Software by Design: Shaping Technology and The Workplace

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Oxford University Press, 6 ian. 1994 - 368 pagini
As computers become more and more integral to business and other organizational operations around the world, software design must increasingly meet the social demands of the workplace. This book provides an informative, cogent examination of how various social factors--such as organizational structure, workplace relations, and market conditions--together shape software developers' technical design decisions. Through a survey of major software companies and in-depth case studies of the banking, hospital, and equipment field service industries, the authors identify factors that influence specific design strategies and examine the significant consequences that engineering decisions have on users' work, workplace quality of life, and opportunities for autonomy and skill development. The book concludes with a chapter devoted to exploring how a progressive design approach can improve both the performance and working conditions of an organization. By providing an important empirical study of the social construction of technology, the authors offer an insightful understanding of the challenges inherent in effective software design. The book will appeal to professionals and students in software design, information systems management, computer science, and the sociology of work and technology.

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Case Studies of Software Design
83
Implications for Management and for Further Research on Technology Design
195
Appendices
235
References
327
Index
345
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Pagina 12 - Engineering is the profession in which a knowledge of the mathematical and natural sciences gained by study, experience, and practice is applied with judgment to develop ways to utilize, economically, the materials and forces of nature for the benefit of mankind.
Pagina 28 - ... the habits of men (or to women, as was increasingly the case) rather than the other way around. And things have been that way ever since. III. Message In place of a moral, I want to leave you with a message of faith and qualified hope. The story of QWERTY is a rather intriguing one for economists. Despite the presence of the sort of externalities that standard static analysis tells us would interfere with the achievement of the socially optimal degree of system compatibility, competition in the...
Pagina 29 - The functional factors are assimilation, the process whereby an action is actively reproduced and comes to incorporate new objects into itself (for example, thumb sucking as a case of sucking), and accommodation, the process whereby the schemes of assimilation themselves become modified in being applied to a diversity of objects.
Pagina 327 - Press. . 1960. The End of Ideology: On the Exhaustion of Political Ideas in the Fifties. Glencoe, IL: Free Press. Beniger, James R. 1986. The Control Revolution: Technological and Economic Origins of the Information Society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Bennett, Robert A. 1988. "Nation's Biggest Banks Had Worst Year in 1987 Since the Depression.
Pagina 22 - Because radical inventions do not contribute to the growth of existing technological systems, which are presided over by, systematically linked to, and financially supported by larger entities, organizations rarely nurture a radical invention. It should be stressed that the term "radical is not used here in a commonplace way to suggest momentous social effects. Radical inventions do not necessarily have more social effects than conservative ones, but, as defined here, they are inventions that do...
Pagina 45 - ... In a historical review of sociotechnical theory, Mumford (1987) notes that very little of this research addresses technology design and suggests that one reason is the lack of engineering expertise by sociotechnical researchers (see also Cherns, 1987). Moreover, as Bansler (1989, p. 12) has written, "Although many of the sociotechnical ideas and recommendations have gained widespread acceptance among systems designers they have, however, only had little impact on how the systems actually developed...

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