- Charan Kamal Singh- Charan Kamal Singh - Rinki- Rinki MBA(HR)MBA(HR)

Introduction

Floyd (1970) defined technology as the practical application of scientific or engineering knowledge to the conception, development, or application of products or offerings, processes, or operations.

He argued that technology is important for two important reasons (objectives):

• To achieve success in business and attain competitive position and

• To promote a culture of innovation through technology for long term sustainability.

The concept of Technology Management

• Christensen (2003) defined technology management as ‘ the field of study which imparts skills and knowledge designed to improve the entire process of technological change, and ranges from systems planning and design, to introduction, to evaluation of effectiveness.’

• Organization needs to manage technology, effectively integrating the human factors.

• Outcome - successful technological change, which enables the organization to use technology as a key driver to competitive advantage.

Sociological Issues in Technology Management

• This aspect considers technology as the outcome of the social process, involving technology adopters (organization) and others (stakeholders) who are affected by their prevailing culture, political beliefs, and strategies.

• The various sociological aspects influencing technology management are Innovation Communication Social System Time

Innovation

• Focus is on main attributes of innovative technology.

• These are relative advantage, compatibility, complexity, trialability, and observability.

• Relative advantage is a quantitative or qualitative measurement of innovation to understand the degree of change between the past and present innovation.

• If the present innovation is better, it receives an acceptance from the stakeholders and the organization also succeeds by ensuring quick adoption.

• Compatibility of innovation studies degree of consistency with corporate value systems, past experiences, habits, and needs of stakeholders.

• High compatibility ensures successful adoption, while low compatibility makes acceptance slower

Complexity in innovation arises due to difficulty in understanding an lack of user-friendliness.

The greater the complexity, the slower is the acceptance.

• Trialability is the pilot testing of innovation to reduce the possible risk of technological change.

• Successful trials can ensure acceptance as people understand the outcome better.

• Observability is the degree of visibility of the outcome of technological change.

• A higher degree of observability means a better degree of acceptance.

Communication

• Communication is the most important aspect in any technological change.

• Selecting the appropriate communication channels to convey the message to the receiver is strategic decision for the organization.

• During change process the organizations should increase the spate of face to face communication, dedicating more executive time talking to people, clarifying their doubts etc.

Social System

• The social system, in the form of norms, opinion leaders, change agents, culture, political beliefs, laws, policies, etc., set the boundaries of innovation, within which organization can bring about technological change.

• An incompatible social system leads to poor acceptance.

Time

• Introducing technological change in an organisation in a gradual manner is not advisable because slowing the process of change reduces the opportunity to sustain competitive advantage.

• Therefore, the change process should be appropriately timed, bearing in mind also the degree of adaptability of people.

Organizational Structure and Design

• Technology also influences organizational structure and design.

• It alters the production process, systems, and even the skill sets of employees.

• Technology often renders workers and employees as supplementary to the production process.

• All this requires change in the organizational structure. • For example, in many manufacturing organization the

production process is such that it empowers workers as independent production owners, so much so that they control their own jobs and require no supervision.

Economic Issues in Technological Change

• In economic terms, technological change is considered from the viewpoint of feasibility in production.

• Hicks (1932) said that a technological change is called Hicks neutral when the ratio of capital's marginal product to labour's marginal product remains unchanged.

• Following Hicks, we have two more bifurcations of this concept, that is, Harrod neutral and Solow neutral.

• Harrod neutral says that if technology is labour-augmenting, it benefits labour; while Solow neutral believes that if technology is capital-augmenting, it benefits the capital (i.e., the investor).

Strategic Technology Management

There are three fundamental areas :

I. Organizations decide to work differently by quantitative assessment of performance, benchmarking against best practices, and duly appreciating stakeholders' needs.

II. They direct scarce resources to high-value uses by reengineering critical functions, and carefully controlling and evaluating expenditure through specific performance and cost measures.

III.They support major cost reduction and service improvement efforts with up-to-date professional skills, and organizational roles and responsibilities required to do the job.

Strategic Technology Management

• Strategic management of technological change requires involvement and commitment from the top.

• Top leadership should not only define business goals, but also initiate, mandate, and facilitate major changes in technology to support the achievement of these goals.

• They must appreciate the cost-benefit and risk-return trade-offs associated with the technology investments.

Human Resource Management And Technology Management

• Audretsch and Thurik (2000) argue that effective HRM practices are becoming increasingly important in the new 'knowledge-based' economy, as companies face the double challenge of the need for more highly trained employees coupled with a shortage of qualified labour.

• The HR practices considered for technology management focus in the following areas:

Human resource planning Systematic recruitment and selection Training and development programmes Written job description Regular performance appraisal Growth plans and strategies Management techniques (e.g., continuous improvement including TQM) Benchmarking

Human Resource Management And Technology Management

The advanced technologies which particularly affect the areas of organizational operations are as follows: – Design and engineering – Processing fabrication and assembly – Automated material handling

– Inspection

– Integration and control

– Network communication

Technology Planning• A technology plan serves as a bridge between established

standards and organization practices.

• It facilitates multiple levels of strategy, policy, and decision-making, and allows for resource allocations.

• Technology planning is an ongoing process, and translates organizational policy and technology needs into concrete actions.

• It allows organizations to take advantage of technology innovation while minimizing the negative impact of unexpected challenge.

• It provides a roadmap for the implementation of technology and can result more efficient expenditure of limited resources, and improvement in organization performance.

Principles of Technology Planning• The basic principles of technology planning involve

selecting a model and then moving the process forward.

• Hopey and Harvey-Morgan (1995), gave the following six basic principles:

1. It should be organized and considered as a continuous process. It should use simple, straightforward planning model, and result in a document that show how technology is used to improve operations, management, assessment, and communications.

2. Be broad but realistic in scope, with economical and technically feasible solutions.

Principles of Technology Planning

3. Involve all the stakeholders and technology experts.

4. Identify the strengths and weaknesses of the organization, and how each will impact the implementation of technology.

5. Formalize the procedures and methods for making technology decisions, including the setting of priorities and the purchase, evaluation, upgrading, and use of technology.

6. Be driven by organizational goals and objectives rather than by technological developments.

Technology Transfer The term 'technology transfer' is used to describe a formal

transferring of new discoveries and innovations resulting from scientific research conducted at universities, to the commercial sector.

One way in which universities do this is through patenting and licensing new innovations. The major steps in this process include

i. the disclosure of innovations,

ii. patenting the innovation concurrent with publication of scientific research, and

iii. licensing the rights to innovations to industry for commercial development.

The important elements of technology transfer functions are as follows:

1. Coordinate Coordinating between technology users and developers, and

researchers and manufactures. Access to relevant internal and external resources to individual projects and enterprises improves coordination.

2.Nurture Proper nurturing moves technology from a research stage to an

organizational usage, providing new business opportunities and entrepreneurship. An effective process of nurturing provides guidance, counselling, and resources.

3.Link Linkage between business enterprises and future entrepreneurs,

researchers, and other technology developers to help pioneer new products, companies, etc.

Technology and Organizational Design

• According to Pettigrew et al. (2003), organizational design is also influenced by technology.

• With advancement of information technology, companies all over the world are now experimenting with various organizational designs to achieve the right fit with their strategies.

• Globally, many automobile manufacturers now focus on customized car designs to consolidate their market share.

• Traditionally, automobile manufacturers follow an assembly line-based production process, as every aspect of manufacturing is standardized and requires groups of workers to perform only some routine jobs at their individual workstations.

• However, to accommodate customized designs, automobile manufacturers are turning to a matrix structure.

Technology and Organizational Design

• Due to the influence of technology, TCS also now follows an MIS approach in organizational design.

• At the corporate level it follows the functional structure, but at the operations level, it uses a matrix structure to accommodate the specific needs of its customers.

• Two well known models that illustrate how technology influences the organization as a whole including its design are:

Thompson’s Model Woodward’s Model

Thompson’s Model

• James Thompson (1967) developed three classifications for technology: (i) intensive technology, (ii) mediating technology, and (iii) long-linked technology.

• Intensive technology is developed keeping in view a high level of uncertainty. It helps to produce the desired outcomes even in uncertain situations.

• Intensive technology makes workers interdependent and creative, and capable of solving their work-related problems through mutual coordination. It makes organizations more flexible in decision-making, rather than emphasizing decisions that are standard operating procedure (SOP) bound.

Thompson’s Model

• Mediating technology brings together individuals and/or groups to seek a mutually beneficial exchange of values.

• This form of technological environment is more applicable in the service industry, such as banks, financial institutions, etc.

• Long-linked technology is appropriate for mass production processes, such as an automobile assembly line.

• It depends on highly specialized tasks in a closely controlled sequence of activities to produce the final product.

• According to Thompson's model, each type of technology has specific bearings on the design and structure of the organization.

Woodward’s Model

• Joan Woodward (1965), with her team of researchers, studied about 100 organizations in England during the 1960s to establish the linkage between the size and structure of organizations.

• They could not establish any such relationship.• In their follow-up study, they found some relationship

between the structure and three basic forms of technology, which they categorized as

(i) small batch production technology,

(ii) large batch or mass production technology, and

(iii) continuous process production technology.

Woodward’s Model

• Small batch production technology is suitable for the production of few variety productions, primarily to meet the specific requirements of customers. E.g. Shipbuilding Industry

• Long batch or mass production technology is used for producing large volume standardized products to cater to the demand for the larger market. E.g. Automobile Assembly Line.

• Continuous process production technology is a completely mechanized form of production, where machines undertake all the jobs, leaving people free to focus on quality inspection and adjustment, monitoring, etc. E.g. Petroleum refineries and chemical plants.

 Capability Maturity Model

• The Capability Maturity Model (CMM) is a development model created after study of data collected from organizations that contracted with the U.S. Department of Defense, who funded the research.

• This model was developed by Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh.

• The term "maturity" relates to the degree of formality and optimization of processes, from ad hoc practices, to formally defined steps, to managed result metrics, to active optimization of the processes.

            CMM-  Structure The model involves five aspects:

• Maturity Levels: a 5-level process maturity continuum - where the uppermost (5th) level is a notional ideal state where processes would be systematically managed by a combination of process optimization and continuous process improvement.

• Key  Process  Areas:  a Key Process Area identifies a cluster of related activities that, when performed together, achieve a set of goals considered important.

• Goals: the goals of a key process area summarize the states that must exist for that key process area to have been implemented in an effective and lasting way. The extent to which the goals have been accomplished is an indicator of how much capability the organization has established at that maturity level. The goals signify the scope, boundaries, and intent of each key process area.

• Common  Features:  common features include practices that implement and institutionalize a key process area. There are five types of common features: commitment to perform, ability to perform, activities performed, measurement and analysis, and verifying implementation.

• Key  Practices:  The key practices describe the elements of infrastructure and practice that contribute most effectively to the implementation and institutionalization of the area.

 Hype Cycle Model• The Hype Cycle is a branded graphical tool developed

and used by IT research and advisory firm Gartner for representing the maturity, adoption and social application of specific technologies.

• It consists of five stages.

Hype Cycle Model