Information technology in hypointegrated organizations: communication support versus decision support

Abstract

The tumultuous developments of Infonnation Technology and the organizational revolution, beginning in Japan with the Lean Organization concept, where important keywords are autonomy, empowennent etc., changed radically the strategic and operational conditions of companies. The environment was becoming more and more chaotic and, in this context, hypo integrated organizations, characterised by weak structural links and by a dispersed memory where the communication process became the central aspect, emerged.After discussing the features of the emerging organization fonns taking into account the principal theories, our work analyses thoroughly the communication process because 1 The research was carried out cooperatively, but iu particular Cariati wrote section I, 5, 6, Iazzoliuo section 2, Tancredi section 3, 4. P. Humphreys et al. (eds.), Implementing Systems for Supporting Management Decisions