suggestions of his own. My favorite chapter is Chapter 5, which describes the social implications of office automation implementation. The problems he describes are faced daily by everyone involved in the installation and support of information systems, and his insights are meaningful even to a scarred veteran like me. Ever the academic, however, Hirschheim follows each chapter with lengthy lists of references so that every subject mentioned in the chapter can be studied further. And, in his last chapter, he offers suggestions where further research would be appropriate. As I implied above, this book offers much for both the academic and the practitioner. The academic will enjoy the broad scope of the materials and the linking of the office technologies to more basic sciences. The practitioner will find many models into which specific proposals can fit. I can see many of them as bullets on transparencies, used as background in presentations requesting additional office automation resources. Hirschheim also offers some very pragmatic checklists, the best of which, in Appendix B, lists Key Questions for Office Automation Implementation. A book like this makes me even less patient with the usual journal paper, in which the value, if any, is hidden in a forest of statistics. Hirschheim shows that it is possible to communicate well and still remain academically sound. Other researchers, please take note.