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Organisational Theory

Technology

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.

RMIT University

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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).

RMIT University

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Thinking Point:

Technology does not emerge from an objective exercise in problem solving.

  • Technology should not be thought of as an “end point”
  • If we focus on capturing technology as the end of a process, then we miss out on the human interactions and expertise!!

Please remember this when you become a consultant

RMIT University

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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RMIT University

Defining Technology

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Ontology

Technology is an objective reality. Technology exists independent of our knowledge of it.

Epistemology

Positivism – truths about technology are ‘discovered’ through ‘testing’ our understanding against the reality found in the objective world.

Knowledge that is produced or articulated:

‘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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Defining Technology

Knowledge that is produced or articulated:

‘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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Do we take these definitions for granted?

Or are these definitions underpinned by a analytical tradition?

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An attempt to embrace key drivers and products?

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Modernist Approaches:
Structural typologies

  • Types of technology: (Perrow)

core technology, e.g. unit/organisation level (Woodward, Thompson)

supporting technology, e.g. 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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Modernist: Woodward’s Industrial Organization (1965):

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Organisational forms reflect production technologies

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Technology as a Strategy

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.

RMIT University

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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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Symbolic Interpretive Approach

Expanding the Definition

Theoretical “Ontological” Position

  • Understanding of technology is socially constructed
  • Symbolic interpretive approaches focus on how understanding of technology as a concept is ‘constructed’ through interaction.

Analytical Approach:

  • Symbolic Interpretivists expand definition beyond physical objects to include symbols – words, images, metaphors and beyond task to include interactions between people and technologies

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Social Construction of Technology

Knowledge or ideas generated :

  • Reject modernist notion that technology:

determines organisational design

is developed according to a particular ‘logic’, process or universal law.

  • 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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Social Construction of Technology

Discourse focuses on influences of technological design and use:

Institutionalisation of technology

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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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.

RMIT University

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Social Construction of Technology

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).

RMIT University

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Critical Theory

Theoretical “Ontological” Position

Technology exists

Analytical approach

Questions assumptions about technology and innovation

Do technologies comes about in order to meet an existing need?

Do we (creators) find ‘needs’ for a new technology?

Transistors replace valves – miniaturisation?

Are technologies invented for the ‘challenge’ or for symbolic purposes?

Hydrogen Bomb?

Logos?

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Critical Theory: Technology and “Progress”

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 evidence support these claims? Totally? Partially? Not at all?

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Critical Theory

Braverman and Labour Process Theory: power over

Harry Braverman’s key arguments

Links Taylorist 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 decision-making, shift rosters, speedup, etc.)

RMIT University

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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.

Technology might be selected not because of its innate superiority, but because it meets the needs of the power holder within that organisation.

Examples:

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.

China Today: the concept of toxic progress –polluted air and water.

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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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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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Tainted by the scientific value system - just another subjectivity?

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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.

RMIT University

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Critical Theory: Technology Driven Organisations?

Technological Determinism

  • ‘The assumption that technology determines—that is leads directly to—a particular form of society or organisation’

Grint and Case (1998)

  • We are the ‘servants’ of technology rather than its ‘master’ (‘Frankenstein Monster’)

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’ ?

Blauner (1964)

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resonates with CT

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Postmodern Conceptions of Technology

  • Focus of Postmodern Conceptions:

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).

RMIT University

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Postmodern Conceptions of Technology:
Techno-human partnerships

  • Cyborganisation

A hybridised organisation: a techno-human construct

An organisation that 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

  • There are 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.

RMIT University

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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

RMIT University

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Technology as Knowledge

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We have revealed four analyatical views about technology

  • So what knowledge about technology does your organisation want to capture?

Modernist

Symbolic Interpretivist

Critical Theorist

Post-modernist

Predominantly captured?

Which organisations view these as “valid” accounts of technology?

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Conclusion

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Thinking Point:

Technology does not emerge from an objective exercise in problem solving.

  • Technology should not be thought of as an “end point”
  • If we focus on capturing technology as the end of a process, then we miss out on the human interpretations and expertise!!

Please remember this when you become a consultant, because we often miss out three viewpoints when it comes to technology.

RMIT University

References

  • Blauner, R. (1964). Alienation and freedom: The factory worker and his industry.
  • Grint, K., & Woolgar, S. (2013). The machine at work: Technology, work and organization. John Wiley & Sons.
  • Grint, K., & Case, P. (1998). The violent rhetoric of re‐engineering: management consultancy on the offensive. Journal of Management Studies, 35(5), 557-577.
  • Hatch, M. J., & Cunliffe, A. L. (2012). Organization theory: modern, symbolic and postmodern perspectives. Oxford university press.

RMIT University

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