New Process Technology, Job Design, and Work Organization: A Contingency Model

External Learning Opportunities and the Diffusion of Process Innovations to Small Firms: The Case of Programmable Automation

“…[4] For example, nearly all researchers see the collaborative production networks in Japan as being led by great industrial conglomerates (Cusamano, 1985;Dore, 1986;Florida and Kenney, 1989;Freeman, 1988;Johnson, 1982 (Kelley and Harrison, 1990;Harrison and Kelley, 1990), productivity in the use of PA (Kelley, 1990b;Kelley and Xue, 1990), and the determinants of skill-upgrading approaches to job design and training opportunities (Kelley, 1989a(Kelley, , 1989b(Kelley, , 1989c(Kelley, , and 1990a In 1986, an average of US$6,265.51 per employee was invested in new equipment among establishments with programmable machines, compared to the US$1,972.40 per employee in establishments that had no PA technology.…”

“…In the case of information technology's application to manufacturing in the form of programmable automated (PA) machine tools, the shift to this new technological regime requires the integration of new science-based knowledge of electronics, computers, and software engineering with the accumulated tacit knowledge of metal-cutting practices acquired through years of practical experience; PA also makes some traditional skills obsolete (Kelley, 1989a(Kelley, , 1989b(Kelley, , 1989c(Kelley, , and 1990a. In order to make this shift to the new trajectory successfully, firms have to buy, borrow, or somehow internally develop that expertise and integrate it with the relevant traditional practices to match the requirements of the emerging system.…”

Studying Organizational Computing Infrastructures: Multi-Method Approaches

“…Not surprisingly, research into computing infrastructures has generally employed multiple methods of data collection (e.g., Adler 1995;Barley 1986;Burkhardt 1994;Gasser 1986;Kelley 1990;Kling and Scacchi 1982;Koppel 1994;Ruhleder 1995;Salzman 1989). !These authors represent a range of disciplines and conceptual perspectives.…”

“…Two examples are the variations in the use of Lotus Notes across departments of a large consulting firm (Orlikowski 1993) and the use of the same technology at Zeta Corp. (Orlikowski 1996). Other examples include the variations in use of computer-aided software engineering (CASE) tools among software development teams (Guinan, Cooprider and Sawyer 1997) and in the use of computer-aided design (CAD) (Collins and King 1988;Kelley 1990;Salzman 1989).…”

Labour Deployment in Plants in Canada and Sweden

“…Among these production components, labour plays a major role (Abraham 1990a(Abraham , 1990bBlock 1990;Colclough and Tolbert 1992;Kelley 1990;Livingston 1993;Osterman 1988). Within the enterprise, typical options to achieve greater flexibility in labour inputs include manipulating numbers of workers and hours of work, altering wage schemes, adjustin g sk i ll re q u ir em e n ts an d ch a n g i n g wo rk as s ig n m e n ts , jo b responsibilities and management practices (Piore 1986: 158-162).…”