Cultural Appropriateness
Today, computers are on everyone’s desk. Because of this accessibility to the power of word processing and spreadsheets, people at all levels in a workplace get involved in clerical work. This leads to another norm or value for technology including the computer: cultural appropriateness. If we focus on this value within the workplace, it is obvious that an excessive amount of clerical work for vice-presidents is neither appropriate nor productive. Rather than producing documents on the computer, they need to focus on the big picture, making managerial decisions that create the business culture and philosophy needed for productivity.
Tenner, in his book Why Things Bite Back, summarizes the paradox of productivity issue this way: Despite industry call for usability . . . the computing world of the 1990’s turns out to be a patchwork of stand-alone machines and networks, professionals and amateurs, always in a state of tension between the productivity benefits greater power brings and the learning and support costs that it requires. Edward Tenner, Why Things Bite Back: Technology and the Revenge of Unintended Consequences (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996): 254. |
Support costs are an important factor when asking questions about computer and computer-system productivity. The large, costly information-technology (IT) departments needed to sustain the productive use of computers have perhaps resulted in a decrease in overall productivity. In fact, for good or ill, many companies are now outsourcing the work of information-technology in hopes of containing these costs.