This document provides an overview of different perspectives on information technology, including traditional, interpretive, and critical perspectives. The traditional perspective discusses the purposes of IT in increasing productivity, knowledge management, and control. It also examines the impacts of IT on organizational structure, processes, and work/workers. The interpretive perspective focuses on how IT influences sense-making and is socially constructed. The critical perspective analyzes how IT can reinforce managerial authority and neo-liberal hegemony as well as enable global control and resistance.

1. Chapter 7
Information Technology

2. Information Technology
• Information Technology and Change
• Traditional Perspective
• Interpretive Perspective
• Critical Perspective
• The Technologized Life

3. Information Technology
and Change
• Information Technology is Pervasive in
today’s world
Two Views of Technology’s Impact
• Information Technology is the force that
causes organizational and social change
[Technological Determinism]
• Change is produced by the choices made by
humans in their use of technology

4. Information Technology
and Change
Impact of Information Technology
• Emergence of Virtual Organizations
• Global Economy supported by a Global
Internet
• Inequalities Resulting from the Digital Divide
• The Need for Technological Fluency
• 24/7 Accessibility

5. Traditional Perspective
• Purposes of Information Technology
• The Digital Divide and Information
Technology Fluency
• Organizational Impact of Information
Technology

6. Purposes of Information
Technology
• Productivity
• Knowledge Management
• Control

7. Productivity
• Information technology (IT) contributed more
than 70% of the total gain in U.S. business
productivity from 1995-2000
• Productivity increase is not due to IT alone
but to the reengineering of business practices
in conjunction with technology
• IT applications have to be tailored to sector-
specific business practices to improve
productivity

8. Knowledge Management
• Knowledge requires information, but information in
and of itself is not knowledge, and a management
information system is not the same thing as a
knowledge management system.
• Knowledge is not just the information in one’s
possession, but also one’s understanding of that
information, i.e., how to interpret and act on
information as well as where and how to find it.
• Without a system to manage it, organizational
knowledge walks out the door everyday at closing
time.

9. Knowledge Management
• Generating new knowledge
• Representing knowledge in documents and databases
• Embedding knowledge in products, services, and
organizational processes
• Diffusing or transferring knowledge within the
organization
• Using accessible knowledge in decision-making
• Providing incentives and a culture to facilitate
knowledge growth
• Measuring the value of knowledge as an organizational
asset (Galagan, 1997)

10. Knowledge Management
• In some situations, information technology (IT) is
used mainly to create electronic knowledge
repositories (codification).
• The idea in codification is to turn knowledge into a
commodity and put it where everyone can find it.
• In other situations, IT is used mainly to help people
find and communicate with one another
(personalization).
• Personalization focuses on people and the
transactions among people as sources of knowledge,
so the objective is to connect people.

11. Knowledge Management
• Computers were supposed to make it easier to manage
information, and the Internet was supposed to make it
easier to find it, yet most of us have found ourselves
completely overwhelmed (Greengard, 2000)
• Technology does make it easier to find and manage
information, but it also gives all of us the ability to
produce it and disseminate it at quantities and rates
that are greater than we can process
• The glut of information, rather than enabling people to
do their jobs better, threatens to engulf and diminish
their control over the situation (Edmunds & Morris,
2000)

12. Knowledge Management
• Hewlett Packard’s (HP) problem is no longer one of
storing, retrieving, and shaping information for
managerial decisions. It is the gulf between the
company’s wealth of absolute knowledge and the
distribution of that knowledge within a complex
organization in a highly volatile environment (HP
Executive, John Doyle)
• With the new reality that information vital to your job
and your company could be just a few clicks away on
the Web, information overload went from a theoretical
concept to a visceral everyday reality (Charles Sieloff,
HP Program Manager)

13. Control
• Information technology is tied to objectives of
efficiency, effectiveness, and productivity
• Managers use technology directly for control
(surveillance of employees)
• Control Paradox 1: Technology can overwhelm
organization members, demolishing any sense of
control that one has over their environment. Hence,
it is both indispensable and disruptive.
• Control Paradox 2: The same technology that
enables those at the top echelons of the organization
also enables people in many other areas and levels
of the organization as well

14. Digital Divide
• Definition: The differences between those with and
those without access to computers and the Internet
(Robinson, 2003)
• Associated variously with differences in race,
gender, ethnicity, economic status, educational
level, and geography
• Minorities, the poor, the less educated, the rural,
and those in developing countries are less likely to
have access to information technology, a situation
that would only reinforce second class citizenry in
the information age

15. Reducing the Digital Divide
• Many billions of dollars have been expended
nationally and internationally to close the divide
on the assumption that access and computer
skills will ensure upward mobility for economically
disadvantaged people.
• The transfer of wealth from the information
technology industry to ordinary people is not
automatic, however. A number of studies
suggest that information technology alone is not
a “magic bullet” for alleviating poverty and
inequality.

16. Reducing the Digital Divide
• The issue is not just access to computers and the
Internet, nor even basic skills in using software, but
also access to and facility with large-scale enterprise
systems for managing information and business
processes
• Wal-Mart not only can afford the highly sophisticated,
state-of-the-art emergency operations center that we
described in Chapter 1, but also the people who
know how to use that center to manage a crisis
• Could a smaller enterprise or even a city like New
Orleans ever afford this kind of investment?

17. Information Technology
(IT) Fluency
• Knowing how to write formulas in a spreadsheet,
construct a relational database, or create a
PowerPointTM
slide is, by today’s standards, just
basic computer literacy
• Producing knowledge management, innovation,
or other value-added outcomes with these skills
is something else
• Computer literacy is not sufficient to become a
creative and competent user of information
technology

18. IT Fluency
• Engage in sustained reasoning. Be able to
understand exactly what problem is to be solved and
when it has been solved.
• Manage complexity. Be able to deal with the
complexity of problems to which IT is applied, the
resources provided by the technology, and the inter-
dependencies of technology-based systems.
• Test a solution. Be able to determine that both the
design and implementation of a solution are correct.
• Manage problems in faulty solutions. Be able to
diagnose and correct problems when technological
tools fail.

19. IT Fluency
• Organize and navigate information structures and
evaluate information. Be able to find information,
make judgments about its reliability and validity,
and structure it to make it useful and meaningful.
• Collaborate. Know how to collaborate within and
between groups and also how technology changes
the way in which collaboration takes place.
• Communicate to other audiences. Be able to
understand audiences and adapt messages and
information as well as technological tools to the
audience.

20. IT Fluency
• Expect the unexpected. Be able to anticipate and
adjust to unexpected or unintended consequences
of technological systems.
• Anticipate changing technologies. Know when it is
appropriate to use an IT tool, how many features to
learn, when to upgrade or adopt new technology.
• Think about IT abstractly. Be able to transfer
principles of technological solutions from one
situation to another and understand the policy and
social implications of technology.

21. Organizational Impact of
IT
• Organizational Structure
– Centralized Versus Decentralized
– Virtual Organizations
• Organizational Processes
• Work and Workers
– E-Mail
– Group Support Software

22. Organizational Structure
Centralized Versus Decentralized
• New-form organizational theory asserts that
technology enables structural changes with pressure
toward greater flexibility, decentralization, and shifts
in authority relationships (Schwarz, 2002).
• In some cases, IT has led to more centralization, in
others to more decentralization, and in still others, it
appears to have no effect at all (Malone, 1999).
• IT may also be paradoxical in this respect; it can
have both centralizing and decentralizing
consequences, even within the same organization.

23. Organizational Structure
Centralized Versus Decentralized
• Transition from workers with lesser skills to knowledge
workers (collecting, analyzing, and integrating information
and also handling complex transactions that require
integrated skills)
• Knowledge workers have e-mail and other
communication tools that are powerful because they are
not constrained by formal hierarchy and chains of
command
• Top managers and executives are not the only people
who have the knowledge and the tools to operate with
some degree of autonomy and organizational influence,
creating potentially decentralizing forces in organizations

24. Virtual Organizations
• Definition: IT-dependent linkages among persons or
organizations sharing knowledge and skills or
collaborating in nontraditional ways
• Simple Form: a team of individuals who collaborate
from remote locations using e-mail, groupware and
other information technologies
• Complex Form: a cooperative arrangement of
companies or institutions that deliver a product or
service on the basis of a common business
understanding and present themselves as a unified
organization (Pang, 2001)

25. Virtual Organizations
Virtual Ownership and Outsourcing
• Dell Computers assembles, markets, and provides
customer support for computers, but just about
everything that goes into a Dell computer is made by
other companies
• The kind of supply chain management that Dell
requires to support this enterprise would not be
possible without today’s information technology
• Consider the level of coordination required to make
such an arrangement work, and the importance of
current information and communications technologies

26. Organizational Processes
• Reengineering or redesigning organizational
processes in ways that take advantage of IT
• Concerned mainly with gaining efficiencies through
elimination of unnecessary processes, but it can
involve radical change
• In business process reengineering, processes are
scrutinized to eliminate those that do not add value to
the enterprise, to automate wherever feasible, to
simplify workflow procedures, and to improve
anything that can be improved (logistics, operations,
sales, and customer service in terms of criteria such
as quality, cost, speed, and innovation)

27. Work and Workers
• E-mail
• Privacy of Employee E-Mail
Communications
• Group Support Software

28. E-Mail
• E-mail contributes to communication load since it
requires effort to construct messages or to do
something in response to messages.
• In one study about 20% of the time that participants
spent on e-mail was used just to find or organize
messages and attachments (Bellotti, et a.l, 2005).
• Complexity in Message Requirements: E-mail
messages concerning interdependent tasks require
coordination with others and contribute heavily to a
sense of overload and are difficult to manage
(Bellotti, et al., 2005).

29. Privacy of Employee E-Mail
Communications
• Organizations frequently subject employee e-
mail to surveillance.
• An American Management Association survey in
2004 found that 60% of surveyed companies
monitor e-mail entering and leaving the
company, and 27% also monitor internal e-mail
messages (Kierkegaard, 2005).
• United States law provides very little privacy
protection for employee communications.

30. E-Mail Privacy
• The U. S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled
that retrieval of e-mail archived on a company
server does not constitute “interception” because
it already has been transmitted and processed
• In a case involving the Pillsbury Company, a court
ruled that an employee had no reasonable
expectation of privacy for messages sent over an
e-mail system owned by an employer

31. Group Support Software
• Groupware combines e-mail with tools such as
scheduling, note taking, conferencing, posting, and
project tracking
• Groupware is the basic instrument for enabling virtual
teams
• With groupware, each computer screen becomes the
participant’s blackboard or the flipchart located at the
staff conference
• Simply put, groupware simulates the experience of a
group working in the same room, but the group
participants are in different geographic locations

32. Group Support Software
• Unlike the blackboard or flip-chart, the collaborative
work product produced with groupware can be printed,
stored, copied, re-read, or forwarded to and from other
people
• Involves more than mere teleconferencing or
videoconferencing where remotely separate
participants can hear and/or see each other
• Groupware adds computer-based tools to facilitate
collaboration and to document the work product
• Group members may work at the same time
(synchronous communication), or at different times
(asynchronous)

33. Group Support Software
Sophisticated Form of Groupware
• Groupware provides group decision support systems (GDSS)
• Collaborative systems document the process used by a group to
arrive at a decision while GDSS actually structures the decision
making process
• GDSS software for group conferencing not only provides tools
for creating, exchanging, and printing computer messages, but
also for decision-making and voting procedures
• GDSS may provide users with a choice among different models
or protocols for decision-making or problem-solving, typically
from a menu of options (guiding the group through each step)

34. Group Support Software
• Most GDSS software products are based on a common,
underlying phase model (problem identification,
development of alternative solutions, analysis of
alternatives, and choice of one alternative for
implementation)
• A newer approach relies on development of multiple
perspectives of a problem, then synthesis of these
perspectives as a basis for generating possible solutions
and defining actions
• GDSS “can make a well-planned meeting better, and it can
make a poorly planned meeting worse” (Nunamaker, et al.,
1997).

35. Interpretive Perspective on IT
• Technology’s Influence on Sense-Making
• Social Construction of IT

36. Technology’s Influence
on Sense-Making
• People sustain reciprocity in ordinary interaction,
but computer mediation requires users to actively
find evidence that they share meanings with
others in the communication
• People use “normal form” terms and utterances
in ordinary interaction to describe their
environment and experiences (until just a few
years ago, nobody had ever googled anything)

37. Technology’s Influence
on Sense-Making
• Much of the knowledge that supports ordinary
interaction is tacit and not explicit, and utterances are
incomplete, vague, and ambiguous.
• We assume that others will fill in the right meanings
or that meanings will be clarified in the on-going
conversation.
• In computer-mediated communication, one must
actively seek additional information to interpret
events [and] wait for this information to emerge

38. Technology’s Influence
on Sense-Making
• In ordinary interaction, participants expect each other
to “look beyond the surface meanings of words” for
understanding.
• Various aspects of context enable us to do this, e.g.,
knowledge about the other person, the situation, or
the setting.
• Computer-mediated communication brings its own
kind of demand for this ability to comprehend
computer displays and communications by using
contextual information (Gephart, 2004)

39. Social Construction of IT
• Understanding the meanings that technology
has for its users and how these meanings are
constituted through communication
• Interpretive flexibility: the emergence of multiple
understandings for the same technology
• For example: The divergence between the
technologist who designs, implements, and/or
supports the technology and the ordinary user
who applies that technology to tasks and
problems [SNL’s Your Company’s Computer
Guy] (Gephart, 2004)

40. Social Construction of IT
• Interpretive flexibility also involves variations in
users’ understandings of IT as well
• Any given member might experience both
positive and negative feelings about a new
technology, being open to it on the one hand, but
harboring reservations about it on the other
• Also, members are open to influence and
members do attempt to influence one another
about IT

41. Critical Perspective on IT
• Technology and Managerial Authority
• Technology and Neo-Liberal Hegemony
• Technology and Global Control
• Technology and Resistance

42. Technology and
Managerial Authority
• Information technology innovations tend to
reinforce rather than change existing organizational
structures and systems of authority (Schwarz,
2002)
• Study of two Australian organizations implementing
major information technology initiatives
• The new systems did not lead to structural
transformations and did not alter the existing
systems of hierarchy and authority

43. Technology and
Managerial Authority
• Management announced the at the outset that IT
would fundamentally alter the organization, but as
soon as implementation was completed, they began
to nudge it back into conformity with their pre-
existing values
• Instead of enabling decentralization, management
used the system for closer supervision and scrutiny,
and individual roles remained much the same
• Non-managers used IT in ways that sustained
managerial control because they were “socialized to
hierarchy” (Schwarz, 2002)

44. Technology and Neo-Liberal
Hegemony
• Neo-liberal hegemony: a revival and transformation
of the economic liberalism that flourished in the
United States until the Great Depression in the
1930s.
• Economic liberalism was predicated on free
enterprise and free trade with little or no government
intervention in the form of controls, barriers, and
restrictions.
• Neo-liberalism is a return to basic principles of
economic liberalism, but with a new twist involving
belief in the primacy of market forces.

45. Technology and Neo-
Liberal Hegemony
• Belief in the primacy of market forces is no
longer based on the production of goods and
services. The market is an end in itself. Every
human transaction is a market transaction,
potentially competing with and influencing every
other transaction.
• Since the market is the standard and the guide
for all human action, it supplants any other
system of ethics and beliefs.
• Now how is this connected with technology?

46. Technology and Neo-
Liberal Hegemony
• The neo-liberal position envisions a global,
economic order where traditional bureaucratic
organization and hierarchy are outmoded.
Organizations are boundary-less and do not
require centralized systems of authority. The
new order is one of flexibility and adaptability to
take advantage of the opportunities that the
market presents. In other words, the new order is
a virtual order that is enabled by technology and
also obliges a virtual consciousness.

47. Technology and Neo-
Liberal Hegemony
• Thorne (2005) describes virtual consciousness as a
pervasive worldview in which globalization is an
inevitable historical framework where virtual
organizations are the only viable organizational form.
Resistance is pointless.
• Virtual consciousness obscures the capitalist forces
that drive the virtual enterprise, reinforce inequalities in
wealth and power, and make individuals dispensable. It
also ignores the fact that even terrorist and criminal
organizations have many characteristics of virtual
organizations, including mastery of cyberspace and the
global, digital domain.

48. Technology and Global
Control
• If virtual consciousness is pushed beyond the
bounds of Western culture, the implication is not
just for a global economy, but also for a
condition of global control.
• In the present day, new technologies that might
seem to be liberating and empowering for the
individual as tools have shifted the balance of
global power to a cadre of financiers and major
multinational corporate executives.

49. Technology and Global
Control
• The concern is mainly about control of
corporations and financial institutions over
telematics and transnational data flows that
enable them to locate the means of production
anywhere and control it from anywhere
(McMahon, 2002)
• How can a labor union or even a national
government negotiate with a multinational
enterprise when that enterprise can move jobs to
another country?

50. Technology and Global
Control
• What about the differences in influence and
effectiveness between large corporations and
institutions with the resources to leverage
technology in support of their goals and less well-
to-do non-profit or non-governmental
organizations that lack this capability? [Vegh,
2003]

51. Technology and
Resistance
• Hacktivism: a movement that combines
oppositional political activism with the methods
and techniques of computer hacking
• Similar to other resistance groups that act by
disrupting the processes of dominant systems
• Consider the case of Electronic Disturbance
Theater (EDT) and its alliance with the anti-
government Zapatista movement in Mexico.

52. Technology and
Resistance
• EDT has on various occasions coordinated web sit-
ins for the Zapatistas and used a software system
known as Floodnet to disrupt the websites of
corporations and financial institutions.
• The effectiveness of Floodnet depends on how
many web browsers simultaneously use it on a
given web site, so its strength from EDT’s
standpoint is demonstration of “the solidarity of
simultaneous collective action” in electronic civil
disobedience (Taylor, 2005).

53. The Technologized Life
• We would be lost without our laptops, PDAs,
and wireless phones
• Gen-Xers and Millennials, having grown up with
the technology, may take it for granted, but
they might be even more lost without it
• 21st
century life for many of us is more
thoroughly technologized than ever before

54. The Technologized Life
• The line between work life and personal life is
being obliterated by the extension of work into
leisure time and home life
• The pace of technological change obliges
continuous adaptation and upgrading of skills.
And once an infrastructure is in place for
virtual work, it can be accomplished anytime,
anywhere, by anyone with the requisite skill
sets.