Technical Change Needs Organizational Change,
Abstract
This paper shows that effective performance cannot be assured simply by installing expensive, state of the art technology. The studies of many applications of computing and information technology have included both successful and unsuccessful examples. The clear practical lesson from this work is that the successful cases have usually been those there technical change has been accompanied by appropriate organizational change. The less successful ones have generally been those where projects have been dominated by technical considerations, with little or no thought given to organizational ones. These lessons seem as relevant to defence installations as to the civilian ones in which our research has been conducted. The common characteristic is that all organizations are confronted by technical developments, which are intended to help them meet their objectives. For them to succeed in that task, it appears to use that management needs to ensure that three big hurdles are successfully crossed. These are: Managing the project; Setting the right objective; and Changing the organization. Each of these hurdles will be outlined in turn, and the paper concludes with some proposals on how they can be overcome.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Mar 01, 1988
- Accession Number
- ADP005729
Entities
People
- David Boddy
Organizations
- University of Glasgow