What other discourse does the text incorporate, what other “voices” are included or notably excluded (dialogicality)? One way to analyze the intertextuality of text is to do a brief analysis of the references used and the way they are used. Of the 37 different end noted references, one can count 21 as being general academic, 9 case studies (of course
academic in character) or other company related material, 6 articles in management journals such as Business Week and Harvard Business Review, and one policy studies oriented. One interesting finding is that 12 references were MIT related. This would indicate that the text is along the lines of the common research themes at MIT. This is also present in the acknowledgements (“the authors wish to acknowledge the support of the Center for Information Systems Research at MIT Sloan School”.) Consulting organizations are mentioned as well (McKinsey & Company) with Harvard Business School. The authors themselves worked at Ernst & Young (Davenport) or MIT (Short) at the time of writing the article. All this strongly indicates that the text is an accepted part of the established business education and consulting practices in the USA, and not one to question the basic premises of global capitalist economies. This finding is further supported by the non-modalized assertions made about contemporary economic realities, e.g.
regarding the unpredictability of the business environment, need for change etc.
Some critique directed towards IT’s effects on people is mentioned, forming opposing “voices”. These views are however credited to two outside sources, Shoshana Zuboff (a direct quote) and Edgar Schein (an indirect quote), who both are very influential academic writers22. Here other voices are present, but their presence is quite bracketed. In addition, the text includes numerous indirect reports telling how things were done “at IBM” for example, or how “in several companies, the managers felt that...” (p. 16). In contrast there are only three direct quotes from managers themselves. This way a voice is given to organizations and the practitioners themselves, but the message is mediated by the authors. All reports are in support of the text’s main
22 Zuboff’s In the Age of the Smart Machine (1988; New York: Basic Books) is
considered a definitive study of the impact of IT in the workplace. Later she has expressed strong social critique of “managerial capitalism”. (Checkland & Holwell 1998, 6.) Schein is credited with the term “corporate culture”, and is a leading academic in the field of organizational development and learning.
argument. In this sense the text is not dialogical, even though the objects (organizations and workers) are actively present in the text.
5.2.2 Significant assumptions
One of the most prevalent assumptions in the text regards the way authors view work and organizations. There is the existential assumption, which implies also a strong value assumption, that something akin to scientific management and industrial engineering is the best way to develop organizations. The authors see that Taylor’s vision was so powerful that something similar is now needed and desirable: “at the turn of the century, Fredrick Taylor revolutionized the workplace” (p. 11); “…two newer tools are transforming organizations to the degree that Taylorism once did”; (p. 11)“…no subsequent concept or tool has rivalled the power of Taylor’s mechanizing vision.” (p. 11).
These assumptions do not leave much room for the substantial criticism directed at scientific management (see e.g. Morgan 1997), especially regarding its view of the individual worker. Of course, the authors do not wish to recreate Taylorism as such, and they mention the different context and limitations (for example they criticize the overt rationalization and lack of context and vision in Taylorism, p. 14) , but what is notable is how they see such a universal concept of “totality” in management as something desirable. Moreover, the authors see the industrial engineers persisting in the future: “We believe that the industrial engineers of the future…” (p. 25). The authors view work in organization as something that should be managed as a systemic entity. This is evident in the propositional assumptions such as:
“business activities should be viewed as more than a collection of individual or even functional tasks” (p. 12). The organization is a system, which in some cases does not work as well as it could, and can be re-engineered to work better.
The other very relevant assumption is the one made about IT. This is evident in the following propositional assumptions: “it (IT) can fundamentally reshape the way business is done” (p.12); “information technology’s promise…is to be the most powerful tool in the twentieth century…”(p.12); “And few would question that information technology is a powerful tool for reshaping business processes” (p.25). IT is thus both a tool and a force of its own.
There is also a particular view of business environment: the business environment is unstable, which is undesirable but unavoidable as
“today’s corporations do not have the luxury of such stability” (p.12); IT is continuing to evolve, so the redesign “must generally be dynamic”;
and organizations must be prepared to change their way of organizing and skills as needed (thus implying also the need to direct change towards workers, as they are the ones owning the skills).
5.2.3 Difference
Even though the general assumptions regarding work in organizations are quite obvious, the text does recognize the emergence of a type of work that is different from the legacy of Taylorism and industrial engineering. Types of work done as process are differentiated by classification and typologies that make the distinction between physical objects and intangible ones - “informational” objects. Difference is in this way accentuated, and objects categorized. This is what Fairclough calls
“logic of difference”: tendency towards creating and proliferating differences between objects, entities and groups of people (2003, 88).
This in turn is part of a social process called classification: the text classifies types of work as well as types of processes (p. 18). Also a distinction is made between “managerial” and “operative” activities, which also imply the existence of two corresponding types of workers, operative ones and managers. The authors concede that knowledge intensive activities may need new approaches, even though the text
does not as a whole make clear what these might be. “Even the notion of managerial activities involving definite outcomes is somewhat foreign” (p.20); “Strangely, the proportion of informational processes already transformed by IT is probably lower than that of physical processes” (p 20). The authors imply that there seems to be an anomaly going on in organizations (something “strange”).
It can thus be said that the orientation to difference in the text is mainly consensus seeking that attempts to normalize differences by recognizing them but still attempting to fit them into the same general model of “new industrial engineering”: certain representation of work is made the universal one. Certain openness to the emergence of difference in the working life (knowledge work) is however present. It is not in the form of dialogue, but in the form of recognition.