This award provides support to an interdisciplinary team of researchers to identify functional and disfunctional mechanisms in use in designing technologies for the workplace. The study evolves from the investigators' prior work in the Shop Floor Programming Project (SFPP) at the University of Lowell. The SFPP's goal was to create machinist-friendly software, to overcome rigid divisions of labor that assign programming functions to engineers and executing functions to machinists. Computer scientists and engineers have found it difficult to work with machinists so as to enable them to retain or augment a decision making role in using graphics-based software. These difficulties mean that innovation and flexibility are lost in the workplace. This project proceeds by contrasting skill-based with heirarchical or Taylorist principles, in the observation of the interactions of machinists and computer scientists and manufacturing engineers in the SFPP. The study will record meetings and working sessions on videotape for transcription and conduct group sessions for analysis of the tapes; examine documents, artifacts, and working journals from SFPP participants; and revise the theoretical framework based on findings. The software generated by the SFPP can itself be analyzed for what it reveals about assumptions and values. Results will include hands-on development and implementation of skill-based technological systems, publications in periodicals that reach professional, managerial, and worker communities, speaking engagements, exchanges among people working on these issues in the U.S. and abroad, and planning for curriculum development in undergraduate science and engineering. The topic of this proposal is of highest priority for Ethics and Values Studies. The qualifications and track record of these investigators are excellent. The project provides an important test for theories and methodologies to study innovation in the workplace. Results will be useful for a wide range of individuals and groups. The proposal is recommended for support.
