The Social Shaping of Technology
by Donald MacKenzie and
Judy Wajcman
(2nd edition, Open University Press, Buckingham, 1999)
How does social context affect the development of technology? What is the relationship between technology and gender? Is production technology shaped by efficiency or by social control?
Technological change is often seen as something that follows its own logic - something we may welcome, or about which we may protest, but which we are unable to alter fundamentally. This reader challenges that assumption and its distinguished contributors demonstrate that technology is affected at a fundamental level by the social context in which it develops. General arguments are introduced about the relation of technology to society and different types of technology are examined: the technology of production; domestic and reproductive technology; and military technology.
The first edition of this reader, published in 1985, had a considerable influence on thinking about the relationship between technology and society. This second edition has been thoroughly revised and expanded to take into account new research and the emergence of new theoretical perspectives.
Editors
Donald MacKenzie holds a personal Chair in Sociology at Edinburgh University. He is the author of Statistics in Britain, 1865-1930: The Social Construction of Scientific Knowledge(1981), Inventing Accuracy: A Historical Sociology of Nuclear Missile Guidance (1990) and Knowing Machines: Essays in Technical Change (1996).
Judy Wajcman is Professor of Sociology in the Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University. Her books include Women in Control: Dilemmas of a Workers' Cooperative (1983), Feminism Confronts Technology (1991) and Managing Like a Man: Women and Men in Corporate Management(1998).
Macho management is still the norm among executives and to break through the glass ceiling women have to manage like men, according to an ANU professor.
Women managers 'forced to act like men' by Shelley Simonds, ANU Reporter, Vol.29, No.17, November 1998.
This is despite the popular rhetoric in management schools that "feminine" management qualities - such as flexibility, team work and people skills - are necessary for the new millennium and that women with this style will flourish, said Professor Judy Wajcman, in the Research School of Social Sciences.
Although many of the senior managers she interviewed acknowledged the importance of these qualities, in the real world of corporate downsizing and managing with less, they said executives relied on old fashioned, "masculine" management styles of command and control.
Changing the culture of an organisation to encourage people skills was not a high priority for companies undergoing arduous structural change.
"In that context you have to be incredibly tough whether you're a man or a woman," Prof Wajcman said. "In this economic climate both men and women feel the need to conform to a macho ethos of management. It is still, in practice, the only one regarded as effective."
Although there has been an increase in the proportion of women in lower and middle management positions, women are still severely under-represented at the top levels of management. Growth in the number of female senior executives in Australia was less than half of one per cent in 1997, according to a study by the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
Extremely long work hours had also become endemic to managerial culture. The women and men Prof Wajcman interviewed for a new book, Managing Like a Man: Men and Women in Corporate Management, regularly worked 50 to 60 hours per week.
Long hours were part of an ethos of loyalty and commitment to the corporation where the job consumed most waking hours and dominated almost all aspects of life for senior managers, Prof Wajcman said. For women, this often meant making choices between career and family which men were not forced to make, she said.
Fewer senior women managers than men have families, according to the book. Prof Wajcman found 93 per cent of male managers were married or living with a partner compared to 73 per cent for women colleagues.
Over two-thirds of senior women managers did not have children. However two-thirds of men managers did have children. And most of these men did not have primary care responsibilities.
Of the respondents with children, 94 per cent of women managers reported having primary responsibility for children compared to only 15 per cent of men.
Women were also caught walking a fine line between masculinity and feminity at work. They were expected to display good listening and people skills on one hand and project an authoritative image on the other.
"This can be very tricky, since women doing the exact same thing as men are often perceived differently, for instance to be aggressive and overly ambitious," Prof Wajcman said.
Research for the book, published last month by Polity Press and Allen & Unwin was conducted in a major study of 400 senior managers in five multinational high-tech corporations in Britain.
When the going gets tough in business a 'feminine' approach is often quickly replaced by a more macho style based on discipline and fear. Judy Wajcman reports
We can't take 'man' out of management, Guardian, UK, November 1998
Rex Harrison famously asked in My Fair Lady: "Why can't a woman be more like a man?" And I believe they can, and need to, if they want to succeed as senior managers. For very few women reach the top of the managerial ladder.
Yet trend-spotters insist that the future is female. Flexibility, team work and people skills are said to be the qualities for corporate management in the new millennium. If women have a natural affinity with all this they will flourish as never before, it is argued.
Indeed, it has become fasionable in business schools to argue that women managers are not the same as men. Rather than adopting the aggressive style and habits that have proved successful for men, women executives are urged to draw on the skills and attitudes that develop from their shared experience as women.
But my comparative study of senior men and women managers in five global corporations casts doubt on this scenario. It reveals that senior women manage in much the same way as senior men. And like their male counterparts, women find it "hard to be soft".
Both men and women managers believe that there are sex differences in leadership style. They see the male style in terms of command and control and the female style as co-operative and consultative.
However, when I asked them to talk about their own style, 80 per cent of men as well as women claimed to manage in a co-operative, consultative manner. They generally cited "people management" as the most important skill. From this we might conclude that a feminine management style is in the ascendancy and that male managers are having to model themselves on women.
My research shows, however, that this is not the case. When I asked managers to discuss their own work practices, a major gulf opened between the rhetoric of "soft" human resource management and the "hard" reality. Many managers commented that with the almost continuous downsizing of companies, management is returning to a more traditional hierarchical structure.
As the most senior woman manager is one company explained: "The culture of the organisation is becoming much more directive, much more controlled from head office ...when things are tough people like to be in control and pull back control. The word that is being used is discipline."
A male manager put it more bluntly. "We have returned to the sixties military style of management by brutality, shout louder, hit them harder and threaten them to death until they're frightened and they do what they're told."
In this economic climate, both men and women feel the need to conform to a macho ethos of management. It is still, in practice, the only one regarded as effective. What does this imply for women managers? The corporative world that they inhabit is still male-dominated.
Managers of both sexes must project an image of the authoritative manager. My research shows that to be successful, women have to learn to tailor and adapt how they manage to the dominant masculine culture. Rather than patenting a new management style, they must "manage like a man."
Far from enhancing opportunities for women, current enthusiasm for a"feminine" leadership style reinforces the stereotype that is at the root of the problem. When women adopt male leadership traits like dominance and aggressiveness they are cast as "iron maidens". At the same time there is evidence that men can appropriate the rediscovered "feminine" style and add it to their traditionally male repetoire.
Whereas men will be advantaged by adding these new qualities to those they are already deemed to have women, will continue to be seen as offering feminine qualities only. While management gurus may ask "why can't a man be more like a woman", this does not necessarily herald the achievement of sex equality for women. The "man" is still a defining feature of senior management.
Managing Like A Man by Judy Wajcman is published by Polity Press. Professor Judy Wajcman is currently located in the Sociology Program, Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University, Canberra. The research was carried out while she was a Research Fellow at Warwick Business School. The study is based on a survey of over 400 men and women senior managers in five multinational hi-tech companies in the UK.
Comments and queries to Sociology web maintainer URL: http://sociorsss.anu.edu.au