| 来源类型 | Working Paper |
| 规范类型 | 报告 |
| DOI | 10.3386/w29580 |
| 来源ID | Working Paper 29580 |
| Organizational Frictions and Increasing Returns to Automation: Lessons from AT&T in the Twentieth Century | |
| James J. Feigenbaum; Daniel P. Gross | |
| 发表日期 | 2021-12-20 |
| 出版年 | 2021 |
| 语种 | 英语 |
| 摘要 | AT&T was the largest U.S. firm for most of the 20th century. Telephone operators once comprised over 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 first invented in the 1880s. We study what drove AT&T to do so, and why it took one firm nearly a century to automate this one basic function. Interdependencies between operators and nearly every other part of the business were obstacles: the manual switchboard was the fulcrum of a complex system which had developed around it, and automation only began after the firm and automatic technology were adapted to work together. Even then, automatic switching was only profitable for AT&T in larger markets—hence diffusion expanded as costs declined and service areas grew. We show that automation supported AT&T's continued growth, generating a positive feedback loop between scale and automation that reinforced AT&T's high market share in local markets. |
| 主题 | Labor Economics ; Labor Supply and Demand ; Industrial Organization ; Market Structure and Firm Performance ; Firm Behavior ; Other ; Accounting, Marketing, and Personnel ; History ; Labor and Health History ; Development and Growth ; Innovation and R& ; D |
| URL | https://www.nber.org/papers/w29580 |
| 来源智库 | National Bureau of Economic Research (United States) |
| 引用统计 | |
| 资源类型 | 智库出版物 |
| 条目标识符 | http://119.78.100.153/handle/2XGU8XDN/587254 |
| 推荐引用方式 GB/T 7714 | James J. Feigenbaum,Daniel P. Gross. Organizational Frictions and Increasing Returns to Automation: Lessons from AT&T in the Twentieth Century. 2021. |
| 条目包含的文件 | ||||||
| 文件名称/大小 | 资源类型 | 版本类型 | 开放类型 | 使用许可 | ||
| w29580.pdf（2120KB） | 智库出版物 | 限制开放 | CC BY-NC-SA | 浏览 | ||
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