design projects. Basically it is an anthology of design methods that were established in the sixties, and it is further comment on the sparseness of the literature in this field that the current 1981 edition of Jones book is still based substantially on the earlier material. However it still represents a major contribution to the subject.

There is a section on man- machine system designing which will be of interest to the readers of this journal. However, for the readership of this journal the major interest of this work will be the discussion of design and designing, that challenging context for the application of computer-aided design technology.

Partick Purceil, Royal College of Art, London

See also the review by Nigel Cross

What managers read

J F Blagden Do managers read? Cran- field Institute of Technology Press, UK (1980) 20 pp, £3.00

This is a thesis put into a form suitable for managers to read. Or is it ?

The aim of the study was to find out the extent to which members of the British Institute of Management used the BIM library (known as the In- formation Centre).

By and large managers do not appear to read very much. If they ' read' their preferred reading is Manaqement Today (the BIM journal) or Financial Times. Splitting of the reader popula- t ion into groups suggests that personnel managers are the principal functional group to use the B!M hbrary. This rai- ses all kinds of interesting questions. The author suggests that reading is related to job characteristics and quotes Rosemary Stewart 's picture: ' A charac- teristic of most management jobs as shown by a number of studies is a highly fragmented work pattern. Mana- gers typically switch their at tention every few minutes from one person or subject to another although the frequ- e n c y . . , will vary both with the job and the individual style of working. ' In addi- tion he quotes Glover on the difference between decision-making in science and in management. Typically the manager deals with inadequate information and 'satisfices'.

Reflection on the possible implications for designers suggests that

they might occupy an intermediate pos- ition on extent of reading between scien- tists and managers and there may be a wider spread of key reading items than for managers and possibly even than for scientists.

Although there have been a number of studies on designer reading no a t tempt at cross-professional com- parison is known. There would be diffi- culties in specifying populations suitable for comparison. It should be noted that regret is expressed about the inadequacy of the BIM membership breakdown.

The report includes a compil- ation of available studies of managerial work activities. There is an indication that what reading occurs is largely con- cerned with scanning or monitoring rather than directed searching. Thus Mintzberg found that on the reading of periodicals action was taken on only 4 out of 102 recieved in his study. Stew- art, in maintaining that project-type managers read more than others, lends colour to the conjecture about designer reading.

The top five titles of reading matter include, in addit ion to the two already quoted, The Times, The Econo- mist and The Sunday Times. Books were either bought personally,

Disaster responses

J Egginton Bitter harvest Secker and Warburg, London (1980) 351 pp, £9.95

People have a great interest in tragedy, particularly when it is spectacular or devastating. The classical Greek view of tragedy tended to look at the inevitable working of fate for a single individual. Today, however, we are receiving all too many reports which deal with the fate of whole communities. Although some of them can claim to have a technological basis is it more likely that human or organizational stupidity, error, or misbe- haviour is central. What can be reason- ably said about the difficulties of people who live in regions of the world likely to have frequent onslaughts from flood, huricane or earthquake? At least some- thing might be done to lessen the inci- dence of damage and to bring relief in a prearranged and organized way.

But what about the unexpected or the unknown? Although with the be- nefit of hindsight we now doubt almost anything to do with halogenated hydro-

borrowed from libraries other than the company library, borrowed from the company hbrary, or were sent direct by the publisher ( this raises odd questions). Apart from the BIM library, public hbraries and university hbraries played important parts. The principal items of information sought externally dealt with management principles and techniques, technical information, and 'other personnel topics' . A comparison of the managerial functions performed with the kinds of information sought suggests a reasonable match.

The type of s tudy made avoids a number of topic areas because of its nature. The author raises questions of the status of reading among managers. Is it something wich does not fit in with the apparently-desired 'macho ' image ? But be might as well have asked whether there is anything of particular value in the management literature and at temp- ted to define it. There appears to be a need to carry out some detailed case analysis to find out why managers read and the effectiveness of their reading transactions compared with other ways of obtaining information.

Sydney Gregory

carbons - even if there are some good guys without which hfe would be harder. The case reported here concerns a mistake about chemicals in unmarked bags (a result of paper shortage) in which PBB (polybrominated biphenyl) - a complex material used as a fire retardant - was substituted for a simple and harmless inorganic additive to cattle feed.

This simple confusion by an illiterate driver led to the spread of PBB across the whole state of Michigan and the contamination of many of its nine million inhabitants through their con- sumption of meat and dairy products.

The story which unfolds is that of persistance in the a t tempt to diagnose the troubles which emerged as a first result in dairy cattle. The essential persistence was that of a farmer's son, trained as a chemical eng- ineer and then working as a major dairy farmer. The difficulty lay in relating ser- ious changes in cattle behaviour to any of many possible causes of which change

190 DESIGN STUDIES

in cattle feed was only one. The vital contaminant was not something of whose presence anyone was aware. Furthermore, the methods of instru- mental analysis were not readily acces- sible even if the object of the search had been known.

The various studies by experts and new complaints coming in from farmers lacked major organizational co- hesion. When the Michigan Department of Agriculture ultimately intervened it was to serve quarantine notices on the farmers. From then on there proceeded a tangled series of scientific arguments, legal confrontations, interactions with politicians and uncertainties about the standing of the local university in the community.

With case material of this kind it is important to try and draw out what is of general application. This appears to lie in the illumination of two problem

Our technological future

D Collingridge The social control of technology Frances Pinter, London (1980) 200 pp, £12.75

One cannot avoid believing that some- where, deep down, the author has spe- cial feelings about an ill-defined force which he calls ' technology'. The kinds of arguments which he deploys can clearly be directed against other targets such as tobacco, slavery, opium, adulter- ated bread (to name some issues of the early 19th century) or skateboards, hyp- ermarkets, containerization, and mone- tarist politics.

According to him 'our tech- nical competence vastly exceeds our understanding of the social effects which follow from its exercise'. As everyone of reasonable age and maturity knows this is not a new complaint. During the 1930s there was a call for a 'morator- ium on scientific research' for a

areas. The first deals with distributing systems in whiv.h noxious products can be introduced by ignorance, stupidity, or evil intent, and which can generate diagnostic puzzles because of lack of information. The second concerns the development of adequate response pro- cedures.

The general approach today attempts to lower the likelihood of occurence of disasters by legal and pro- cedural means. But we do not appear to have an organized concern about unexpected possibilities. Although there are regional disaster plans and the hke has anyone given thought to diag- nosing the less obvious? These are matters which should be reflected upon by those who take decisions on the design of communities. Do we have a sufficiently sensitive monitoring system?

T P

similar reason. The principal claim advanced

is 'a new way of dealing with the dilemma of control' the dilemma being that, if a technology can be knowrgto have un- wanted social effects only when these effects are actually felt, how can one retain the ability to exercise control over it. To arrive at this we need to understand and counter the 'notorious resistance to control which technologies achieve as they become mature'.

In presenting his case Coiling- ridge provides a number of reviews of events which deal with energy, nuclear and ballistic weapons, and lead in motor fuel. What emerges from these reviews is that there is no standard pattern of events -- which would, in any sober consideratio~ be highly unlikely. He characterizes the causes briefly as: inflexibility, competition, 'hedging decision', lead time difficulty, scale of

operation and dogmatism. It might also be noted that some of the activities rev- iewed are continuing whereas others are limited as projects.

The theoretical tool chosen is a technique of 'decision making under ignorance' which is declared to be diff- erent from the now well-accepted dec- ision making under uncertainty. This he does not appear to qualify in any way with respect to criteria such as 'least regret' etc.

Some qualification emerges incidentally in what seems to be the least pessimistic part of the book. This deals with the use of scenario analysis in the 1976 Marshall Report on UK Energy R and D. This scenario analysis develops a set of six hypothetical states of the world up to 2025 AD. These are roughly the equivalent of potential failure modes in the operation of a com- plex manufacturing system. What is sought is a portfolio of R and D which has great robustness, with the least likelihood of failure over the period of interest. No- thing particularly new comes out of Marshall's use of scenario analysis but it provides a rhetoric for informed pub- lic discussion.

Within some such potential- states-of-the-world structure we might be better placed to make decisions, although, as decisions go, they are most likely to be made on political or power grounds. But given a public exposure of the arguments and, more importantly, the availability of the indications from a suitable monitoring system, it should be possible for interested people to take part in debate on whether to change direction.

Perhaps the debate is about democracy, or more democracy, and about the kind of machinery which is needed to make that democracy fun- ctional. Technological issues have been chosen, possibly because of their 'non- transparent' character, but equally well educational or economic issues might be involved and, from some viewpoints at least, have a larger significance.

TP

vol 2 no 3ju ly 1981 191