Journal of Strategic Information Systems 1995 4(2) 201-203

Book reviews

LEO: The First Business Computer P J Bird Hasler Publishing, Wokingham (I 994) 272 pp ISBN 0 952165I 0 4

This book tells the story of the development of the world’s first business computer by J Lyons, of corner teashop fame, and the subsequent setting up of a subsidiary to manufacture and sell computers. It is a tale which has much for the modern researcher as well as the historian. It is the former because in it one can find examples of such ‘current’ topics as vision, competitive advantage, business process reengineering ‘work could be undertaken which had not previously been possible using conventional methods’ (p 39), and strategy based on computerization. There were sponsors and champions; the use of prototyping, parallel implementation. Attention was paid to security and the use of a back-up machine. Again, as the strategic information technology (IT) argument advocates, commitment was undertaken without much analysis of costs or benefits, a rough estimate gave costs as flOO,OOO, and the return f50,OOO pa. In the event (the first computerization project cost overrun?) total cost for the first machine was f150,OOO and the time taken more than 5 years. Clearly there were benefits but perhaps not those envisaged. For instance, payroll improve- ments - clerk 8 minutes, LEO 1.5 seconds. LEO was estimated to do the work of 200-400 clerks but ‘in the event no staff were made redundant as a result of the initial installation of LEO’. Lyons was also a firm with the foresight to employ the young Frank Land and the young Margaret Thatcher, though it is not clear if their paths ever crossed.

What is striking about the process is how much we have lost only to rediscover more recently. For instance, Lyons had a ‘systems research office’ and they recognized the importance in the early days of involve-

0963-8687 1995 Elsevier Science B.V.

ment and participation of managers and staff (users). However, this was disregarded somewhere along the line as, by 1962, a report, ‘LEO and the Managers’, had been written without any account of the managers’ point of view. We also have illustrations of attention to detail in cost terms, quite ridiculous when the whole process was experimental and uncontrolled. For example, Lyons’ cost accountant measured the amount of wire used by a sub-contractor to the nearest inch (perhaps this again is the earliest example of accountants not understanding the true issues in computerization). We also have a strange, very British world in which the major electronic circuitry work sub- contractor was a luxury yacht building firm. In many ways the development process resembles that of Data General recounted in The Soul of a New Machine (Kidder, 1981).

Early on, LEO was used in bureau mode since the machine costs were high while labour costs were low. At the outset a 15-year life-cycle for machine development was deemed prudent but, 10 years on, LEO III was 100 times faster than LEO I. Aside from those for their own use, 59 computers were sold commercially but ‘at the outset Lyons had not contemplated manufacturing computers for sale outside the group’. As they recognized, ‘We deluded ourselves that this could be a money spinner’. Of course it could not last, the team of gentleman computer builders, far more interested in the process than the commercial prospects, up against the plethora of dedicated computer manufacturers (‘a potential computer user needs to have some confidence in his own judgement if he is to buy his computer from a teashop’) and eventually Lyons got out of the business in the great merger mania of British computer firms of the 1960s. Even then, the author maintains that this was done reluctantly.

Although not written for an academic audience, this book should be required

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Book reviews

reading for new doctoral students, to give them a taste of how things were and to enlighten them as to how far back the problems we see as current go. Perhaps it is time to ditch some of the ‘classic’ IT cases which are used to support virtually any new theory and go back a few years to reinterpret the pioneering days with the same models; it would probably be just as valid. If nothing else, this is a very readable book which conveys some of the excitement of the early days of doing something very different.

Philip Powell Warwick Business School

University of Warwick, UK

Reference Kidder, T (1981) The Soul of a New Machine Little, Brown, New York

The Japanese Advantage? Competitive IT Strategies Past, Present and Future Brian Hunt and David Targett Butterworth-Heinemann Oxford (1995) 246 pp f25.00

At a recent small gathering of UK informa- tion systems (IS) academics, the topic of just how little we know about the practice and process of IS in Japan arose. We are all aware of the strength of Japanese industry, but the causes underlying this remain elusive. Hence, this is a timely book which seeks to assess whether the ‘Japanese Advantage’ is in some way due to their use of technology and, more specifically, to their competitive information technology (IT) strategies.

Hunt and Targett have carried out 10 case studies (section two of the book) on a selection of well-known Japanese companies who operate in the UK, including Hitachi, JVC, Nissan, Sony and Toshiba. In addition to the cases, we are given a first section (three chapters) which sets the scene and a third section which attempts to draw together and weigh the evidence.

The first chapter very briefly reviews competition between Japan and the West. This is a useful though very conventional

introduction. Incidentally, here a strange hierarchy of sources emerges for the first time: if you are a major guru or an industrialist you are given a first name (Michael Porter, Paul Kennedy), if you are not quite as well known to a management audience but from somewhere impressive, you only get a surname and a location (McFarlan from Harvard Business School), while everyone else merely has a last name.

Chapter two reviews the literature on the strategic role of IT, giving us the change in the role of IT, the strategic grid, the Index matrix and the five levels of IT-induced business transformation. These are well presented but it is here that one might start to feel a little uneasy. What is offered is fine if you believe in rational, planned approaches to strategic IS and observable outcomes, but what about Ciborra and Jelassi (1994) and others’ recent views on the real processes in developing successful systems? We are told nothing of bricolage, serendipity etc as alternatives.

Chapter three is a bit of a let-down. It discusses Japanese culture and management, but it would by very surprising if this was new to readers. We are treated to a brief history of Japan (isolation and insularity) - land area, climate etc, to issues such as harmony and conformity, lifetime employ- ment, promotion by seniority, consensual decision taking and risk aversion.

Chapters four to 13 present the 10 cases. The structure of the book is such that the discussion of these is left to the final section, so that each case is a description of the company background, the business impact of IT and the process of managing IT. The first case is interesting, as is the second and maybe the third, but the emphasis on description rather than analysis leaves one wondering about the thrust after a number of these chapters. In the 130 pages of cases there are some very interesting vignettes but also some repetition. Perhaps the authors do not intend the book to be read in this way. Indeed, if the reader were to dip into the cases or read them after section three, it might feel better, but as it is they dominate

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