Communication, Organisation and Technology

What IS Technology?

What IS Technology?

The means of Achieving something

Core Technologies

Those means of doing things that are essential to the very nature of an enterprise or organisation.

What are the Core Technologies at UCW???

UCW

Physical: Class rooms and equipment etc

Activity: Teaching and learning

Knowledge: Research and understanding

What are the technologies required by An Insurance Company?

Technology and Performance

Research into Organisation structure and Business Performance by Woodward J (1958) seemed to indicate no significant correlationUntil the type of Technology is included. She found that there is a Scale of complexity on to which all technologies may be placed.

The type of technology, and its relative complexity will bear upon the complexity of the task undertaken.

Too complex a technology for a simple task will result in poor performance.And vice versa

High Technologies

“ High technology changes the nature of tasks and their performance, interconnections and nature of physical,energy and information flows”Zeleny M (1990)

Installing and using High Technologies implies changes, often radical, in the organisation. Not merely in structure but in the interaction between people and the nature of the society that this represents.

Technologies may also be characterised as follows:

Long-Linked: e.g Process technology

Mediated: Linking individuals

Intensive: e.g. Engineering design

Thompson (1967)

Complexity

The increasing complexity of newer technologiesmakes it impossible for operators to accurately conceptualisethe process and thus a virtual process (conceived differently by different people) is developed. This leads to confusion and lack of control of the process

Karl Weick (1990) argues that high technologies in particular are Stochastic i.e they perform in unpredictable ways because of the complex interaction ( almost random?) of component parts

Think of recent events: Electrical failure in Italy; New York and London

Questions ?

Think about how technologies have changed the nature of work:

•List 5 of these.

•Take a particular technology and consider how organisations have adapted or been changed by its introduction.

Group Exercise