Technology & Structure

Question 1

Woodward (1958;1965)

Answer 1

Management & Technology (a contingency theory again/structure is contingent on technological complexity)

• Case studies of firms in England between 1953-1957
• there is NOT one best way for all production systems

Key Findings:

• no sig relationship between size and system of production
• no sig relationship between adhering to rules of management and success
• As complexity increases, so does # of employees, layers of management, admins, CEO span of control
• As complexity increases, 1st line supervisor span of control decreases

Question 2

Galbraith (1974)

Answer 2

Main idea: Slack Resources & Org Design (responding to uncertainty/complexity)

Effective use of hierarchy/rules/etc. depends on frequency and # of exceptions

Can either:

• reduce need for info processing
  
  • create slack resources (i.e., lead times, buffers, budget)
  • create self-contained tasks (duplicate resources)
• increase capacity to process info
  
  • vertical info systems (data, computers)
  • lateral relations (use liaisons, teams, project managers)

Question 3

Barley (1986)

Answer 3

Barley suggests that structure is both a product of and a constraint on human behavior.

Studied implementation of new radiology equip at 2 different hospitals and observed “scripts” of interactions between technicians and MDs

Same technology can led to different org environments

Technology are occasions where managers can re-evaluate or re-imagine the structures in which they work

Question 4

Orlikowski & Scott (2008)

Answer 4

Sociomateriality

• The social and material are inextricably linked but management research often treats them as separate (e.g., contingency theorists- humans and technology are discrete; structuration – humans and technology are interdependent and they shape one another through ongoing interaction; sociomaterial-humans and technology exist through their temporally emergent constitutive entanglement)
• Applies an “agential realism” approach (people attribute agency to equipment, machines, formulate, and other apparatuses to explain the universe)
• New research – open sources software, online communities—google searches where the underlying technology was built and coded by people but is informed by millions of people’s searches and updated by their input

Question 5

Leonardi (2011)

Answer 5

• Prior research using the human agency perspective has suggested that when humans are faced with a perceived constraint from the material agency of a technology, they typically change their routines to achieve their goals while leaving intact the technology
• Yet this ignores the reality that people are often able to manipulate the machines to better suit their routines (e.g., add a new model, write a new computer script, etc.)
• Imbrication: people have agency and technology have agency but people decide how they will respond to a technology
• Constraints: change technology
• Affordance: change routines