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Fast and flexible low‐cost data processing and information systems have
transformed business operations. Reductions in production setup times,
lot sizes and inventory levels have yielded substantial improvements in
productivity and profitability. The continuing changes sweeping American
business impose significant impacts on the distribution (or logistics)
function within manufacturing and merchandising firms. This research
assesses current levels of computerization within logistics and examines
the relationship between computerization and implementation of the
integrated logistics concept. Significant differences between
integrated and non‐integrated firms concerning levels of computerization
are identified. Integrated firms have developed the information support
systems necessary to position their organizations for competitive
success.

This article offers a new explanation for union decline by focusing on a currently neglected site that exemplifies the fragility of unions—the shop floor in the computer revolution era. Using data from several sources including the National Labor Relations Board, it analyzes the effect of using a computer at work on the odds of being a union member and the broader effect of computerization on union strength within detailed industries between 1973 and 2002. Workers who used a computer at work were found less likely to be union members, and computerization of workplaces accounted for about a quarter of the decline in union density within industries; partly by changing the skill composition of industries' workforces and partly by enhancing employers' resistance to unions as measured by their use of unfair labor practices and decertification elections as documented by the National Labor Relations Board. The findings are explained in a new theoretical framework that specifies what computerization does to unions by (a) reshaping the way products are made and services are provided and (b) boosting a profound power shift throughout workplaces.

This article examines the relationship between the use of computer-based systems and transformations in parts of the social order. Answers to this question rest heavily on the way computer-based systems are consumed -not just produced or dissemtnated. The discourse about computerezation advanced in many professional magazines and the mass media is saturated with talk about "revolution, " and yet substantial social changes are often difficult to cdentcfy in carefully designed empirical studies. The article examines qualitative case studies of computerization in welfare agencies, urban planning, accounting, marketing, and manufacturing to examine the ways that computerization alters social life in varced ways: sometemes restructuring relationships and in other cases reinforcing existing social relationships. The article also examines some of the theoret ical issues in studies of computerization, such as drawing boundaries. It concludes with some observations about the sociology of computer sctence as an academic discipline.

Divergent conceptualizations of the recent changes in work organization that have accompanied computerization include neo-Bravermanian analyses, postindustrial analyses, and contingency analyses. To make sense of these differing views, the paper surveys sociological research on computerization and its impact on three analytically separate dimensions of the workplace: organizational restructuring, changes in worker skill, and power and authority relationships. The review reveals that computerized work organizations typically have fewer hierarchical levels, a bifurcated workforce, frequently with race and sex segregation, a less formal structure, and diminished use of internal labor markets and reliance instead on external credentialing. Variable patterns of centralization and decentralization occur, and workplace power relationships interact with technological change to produce variable political outcomes. With regard to worker skills, recent evidence suggests aggregate upskilling with some deskilling and skill bifurcation. Future research should more closely analyze the process of technological design and implementation.

This is a first report on a long-term project concerned with the managerial implications of the development of advanced computer systems, for administrative purposes, in manufacturing firms. In this pilot stage, the management systems of two large firms—one in electrical components, the other in chemicals—were studied. The attitudes and behaviour of managers towards various aspects of computerization were analysed, and related to the structural characteristics of the two management groups. In respect of the latter, the guide-lines were the cosmopolitan/local continuum of A. W. Gouldner, and the organismic/mechanistic typology of T. Burns and G. M. Stalker. The data suggest that at least certain important components of both the cosmopolitan and organismic concepts are related to positive attitudes to computerization.

The computer is increasingly being used as a Trojan Horse for Taylorism. We are now beginning to repeat in the intellectual work environment many of the mistakes already made at such cost in the field of manual work. The division of labour is sweeping through the entire spectrum of white-collar work from routine clerical tasks to some of the highest levels of creative activity such as design. Examples are provided of alternative systems which are human centred and enhancing. Whether such systems are implemented is a question of profound ideological and political significance.