Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!mailrus!cornell!rochester!kodak!eastman!HP-UX!gerwitz
From: gerwitz@HP-UX.kodak.com (Paul Gerwitz)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: Low Productivity of Knowledge Workers
Message-ID: <954@eastman.UUCP>
Date: 18 Sep 89 12:56:19 GMT
References: <9676@venera.isi.edu>
Sender: news@eastman
Reply-To: gerwitz@kodak.com (Paul Gerwitz)
Organization: Eastman Kodak Company, Rochester, NY
Lines: 21

In article <9676@venera.isi.edu> lpress@venera.isi.edu (Laurence I. Press) writes:
>I recently heard Michael Scott-Morton give a talk in which he
>asserted that U. S. knowledge worker productivity has not been increased
>by all of our personal computers.  I was also told that there
>was a fairly recent Fortune Magazine article making the same point.
>
>1. Can anyone provide references to research on this question?
>
>2. If this is true, would you care to speculate on why?

I'm not sure if Mr. Morton was responsible for the remarks, but after
talking to other management types, I would tend to agree to some extent.
It seems that the problem is that most applications in the commercial and
manufacturing areas were developed as excelerators of existing paper or
human systems.  Mike Hammer (MIT, Index Group Prism) aludes to the need for
IS to transform, simplify and redeem a business.  I recommend an article on
Dr. Hammer in Information Week, July 3-10, Page 36.
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