– Boken 'Talking about machines' er et resultat av forskningsarbeid utført av antropologien Julian E Orr. Arbeidet ga ham også en doktorgrad på begynnelsen av 1990 tallet. Orr utførte arbeidet for Xerox konsernet, der han var en av forskerne.
Teknikerne i Xerox konsernet jobber i grupperinger fordelt geografisk rundt omkring i USA, og arbeidet deres består av å reparere kopimaskiner som av en eller annen grunn ikke fungerer. Dette betyr at teknikerne reiser ut til kundene, og reparerer maskinene på stedet. Slike maskiner kan ha flere feil, både kjente og ukjente. Dette fordi maskinene brukes forskjellig, i forskjellig temperaturer og på feil måte, men også pga produksjonsfeil.
Etter min oppfatning har boken flere sentrale aspekter;
" En kritikk av den lineære og strukturerte synet ledelseslitteraturen har på arbeidsinstrukser
" En anerkjennelse av teknikernes samfunn og miljø da teknikerne, som vanligvis oppfattes som 'loners' reiser lange omveier for å kunne treffe sine medarbeidere til teknisk diskusjon på kafè
" En rik beskrivelse av mennesklig kunnskap og praksis i arbeid idet boken fokuserer på hvordan fortellinger mellom teknikerne, under arbeid, hjelper dem til å løse komplekse problemer
Boken er kjent i fagmiljøet, men anbefales også til andre lesere
Talking about Machines
«
How ironic, at an historic moment when technology has assumed a taken-for-granted status in the workplace, that scholarship on organizations, work, and technology has only recently begun to find its feet. With this splendid ethnography of work practices by technicians who service photocopy machines, Julian Orr has made a major incursion into this territory, producing a volume that bridges disciplinary boundaries by joining the literature of organizations, occupations, and work with that of science and technology studies.
» Diane Vaughn, Administrative Science Quarterly
This is a story of how work gets done. It is also a study of how field service technicians talk about their work and how that talk is instrumental in their success. In his innovative ethnography, Julian E. Les mer
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The work technicians do encompasses elements not contained in the official definition of the job yet vital to its success. Orr's analysis of the way repair people talk about their work reveals that talk is, in fact, a crucial dimension of their practice. Diagnosis happens through a narrative process, the creation of a coherent description of the troubled machine. The descriptions become the basis for technicians' discourse about their experience, and the circulation of stories among the technicians is the principal means by which they stay informed of the developing subtleties of machine behavior. Orr demonstrates that technical knowledge is a socially distributed resource stored and diffused primarily through an oral culture.
Based on participant observation with copier repair technicians in the field and strengthened by Orr's own years as a technician, this book explodes numerous myths about technicians and suggests how technical work differs from other kinds of employment. -- Cornell University Press
Detaljer
- Forlag
- ILR Press
- Innbinding
- Paperback
- Språk
- Engelsk
- Sider
- 192
- ISBN
- 9780801483905
- Utgivelsesår
- 1996
- Format
- 22 x 14 cm
Anmeldelser
«
How ironic, at an historic moment when technology has assumed a taken-for-granted status in the workplace, that scholarship on organizations, work, and technology has only recently begun to find its feet. With this splendid ethnography of work practices by technicians who service photocopy machines, Julian Orr has made a major incursion into this territory, producing a volume that bridges disciplinary boundaries by joining the literature of organizations, occupations, and work with that of science and technology studies.
» Diane Vaughn, Administrative Science Quarterly
«
This book should be of value to anyone interested in studies of work practice, and to those who study technical work in particular.
» Bonalyn J. Nelsen, Industrial and Labor Relations Review