Organizational and Economic Obstacles to Automation: A Cautionary Tale from AT&T in the Twentieth Century

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Feigenbaum, James; Gross, Daniel P.
• 署名单位: Boston University; National Bureau of Economic Research; Duke University
• 刊物名称: MANAGEMENT SCIENCE
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0025-1909
• DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.2022.01760
• 发表日期: 2025
• 关键词: automation; technology adoption; ORGANIZATIONS; COMPLEMENTARITY; TASK INTERDEPENDENCE

摘要

AT&T was the largest U.S. firm for most of the 20th century. Telephone operators once comprised more than 50% of its workforce, but in the late 1910s, it initiated a decades -long process of automating telephone operation with mechanical call switching-a technology invented in the 1880s. We study what drove AT&T to do so and why it took nearly a century. Interdependencies between call switching and nearly every other activity in AT&T's business presented obstacles to change: Telephone operators were the fulcrum of a complex production system that had developed around them, and automation only began after the firm and new technology were adapted to work together. Even then, automatic switching was only profitable in larger markets- hence, diffusion expanded when the technology improved or service areas grew. The example suggests even narrowly defined tasks can be difficult to automate if they interact with many others.