Customer Reviews

Talking about Machines: An Ethnography of a Modern Job (Collection on Technology and Work)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Too often in organization literature, work is treated as the relationship between management and workers, rather than the activities that result in a product or service. Managing the relationship is not the same as managing the work, a point demonstrated by Orr's technicians. The small subculture of service workers described by this ethnography rigorously maintain their distance, both physically and philosophically, from the larger organization structure. By enhancing their status as heroes among their fellow technicians, they fulfill needs not addressed by the corporation. They create identity and meaning through their "war stories" about working on the machines entrusted to their care. Orr's background as a technician gives him the credentials to be accepted by the members of this study.

Two reservations: (a) Orr's style does not let us hear the voices of the technicians directly; he narrates for them more than presenting dialog; we miss the sense of personalities. (b)Orr reflects that his acquainance with the work and the technology may cloud his vision of the familiar, causing him to overlook salient points which have become commonplace.

Not discussed, but worth exploring: Although gender roles are not discussed in this study, a dialog between a male technical specialist and a female technician demonstrates a conventional male/female communication disconnect. How does this affect identity creation in female technicians? I recommend this brief ethnography to anyone interested in seeing organization behavior from an anthropological perspective.

Julian Orr's book portraits the way technicians at Xerox acquire the skills needed in order to maintain and repair machines. Having worked in a similar environment I found Orr's insights profound and true. Orr is influenced by the work of ethnomethodologist Harold Garfinkel and anthropologist Lucy Suchman. Instead of focusing on sterile abstractions of work, Orr provides a thick description of practice. Anyone interested in learning how people work and learn is well advised to read this book closely.

Heralded as a book which demonstrates "an uncompromising ethnographic eye on work practices (1996:xiv)", Talking about Machines by Julian Orr does not live up to its advertising. While being thorough (overly so) in his explanations of the "interactions" of technicians who travel to clients throughout Silicon Valley, he is sadly lacking in providing the ehtnography he claims to be striving towards. The pedantic, tedious, and painful blow-by-blow description of every conversation within the group he follows as an "anthropologist" is overdone, and the "vignettes" which follow are lacking in ethnographical explanation and style. While Julian Orr's initial intentions and the foreword was written in an intrigueing manner, he did not live up to it in the rest of the book. In the beginning, he spoke of looking closely at the interactions of the group of people who go around as mobile technicians to problem solve machines at companies in Silicon Valley. He wrote that he was interested in looking at the interactions of the technicians in relation to the high tech environment, and that he would focus on the "triangle" of the technician, the customer, and machines. He did indeed go very much into detail of the technician's interactions, but too much so without enough perspective or insight. I do not feel as though I gained a better understanding of their work environment, the machines, or their relationship. In fact, most of the time the conversations he relayed in the book almost action by action seemed to be a long litany of complaints the technicians had. For a reader interested in the very detailed (and not particularly ethnographic) commentary on technicians, this book might be of interest. For someone expecting something with a bit more soul, go elsewhere. While I believe the book had great potential in using the case studies and vignettes to illustrate interrelationships and relationships, it unfortunately did not live up to my expectations in that area.

The book was recommended to me. I work for the company that the book deals with, in fact, I am a Technical Representative. That is the title of the job when I was hired 20 years ago. We now are called Customer Service Engineers, I still say Tech. Rep. I read the book and gave it to my manager to read, she hasn't returned it yet. The book makes some interesting points and observations about the Tech. Reps. world. How we interact with other Tech. Reps and our bosses and how we "get along" with our machines. It explained who we are and what we do, or try to do. Should be on any service managers reading list. I won't comment on the academic areas of the book, above my area of knowledge. It opened my eyes, and made me look as customers, service and copiers/printers/equipment as I had not done so in the past.

This is a superb book about a mundane topic. Mr. Orr has performed the implausible: he's made a book about copier repairmen (and they are nearly all men) fascinating. This ethnographic study describes at some length the rich network of connections made by men working alongside one another, and the power of peer-esteem in developing social capital. As repairmen cluster around the dispatcher's desk they pass along worthwhile folklore and high-context messages that can't be captured in a Knowledgebase, as Xerox discovers when it tries to automate the KB and dispatching process. More efficient? Yes, but at significant cost. Any social scientist or knowledge professional would do well to read this book. Highly recommended.

This book is a keenly observed description of the work life of copier machine repair persons -- some of the unsung heros of the technological world we live in. The book focuses on the social interaction of these persons' work life, and how they interact with the machines they maintain, the customers who depend on the machines, and with each other in their rather closed world. It is a "small" world, which the book describes with respect and attention to detail. It is a world which is important to all of us who depend on machines (because we need the machines to work), and it is important to the repair persons, because it occupies the best hours of the best days of their lives. I heartily recommend this book to give outsiders insight into what technical work is really like, and, for the technicians themselves, they may find some satisfaction in reading an insightful account of what they do. My only reservation is that the author's conclusion that the conversational world the technicians build up and nurture in their work is, while important, ultimately only a means to the end of fixing the machines is unfairly "instrumental". Fixing the machines is assuredly one of the goals of this discourse: it is the goal which matters to the customers and the manufacturer. But the conversation itself is also *an* important goal for the repair persons in helping give meaning to their lives. Every person has a basic human need for meaning, and this book shows how these persons make meaning in their work as well as producing the instrumental product. IMO every job must be judged not just in terms of what it does for the employer and for the customer, but also in terms of what it does (or does not do), besides paying money, for the worker.

Being a technician for Xerox (basis of this study) I may be a bit biased...but this book is very insightful in to the inner workings of a group of techno-nerds. For anyone who wants an inside glimpse, this is a must read!!!