MANAGEMENT POLICY FOR GREATER COMPUTER BENEFITS - FRIENDLY SOFTWARE, COMPUTER LITERACY, OR FORMAL TRAINING

Using data from over 3,000 public employees in 46 U.S. cities in 1988, this article investigates three classes of factors commonly thought t o affect computer use: training, friendliness of software, and user co mputer background. Computer use is analyzed as 11 specific tasks (such as programming, record searching) and is further broken down by organ izational role of user, for example, manager and street-level employee . Some findings are that (1) the computer literacy or prior coursework of employees is more important to their computer use than how many ye ars an employee has used computers; and (2) for most employees the use r friendliness of programs is relevant, and weakly so, only for generi c tasks such as searching a file or entering data. More generally, the data lead us to highlight training because it can be used to compensa te for weaknesses in present software as well as in the computer liter acy and experience of users.