I bridged the transition from the essentially no-electronic-communications era to just a few years ago. Looking back at the differences is startling:
We started out working with clients that would make 2 or in a rare case 3 rounds of changes on projects, with a day or two minimum on each side to review and process the changes. Life was normal and work was fun. At a certain point the project was finished.
In the latter days I ended up chained to the computer, making literally dozens of changes to the same project over the course of a DAY. 15 min. after I sent a "finished" file to the client, (aaahh get a cup of coffee and WhoopS!) I'd get an e-mail for another minor change. Make change. Send file. Get e-mail with new changes. Make changes. Send file. This went on ALL DAY LONG.. they never stopped! If I came in at 7 there were already demands that they'd forwarded from 8 or 9 the night before, same time zone.
The various client elements, also, could never get it together to review the changes together INTERNALLY.. so I'd be getting changes from several quarters, sometimes conflicting! When I suggested they take a break, talk together and get back to me the next day they seemed offended! So I'd have to call each of them in turn and waste time on the phone trying to re-integrate the project and figure out what they collectively wanted. Then the next round of changes would come.
And then they wondered why our bills were so high.
This was pretty much the norm for all clients.. that just seems to be the way everyone has gotten used to working: running around like chickens with their heads cut off. WAY more stress, with the bonus of WAY lower productivity. The projects were never, ever, finished, and we were made to frantically continue to phone and fax changes to printers and trade show booth constructors and various fabricators while the work was in final production. I never, ever had to do that in the '80s and it made me frustrated and embarrassed to be abusing my suppliers in turn.
I got the feeling it was a downward spiral with no hope. Far from trying to learn (from us or by experience) to meet mutually-agreed-upon deadlines and manage their work well, it seemed like the crisis-mode actually served to justify their existence. The more frenetically they worked, the more they felt important. "See! We got through 20 rounds of changes today!" If they sat down seriously and THOUGHT about and READ what they were working on for an hour and made all the changes at once.. then what would they do for the other seven hours? Go home?
The higher-up managers are to blame, but I get the feeling they, too, are just caught up in it and have a hard time stepping back and seeing the waste and the burn-out. The older the person, I will say, the easier they were to work with, but I think that's just because, like us.. they remembered a time when things were not so continuously "urgent".
CFB, sorry your study was "buried", but really.. it's all there for anyone with eyes to see it.