Work and Technological Change
Stephen R. Barley
Abstract
The four chapters of this book summarize the results of thirty-five years dedicated to studying how technologies change work and organizations. The first chapter places current developments in artificial intelligence into the historical context of previous technological revolutions by drawing on William Faunce’s argument that the history of technology is one of progressive automation of the four components of any production system: energy, transformation, and transfer and control technologies. The second chapter lays out a role-based theory of how technologies occasion changes in organizations ... More
The four chapters of this book summarize the results of thirty-five years dedicated to studying how technologies change work and organizations. The first chapter places current developments in artificial intelligence into the historical context of previous technological revolutions by drawing on William Faunce’s argument that the history of technology is one of progressive automation of the four components of any production system: energy, transformation, and transfer and control technologies. The second chapter lays out a role-based theory of how technologies occasion changes in organizations. The third chapter tackles the issue of how to conceptualize a more thorough approach to assessing how intelligent technologies, such as artificial intelligence, can shape work and employment. The fourth chapter discusses what has been learned over the years about the fears that arise when one sets out to study technical work and technical workers and methods for controlling those fears.
Keywords:
technology,
technical work,
technological revolution,
role-based theory,
organization,
artificial intelligence
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2020 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780198795209 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: October 2020 |
DOI:10.1093/oso/9780198795209.001.0001 |
Authors
Affiliations are at time of print publication.
Stephen R. Barley, author
Christian A. Felipe Professor of Technology Management, University of California, Santa Barbara
More
Less
