Information Technology and the Changing Fabric of Organization

Abstract

Technology has been an important theme in the study of organizational form and function since the 1950s. However, organization science's interest in this relationship has declined significantly over the past 30 years, a period during which information technologies have become pervasive in organizations and brought about significant changes in them. Organizing no longer needs to take place around hierarchy and the collection, storage, and distribution of information as was the case with “command and control” bureaucracies in the past. The adoption of innovations in information technology (IT) and organizational practices since the 1990s now make it possible to organize around what can be done with information. These changes are not the result of information technologies per se, but of the combination of their features with organizational arrangements and practices that support their use. Yet concepts and theories of organizational form and function remain remarkably silent about these changes. Our analysis offers five affordances—visualizing entire work processes, real-time/flexible product and service innovation, virtual collaboration, mass collaboration, and simulation/synthetic reality—that can result from the intersection of technology and organizational features. We explore how these affordances can result in new forms of organizing. Examples from the articles in this special issue “Information Technology and Organizational Form and Function” are used to show the kinds of opportunities that are created in our understanding of organizations when the “black boxes” of technology and organization are simultaneously unpacked.

The sociomateriality of organisational life: considering technology in management research

“…Given their relative inattention to technological entailments, however, these studies will be unable to articulate the various ways in which different technological capabilities within the synthetic worlds will have particular effects in the world and on the participants, nor will they be able to explain how the situated materiality of specific synthetic worlds affords particular modes of interacting (Zammuto et al, 2007).…”

“…5 In the second perspective, technology is posited to be an exogenous force -a powerful driver of history having determinate impacts on organizational life. The third perspective, that of emergent 3 A number of trade conferences have sprung up around the use of such synthetic worlds, including http://www.3dtlcdc.com/ and http://virtualworldsforum.com/ 4 For detailed reviews of the research on technology in management studies, see Barley (1988), Dewett & Jones (2001), Orlikowski & Scott (2008), Roberts & Grabowski (1996), and Zammuto et al (2007). 5 Gergen (2002) introduces the idea of "absent presence" by describing a group of people sitting in a room together, engrossed in their own thoughts and activities, and not acknowledging each other's presence.…”

Assessing the impact of business broadband use on the Welsh economy

“…These impacts have been studied in relation to profit, cost reduction, sales and productivity growth. They have also been identified in areas such as organisational capabilities and innovation (Gray, 2006), including new and improved products, processes and services (Zammuto et al, 2007), and new forms of communication with suppliers and partners (Corso et al, 2003).…”

Collaboration technology in teams and organizations: Introduction to the special issue

“…The impact of emerging technologies on organizational forms and functions can be significant (Zammuto et al 2007;Garrigos-Simon et al 2012). Traditional ways to plan, execute, collaborate, and manage activities in organizations are changing.…”