Automation in the Social Office: Women’s Skills and New Technology
dc.contributor.author
Webster, Juliet
dc.date.accessioned
2026-05-05T07:32:22Z
dc.date.issued
1991
dc.description.abstract
This paper examines the location of skills, technical expertise and organisational knowledge, and particularly the value accorded to these skills by bosses and their secretaries in the non-automated office. It considers whether new office technologies, specifically word processing, have changed patterns of expertise, routinised office operations and so radically altered the social and power relations of yesterday's office. It concludes that, on the contrary, the character of the technological office is determined by the social relations that exist before the automation process - that structures of power and expertise condition the application of technology, rather than vice versa.
dc.identifier.isbn
1-872287-24-7
dc.identifier.uri
https://era.ed.ac.uk/handle/1842/44627
dc.identifier.uri
https://doi.org/10.7488/era/7142
dc.language.iso
en
dc.publisher
Research Centre for Social Science / University of Edinburgh
dc.relation.ispartofseries
21
dc.subject
non-automated office
dc.subject
social office
dc.subject
women's skills
dc.subject
word processing
dc.subject
patterns of expertise
dc.subject
social relations
dc.title
Automation in the Social Office: Women’s Skills and New Technology
dc.type
Working Paper
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