Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
to and approved by high-level executives—in many cases without any
input from the midlevel managers whose work would be most affected
by their implementation.
The combination of “professional management” and computerized
management systems threatened to remove power from the hands of
local managers. In a widely cited 1958 article in the
Harvard Management
Review
, Harold Leavitt and Thomas Whisler predicted that within thirty
years, the combination of management science and information technol-
ogy would decimate the ranks of middle management and lead to the
centralization of managerial control.
51
Whisler would later suggest that
EDP specialists were the direct benefi ciaries of such centralization, which
occurred at the expense of traditional managers. He quoted one insur-
ance executive who claimed that “there has actually been a lateral shift
to the EDP manager of decision-making from other department man-
agers whose departments have been computerized.”
52
Or as one Wharton
MBA graduate warned his colleagues in a 1965 article, “As the EDP
group takes on the role of a corporate service organization, able to cut
across organizational lines, a revolution in the organizational power
structure is bound to occur.”
53
In a 1971 topic describing
How Computers
Affect Management
, Rosemary Stewart argued how computer specialists
mobilized the mystery of their technology to “impinge directly on a
manager's job and be a threat to his security or status.”
54
In addition to this direct threat to their occupational authority, tradi-
tional managers had other reasons to resent EDP specialists. “Computer
people tend to be young, mobile, and quantitatively oriented, and look
to their peers both for company and for approval” suggested a 1969
Fortune
article explaining why “Computers Can't Solve Everything”:
“Managers, on the other hand, are typically older and tend to regard
computer people either as mere technicians or as threats to their position
and status.”
55
As the persistent demand for qualifi ed computer personnel
pushed up salaries and created considerable opportunities for occupation
mobility, computer personnel acquired a reputation—deserved or other-
wise—for being fl ighty, arrogant, and lacking in corporate loyalty.
As might be expected, the perceived impositions of the computer boys
prompted a determined response from midlevel managers. By the end of
the 1960s the management literature was full of reports of a growing
crisis in “software management.” An infl uential 1968 report by McKinsey
and Company suggested that most computer installations were unprofi t-
able—not because the technology was not effective but rather because
“many otherwise effective top managements . . . have abdicated control
