RESPOND TO TWO CLASSMATES. 600 WORDS EACH

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DISCUSSION THREAD

Technology Structures and Social Boundaries

Dionna Ward-Stover

School of Business

Author Note

Dionna Ward-Stover

I have no known conflict of interest to disclose.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Dionna Ward

Introduction

Organizations have a crucial role today, and modern-day social life is impacted by the existence of organizations. Workplace health and well-being may be adversely affected by several variables influenced by organizations, including people's decisions, trends in technology, and the resources available to support those decisions. Many researchers have examined the evolution of organizations, their nature and roles, and the ways in which people approach their work. It is agreed upon that today's organizations are distinct from other social structures in that they have some characteristics in common. An analysis of the current business concept and empirical data is used to determine the methods, aims, and variations of each organizational structure which are the key concepts under rational, natural, and open system views.

Technology Structures and Social Boundaries

There are three main perspectives that have an impact on organization technology structures and social boundaries, which includes the natural, rational, and open perspectives. Because each of these systems has a specific relation to an organization, understanding them is essential. Organizational studies have evolved throughout time, with each of these ideas reflecting this evolution. The historical organizational development demonstrates these perspectives, and the current corporate paradigm may be seen as a combination of these perspectives. Organizational studies began in the early 1990s, and it is believed that early researchers stressed the legitimacy of rational norms and policies that control organizations as a response to the high rationality of current society.

Natural Perspective

Organizations, from a natural perspective, are groups of people working together to achieve a common purpose. Also, from the natural view, organizations are perceived to show a high degree of formalization in their architecture. Natural thinkers focus on the formalization of organizations and how they define their objectives which can be achieved through the utilization of technology. It was found that several thinkers investigated administrative, decision-making, and bureaucratic natural systems philosophies. According to scientific management, organizations should be approached rationally and also argued that formal processes may be used to both assess performance and design more effective workplace standards.

Similarly, Agyabeng-Mensah et al. (2020) found via case studies that the manufacturing process could be managed and controlled to maximize output. He advocated for the use of technological and scientific control over traditional management practices. As a growing field of study, scientific management differs from other kinds of management to him, including traditional management, in that employees are chosen based on criteria established by the scientific community. Emerging scientific technology has established procedures and policies rather than relying on the trial-and-error method of learning. Monitoring factors that impact production processes and using improved technology and scientific techniques to enhance productivity help to promote organizational efficiency.

Rational Perspective

Organizations are seen as a group of people working together to accomplish a certain goal from a rational perspective. As a result, individual activities are affected by changes in the organization of the workplace. This perspective also emphasizes the importance of specialization and coordination as structural aspects of an organization. A company's participants may be controlled via coordination. As a result of specialization, an organization is better able to organize its many operations and assign tasks to its employees instead then emphasizing individual employees or teams; an administrative approach often focuses on organizational structures rather than scientific control. However, much like scientific knowledge, this idea is included in the evaluation of formal elements of an organization's effectiveness.

The formal elements of an organization are the focus of the decision-making concept, another rational system approach. Instead of focusing on the structure of the organization, decision-making focuses on the people who work in an organization. Scientific management is criticized by Jaworski et al. (2018), who claim that employees are constantly looking to maximize their benefits. He said that organizations frequently aid in shortening the length of decision-making processes by establishing goals and criteria that are suitable. Thus, the theory of decision-making expanded people's knowledge of how employees make decisions and emphasized the formal aspects of an organization's structure in order to accomplish certain goals.

Open Perspective

The open systems perspective places enterprises in an environment that has a considerable impact on their operations. There are both good and bad impacts on the environment from the activities of a business. It is still important to understand how organizations run by examining these interrelationships between activities and material flows. Organizational studies are increasingly using bounded rationality, a notion that synchronizes open and rational viewpoints. Such an approach considers all elements of organizations, both official and informal, while also addressing the context in which they function. Thus, organizations must be seen from all three of the previously mentioned angles. However, it is essential to combine different viewpoints in order to acquire vital insights about businesses.

Open perspectives make it difficult to distinguish between the organization and its surroundings. Because the external world provides energy, resources, and information, and the organization processes and produces a product, they are mutually reliant. The structure is what separates the outer world from the organizational system. People in the organization are guided in their pursuit of the organization's objectives by a normative framework that has defined norms and regulations. In addition, the regulations specify where the boundaries between the organization and the outside world begin and end. As a result, employees cannot put their own interests ahead of those of the company.

Theoretical Viewpoint

Natural Perspective

A firm's operations are based on its directions and participant connections, according to the natural system's approach to organizational definition, which theorizes that firms function within a social framework with similarities and conflicts. A new theory proposes that companies benefit from social ties as a foundation for development, fostering cooperation and sharing resources at every level of the organizational hierarchy. As a result of social interest groups working together in an organizational framework, members are encouraged to engage in reciprocal organizational citizenship behaviours. There must be an efficient collaboration between social groupings and interdependence of individual and company actions in order for a natural system to be successful in terms of its operations.

Rational Perspective

The theoretical view of the rational system believes that objectives, in the framework of social relationships, motivate production. In a critical argument, the participants' paradigm of the company has shared values with participants rather than clear objectives as motivation is evoked as a source of employee engagement. Higher levels of effectiveness and, as a result, more discretionary effort is provided by employees who are linked to the company's value system, and this has a direct influence on the performance of the business.

Open Perspective

The theories of contingency and Weick's organizing model are useful in explaining open systems methods and their assumptions. According to Ghasemi et al. (2019), contingency theories must identify certain accounting system characteristics that are linked to certain specified conditions and establish a suitable connection. According to the general orienting hypothesis of contingency theory, organizations that have internal qualities that meet their surroundings' requirements would have the greatest adoption. Weick offers a thorough explanation of the social process that results in the formation of organizations. It is Weick's view that the organization is not just a sum of individual actions but rather the result of a collaborative effort by everyone in the company. In addition, he contends that employees are actively involved in shaping their workplace environment.

Areas of Technology at Issue for Participants

Organizational structures, according to Douglas (2021), represent the whole of the organization's efforts in dividing its work into various activities and coordinating its many systems. A number of thinkers have focused on the interconnectedness between an organization's structures and its technological environment since the 1960s (Van & van Marrewijk, 2019). A contingency hypothesis, for example, asserts that an organization's structure is influenced by its surroundings. Miceli et al. (2021) claimed that organizations thrive because they are able to adapt to a variety of circumstances. When it comes down to it, structural discrepancies are often caused by environmental changes. Majchrzak et al. (2018) examined how technology and the environment affect organizational structure to better understand the contingency theory's conclusions.

An important part of the phrase 'technology' in an organization settings context is referred to as the hardware. The term hardware, in this case, refers to technological equipment, machines, and tools that people use to carry out their daily tasks within an organization. For the most part, organizational theorists think that technology encompasses all of these things, meaning that technology must cover all aspects of the things that are used to conduct and accomplish work. Workers can more easily convert raw materials into the final products they need, thanks to technological advancements. Many of the participants are unsure about the connections between organizational structure and technological advancements. Organizations are more inclined to devise frameworks to protect their technological core when faced with greater levels of technical uncertainty, according to the majority of participants.

Issue With Organizational Boundaries for Participants

An organization's boundary concerns remain complex and nuanced (Ciuchta et al., 2020). In light of the fact that organizations are open systems, their borders must be sieves rather than shells, and because of this, such limits should allow for acceptable flow while excluding any undesirable components. Determining what is most vital and deadly is a challenge, and it arises because the criterion for identifying the border between harm and attractiveness varies from place to region and from time to time. For example, Sharma et al. (2017) believes some of the techniques that businesses employ to discover buffers in their technological environment are crucial.

Even though organizations provide a wide range of benefits and possibilities to their members, there are a few drawbacks that should be taken into consideration. Insecurity, inequality, and alienation are all degrees of difficulty that organizations provide. It is no secret that the issue of employee dissatisfaction is a growing concern for firms despite several assertions and proofs arguing that the majority of them are inconsistent. For a long period after Weber's time, many observers said the organizational methods he advocated had a negative influence on the people involved, and many studies used the term alienation to describe these denigrating processes. As a result, this concept has to do with separating employees from their employers.

Despite progress has been made in recent decades, there is still a large difference between the advancement and compensation of males, as well as inequality in many forms. Many male employees believe that factors such as ethnicity and gender have a significant impact on how people are treated in the labor market. Many members of the workforce are affected by uncertainty, particularly in terms of employment contracts (Yeung & Yang, 2020). For example, fewer employees are employed for lengthy periods of time owing to a rise in layoffs. Changes in employees' economic security have occurred throughout time, and layoffs often reach previously unimagined proportions.

Personal Perspectives

To comprehend the corporate structure and examine it in ways that not only personify it but also do not equate it to human behaviour is an ongoing problem in sociology. There is no doubt that today's organizations play a crucial role in society. Their existence now has a direct impact on almost every part of an individual's life. Organizations, by their very nature and purpose, have altered and affected the ways in which people think and interact. To fully grasp an organization's structure and operation, it is essential to combine the insights provided by rational, natural, and open systems.

Biblical Perspective

It is essential to understand that when more than one arrangement is used, the differences in structural characteristics of these arrangements offer various opportunities and create tensions. Therefore, every firm should analyze which system works best for its goals. Low formalization structures support the emergence of innovative ideas, but missing documentation and standardization impair the new ideas' broader usefulness. For these reasons, firms should simultaneously have multiple structures to seize the unique advantages arising from the characteristics of different structures. However, reaping these benefits necessitates those particular organizational approaches supporting the close connection between different structures in place.

Contrary, the Bible does not mention the stated three perspectives of an organization. Nevertheless, it provides a discussion of how people within an organization structure relate to each other. The Bible does not provide what kind of structure an organization needs to function effectively. However, the organizational structure is designed to channel resources to meet the organization's tasks and mission. Even if it is a rational, natural, or open system, the structure is necessary because it is a structure that supports and facilitates the purposes and mission of an organization. Exodus 18: 19-21 shows how Moses discovered the importance of organizational structure when he was still a fledgling leader (King James Bible, 2017).

Organizational structures are not mentioned in the Bible, but rather, how individuals inside the structure interact with one other is clearly outlined in many verses. The Bible also does not say what type of structure an organization should have in order to be successful. Organizational structure, however, is meant to focus resources on the organization's goals and objectives. Because an organization's goal and objective are supported and made easier by its structure, it does not matter if it is a logical, natural, or open system. At this early stage of leadership, Moses saw the value of having a well-structured organization (Hoffman et al., 2018). This shows that influential leaders establish a framework that promotes the well-being of their subordinates. Moses tells the people that when crises arise, senior leaders may still have some influence.

Conclusion

An analysis of the current business concept and empirical data is used to determine the methods, aims, and variations of each organizational structure which are the key concepts under rational, natural, and open system views. Organizations are often seen as open, logical, and/or natural systems by the public. The history of organizational theory illustrates why each theoretical viewpoint focuses on a certain component of the organization. Organizations and their functionality are built on a foundation of rational, natural, and open systems theories and current viewpoints, including all three of which influence organizational technology structures and social boundaries.

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