classmates Discussion Thread Technology Structures and Social Boundaries
Jeffrey Bartrom
Discussion Thread: Technology Structures and Social Boundaries
Technology Structures and Social Boundaries
Overview of Technology terminology and social boundaries for organizations today
According to Scott and Davis (2016), Organizational theorists believe that technology encompasses not just the physical hardware, but also the knowledge and abilities of an organization’s employees and their skills. The four organizational concepts that have evolved are task environment, general environment, technology, and technical systems (Ricardo, 2021). The general environment is an inclusive concept that involves all outside factors and influences that impact the operation of a business that an organization must respond or react to maintain its flow of operations.
It is further broken down into six types of general macro environments and forces that are interrelated and affect organizations: sociocultural, technological, economic, government and political, natural disasters, and human-induced problems that affect industries and organizations (Ricardo, 2021). The task environment is the set of external forces that directly affect the organization’s operations and performance. It includes customers, competitors, suppliers, regulators, and other stakeholders. Technology refers to the tools, techniques, and actions used by an organization to transform inputs into outputs. It includes both hardware and software components. Technical systems refer to the combination of technology and people working together to achieve a common goal. It is a complex system that involves both social and technical aspects. The environment can provide the material needed for technology, but the environment also provides the technology used to transform the material into the final product. Merida (2015) provided a good example of this when they explained Solomon’s request for materials and skill for constructing the temple: “Hiram… …[supplied] wood, carpenters, and stonemasons. The Sidonians were experts in building techniques. Solomon asks Hiram for skilled men and materials.”
The institutional components of the organizational technological framework refer to the formal and informal rules, norms, and values that guide the behavior of individuals within an organization (Ricardo, 2021). These components include laws, regulations, policies, procedures, customs, traditions, beliefs, attitudes, and expectations.
The political component of the organizational technological framework refers to the influence of government policies on organizational behavior. This includes laws, regulations, taxes, subsidies, trade agreements, tariffs, and other forms of government intervention in the economy (Ricardo, 2021).
Scott and Davis (2016) asserted that “most analysts have conceived of organizations as social structures.” While organizations may themselves be structures and structure may be one of the most common features of organizations, the nature of these structures varies greatly from one organization to another, and most structures are quite important to the organization. Mahmood and Mubarik (2020) identified structural capital as a vital component of intellectual capital within their Industry 4.0 framework. There are many different formal and informal structures and organizations that develop their unique structural arrangements for differing reasons. Among these reasons are technology and labor, each of which holds tremendous influence over the creation and modification of organizational structures.
How do each of these apply to the three perspectives (natural, rational, and open)
Natural
The relationship between technological structures and social boundaries can be viewed from three perspectives: natural, rational, and open. From a natural perspective, technological structures and social boundaries are viewed as the outcome of an organization’s natural growth (Scott & Davis, 2016). According to this viewpoint, technology is a tool used by businesses to increase productivity and competitiveness.
Rational
From a rational perspective, technological structures and social boundaries are seen as deliberate and intentional creations of organizations. They are the result of deliberate design and decision-making processes that seek to optimize performance and efficiency.
Open
From an open perspective, technological structures and social boundaries are viewed as dynamic and flexible. This perspective emphasizes the importance of collaboration, innovation, and creativity in organizational structures. Open systems theory suggests that organizations should be adaptable to change and should be able to respond quickly to new challenges.
The three perspectives on technology structures and social boundaries offer different insights into how organizations can use technology to improve their performance. While the natural perspective emphasizes growth, the rational perspective emphasizes efficiency, and the open perspective emphasizes flexibility and innovation.
Areas of technology that are an issue for participants
Technology is an important aspect of any organization, as it is the piece that allows businesses to interact with the outside world where most of the interaction occurs. This means that technology would often control the inputs and outputs for the organization. When organizations utilize technology, it is a means to enhance the processes and quality. If you look at how IBM and Oracle offer technology services to companies, it’s a means to enhance their business structure and operations (Ardito, et al., 2019). This technology allows companies to rely on computer artificial intelligence to alter the framework of how their company operates. The dependency upon this technology can cause a struggle as there are not human inputs occurring, only algorithms that thinks for each programmed input to react to. This has eliminated a lot of jobs that are used to manually plan and track these trends and shipments (Lu et al, 2018). Before this technology was invented, workers would get an order in and would start on fulfilling and then get it ready for a shipment. When this new technology was inserted, you lost those jobs to a computer who dictated what order should be packed and ship first and sent out on what trailer to streamline the effectively and cost intensive.
Technology issues with automation also occur because the inputs for rates and production metrics can ignore the human factors such as labor force, skill level and even understanding the system in place. Amazon utilizes a program that gets in real time orders and auto sequences them by customer promise date, cost to ship and item location in organization (Barber, 2018). This is all done with my computer algorithms that only take a few inputs to get active each shift but doesn’t account for labor force and won’t redirect work until the last minute. The technological parameters in jobs can be detrimental to employees as they don’t have the required skill and knowledge as well as the technological requirements for the job. Some employees are bound to technology for their organization which is their environment, but they must understand all aspects of the structure or encounter technological difficulties (Scott & Davis, 2016).
Issues with organizational boundaries for participants
Organizations are inherently an open system making them prone to being closed off and just a shell versus a permeable structure that allows flow through (Ricardo, 2021). This means that organizations must allow the proper attributes and qualities to grow and permeate through that organization versus allowing negative ones to fester and rot the foundation away. Organizational boundaries are created, maintained, respected, or contested, crossed, or broken down by organizational members acting in a living forward mode. The resulting boundaries frame future practice and organizational members’ understanding of the organization’s past and present. In decentralized organizations, it is harder to work with other divisions or departments of their own organization than it is to work with outside suppliers or customers. In ordinary cases, this intraorganizational coordination failure can cost substantial sums of money. In other cases, these failures can be catastrophic such as government agencies failing to disclose information through all agencies and culminated into the largest terrorist attack on America.
Organizational boundaries are socially constructed distinctions created intentionally to foster specific patterns of behavior by one set of individuals that are different from other sets of individuals. They have a double-edged value: positive and negative. On the positive side, creating boundaries potentially allows workers to focus, and thereby deepen and specialize knowledge and activity. The negative side is control, where management and culture inflexibility thwart the agility needed for crossing boundaries (Scott & Davis, 2016).
There are four types of organizational structural boundaries that are particularly relevant for communication: vertical boundaries, horizontal boundaries, external boundaries, and conceptual boundaries. Vertical boundaries within an organization serve to create distinctions between levels of control across and within functions (Ntale, et al., 2020). Horizontal boundaries within an organization provide a focus on specialized or unique expertise within a common function, where specific knowledge is developed, thus creating, and using unique language associated with precise meaning (Ntale, et al., 2020). External boundaries separate members within an organization from other entities that their organization interacts with. Conceptual boundaries are created by differences in the way people think about things. Effective communication across organizational boundaries requires shared meaning. However, this can be difficult to achieve due to the unique language associated with each boundary type.
Organizational boundaries, however, friction and conflicts that hinder knowledge integration among actors that possess different knowledge may sometimes occur. This is because actors with different backgrounds and experience are governed by individual mental models or path dependencies, and they feel uncomfortable or express resistance when faced with a different type of knowledge at organizational boundaries. Companies and organizations that are governed by individual mental models, however, cannot avoid competency traps or core rigidities, and they may lose their opportunities for innovation.
Ntale et al. (2020) discussed the impact of culture on structure as follows: “In the more developed countries, [structuring to allow interagency cooperation] has been achieved, leading to high levels of interorganizational collaboration. In low-income countries, however, observable practice shows limited collaboration among organizations (Fret, et al. 2023). Whereas these countries have stepped up their efforts to address challenges such as graduate unemployment, their efforts remain largely individualistic and highly fragmented (Ntale, et al., 2020). These are boundaries that organizations face due to a melting pot of workers who bring all different types of skills and attributes. In current social climates organizations are being faced with societal pressures to reform their diversity through recruiting tactics and how they compensate workers. Equitable compensation is one of the largest issues facing organizational boundaries due to the organizations recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic in which they are promoting these features to attract high quality talent (Franken, et al., 2021).
Personal Perspective
Organizational boundaries and technological aspects are crucial factors that organizations must consider in all aspects. The structures that define an organization are part of the framework that holds it all together while also fulfilling the overall mission of the organization (Ricardo, 2021). Technology plays a major role in assisting organizations to accomplish tasks and activities with ease and efficiency. Additionally, technology plays a role in the human factor by providing the users and organizations with physical and knowledge-based information that assists in its success (Fret, et al., 2023). Technology also plays a major role in the communication aspect as it allows companies to cross thresholds of boundaries by connecting and communicating outside of the company. While technology may negatively impact the organization in some form the benefits outweigh the cost for the benefits exceed the negative.
Organizational operations require the participation and input of workers. The boundaries that technology has brought into the organization has created obstacles for organizations that must be addressed to survive. Organizational simple structures minimize the division of labor and direct supervision while bureaucracies have centralized authority and routinized tasks. Functional organizations divide work into operations and support departments while multidivisional organizations divide it among autonomous departments working on a common product or in a common market. The technical complexity and unpredictability of interconnectedness requires the organizational boundaries to delineate the simple and functional structures within the organization.
In Genesis 11:6 - "And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined doing” ( New International Bible, 1978/2011). This passage describes how technology can be used for good or for bad as all come together under one language. The same is with an organization who brings everyone together and integrates technology into it, so it speaks the organization’s language. This is a very powerful aspect as many could easily use it to wield harm if it’s used with ill intentions.
Conclusion
Technology structures are a common part of all organizations today as it allows them to cross boundaries from their current placement. These structures have the chance to enhance an organization through its production and communication capabilities. These enhancements have allowed organizations to optimize their systems like Amazon and their production facilities. Just as technology structures help organizations social boundaries also assist the organization in succeeding as the interdependency that these two systems play on each other are intertwined through the natural, rational, and open systems. Technology structures revealed that there is a need to use humans to control the technology in any organization. The reason is technology cannot work without the knowledge of humans. In social boundaries, organizations determine to what extent a person should be involved with the organization and where the border should be placed, making them ultimately connected to each other to ensure proper balance and operation.
References
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Barber, D. A. (2018). Rule of logistics: Walmart and the architecture of fullfillment by jesse LeCavalier (review). T echnology and Culture, 59(4), 995-997. https://doi.org/10.1353/tech.2018.0112Links to an external site.
Franken, E., Bentley, T., Shafaei, A., Farr-Wharton, B., Onnis, L., & Omari, M. (2021). Forced flexibility and remote working: Opportunities and challenges in the new normal. Journal of Management & Organization, 27(6), 1131-1149. https://doi.org/10.1017/jmo.2021.40Links to an external site.
Frey, E., Adams, G. S., Pfeffer, J., & Belmi, P. (2023). What we (do not) know about punishment across organizational boundaries. SAGE Publications. https://doi.org/10.1177/01492063221106420Links to an external site.
Lu, D., Marlow, J., Kocielnik, R., & Avrahami, D. (2018). Challenges and opportunities for technology-supported activity reporting in the workplace. Paper presented at the 1-12. https://doi:10.1145/3173574.3173744Links to an external site.
Merida, T. (2015). Christ-centered exposition commentary: Exalting Jesus in 1 & 2 Kings. B & H Publishing Group.
Mahmood, T. & Mubarik, M. S. (2020). Balancing innovation and exploitation in the fourth industrial revolution: Role of intellectual capital and technology absorptive capacity. Technological Forecasting & Social Change, 160, 1-9. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2020.120248Links to an external site.
New International Version Bible. (2011). The NIV Bible. Https;//www.thenivbible.com ) Original work published 1978)
Ntale, P. Ssempebwa, J., Musisi, B., Ngoma, M., Genza, G. M., Kimoga, J., Mugimu, C. B., Ntayi, M. M., & Balunywa, W. (2020). Interagency collaboration for graduate employment opportunities in Uganda: Gaps in the structure of organizations. Education & Training, 62(3), 271-291. https://doi.org/10.1108/ET-08-2019-0193Links to an external site.
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Scott, W. R. & Davis, G. F. (2016). Organizations and organizing: Rational, natural, and open system perspectives (6th ed.). Routledge.