Downsizing and upgrading: A manufacturing firm's move to electronic distribution of documents
Robert Patrick Bergland
- School: Purdue University (0183)
- Degree: Ph.D.
- Date: 2002; pp: 243
- Advisor: Sullivan, Patricia
- Source: DAI-A 64/09, p. 3275, Mar 2004
- Subjects: Language, Rhetoric And Composition (0681); Business Administration, Management (0454)
- ProQuest Document Number:
- ISBN: 0-496-52476-1
- UMI Number: AAT 3104909
Abstract:
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The dissertation is an ethnographic study of the company/customer culture at an electric meter
manufacturing plant from early 1995 to summer of 1997. The study focuses on the document production
and distribution methods before and after layoffs in the mid-1990s. The company at its peak
employed a many document specialists, but by mid-1995, none of those positions existed at the
company, and the company planned to employ electronic publishing. The dissertation outlines the
history of document production and distribution from 1970–1997 and analyzes the company's decision
to distribute its documents electronically. A survey of customers revealed their capabilities and
preferences for receiving documents. The company-customer culture is largely viewed through
the theoretical lens of Feenberg's critical theory of technology. I show how the company took
an instrumentalist view of the technology. In doing so, the company ignored the culture and
literacy level of its customers. Had the company espoused a critical theory of technology, the
result might have been more positive for the company and for the customers. I also examine the
decision-making process and failure to implement an electronic publishing system from a
literacy standpoint, looking at how those in power to make the electronic publishing decisions
had a very low level of literacy in that area. In that same context, I discuss downsizing and
deskilling and the role of the technical communicator and technical communication in
workplace settings such as this.
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