How Technology Is Changing Work and Organizations

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Abstract

Given the rapid advances and the increased reliance on technology, the question of how it is changing work and employment is highly salient for scholars of organizational psychology and organizational behavior (OP/OB). This article attempts to interpret the progress, direction, and purpose of current research on the effects of technology on work and organizations. After a review of key breakthroughs in the evolution of technology, we consider the disruptive effects of emerging information and communication technologies. We then examine numbers and types of jobs affected by developments in technology, and how this will lead to significant worker dislocation. To illustrate technology's impact on work, work systems, and organizations, we present four popular technologies: electronic monitoring systems, robots, teleconferencing, and wearable computing devices. To provide insights regarding what we know about the effects of technology for OP/OB scholars, we consider the results of research conducted from four different perspectives on the role of technology in management. We also examine how that role is changing in the emerging world of technology. We conclude by considering approaches to six human resources (HR) areas supported by traditional and emerging technologies, identifying related research questions that should have profound implications both for research and for practice, and providing guidance for future research.

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Technology as an occasion for structuring: evidence from observations of CT scanners and the social order of radiology departments.

S R Barley (1986)

New medical imaging devices, such as the CT scanner, have begun to challenge traditional role relations among radiologists and radiological technologists. Under some conditions, these technologies may actually alter the organizational and occupational structure of radiological work. However, current theories of technology and organizational form are insensitive to the potential number of structural variations implicit in role-based change. This paper expands recent sociological thought on the link between institution and action to outline a theory of how technology might occasion different organizational structures by altering institutionalized roles and patterns of interaction. In so doing, technology is treated as a social rather than a physical object, and structure is conceptualized as a process rather than an entity. The implications of the theory are illustrated by showing how identical CT scanners occasioned similar structuring processes in two radiology departments and yet led to divergent forms of organization. The data suggest that to understand how technologies alter organizational structures researchers may need to integrate the study of social action and the study of social form.

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Early predictors of job burnout and engagement.

Christina Maslach, Michael Leiter (2008)

A longitudinal study predicted changes in burnout or engagement a year later by identifying 2 types of early indicators at the initial assessment. Organizational employees (N = 466) completed measures of burnout and 6 areas of worklife at 2 times with a 1-year interval. Those people who showed an inconsistent pattern at Time 1 were more likely to change over the year than were those who did not. Among this group, those who also displayed a workplace incongruity in the area of fairness moved to burnout at Time 2, while those without this incongruity moved toward engagement. The implications of these 2 predictive indicators are discussed in terms of the enhanced ability to customize interventions for targeted groups within the workplace. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2008 APA, all rights reserved.