Managing Computers in Large Organizations

Managing Microcomputers in Large Organizations
http://www.nap.edu/catalog/167.html
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PRODUCTIVITY THROUGH AUTOMATION 113
management response would be to allow turnover or reduction in the work
force. However, if a marketing manager or an engineering manager is given a
device that doubles productivity, it is much more difficult to decide how to take
advantage of it. Do you give the marketing manager two markets to manage?
Do you give the engineering manager both engineering and marketing to
manage?
It will be a major challenge for the management of Reynolds and other
companies to find ways to restructure jobs to take advantage of the
improvements in productivity made possible by automation. Inevitably, some
people will be displaced. Managers in our company and the country at large are
going to have to address the issue of retraining these people.
A second management issue we are now facing in the course of increasing
security for corporate data is the question of who owns what data. Reynolds has
bought a sophisticated computer program that requires identifying who owns
each piece of data, who can access it, who can change it, and who can delete it.
This raises some interesting questions. For example, does a piece of tax
information in a division system belong to the tax department or to the division?
A third issue involves measuring productivity. Economic feasibility has
been blithely assumed, but it needs to be tested at every point. On the one hand,
Reynolds has established a goal to double the productivity of its salaried work
force. On the other, we don't even measure the productivity of our salaried work
force today. We can measure the ratio of the total number of salaried employees
to pounds of aluminum or dollars of sales. On an individual basis, however, we
don't know what productivity is and we don't know how to measure it. I believe
this question of how to measure individual productivity is an issue we will
wrestle with at least for the rest of the decade.
A final management issue involves multiple functions and responsibilities.
In the past auditors have taken a lot of comfort in the careful separation of
responsibility. One person requisitions a purchase, a second approves, a third
receives, and a fourth pays the invoice. Automation makes it possible for a
single individual to perform more than one function. Reynold's management, as
well as its auditors, must consider what kinds of controls to build into
automated information processing systems. These controls
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