VOL. 13, No. 2, 66-73
It is increasingly common to hear technology spoken of in distance education as a tool for increasing productivity (chiefly by cutting costs or generating revenues). Yet the experience of the private sector has been that in many industries performance enhancement with technology is more common than any increase in productivity or profitability and that many industries do not achieve profitability increases at all with technology (the productivity paradox). The position taken here is that distance education should learn lessons from the private sector regarding the cost, potential impacts on performance, implications for organizational stability, and innovation characteristics of technology in order to avoid a productivity paradox of our own.
Il est de plus en plus courant, en éducation à distance, d’entendre parler de la technologie comme d’un outil d’accroissement de la productivité (principalement parce qu’elle réduit les coûts ou entraîne des revenus). Cependant, le secteur privé a pu constater que, dans de nombreux secteurs d’activité, on voit plus fréquemment une optimisation de la performance qu’un accroissement de la productivité ou de la rentabilité, et que de nombreux secteurs d’activité n’obtiennent aucun accroissement de la rentabilité grâce à la technologie (le paradoxe de la productivité). Nous sommes d’avis que l’éducation à distance devrait profiter de ces leçons du secteur privé en ce qui a trait aux coûts, aux incidences possibles sur la performance, aux répercussions sur la stabilité organisationnelle et aux caractéristiques d’innovation de la technologie, afin d’éviter le paradoxe de la productivité sur notre propre terrain.
An increasing part of our present interest in high technology in distance education stems from pressure to cut programming costs (Rumble, 1989; Alberta Advanced Education and Career Development, 1996a; 1996b), or even to generate profits by competing “virtually” across former boundaries (Oberlin, 1996). One result is that we are now seeing more references to concepts borrowed from the corporate sector such as return on investment (ROI), cost-benefit analysis, and break-even point calculations (Harvard Computing Group, 1998; Matkin, 1997) as we try to demonstrate this connection.
How wise are we to link technology with profitability (cutting costs, making profits) in our thinking and planning? Answering this question requires a brief look at some of the experiences of the private sector with technology, with emphasis on the lessons these might contain for us.
We may be under some illusions about what technology has done for the private sector in the past decade and a half. Over that period, after technology-related expenditures of well over a trillion dollars, the verdict in some industries is that there have been only barely detectable productivity gains as measured by bottom-line profitability—the infamous productivity paradox (Shaw, 1994). Some, tired of waiting for the promised benefits (McIsaac, 1979; Mehlinger, 1996), have concluded that “computers are basically a dud in terms of productivity growth” (Fernandez, 1997).
The lack of productivity from such a huge investment is an example of a “revenge effect” (Tenner, 1996, p. 9), where unforeseen and usually undesirable results obtain when devices, people, and situations interact in the real world. The interactions that for some users have created such disappointing outcomes, and the private sector’s response to them, are pertinent to our intention for technology.
Spending. When the paradox of technology-without-productivity was first detected, it was suspected of being due to lack of critical mass: as expenditures increased, it was assumed, and the number of systems increased, benefits would begin to flow. Following this advice, expenditures, which were already high, steadily increased from the mid-1980s on, even in times of general economic stagnation (Murgatroyd, 1992).
Technology and productivity. Although disappointment with high technology as a means of directly increasing productivity became deeper and increasingly widespread, some private sector users were slow to recognize that this might be because in some industries there really was “little connection between information technology investment and profits, growth, or productivity” (Quinn & Baily, 1994, p. 38).
The potential for organizational chaos. Awareness of the darker side of the paradox for corporate well-being emerged slowly: Murgatroyd (1992) looked at technology in the corporate sector, and not only failed to find any association between technology and growth, but offered these warnings: “Some technological developments have opened new possibilities for organizational chaos, while others have made our lives more complex” (p. 57); and “Some technological developments can actually be disadvantageous to an organization” (p. 58).
The need for organizational adjustments. Analysis of the paradox eventually led to consensus on the fundamental problem: even when used appropriately, technology predictably lowers productivity initially, and only produces productivity increases after—and if—a potentially complex period of organizational adjustment has been successfully completed (Black & Lynch, 1996). This observation was made in relation both to business and educational implementations of technology (Arnaut, 1997; Dolence & Norris, 1995).
Costs and spending. A key finding from the corporate sector is that the costs of technology are high to begin with and tend to rise from there:
Performance and productivity. Some users have been reluctant to admit defeat with technology as a way to productivity because there have been some successes, specifically in industries such as retail, pharmaceuticals, travel, accounting, airlines, banking, insurance, and telecommunications (Quinn & Baily, 1994). Where successful technology implementations have occurred two significant facts have been observed: (a) the impacts are almost always in the area of performance changes, not productivity as measured by bottom-line profitability; and (b) measurement of the performance effects that occurred is difficult, requiring evaluators to be alert for them and organizations to value and plan for them.
In distance education, reluctance to recognize the limitations of technology is compounded by the variety of our operations. As Sewart (1993) notes, some distance education operations work well on the principles of a manufacturing industry (e.g., production and distribution of course materials), while other subsystems run on principles of a service industry (student support). Measures of performance must be developed to address the use of technology in both types of operations.
There are two other problems: (a) the lack of indicators of performance appropriate to distance education, reflecting its uniqueness and differences from other types of programming; and (b) in distance education itself the need to acknowledge and allow for the “substantial variability among distance education providers” themselves (Shale & Gomes, 1998). Although governments may not realize it, we are not all alike in distance education, and we therefore cannot all be measured by the same criteria or in the same ways (Shale & Gomes, 1998).
Recognizing a genuine lack of fit. It is plausible that some innovations really are not to the advantage of the organization, and that resistance is thus a reasonable and correct response to them. Often the purpose or vision associated with the innovation has not been communicated properly, or other elements of the organization’s history and culture have not been addressed. In such cases, as Stringer and Uchenick (1986) remark, “Culture will win out every time.”
The way through this adjustment stage is by strategic planning and training. Planning assures that a common vision of the desired future of the organization is generated, with performance objectives integrated into operations and strategies, and training provides those involved with the skills to contribute (Watkins & Callahan, 1998). There is some evidence that the private sector, although not usually stinting on training, may not have adequately anticipated the initial and recurrent training needs of various user groups (Black & Lynch, 1996).
Adjusting to technology. Technology is at root an innovation, and the lessons of innovations theory apply. The top-down nature of corporate decision-making often ignores this fact, which makes this a prime suspect in many private sector technology failures (Quinn & Baily, 1994). Some key principles for adoption of technology in distance education operations include the following:
A Distance Education Productivity Paradox?
Returning to the question posed at the beginning of the article, it appears that we should be skeptical in distance education of corporate models of implementing technology. We need especially to recognize the following lessons from the experience of the private sector:
Do we have a productivity paradox at this time in distance education? The most likely answer is the same as in the private sector: it depends on the use and implementation. There are clearly productive uses of technology in distance education and, less well known because less publicized, there are certainly disappointing ones.
It may be true that we do not have a highly visible problem with productivity and technology in distance education—yet. We could find ourselves with one, however, unless we adopt and act on the attitude that technology is “not valuable for its own sake ... only valuable if it adds value to an existing service” (Murgatroyd, 1992, p. 58). The issues related to this question are not merely academic. Wysocki (1998) reminds us that mistakes with technology have been economically fatal to organizations in the private sector, and Oberlin (1996) is not being overly dramatic when he writes, “technology will represent the single biggest opportunity to either enhance or damage an institution’s competitive standing” (p. 21). Technology does not support stasis: we either advance with it or decline.
Although the potential to suffer from our own version of the productivity paradox (or some other revenge effect) exists in distance education, we are fortunate to have the opportunity to benefit from the experiences of others. The stakes are potentially very high; the incentive to learn should be, too.
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Patrick J. Fahy has taught adults, worked in a high technology industry, and consulted for a number of years. He is now a member of the faculty of Athabasca University’s Master of Distance Education program. He became interested in the question discussed in this article in the process of developing a course on technology in distance education.