Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!helios.ee.lbl.gov!pasteur!agate!regard@ttidca.TTI.COM From: regard@ttidca.TTI.COM (Adrienne Regard) Newsgroups: comp.society.women Subject: Re: The Technical Core in Computing Firms Message-ID: <11178@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> Date: 20 Jun 88 16:17:57 GMT Sender: usenet@agate.BERKELEY.EDU Organization: Citicorp/TTI, Santa Monica Lines: 38 Approved: skyler@violet.berkeley.edu (Moderator -- Trish Roberts) Comments-to: comp-women-request@cs.purdue.edu Submissions-to: comp-women@cs.purdue.edu Re your technical core and women in computing: I studied something of a tangent in "Leadership, Motivation and Power" at UCLA during my MBA studies there. We read, among other things THE ORGANIZATION TRAP and THE INVISIBLE WAR, both written by Sam Culbert (the instructor) and John McDonough. Basically, their arguments are for a more "human" workplace, and how one can design a work environment one can survive in while allowing the corporate entity to thrive. However, I went up to Sam after one class and pointed out that many of the changes he was advocating are the same kind of 'human' values that women have been socialized to value. Therefore it would make sense for him to investigate the changes that _can_ come about when women infiltrate a heretofor all (or almost all) male organization. He looked at me blankly for a moment -- the idea had obviously never crossed his mind. . .such an enormous resource, overlooked. In large organizations, it is obviously 'easier' to deal with a bunch of John Does than to deal with individuals. It is also easier to deal with specialized, well defined problems than whole complex systems. The isolation of the technical core is one manifestation of a drive for economy. But, as most organizations have discovered, this much isolation is not reflected in the world they hope to sell to, and the strain of moving from a disintegrated production environment to an integrated market is often too great for the organization to overcome, and the products are overlooked by the customers, and the company fails. It is, of course, a chicken-or-egg problem. Which comes first? The inte- gration or the integrators? And what is success? Teaching integrators to become specialists? Or benefitting, unwittingly, from their integration of issues before the company manages to mold them into the wrong thing? ====================================================================== For submissions, please use: usenet ucbvax!jade!violet!skyler arpa skyler@violet.berkeley.edu