Because workers, managers, and executives cannot pay attention to all aspects of organizational life at the same time, attention is a limited resource for organizations. This chapter treats attention switching as the way to allocate that resource in ways to adapt the organization to its environment. We begin by asking what may seem at first to be an unrelated question.
What does each of the following brief stories have in common with that of the new convert to any religion?
An agricultural information organization discovers that it really is in the insurance business; a manufacturer's representative sees that he is selling organization as well as hardware; a computer hobbyist finds he is promoting a consumer product.
The answer? In all four instances, while everything remains the "same," everything is seen as being "different" from before.
In each instance has occurred a human experience vital to the growth and maintenance of organizations: an attention switch. Via attention switches, persons communicatively regroup, re-pattern, or recycle familiar experiences and functions to make use of the familiar in an unfamiliar way, often to the end that an organization takes on new life or grows to maturity from infancy.
Underlying the concept of the attention switch is the assumption that naming is the fundamental human activity. Human beings, as individuals and when acting as organizations, name or symbolically categorize their experiences in order to communicate, think about, organize, and share those experiences. A name can range from a word or phrase to a story or scenario. In all instances, categorizing experience symbolically requires abstracting or paying attention to some features of the environment and not to other features. Individuals and organizations foster attention shifts when they find new ways to name familiar experiences and functions by featuring and masking attention to different aspects of their environment. In each instance, experience itself is assumed not to have changed, but rather the person's way of symbolically categorizing experience has changed—everything is the "same," and, at the same time, "different." Thus, for example, the born-again religious convert sees "old" experience in "new" ways.
For the individual, the switch may span a few seconds, minutes, or hours; when individuals are multiplied in organizations, the switch may require months or years. Either way, the communication scenario for the attention switch is the same.
In general the story of the attention switch is one of shifting from one overall "name" for the output of a company which focuses attention on familiar "actualities:" ("giving-farmers-information-on-economic-cooperation"; "selling-hardware-for-food-preparation"; "producing-parts-for-a-hobbyist-toy"). Shifted to is a "name" that features attention to new "possibilities" in the company [136] ("insurance-provided-by-the-insured"; "franchising-the-family-business-so-it- is-corporate-business"; "assembling-parts-to-produce-a-consumer-product"). In shifting names, then, persons direct attention to alternative ways of understanding familiar experiences and functions that previously were masked by the "old name."
Within this overall theme of renaming outputs in order to open organizations to new possibilities, communication fosters the attention switch. Communication events, as in any drama, are prompted by or do, themselves, create meanings. In other words, as individuals and organizations name experience, the name, itself, constitutes expectations about that experience. Persons communicatively promote or impede attention switches, then, by naming outcomes of experience as "fitting" or "non-fitting" with expectancies associated with a particular symbolic categorization of experience.
In this case, meaning is associated with two sets of symbol-based dynamics. One set is (1) anomaly-featuring communication (stressing non-fitting relations or anomalies between name-mediated experience and outcomes) and (2) anomaly-masking communication (de-emphasizing non-fitting relations or anomalies between expectations and outcomes). Combining with these is the other set which "locates" anomalies or fitting relations in the "areas" of (1) what is really real about an organization, (2) how to understand the organization, usually in terms of its present, as related to past and future, and (3) how to prioritize desired outcomes.
When communicators wish to promote an attention switch from one set of named expectations to another, they do the following in their talk and writing:
1. They emphasize anomalies, flaws, contradictions, shortcomings, gaps, and lack of pattern in the stories currently being told about (1) what is really real in the organization, (2) what are the ways of understanding the company, and (3) what are the valued goals of the organization;
2. They de-emphasize any anomalies, flaws, etc., in the new story being told about (1) what is real, (2) how to understand what is real, and (3) what goals are to be highly valued.
When communicators wish to impede an attention switch, they do the following in their talk and writing:
1. They emphasize anomalies, flaws, etc., in the new story;
2. They de-emphasize anomalies, gaps, and inadequacies in the current story.
Concurrently with the talk and writing is an apparent restructuring of relationships among ideas so that anomalies, gaps, and contradictions disappear or are minimized. "Order" within "reality" is restored, name-constituted expectations about experience appear to "fit" outcomes of experience.
In organizational life, these dynamics of human communication promote and retard attention switches involving (1) new ways to make old products, (2) new products, (3) new uses for old products, (4) movement from entrepreneurial to managerial task performance (and vice versa), among others. In the extended examples to follow, the "working parts" of attention switching appear in more detail as we consider how human beings allocate that limited organizational resource, attention.
[137] If you have heard or read the slogan for an insurance company which announces that "Nationwide is on your side," you have had personal experience with the historical descendent of the first case history in attention switching. As the details unfold, you will see that an organization whose product had been the informational one of bringing buyer and seller together (broker) took a giant step toward major growth when its new service came to be seen as provision of insurance coverage (value-adding producer) even while everything remained the "same" for the clients and the company.
How did insurance come to be a "new" product for an "old" organization which had made its "name" by providing information on improved farming practices and by using volume buying to pass savings along to farmers on such necessities as seed and fertilizer? As stated before, such an opening to new organizational possibilities came about because of anomaly-featuring and masking communication. The reallocation of attention that was to mean unprecedented economic growth for the organization amounted to a shift from seeing the "problems" of being a "brokering" organization to seeing the "possibility" for being a version of the "value-adding" organization.
The anomalies, or non-fitting relations between expectations and outcomes, had been growing for several years during the 1920s. In the talk about business transactions and client relations, those "flaws," "gaps," or "shortcomings" had been appearing with ever-greater clarity to some spokespersons.
On one matter, their messages had featured attention to anomalies in what was "really rear' about the organization. For example, the nature of the group as being essentially a "cooperative!' was not clear. Was it primarily a "consumers"' or primarily a producers"' organization? This apparent contradiction involving the nature of the group made for ongoing tension and conflict, some of which was not seen as being constructive.
On another matter, it had grown increasingly unclear within the leadership ranks on how best the farmers' cooperative could learn what it really was about. Specifically, should it perfect its patterns of organization by (1) limiting the number of brokering activities and perfecting each—such as, for example, focussing on obtaining high quality fertilizer at the lowest possible cost; or (2) expanding the number of its enterprises, finding its niche by seeing which worked well and which did not? Although each alternative depended on the axiom that organizations learn about themselves by experience, absence of a clear expectancy had made unlikely the clear matching of such expectancy and outcome.
Further, in another "location" for anomaly featuring, the ordering of priorities increasingly had called into question the ways of organizing the group's activities. Should primary attention fall on improving marketing of agricultural products or on getting better bargains for farmers as consumers? Should expansion into credit and utilities be backgrounded to ongoing concerns with feed, seed, and fertilizer? Should efforts be made primarily to aid farmers, or should the organization place a high priority on advancing the cause of farmer-urban consumers simultaneously? These and other apparent contradictions among priorities had added to the perception that gaps were serious in the institutionalizing process. Even though revenues were growing and the reputation of the organization was that of an increasingly viable enterprise, communication-featured anomalies attracted the attention of planners.
Then came a problem that, given an attention shift, became an opportunity.
[138] As problem, it seemed to be the recurrence of a familiar event. Individually, farmers were paying automobile insurance premiums based on accident frequencies of urban dwellers. As a familiar problem involving a familiar solution, the farmers' cooperative sought to broker group buying in order to bring down the cost of insurance to members. The anomaly between that expectation and the actual outcome, however, convinced leaders that this was a new problem requiring a new solution: The company contracted with to provide the insurance was not permitted by state authorities to do business in the Midwestern state in question. To cutting-edge planners, a new way—yet one retaining continuity with past actions—had to be found to meet the difficulty. Simultaneously with the settling on a plan of action was an attention switch that brought fitting relationships among the anomalies already summarized; a "repatterning" occurred that restored "order" to experience.
The solution, of course, was to band the farmers together to sell insurance to themselves. Initial working capital to fund the venture came from a once-only dues charge, a constituent of past actions. Further, the familiar practice continued of passing back to the farmers volume purchase savings (patronage refunds)—in the form of premiums reduced by any lowering of accident claims during a preceding premium period. Next, the innovation spread by word of mouth—as had other initiatives by the cooperative—except in the new ordering of experience within the organization, this took on the added efficiency of having no paid agents for the company. Further, as careful-driving neighbors sold policies to others, careful driving town and urban dwellers joined their number. Spreading the risk across large numbers of safe drivers meant still lowered premiums. After a member's first year dues and premiums, costs for succeeding years were about one third those for insurance from other companies. In the attention switch leading to a "mutual" insurance company, continuity with the familiar organizational paradigm lay in the consumers' volume purchase from the provider of goods; change resided in the act of making the consumers into providers. Everything was the "same," but "different": In the process, the cooperative had become a "value adding," producing organization.
Concurrently, in a new way of naming experience, there occurred a restructuring of relations among ideas that had been anomalous. What was really "real" about the organization serving as parent to the mutual insurance firm? It was not whether it "essentially" was a producer-oriented or consumer-oriented group; rather, it was a case of "both and," both producer and consumer-oriented. How should it learn about itself through experience? It was not a choice between ..specializing" in some services and not in others, on the one hand, and being a "conglomerate," on the other. Instead, it was an organization which "specialized" in "generalizing" its unique strengths in successful spin-off activities, another instance of "both and" thinking. Finally, some of the prioritizing anomalies were resolved. There was important room for both rural and urban dwellers in the affairs of the company, for instance.
Everything was the same, yet different.
To leaders of the organization, a newly apparent pattern of organizational theory made it the same (farmers working together) yet different (farmers owning non-farm business). The new ideology replaced "old-line" capitalism with "economic democracy," an answer to communism and socialism. Value, this version of symbolic reality said, was not created by labor or by capital, although they had a role in it. Value, the leadership of the cooperative realized, was the [139] joint outcome of consumer needs, on the one hand, and a fitting response from labor and capital, on the other. It followed from this renaming of "value" emerging from this new pattern of organizational theory that the goal of production was not profits per se, but service. When such service was faithfully and jointly performed among the parties, profit—as side effect—was the result. In the case of mutual companies, or producer-owned or labor-owned companies, the profit reverted to them, overcoming the separation of laborer or farmer from income beyond wages, without at the same time becoming state ownership or state capitalism. Note that the last statement appears to forestall anomalies in the "new" story being told about the organization's essential nature, its means of learning about itself, and its priorities.
Later, the extent to which this paradigm could make "everything different while remaining the same" would be illustrated by the "cooperatizing" of the Welch Grape Juice Company, with the advice of the same Midwestern cooperative; significantly, the success of the newly constituted Welch company depended upon the continuation of executives, managers, and workers in jobs held before the cooperatization. In the meantime, the resources of the mutual insurance company founded through an attention switch grew from $10,000 in 1926 to $350 million by 1960, at annual increases in volume of business ranging between 15 percent and 25 percent during the 1940s. Today, after more attention switches, the capitalization of the Nationwide Insurance Company is $_________.
Shifting attention from brokering to producing had side effects additional to significant profits. Obviously, changes in the way consumers, workers, management, and owners depended on one another meant alterations in the power structure of affected organizations. Further, the defining of value as apt responses to real needs assumed one general need for all persons: that of being able to manage their own affairs. Given the overarching name of "economic democracy," the attention switch in organizational theory just described appeared to many of its participants to be true to the tenets of free enterprise (the same) but with cooperative ownership (different). Partly, that conclusion arose because participants in the attention shift to a new paradigm did—as was summed up earlier in the scenario of pattern-switching—mask or de-emphasize anomalies and "flaws in the "new" story.
They did not, for example, consider that their new story directed attention away from considering the non-fitting relations that could develop in the new pattern's economic democracy concept that the common good, rather than that of special interests," would be served by the cooperative's attention switch to a value adding, producing organization. What would happen to the "common good" concept, for instance, when and if a shared goal such as lower cost auto insurance led to discrimination against some classes of insurance buyers? How would organizations representing consumers organized according to one specific set of self-management needs relate to others with different specific needs? To the others as "special interests"? What would happen to the meaning of "common good" and "special interest" when "old line capitalist" firms shut their doors to be replaced by "cooperatized" firms?
Such potential anomalies may be more telling than those actually offered at the time by communicators wishing to impede the attention switch toward cooperatives as value adding producers. Recall that when communicators attempt to forestall an attention switch, they emphasize "flaws" or "gaps" in the new [140] story. In this instance, opponents of cooperatization, true, to the attention-shifting scenario, featured names for economic democracy that did not "fit" with traditional views of corporate success. The cooperatives, said these impeders, stressed collective ownership; as such, the cooperatives verged on socialism and communism. Further, the payment of profits to the customers, especially in the form of capital credits, rather than cash, allowed the cooperatives to escape governmental income taxes on corporate earnings (even though individual shareholders were subject to the tax). Much was made of the lack of "fair play" in the economy for "investor-owned, taxpaying corporations" as compared to the cooperatives, including what was one day to become Nationwide Insurance.
In summary, the reader has seen how promoters of an attention shift away from a company as a brokering agency and toward it as a value adding "producer" featured anomalies in the "old" story regarding what was real in the organization, how the organization could understand itself, and what priorities should be valued. At the same time, it masked anomalies in the "new" story, as just described. There were those, of course, who wished to impede the attention switch to cooperatized value adding organizations; for their part, they masked anomalies in the conventional story of corporate enterprise and featured those in the newer story of cooperative capitalism.
So far, the case history of attention shifting has itself featured attention to switches in organizational output as the joint outgrowth of (1) intensified anomalies and (2) de-emphasized anomalies in an organization's older and newer versions, respectively, of what business the company was "really" in, how best to learn the "truth" about the company, and what priorities the company should establish. While the nature of organizational outputs does change through attention shifting, such innovations are also often intimately associated with switches in managerial style. The next case history illustrates, then, the interrelationship of product and managerial style—going in the case of the latter from "entrepreneurial" communication to "managerial" communication, then back again.
First, it may be helpful to see how , in the case history, each of the apparently competing versions of management theory could account for, in an orderly way, the same set of "facts" in the "real" reality.
To some leaders in the food service enterprise being given form by "entrepreneurial" communication, their attention to the innovation of product was in the foreground, while the logistics of its financing and infrastructure—while present—was backgrounded. To the same food service company being given form by those organizing their experience by "managerial" communication, their attention to refinement of product might take a back seat to the foregrounding of finance and/or logistics as the secret of continuing organizational growth and success. Sometimes, to organizational leaders the difference in emphasis, then, was said to be (1) the foregrounding of operations and the backgrounding of finance and (2) the backgrounding of operations and the foregrounding of finance. Further, the talk characterizing the "entrepreneur" was full of enthusiasm for the product itself, taking care of logistical matters by inspiring meanings and motives of similar enthusiasm and dedication on the part of coworkers. On the other hand, the talk characterizing the "manager" was full [141] of analysis and problem solving, particularly in regard to roles carried out in the organization and relations to be created with groups outside the company. "Make-each-other-look-good" could have been the motive created by talk from the "entrepreneurial" persona; "specialize-in-this-inhouse-or-outside-task-and-perfect-it" could have been the motive aroused by talk of the "managerial" persona. So much, then, for attention allocation to what business the company was "really" in.
How about the two versions' explanation for the issue of how the organization would best learn about itself? Again, it is a matter of emphasis, not exclusion of one approach from another. For the leader enacting the role of "entrepreneur," the lessons to be learned from people as people were foregrounded, with attention to broad management principles backgrounded. For the leader enacting the role of "manager" (and this could, in other organizations, be the same person who "does" the "entrepreneur"), the lessons were to be learned in an organization from a systematic application of coherent theory to practice. Another way to say this is that the "entrepreneur" treated knowledge of the organization as a series of actions on the part of persons, altogether forming a history: past, present, and future. The person acting as "manager" treated knowledge of the organization as motions on the part of roles which are constituted and interrelated by communication. In sum, both emphases could lay claim to empiricism as means of learning about the organization; one studied persons more so than roles; the other stressed roles more so than persons.
Finally, what of the versions' two stances on priorities? For example, if primary attention fell on product, then quality control became a top priority. If primary attention fell on finance, then fiscal efficiency, return on investment, became a top priority. Further, if knowledge of the organization came from knowing its people, then attraction and retention of productive persons was a high level goal. If knowledge of the organization resided in enhanced understanding of communication in role relationships, then a major goal was to understand the bases of productivity. Profit looked "the same but different" from the two vantage points, as well. To the entrepreneurial eye, it was the much desired outcome or byproduct of service; to the managerial eye, it was the much desired output of return on investment.
To adapt optimally to environments, organizations need both the managerial" and the "entrepreneurial" emphases. Again, organizationally, it is a matter of "both and" rather than "either or." Yet, as experienced from the inside, the complementary relation between the two is not always clear. In the case history at hand, organizational trauma occurred at any juncture that the choice appeared to be either the entrepreneurial or the managerial model for leadership. It was trauma that was to be resolved via system regulating attention switching as a means to keep vicious circles from developing in company relationships.
The story concerns a fast-food company so large that you almost certainly have eaten at one of its franchises and reasonably could have worked there. Its success story is so well known that the company need not be identified at this point. Rather, attention needs to fall on the set of attention switches that regulated the growth of the corporation.
It is the familiar story of anomaly featuring and masking regarding the priorities, the learning-from-experience, and the nature of business being engaged in. It is, as was the case with Nationwide Insurance, a story that depends both on continuity and change in organizational fife.
[142] Specifically, the fast-food company metamorphosed from a marketing firm headed by an entrepreneur who had before World War II become zealously confident that a newly engineered food mixer could achieve total penetration of the soda fountain and drive-in market. As consumer tastes changed, however, soda fountains became obsolete; the product suffered a shrinking market. Such an anomaly between expectation and outcome sensitized the marketing executive to any new product capable of penetrating a large market: This much was continuity. When that new product appeared to be a folding dining table for small kitchens, there was change. When that product, in turn, failed to find an expanding market, the entrepreneur was excited to find a drive-in operation that was using more than the average number of mixers; if other drive-ins could be as popular, it would mean that the market for the original product would expand indefinitely—change and continuity again.
What was the secret of customer demand that led to heavy reliance on the mixer in question? It was, the entrepreneur saw, a triumph of "managerial" attention to perfecting specialized roles; the drive-in served only one sandwich, a hamburger created on assembly line principles, refined over the course of many years of loving attention to detail by the owners of the drive-in. It was, in short, an innovation via the "managerial" refinement of product that, when given an entrepreneurial turn, could spread almost exponentially. If the owners would by some means increase the number of drive-ins using their methods, the manufacturer's representative would have a secure future for the mixer.
Then came the first attention switch within the "entrepreneurial" vision. The owners were not interested in franchising their fast-food outlet. All right, announced the mixer marketer, renaming himself, if I have to become a franchiser for fast foods in order to keep a healthy demand for my hardware, I'll do it. With the agreement negotiated for sharing income from licensing fees and a fixed percentage of gross sales, the drive-in owners and the marketer brought into being an organization that compensated for anomalies in the business related realities for each: The owners would enjoy increased income without the problems associated with overseeing any new venture; the marketing executive would have restored the demand for the machine that had supported personal prosperity in the past. Masked in the new story were anomalies such as possible friction between the parties; difficulties in adapting building design to markedly varying locales; new problems of supply and food preparation.
When, in turn, those and other anomalies became featured in the entrepreneur's demonstration store, the product centered persona of the leader concentrated on the details of a virtually foolproof method of reproducing franchises capable of selling a standardized product so attractive that each franchisee would generate customers for others when Americans traveled across the country from one region to another.
At this point, a second system regulating attention switch occurred. With quality control the key priority for the spin-off fast-food organization that rapidly was replacing the original mixer marketing one, the "real" reality of the new company's mission consisted of selling organization. Heretofore, human communication in the hardware marketing firm had been invoked to the end of promoting a pre-established "truth": The technical superiority of a mixer over its competitors. Henceforth, the company would practice communication toward the end of organizing the operations in a franchise so that a predictably high quality product in goods and services would ensue. To say it another way, the company [143] "really" was (1) in the business of being "entrepreneur" for selling "managerial" communication; (2) its primary means of learning about itself was its own product centered "managerial" attention to the myriad of details involved in hands-on experience in technical solutions and operations training for franchise owners and their employees; (3) its top priority—as already summarized—was quality control. In its mixture, then, of "entrepreneurial" and "managerial" communication styles, the soon to be giant of fast-food franchising would seem to have foreclosed the danger of anomalies potentially being fatal to its success.
Recall, however, that attention to details on product does not equal attention to details on the logistics of fiscal efficiency. With the "entrepreneur's" communication dwelling on the selling of organization to franchisees who could then produce profits for themselves based on serving popular food, the new franchising company, itself, experienced an increasingly threatening anomaly between expectancy and outcome. With its new version of its "real" nature, its means of learning about itself, and its priority, there had been an increasingly serious gap in its talk. In the original scenario for prosperity, the new organization had been dependent upon greatly increased sales of its hardware by the ancestor organization. With the potentiality of large numbers of new franchisees not yet an actuality, that income was not materializing. Further, it was becoming more apparent that the original plans for licensing fees and percentage share of gross sales would not provide income needed for the new company's growth. Added to these anomalies in the new organization's reality was increasing incompatibility of its management with the drive-in owners whose name and merchandising methods had so fired the "entrepreneur's" imagination.
Necessary, then, for the new company's continued adaptation to its environment was an attention switch away from its foregrounding of operations and toward the foregrounding of finance. The ground had been prepared for such a shift of emphasis with the hiring, earlier, of a person whose strength was fiscal management. Now, faced with anomalies just summarized, the role of the fiscal " manager" clearly complemented that of the product entrepreneur. As means of enhancing return on investment, a franchise marketing company became the parent of a subsidiary formed to produce maximum income from minimum capitalization in the process of securing mortgages on new fast-food facilities. Further, additional financing from major lenders made possible the creation of another subsidiary, an organization operating franchise outlets by the parent company for all profits instead of a percentage. Also, the percentage of gross income paid by franchisees for the organizational information would be revised upward later; in the meantime, the two new subsidiaries made possible the continuation and maturing of the business that consisted of selling organization. Also made possible was the buying out of the shares in that business held by the originators of the assembly line for fast food.
In this third attention shift, then, anomalies of bad cash flow, overly stressed "product" leadership, and organizational friction with "absentee" name-sakes for the business, were all compensated for by talk featuring attention to money management more so than on product development.
At the same time, however, there began to grow another key anomaly, one which for its resolution prompted an attention switch away from the period of primary focus upon fiscal efficiency—and, significantly—away from the complementary nature of the two basic styles in company forming communication.
[144] Increasingly, the "real" reality of the franchising corporation was unclear: Was it an organization to sell organization? Or was it primarily an organization brokering financial transactions among landholders, renters, and financial institutions? Was it, in the second place, an organization that was to be understood in terms of the creativity and energy of its people, or was it an organization to be understood mainly in relation to its theory driven and communication constituted, interacting roles? Was its number one priority the rendering of service that provided corporate scale know-how and survivability to the small family owned business, with profits as byproduct of that service? Or was it an organization keyed to the accumulation of profits via astute fiscal efficiency in managing money?
These alternative versions of organizational being, knowing, and valuing were not, of course, exclusive of one another. The question, nevertheless, was which set was to receive foregrounding and which was to receive backgrounding in allocation of the organization's limited resource of attention. The means by which the "entrepreneurial" and "managerial" communication styles once more were rendered complementary rather than competitive was to institutionalize the former: In a decision backed by the influence of majority share holding, it was determined that future CEOs of the franchising corporation would come from the ranks of persons experienced primarily in operations. Those leaders would adopt many of the product-refining, detail-focussing, role-specializing viewpoints of the "managerial" emphasis, thus institutionalizing the "entrepreneurial" vision. By the mid-seventies, these were the choices made as to what was to be featured and what was to be backgrounded in the ongoing communication patterns of the corporation.
You know, and have known, that the company in question is known officially as the McDonald's Corporation and that the person who singly is most responsible for the system balancing attention shifts during its growth from infancy to maturity was Ray Kroc. What additional shifts have occurred in the organization since the 1970s? They would comprise another story.
In the meantime, it is important to make an attention shift in the exploration, itself, of the next case study in attention switching. Up to now, the importance to attention shifting of finding new "overarching names" has been backgrounded to the dynamics of anomaly featuring and masking vis-a-vis a company's being, knowing, and valuing. Now for fuller understanding of how attention shifts allocate organizational attention for the sake of adaptation to the environment, foregrounded will be the finding of "overarching names" and backgrounded will be anomaly featuring and masking. In the process, everything said will be the "same" as what has been explained before in this chapter, but, it will also be "different" as you read next about the organizational power that accompanied switches of attention in the high-tech world.
The manuscript for this chapter was prepared on a desktop computer, an output of the company that forms the next case study. Many of you, by now, have had personal experience with a microcomputer, perhaps using word processing or spreadsheet applications or playing games. But less than two decades ago, the story about persons' experiences with computers was much different. Your experience today descends from a group of persons shifting their [145] attention from naming the microcomputer as a "hobbyist's toy" to viewing it as a "consumer product." Such a shift entailed featuring attention to "product application" (usefulness) and away from "product creation" (technical development). As will be seen, this attention switch led to the reorganization of persons united by a common interest in a hobby—microcomputers—into computer companies, one of which is known today as Apple Computer, Inc.
In the 1960s and early 1970s, computing power came in two forms: mainframe computers—expensive, room sized machines individually configured for the purchasing corporation, and minicomputers—mass-produced refrigerator-sized machines with a price tag that limited their sales to larger businesses and research institutions. Access to these machines was difficult; users keypunched batch process data cards that were then passed on to technicians who operated the computer and who determined program execution, or else, users shared limited and expensive computer time via online terminals. Computer manufacturers, such as IBM, named these mainframe and minicomputers "industrial products" and allocated attention to product application in the form of software for tabulating and processing business data and for calculating complex scientific formulations—outcomes expected to meet the needs of the market implied in the name.
The name "industrial product," though, masked these companies' attention to the possibility of thinking about the computer as a "consumer product" to be mass marketed. With attention directed toward "old" product application, the possibility of "new" product creation was backgrounded, despite the fact that, now and then, anomalously, companies would receive inquiries from individuals wanting their own computers.
Furthermore, talk by computer programmers, engineers, and others involved in product application, development, and use revealed frustration from lack of access to and control over computers. This tension was aroused by their featuring of attention to gaps or anomalies between lack of access to the "industrial product," on one hand, and expectations generated by American cultural values—such as freedom, equality, and individualism—on the other. In a free society, access was limited to a "powerful" technocracy. As individuals, most programmers and engineers had little control over the technology that provided the source of their livelihood. These frustrated users viewed computers as being surrounded by a "priesthood" of technicians who guarded access to the secrets of computing power—a non-fitting relation in a society that names equality as a value. Finally, the "power" of this new technology might be used against persons, violating expectations about freedom and individuality. Those lacking access to computers, then, began shifting attention away from product application and toward product creation—they would find a way to build their own computers. The way emerged in 1969 in the form of a microprocessor chip.
Semiconductor companies began marketing microprocessor chips, named as "machine controllers," with the expected outcome that they would be used primarily to control existing machines such as copiers, calculators, and elevators. The name mediated expectations constituted by the name "machine controller" masked attention to the possibility that the microprocessor itself was a machine. To the semiconductor companies, microprocessors were categorized symbolically as being "different" from computers.
Frustrated computer users, however, began to direct attention to the "similarities" between microprocessors and computers. For instance, Apple co-founder Steven Wozniak remembers his first close study of the chips: "All of a [146] sudden, I started realizing microcomputers are the same as minicomputers and I understood them" (Williams & Moore, 1984, p. A67). Discourse such as this promoted an attention switch by featuring attention to what was similar between the two categories of experience (e.g., capability of processing data) and by masking attention to differences between microprocessors and computers (e.g., size); everything was the "same," but now it was "different." This symbolic re-categorization of the microprocessor immediately opened up the possibility of building one's own computer around the microprocessor chips.
In the mid-1970s, then, these computer "creators" began grouping themselves into organizations with names such as the Homebrew Computer Club, the Amateur Computer Club, and the Southern California Computer Society. Bringing these individuals together as organizations was a common acceptance of the name "computers are for people"; computing power belonged in the hands of the masses, not in those of a technological elite, as had been occurring from their perspective. The founders of these organizations typically, then, saw their organizations as a way to remedy the gaps of inequality, lack of freedom, and lack of individualism by stressing attention to the sharing of information, cooperation in building microcomputers, and decentralization. To promote the "hobbyist" nature of the organizations, they typically had no obvious organizational structure—no membership requirements, dues, or elected officers—in contrast to the highly organized, bureaucratic nature of institutionalized computer companies. The organizations' names also reflected their nature; their members were "hobbyists," computer "users," or amateurs, building computers to meet their individual needs for freedom, equality, and individualism while many worked full-time for the large computer manufacturers. The organizations gained knowledge about themselves via the cooperative sharing of information among members. Finally, the organizations placed priority on exploration and hands-on experience in contrast to the large companies' emphases on secrecy and controlled access. For these hobbyists, building a computer was not a business but the creating of a work of art manifesting the admired quality of being technically sophisticated. Computer hobbyists often designed and sold computer related products less for profit than simply as a way to finance their computer avocation. The purpose was to give everyone free access to computers; for them, it was a way to enact the dream of giving computing power to the people.
Yet, while featuring attention to gaps in the outcomes promoted by the institutionalized companies, the hobbyists masked attention to gaps in their own outcomes. At the same time the creators believed they were avoiding what they named to be the "problems of a technological elite," they, too, were becoming a technological elite. Constructing and operating a microcomputer required skill and expertise; microelectronic parts had to be gathered tediously from numerous sources and then carefully soldered together. While computer kits, available since the mid-1970s, could be purchased for about $375, almost $3,000 in accessories was actually required to operate the machine. Further, not only did potential users have to be hardware specialists, but they also had to be software specialists; little to no software existed. Finally, while the computer hobbyists were organized to share information within their group, little know-how had spread outside group. Computing power was still out of the reach of the masses and in the hands of a technological elite. The computer hobbyist organizations could not achieve the dream that united them for the focus of their attention was on the [147] act of creating computers—the hardware—not on the act of using them, their applications.
Wozniak, like many other members of the "computer hobbyist" organizations, built his own microcomputer by designing a printed circuit board, which, when fully assembled, contained the microprocessor, its support system, and memory chips. To complete the computer required simply connecting an input device—a keyboard, an output device—a video display monitor, and a power supply to the PC board. A close friend and future Apple cofounder, Steven Jobs, suggested that Wozniak have 50 PC boards manufactured to be sold to other Homebrew Club members to save them the trouble of constructing their own PC boards, consistent with the hobbyist "spirit" of sharing. But then, there was change.
Jobs decided that a further way to finance this avocation would be to sell 50 more PC boards to a local retailer who sold computer kits and equipment primarily to hobbyists. But upon visiting the retailer, Jobs learned that, while the retailer liked the PC board, he did not name it as a "product." What the retailer viewed as a product was a fully assembled computer. The microcomputer market had begun attracting customers who had neither the time nor expertise to scrounge for parts to construct their own computers, he said. By naming the PC board as a product, Jobs had limited his attention to the hobbyist market. However, the renaming of the PC board as merely part of a product shifted the direction of development of the Apple Computer Company—everything was the same" but at the same time "different."
Furthermore, this shift of attention from viewing computer parts as products to viewing the whole computer as product entailed a shift of attention away from product creation and toward product application. Jobs discovered that many computer hobbyists symbolically categorized the Apple I as being similar to the mainframe and minicomputers which threatened their freedom, individualism, and equality. A fully assembled microcomputer limited the hobbyists' access and control over the machine; it did not "fit" their expectancies associated with computer creation. However, non-hobbyists, too, avoided the machine for in its initial state (no keyboard, monitor, power supply, or software), they continued to categorize it as being "same" as a hobbyist's toy, requiring technical skill and expertise to operate and having no useful applications.
In the meantime, Wozniak began work on an enhanced version of the Apple I in response to suggestions made by hobbyists. From his point of view, "There was no interest to have it [the Apple II] be a product. It was just an intent to do the best computer I could to show off at my club" (Raleigh, 1987, p. 40). By now, though, Jobs had made the shift from viewing the Apple as a hobbyist's toy to viewing it as a consumer product and began to glimpse the possible moneymaking opportunities emerging from such a shift. For him, the question became, how to make that name real for others.
Jobs realized that to rename the Apple II as a consumer product required (1) re-categorizing the Apple Computer Company as being "different" from hobbyist organizations and "same" as the established computer companies and (2) re-categorizing the computer itself as "different" from a hobbyist product and "same" as a consumer product. Renaming, though, requires showing how a communication event, such as a product or company, "fits" the expectancies constituted by a particular category of experience.
[148] To enact the first step, Jobs initially rented a mail drop box in Palo Alto to create the image of a "polished corporate address" (Moritz, 1984, p. 145). Further, he hired an answering service "to help give the impression that Apple was a steady enterprise and not a fly-by-night operation" (p. 145). He also hired an advertising agency to design the now famous Apple logo and create and place advertisements for the company that was operating out of Jobs' parents' garage. Finally, Jobs took a step that other hobbyists selling computer kits had been unwilling to take—he acquired an investor, Mike Markkula, with the marketing and management expertise that Jobs and Wozniak lacked. Markkula, then, eventually hired a president and set up a managerial structure for the growing company. Maneuvers such as these then, attempted to shift persons' attention from naming the Apple Computer Company as a "hobbyist's venture' to viewing it as a "real" computer company.
To promote the renaming of the computer itself, Jobs studied the appearance of household appliances and attempted to redesign the computer to make it look like an appliance—housing it in a sleek, trim, light brown plastic case. Further, the Apple 11 was designed to work with other appliances familiar to the consumer—a TV set for a monitor and a cassette player as input/output device. Such acts helped feature attention to the "user-friendliness" of the machine. Finally, rather than stressing the technical sophistication of the computer, early press releases and advertisements stressed applications to education, control over home appliances, entertainment, and financial computation. The microcomputer no longer was a device merely to be appreciated but it was to be used; it was not a "toy," but a "tool" similar to other household appliances. These maneuvers and others, then, promoted the symbolic re-categorization of the computer from "hobbyist toy" to "consumer product" and opened up new possibilities for the company.
For Wozniak, though, the idea of renaming his computer as a consumer product and constituting a company to promote it was difficult to accept, for it required a shift of attention in organizational being, knowing, and valuing. Wozniak described the feeling as "stepping over the boundary" (Levy, 1984, p. 258). Such a step meant that he no longer could be concerned simply with satisfying his own needs via computer creation, but rather his attention had to be directed to the needs of the marketplace in the form of applications. Experience outside the organization began playing a greater role in how the organization learned about itself. Finally, and most troublesome for Wozniak., was the shift in priorities—from the openness of the hobbyist organization to the closed-ness expected in a proprietary commercial venture, from creative design to making money. To give computing power to the people required becoming similar to the established computer companies that had been named as denying computing power to the people—everything was the same, but at the same time different.
The new possibilities that opened to Jobs and Wozniak as they moved from hobbyists to commercial manufacturers is reflected in the company's sales, which jumped $700,000 in 1977 to over $1 billion in 1984. Eventually, as the company grew, the founders would discover they were in the business of selling small business computers rather than home computers, and they would find ways to allocate attention both to production creation and application. They would also experience shifts in emphasis between "entrepreneurial" and "managerial" communication systems, with the eventual result that Jobs would leave the company; but to focus on such attention shifts would require another case study.
Common to the three cases histories described in this chapter is the allocation of a limited resource, attention. In each instance, the growth, maintenance, and ongoing adaptation of the organization to its environment related to the organization's ability to shift attention to make use of familiar experiences and functions in an unfamiliar way.
Further, communicators strategically promoted or impeded attention switches by communicatively featuring or masking attention to anomalies in (1) what was really real about the organization, (2) how to understand the organization, and (3) how to prioritize desired outcomes.
Finally, in each example, the shift of attention entailed an apparent restructuring of relationships among ideas so that anomalies disappeared or were minimized. At the same time, though, the new "patterns" for understanding organizational experience backgrounded anomalies with which the organization would one day have to resolve in order to continue on a path of growth and adaptation. Thus, the process of attention switching is a continuous one (continuity). What changes is only the specific content of the attention switch (change).
In this chapter, attention was directed toward content shifts involving new products, new uses for old products, and movement from entrepreneurial to managerial task performance. In the case study that follows, you may find all of these content shifts and more involved in the growth and adaptation of the case study organization. But you will find that the story of attention switching, the shifting from one overall "name" for the output of an organization focussing on familiar "actualities" to a "name" that features new "possibilities," to be the same. Everything remains the same, yet is different from before.
In the late 1960s, an expanding insurance firm, which offers policies to cover losses resulting from theft of or damage to computers, experiences growing pains. The accounting department, itself, needs more computing power than can be provided by a minicomputer, but less than that provided by a mainframe. Growth will be crippled with too little computer power; yet, cash flow will be a significant problem with too much computer capacity (heavy immediate monetary outlay for hardware can be recouped only by future sales growth). Also disturbing is the fact that a mainframe will be under used, idle for long periods of time after company needs are met. Yet, a decision regarding computer acquisition must be made. Current accounting operations cannot keep up with the necessary financial tracking of the company.
Time-sharing, in which the company purchases time on a mainframe computer shared with other users, would be one efficient and relatively low-cost way to meet company needs in the short ran. Increased growth in sales would probably then enable the company to grow past the "awkward stage" and to avoid the present dilemma by being able to afford a mainframe later. That would allow the founder and CEO to concentrate on insurance sales without having to forego the necessary financial tracking and without worries about overspending for company equipment.
[150] At the same time, the vice-president and treasurer of the niche-playing insurance firm conceives of a way to have the present and future company needs for financial tracking met by the immediate purchase of a mainframe. Excess computer capacity will be sold to other firms in order to avoid under utilization and to finance debt payments. Rather than purchase time on another computer, the company can sell computer time by creating its own timesharing service. As the insurance company's sales grow and require more computer capacity, company growth will guarantee the retirement of the debt for the mainframe. Further, as a possible hedge against fluctuations in insurance sales, it is conceivable that the company can originate business information services via computer communication; the company itself is creating databases for its own investment decisions. Without selling its own decisioning strategies, which clearly are proprietary in nature, it could offer the databases, themselves, on which those strategies operate. Thus, in addition to selling computer time, the company can also sell information in the form of online databases.
The decision is made, considering all these options, to purchase a mainframe computer and to offer it for use by time sharers. Then the unexpected happens: timesharing sales are equaled soon by the widespread sale of databases; at the same time, insurance policy sales also increase. The company cannot keep up with current overall demand on computer capacity. It does not wish to sacrifice the new and unexpected earnings from the sale of databases. Yet to continue the expansion of insurance sales, the company needs to use more of the mainframe's capacity.
At this point, you are the decision maker.
1. Is the situation one marked by the recurrence of a familiar problem? If you think so, what are the key similarities to the familiar problem, what are the unimportant differences from the familiar problem, and so what are the familiar steps to a solution that can be applied here?
2. Or, on the other hand, is the situation one in which an opportunity is being named as a problem? Ask yourself, what is the essential nature of the business that the company is really in? How best can it continue to learn about itself? What are and should be the priorities for the company?
3. If your conclusion is "yes" to number 1 and "no" to number 2, then will you be allocating attention by impeding or promoting an attention switch?
4. If your conclusion is "no" to number 1 and "yes" to number 2, then will you be allocating attention by impeding or promoting an attention switch?
5. Whether a switch is to be impeded or promoted, what anomalies will be featured/masked? What switches in the organization's "real" nature will be maintained or changed? What shifts, if any, in the organization's ways of learning about itself and its environment be continued or revised? What changes in priority, if any, will be resisted or promoted?
6. Whether an attention shift is impeded or promoted, side effects will occur in (1) the hierarchy of role relationships—for instance, the maintenance and reinforcement of current relations; the minimization of current hierarchy; the substitution of new hierarchy; and (2) in patterns of perceived needs on the part of organization members, including "old" and It new" needs, together with continuation or change in the persons perceived as being able to satisfy those needs.
[151] To aid you in dealing with the "givens" and "possibilities" in the case, the accompanying matrix may be helpful in keeping the total situation before you. Your instructor knows which alternative for allocating attention the company took. Further, your instructor will be able to present you with another aspect of the case study, one having to do with an attention shift impeded or facilitated between management styles for the same company.
| [152] Allocating Attention by Promoting an Attention Switch | |
| Anomaly-featuring in old "name" of organization | Anomaly-featuring in new "name" of organization |
in the "real" business
|
in the "real" business
|
in how best to learn about company
|
in how best to learn about company
|
in priorities
|
in priorities
|
| Allocating Attention by Impeding an Attention Switch | |
| Anomaly-featuring in old "name" of organization | Anomaly-featuring in new "name" of organization |
in the "real" business
|
in the "real" business
|
in how best to learn about company
|
in how best to learn about company
|
in priorities
|
in priorities
|