What Machines Can't Do: Politics and Technology in the Industrial Enterprise [Paperback]

Robert J. Thomas (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 25, 1994

Virtually every manufacturing company has plans for an automated "factory of the future." But Robert J. Thomas argues that smart machines may not hold the key to an industrial renaissance. In this provocative and enlightening book, he takes us inside four successful manufacturing enterprises to reveal the social and political dynamics that are an integral part of new production technology. His interviews with nearly 300 individuals, from top corporate executives to engineers to workers and union representatives, give his study particular credibility and offer surprising insights into the organizational power struggles that determine the form and performance of new technologies.
Thomas urges managers not to put blind hopes into smarter machines but to find smarter ways to organize people. As U.S. companies battle for survival in an era of growing global competition, What Machines Can't Do is an invaluable treatise on the ways we organize work. While its call for change is likely to be controversial, it will also attract anyone who wishes to understand the full impact of new technology on jobs, organizations, and the future of the industrial enterprise.

Editorial Reviews

From the Inside Flap

"Anyone who journeys through What Machines Can't Do is going to [become] much more sophisticated about the sociology of introducing new technologies into existing organizations."--Lester C. Thurow, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

"A compelling case for rethinking why and how new technologies are introduced into organizations. With its graphic accounts and insider detail, he shows that when it comes to technology and politics, one cannot be understood apart from the other. What Machines Can't Do is one of those special books that fundamentally alters how one looks at the engines of corporate change."--Michael Useem, University of Pennsylvania

"An extraordinary achievement. Robert J. Thomas not only provides intimately detailed studies of the introduction of new technologies in large companies in four major industries. In the power-process framework, he provides us with a new theoretical approach that seems to me superior to other frameworks for the study of technological changes. For practitioners in industry, this book suggests ways of reorganizing the new technology introduction process so that workers and managers in manufacturing play more creative roles than is possible when they are considered as simply implementors of what others have designed for them."--William F. Whyte, Research Director, Programs for Employment and Workplace Systems,Cornell University

"This is one of the few books I have seen in reent years that is a genuine advance in business scholarship. For over ten years now, American business has been trying to achieve greater 'integration' across the separate components of the internal organization and between the organization and suppliers, customer, and clients outside. The results of these efforts have been disappointing. Here is a book that, for the first time, explains why. It may not be the last work on the subject, but all subsequent work will build upon these results and will have to come to terms with its argument."--Michael J. Piore, MIT

"These are the best cases I know of for giving students a feel for the complex dynamics of technological change and organizational power in industry. The cases are especially credible because of the clear writing and the unobtrusive theoretical guidance. It is not news that technology is socially shaped, but this presentation is more dramatic, more subtle, and more satisfying than the conventional literature."--Charles Perrow,Yale University

"This sophisticated, readable book . . . combines terrific original field research with a grand feat of theoretical synthesis."--Paul DiMaggio, Princeton University

From the Back Cover

"Anyone who journeys through What Machines Can't Do is going to [become] much more sophisticated about the sociology of introducing new technologies into existing organizations." (Lester C. Thurow, Massachusetts Institute of Technology) --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 332 pages
• Publisher: University of California Press (March 25, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0520087011
• ISBN-13: 978-0520087019
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,482,785 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Uncertainty is a Bonus: Technology Innovation, September 26, 2000

By 

mary durfee (Michigan Technological University, Houghton, MI) - See all my reviews

This review is from: What Machines Can't Do: Politics and Technology in the Industrial Enterprise (Paperback)

Thomas provides provocative case studies on how major technology-intensive companies introduced new manufacturing machines and processes into their plants. Some readers may not like the idea that innovation means company politics, but this book shows how the very uncertainty of internal politics thwarted and aided the innovation process. By walking up to different views on what new technology was needed and what it would mean to a firm, many of the firms in his study gained new-found capacity to choose and manage technology. Large firms, whether product or process oriented, encompass many departments and professional work groups. His cases show how the efforts of engineers or unions or management to enact a vision of useful work in shapes innovation itself and, in my view, help us understand the complicated factors in seeking innovation. Another excellent feature of the book is the fact that he traces the entire innovation process--from how the original choices were framed and then selected to the learning associated with implementation. Some readers may be put off by the "theory" chapters, hence the four rather than five rating. Readers can easily skip the theory and methods and move to the cases. Those interested in what high quality qualitative social science can yield will find his work exemplary. Last but not least, my engineering undergrads read one of Thomas's cases and actually recommended I add the entire book the next time I taught the course. That's enthusiasm!