How Computing Has Changed Us Essay Research

How Computing Has Changed Us Essay, Research Paper

Computing has changed the workplace dramatically over the last few years. Information technologies have taken over our infrastructure. It is now necessary to consider your organizational needs before you make any drastic changes. Managers must consider how these changes will affect different aspects such as human behavior. We need to see how the advent of telecommunications will affect peoples behavior. Will Email, database services, and teleconferencing affect our users. These are the questions we need to ask as managers of businesses considering organizational change.

We need to assess any and all consequences of implementation of all the aspects mentioned before. Factors such as employee resistance are a big concern. For instance if an employee that hass a busy work load is expected to learn a lot of new procedures may become overwhelmed. This may result in less productivity and more job dissention, which is not good for anyone involved. Learning new ways of doing things can be an extra burden that some people may not have the time or the patience to deal with. As managers we need to find ways of easing organizational changes in to the work place. Another option is to provide training for the employees in need of it. Sometimes it is better to train everyone in the procedure rather than just training them on the equipment. They may be able to become efficient earlier with out knowing exactly how everything works but rather knowing how to accomplish the tasks they need to get done on a regular basis.

We must discuss human behavior success factors. If technology is to be compatible with human, social, political, and economics patterns we need to recognize these factors. Not only recognize these factors but address them in a way that is conducive to the business. Human compatibility is obvious we already alluded to that. Social compatibility is another issue all together. Political compatibility is another factor that cannot be overlooked. It is crucial to provide compatibility

with all political issues. Economic patterns must be seen as compatible with changes made to organizational structures.

In a recent survey article in The Economist, John Browning wrote: “Information technology is no longer a business resource; it is the business environment.” His statement is not far from truth. Ongoing advances in information technology (IT), along with increasing global competition, are adding complexity and uncertainty of several orders of magnitude to the organizational environment. One of the most widely discussed area in recent business literature is that of new organizational network structures that [supposedly] hold the promise of survival and growth in an environment of ever-increasing complexity. How can IT help the organizations in responding to the challenges of an increasingly complex and uncertain environment. How can IT help the organizations achieve the “flexible” organization structure. These are the topics of discussion in this article.

We are observing a strong trend of convergence of the technologies of computing and telecommunication. Changing technology economics, merging of formerly disparate technologies with different managerial traditions, and the problems of managing each of the phases of IT assimilation in different ways calls for a major reappraisal of the organization structures designed for yesteryears.

IS researchers have expressed time and again that technological change poses the greatest challenge to their research. It has been mentioned that not much attention has been given to the integration of technology or its use as a coordinating mechanism for organizational units. It is our contention that IT should be studied as an independent variable affecting the organizational structure. It has been many times recommended that a serious and in depth a reassessment of certain components of organization theory which are affected by the tremendous changes that have occurred in the capabilities and forms of communication technologies. This article will attempt to contribute to the development of these issues.

Researchers have studied the impact of information technology at different levels of the organization. Possibly using organization theory, formulated hypotheses for empirical testing which reflect the impacts of IT on the decision behavior and design of organizations. Others have noted that most of the early studies considered IT as the dependent variable for analyzing its adoption by organizations. As reported, the results of several empirical studies that attempted to analyze IT s impact on organizations have proved inconclusive.

The increasing global interdependencies and the accelerating pace of change demand more flexible and adaptive organizations. Other managers have defined organizational flexibility in terms of “vulnerability” and “adaptability.” Effective implementation of IT would decrease vulnerability by reducing the cost of expected failures and enhance adaptability by reducing the cost of adjustment. We can attribute the ever-increasing need for managing interdependence to competitive pressures that included globalization, time-based competition, increased market risk, and a greater emphasis on customer service and cost reduction. It was once said “the organization’s response to the environment will continue to be the cr