Productivity paradox

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The productivity paradox of information technology is described as the hypothesis that (especially in the service sector ) there does not seem to be a positive correlation between investments in information and communication technology ( ICT ) and productivity at the economic or corporate level. The Nobel Prize winner Robert Solow put it pointedly : "Computers can be found everywhere - except in productivity statistics."

Explanatory approaches for this include errors in the measurement method and a .:

1. Delay between IT use and effect (users first have to learn to deal with the new system)
2. Management errors and insufficient use of the potential when using the technology
3. Distribution of profits between companies and parts of companies
4. Negative effects of the increase in information
5. Negative effects due to the effort involved in reorganizing the work processes required with the introduction of the technology
6. Further development of software with a comparatively low increase in effectiveness with sharply increasing hardware requirements and high adaptation costs.

Modern studies ( McKinsey 2001, Farrell 2003) indicate industry-specific differences in the increase in profitability. In computer and semiconductor manufacturing , telecommunications , wholesaling and retailing, and securities trading , the use of information technology has made it possible to achieve significant increases in profitability. Furthermore, factors outside of the core IT area seem to play an important role in the successful use of information technology. In particular, continuous coordination of IT with business processes, structures and practices is necessary in order to achieve a real increase in profitability.

criticism

From the point of view of (sociological) science and technology studies, the productivity paradox is not a paradox at all. It is an artifact of economics (which is discussed mainly by management consultancies, as the references above show). The knowledge anthropologist Susan Leigh Star has drawn attention to this:

"If one does not represent work, practice and membership [in different social worlds] in technology analyzes and socio-technical networks, then the invisible work that ensures the stability of many of these networks is not taken into account. This appears as a supposed drop in productivity."

The productivity paradox is therefore the consequence of a narrowed economic concept; you can only see it when economic infrastructures and invisible work are hidden. To put it even more pointedly: You can only see the paradox from the perspective of a manager (in an armchair). Following this diagnosis, the question of how inequality is reproduced via the framing and definition of the problem (or rather, to use the infrastructure metaphor: how unequal assessments are standardized) is discussed.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Quoted from Ludwig Siegele: Errors in the system. A heated debate has broken out in the United States about the usefulness of computers in business. In: Die Zeit from October 10, 1997, p. 48.
2. ↑ Susan Leigh Star: Power, Technology, and the Phenomenology of Conventions . In: Sebastian Gießmann, Nadine Taha (eds.): Susan Leigh Star: Border objects and media research . transcript, Bielefeld, S. 259 .