Abstract

This study investigates the relationship between the use of specificinformation technologies and team-oriented practices and six measures of shop-floor control in a manufacturing setting. We investigate how use of 3 different types of ITs used in high tech manufacturing (product tracking, process automation, inter-firm ITlinkages) are correlated with use of 3 types of world class manufacturing practices (process review and control, continuous improvement, and JIT), and how these patterns of use are associated with two very different managerial approaches to controlling workers. One is traditional, emphasizing top-down monitoring and pay-based rewards, the other participative, emphasizing social needs and team based work structures. Hypotheses linking technologies and practices to the specific control mechanisms underlying these two views are developed using control theory, agency theory, and concertive control theory. These hypotheses are empirically tested using data from a survey of manufacturing plants in the highly dynamic and competitive disk drive industry.Our resultsindicate that both views are used in practice, though we find that technologies and practices are associated with quite different patterns of control. Product tracking technologies' are associated with a top-down, managerial command and control approach which is best explained by agency theory supplemented with a recognition of the social implications of performance measurement which provide a basis for peer pressure. Inter-firm IT linkages and practices' relationship to control are associated with a more participatory team-based approach.

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