Abstract
Work and Technological Change is a set of four essays, three of which Barley delivered at the prestigious Clarendon Lectures in Management Studies at Oxford University. The fourth, on the implications of intelligent technologies, was written afterwards and is an essential part of Barley’s objective: to bring closure to decades of research on technology and work and to share what he has learned about when and how technological change will transform work and organizations. This book will, of course, be of interest to those who have followed Barley’s work over the years. It will also engage anyone interested in how technology shapes our work and our lives. Moreover, people interested in field work in organizations will find these essays of great value.
Barley ranges widely in these essays, from the grand sweep of revolutionary impact of technological change on whole societies in the first to a deep dive into the details of technical work in medical imaging and internet car sales in the second. The reader moves from a wonderful account of the effect of snowmobiles on the reindeer-based society of the Skolt Lapps in northern Finland to the intimate, almost minute-by-minute details of the way ultrasound technology changed the work and the roles of imaging technicians and radiologists and the relationships between them.
Although the first two essays focus on different levels of analysis, there is a strong conceptual connection between them—a connection established very clearly in the third essay on intelligent technologies, which Barley co-wrote with his colleague Matthew Beane. Barley approaches the study of technological change in social organizations from two vantage points. The first is what he calls the role system—the tasks, jobs, roles, relationships, interactions, and networks that pertain to people affected by the technology. The second is what he calls the technology stack—the hierarchy of technologies required to create and support the particular technology of interest. Any technological change, like the application of artificial intelligence, changes work and organizations only if it changes the role system, and those changes may ripple through the technology stack to affect occupations, employment, and organizations broadly. In this essay on intelligent technologies—AI, robotics, autonomous vehicles, etc.—Barley and Beane use this framework to examine their potential revolutionary impact on work, employment, and organizations. It is here, in the specific examples of intelligent technologies, that we see the interplay between the deep dive into the details of the technologies and their use and the broad implications for work and social organizations in the society. Barley and Beane are quite critical of the current state of research on these issues, labeling it largely isolationist (with a narrow focus on a technology, not the stack) and reductionist (with a narrow focus on jobs, not the role system). But Barley also makes it clear that his deep-dive methods of ethnography (which he has used throughout his professional life) are essential but not sufficient to assess these emerging technologies. Many other methods, involving teams of researchers, will be necessary.
The fourth essay is a delightful behind-the-scenes look at how Barley and his co-author Diane Bailey approached serious methodological problems in their deep dive into technology and work in highly technical settings. The problems (characterized as fears) ranged from not understanding the language of engineers to the overwhelming complexity of the very data they sought to acquire. What they did, why they did it, and how it worked provide valuable lessons for anyone doing any kind of field work.
Taken together, these four essays have important insights and implications for research not only on technology and work but more broadly. First, the essays create a window into the work of a distinguished scholar. Barley approaches a set of fundamental questions and problems within a consistent framework over a long period of time. He arrives at valuable insights and at wisdom about the issues and the process of discovery. These essays share that wisdom and also feature a healthy dose of humility we would all be wise to emulate.
Second, the essays’ significant implications for research include the following:
The effect of technical change on work and organizations depends on choices people and groups make about the technology and how it is implemented. The depth and detail of Barley’s work and the way he frames his analysis put the importance of choice in sharp relief. It seems clear, as well, that while technology does not determine what happens to roles, relationships, and networks, it shapes those choices. How are those choices made? Are some choices better than others?
Barley and Beane’s work underscores the importance of second- and third-order effects in the relationship between technical change and work. There are several examples in the essays, but the implementation of a Da Vinci robotic surgery system is quite dramatic. The first-order effects on the work of surgeons were expected and clear, but the technology also fundamentally changed the training of surgical residents. In fact, they could not be trained very well at all. Moreover, the system changed the way a surgical team had to operate. Can such effects be anticipated? If they were, what difference would it make? Can implementation of the same technology be done more effectively?
Details matter. Depth matters. Depth and detail are hallmarks of Barley’s work. They matter because they provide evidence of how roles and relationships change in day-to-day practice—evidence based on first-hand observation. They shed light on the specific features of the technology that influence the role system. They help generate answers to questions about what happened, and they also illuminate why things happened the way they did.
Here, the implications are for the power of systematic field work in research on many fundamental aspects of organizations. In a time when very large data sets and sophisticated analytical techniques seem quite attractive, it would be well to remember the potential power of systematic field work in research in strategy, innovation, leadership, product development, entrepreneurship, sales and marketing, and many other areas. That work does not have to be ethnography. But it does have to involve being in the field, observing, interacting with people, and collecting critical data first-hand within a systematic research design.
Barley and his coauthors have produced a set of essays that are a good read. There are a lot of great nuggets (e.g., the literature review on intelligent technologies in essay three is outstanding), wonderful stories (see essay four), and profound lessons and insights. The book is both important and timely. Barley addresses the possible impact of intelligent technologies, an issue of great significance. As we are witnessing a dramatic change in work patterns for some sectors of the workforce due to the COVID-19 pandemic, there is a large natural experiment underway on the effects of technology on work, and Barley’s ideas and framework are salient.
There are two things I wish Barley had addressed but did not. This is not a criticism of what is there but rather a hope for something more, perhaps in future work. The first is the issue of the toxicity of workplaces around the world. Evidence on employee engagement, on meaning and purpose at work, and on employee mental and physical health all point to a high level of toxicity in the workplace worldwide. Few people have spent more time observing people at work than Stephen Barley. What has he learned that might shed light on the terrible state of work in the world?
The second is the issue of performance. We already know a lot about how to implement new technology that improves the bottom line but creates havoc in the lives of employees. Suppose instead that the objectives were to tap into the technology’s potential to improve products, processes, or services but at the same time to strengthen meaning and purpose for the people at work and to create opportunities for them to grow and learn? With the depth of knowledge Barley has created about technology and work, what has he learned about how technologies ought to be implemented to achieve those objectives?
Stephen Barley has given us much. I hope there will be more.