Transcript Technology is - Homework Market

Organisational Theory
Technology
RMIT University
Slide 1
Technology
Objectives:
• Introduce the concept of technology
• Discuss common assumptions about technology
•
To understand the relationship between technology,
organisations, management and employees.
• To explore how the different perspectives view
technology.
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Slide 2
Thinking about Technology
A critical exploration of the claims and counterclaims of the
relationship between technology and progress.
‘Why do we take so little for granted in the social sciences and so
much for granted in the natural sciences?…what happens when you
apply the scepticism normally reserved for social relations to
technology?’ (Grint and Woolgar, 1997, 37).
Technology does not emerge from an objective exercise in problem solving.
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Slide 3
Defining Technology
‘Technology’ is a fairly new word—coined by
Jacob Bigelow, Harvard professor, in the 1820s.
Roots of the word are much older:
• Techne (Greek): art, craft or skill
• Teks (Indo-Euro): weave or fabricate
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Slide 4
Defining Technology
Modern Definition 1:
‘A system based on the application of knowledge,
manifested in physical objects and
organisational forms for the attainment of
specific goals’
Assumption:
– that technology comes about in order to meet an
organisational or social need.
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Slide 5
Questions concerning technological
innovation
Do technologies comes about in order to meet an
existing need? Keyhole surgery to cut costs?
Do we (creators) find ‘needs’ for a new technology?
Transistors replace valves – miniaturisation?
Are technologies invented for practical purposes?
Related to 1?
Are technologies invented for the ‘challenge’ or for
symbolic purposes? Hydrogen Bomb? Logos?
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Slide 6
Defining Technology
Modern definition 2:
‘A system based on the application of knowledge, manifested in
physical objects and organisational forms for the attainment of
specific goals which maybe for practical reasons, symbolic reasons
or for reasons of generating profit’.
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Slide 7
Technology and Progress
A modernist duality: Common (modernist) assumptions:
• Technological change is usually one of continuous improvements of
existing technologies.
• ‘We’ can always make things better and faster.
• The progressive element of technology makes it a unique human
endeavour.
• Advances in technology bring positive advances to an organisation.
• An organisation’s level of progress can be measured in its advances
in technology.
Does the evidence support these claims? Totally? Partially? Not at all?
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Slide 8
Myth 1: Technology is ‘progressive’
Critical theorists and postmodernists argue:
Technology is a subversive force:
– Technological change can be a subversive process that results
in the modification or destruction of established organisational
roles, relationships and values.
Examples:
1.Early 1800s, British manufacturers in the textile industry wanted to
introduce new ‘more productive’ machines.
Workers objected for fear of its impact on their jobs and skills.
Formation of the ‘Luddites’ to destroy the ‘subversive’ technology.
2. China Today: the concept of toxic progress –polluted air and water.
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Slide 9
Myth 2: Technology can ‘fix’ all problems
Solving one problem generates new problems?
Car accidents  seat belts, air-bags
Hyper active kids  Retalin (prescription drugs)
Heroine addiction  methadone
Graffiti  resistant paints
Dangerous jobs  robotics
Global warming  carbon capture and storage/geosequestration
‘Ugly people’  cosmetics/cosmetic surgery
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Slide 10
The Appeal of Technocracy:
The myth of rational and objective leadership?
That organisations can be governed by engineers and
technical experts (scientific managers) who attempt to
solve workplace problems’ based on technical/scientific
principles.
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Slide 11
The deficiencies of the technocratic
delusion
• Technology is often a source of organisational problems.
• Goals for organisations are not always clear and often
contested by various stakeholders (workers versus
managers).
Technology is value-laden: not objective
– it serves to benefit someone.
– It is informed by those who control the institutional means for its
creation
– The techniques produced embody (objectify) the values and
perspectives of individuals engaged in their production.
– Humans are not as quick to change behaviour as a new machine
or computer chip.
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Slide 12
Technological Determinism
‘The assumption that technology determines—that is leads directly
to—a particular form of society or organisation’ (Grint, 1998).
• We are the ‘servants’ of technology rather than its ‘master’
(‘Frankenstein Monster’)
• Generally rejected by classical modernists (control of), SI
(constructed by), CT (used by hegamons) and PM (Tech-Human
interface)
The technological imperative: technology as a cause of
organisational structure – we select then accommodate it.
– Robert Blauner concludes in his research on work in American
industries that:
‘technology more than any other factor
determines the nature of the job tasks performed
by blue collar employees and has an important
effect upon a number of aspects of alienation’ ?
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Slide 13
MODERNIST APPROACHES: structural typologies
Types of technology: (Perrow)
core technology – unit/organisation level (Woodward,
Thompson)
supporting technology – task level – task variability (TV),
task analysability (TA)
Two-by-two matrix TV (high, low) against TA (high, low)
Thompson’s Typology:
Distinguish between long linked (mass production
continuous processing), mediating (bring people together
for exchange) and intensive (coordinating two or more
specialised abilities)
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Slide 14
Woodward’s Industrial Organization (1965): A Modernist
approach
Organisational form reflects production technologies
Production Type
Production and
Technological
characteristics
Organisational
structure
Unit and small batch
production (shipbuilding)
Made to order. Unpredictable.
Diverse products.
Specialised & flexible
technologies
Highly skilled labour.
Structure: Flat, flexible
Control: Committees, teams.
Skilled workers maintain some
control over machines.
Mass production
(automobile)
Routinised & predictable
Conveyor & Assembly line
Automated (robotics)
Unskilled
Structure: Vertical,
bureaucratic, specialised
Control: Managerial control of
machines
Continuous production
(chemical)
Continuous flow & automated
Highly technical, computerised
Structure: vertical & organic
Control: committee,
technicians monitor and
manage production.
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Slide 15
Child’s Strategic Choice:
• Technology is a consequence of organisational structure and
management’s ‘strategic choice’
• An organisation can shape technological change through their ability
to affect the supply and demand for a particular technology.
• An organisation responsible for a sizable portion of an industry can
greatly influence the technological development of the industry as a
whole when it creates (or refrains from creating) new products. For
example, Microsoft.
• A technology might be selected not because of its innate superiority,
but because it meets the needs of the power holder within that
organisation.
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Slide 16
Symbolic Interpretive Approaches:Technology as
socially determined
technological changes are themselves socially
engineered and all human relationships (including
organisational relationships) are derived from and
ultimately determined by cultural and/or social
relationships rather than technological aspects.
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Slide 17
SI: Expanding the Definition
• Because technology is socially constructed Symbolic
Interpretivists expand definition beyond physical objects
to include symbols – words, images, metaphors and
beyond task to include interactions between people and
technologies.
• Broadening the study of the socio-technical interface
• Special interest in New (computer) technologies:
• Stochastic – more open to producing the unexpected –
reliability an issue
• Continuous – in ways never imagined by modernists
• Abstract – operator removed from technical operation
• Tight coupling –human agency/technology
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Slide 18
Social Construction of Technology
Symbolic interpretive approaches focus on
how technologies are ‘constructed’
through interaction.
Reject modernist notion that technology:
– determines organisational design
– develop according to a particular ‘logic’,
process or universal law.
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Slide 19
Social Construction of Technology
Influences on technological design and use:
institutionalisation
• Market control (mimetic pressure)
– Beta versus VHS, Microsoft versus Apple
• Social acceptance (normative pressure)
– 1890s cars interpreted as ‘green’ alternative to horse-drawn carts
– Today cars associated with environmental destruction.
• Government policy (coercive pressure)
– Criminalisation of hemp in 1937 allowed for DuPont’s synthetic fibres.
• Gender (normative pressure)
– Bicycle
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Slide 20
Social Construction of Technology
Application/focus of SCOT as an analytical tool:
• Identify the different interpretations of technology.
• Analyse the problems and conflicts these interpretations
give rise to.
• Correct the design features of the technological artifacts.
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Slide 21
Social Construction of Technology:
conclusion
Technologies have different meanings to
different groups.
“..technology is not a pure application of science;
it is co-determined by social, cultural, economic
and technical factors in the environment that
contextualizes it” (Hatch and Cunliffe, 2006: 155).
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Slide 22
Critical Theory
Braverman and Labour Process Theory: power over
Harry Braverman’s key arguments:
•
Links Taylorist work redesign processes to Marxist class analysis.
•
Through the process of deskilling and work degradation, all employees are
finding themselves in a similar disempowered and alienated position.
•
All work is becoming the same and workers are becoming extensions of
machines.
•
Under the ‘logic’ of capitalism ‘deskilling’ is a universal process and the
skilled craft worker is becoming extinct.
•
Through ‘deskilling’ workers have lost control over the production process
and are largely powerless to stop any workplace changes (e.g.
technological change, the hiring and firing of workers, managerial decisionmaking, shift rosters, speedup, etc.)
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Slide 23
Postmodern Conceptions of Technology
Focus of research:
the relationship between technology and ‘self’ in
organisations and the emergence of the techno-human
interface.
• Technologies of control (e.g. self-surveillance, discipline, focus
on performance rather than values).
• Technologies of representation: technologies used to represent
individuals and work processes:(e.g. electronic systems to identify
performance and make managerial decisions about merit and
promotion among employees).
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Slide 24
Postmodern Conceptions of Technology
techno-human partnerships
Cyborganisation
–
A hybridised organisation: a techno-human construct
• An organisation who has been taken over in whole or in part by computer or
electromechancial devices (computers, software programmes, phone systems, copier
machines, etc.).
• An organisation determined by both machine and human intervention.
• A techno-organic organisation
Dangers:
• Human misuse and abuse of technology
• Organisational members serve the technology instead of the technology serving the
organisation.
•
Organisational members often expect more from a technology than it can deliver.
• Human and social elements become subordinated to technological capacities and/or
imperatives.
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Slide 25
Actor Network Theory: Techno –human
equality?
• Knowledge product of interactions – machines, people, buildings,
concepts, written documents
• Network not the actor that performs the act – humans just another
element (Networks of relationship between human and non-human
actors)
• Networks are fluid and largely invisible
• Two key assumptions:
• Social world is materially heterogeneous – socio-technical ordering
• Elements of network do not have an independent existence principle of rationality
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Slide 26