Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
boundaries between factory fl oor and offi ce space. Calling ADP the “still-
sleeping giant” of modern corporate management, Diebold described, in
vividly organic terms, a single information system that would “feed” an
entire business. This system would be “the arteries through which will
fl ow the life stream of the business: market intelligence, control informa-
tion, strategy decisions, feedback for change.” Gradually, the system
would grow to encompass and absorb the entire organization. And after
that, suggested Diebold, “management would never be the same.”
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The monolithic information system portrayed by Diebold became the
management enthusiasm of the 1960s, variously referred to in the litera-
ture as the “total systems concept,” “management system,” “totally inte-
grated management information system,” and most frequently, MIS. As
Thomas Haigh has convincingly demonstrated, during the decade of the
1960s “a very broad defi nition of MIS spread rapidly and was endorsed
by industrial corporations, consultants, academic researchers, manage-
ment writers, and computer manufacturers.”
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Although important dif-
ferences existed between the specifi c versions of MIS presented by these
various champions, in general they shared several key characteristics: the
assumption that information was a critical corporate and managerial
asset; a general enthusiasm for the electronic computer and its ability to
centralize managerial information; and the clear implication that such
centralization would come at the expense of middle managers.
A New Theocracy—or Industrial Carpetbaggers?
Although the dream of the total management system never really came
to fruition, the shift of power from operational managers to computer
specialists did seem to occur in at least some organizations. In a follow-
up to “Management in the 1980s” in 1967 titled “The Impact of
Information Technology on Organizational Control,” Thomas Whisler
reiterated his view that information technology “tends to shift and
scramble the power structure of organizations. . . . The decision to locate
computer responsibility in a specifi c part of an organization has strong
implications for the relative authority and control that segment will
subsequently achieve.” It seemed unlikely, he argued, that anyone “can
continue to hold title to the computer without assuming and using the
effective power it confers.” He cited one insurance executive as saying
that “there has actually been a lateral shift to the EDP manager of deci-
sion-making from other department managers whose departments have
been computerized.” Whisler also quoted another manager at length who
