Technogical Impact

Technology Impact on Organization Structure and Human Resource Management

Technology Impact on Organization Structure and Human Resource Management

Abstract

The influence of certain factors on the organizational components has been in researchers' focus for years, together with their impact on the overall organizational efficiency. Traditional view commonly divided the factors on internal and external ones, which became improper in modern conditions. With contemporary division on structural and contextual factors, as a specific determinant we have to extract information and communication technology (ICT) which impacts organizational structure elements, but also comprehensively changes the effects of all the other mentioned factors.

Therefore it is becoming generic factor which cannot be classified into one of these groups. In this research, we shall observe impact of technology on organizational structure.

Introduction

Organizations are formed by groups of people with purpose of achieving effects that one person cannot achieve individually. Better results are created as a consequence of organizational effect which directs organization to achieving some organizational goals. Regarding the purpose of the organizations' founding, they can be described as profit or non-profit ones. To achieve these goals organizations create inner order and relations among organizational parts that can be described as an organizational structure.

All organizational parts together with relations and mechanisms of their coordination are important for proper functioning of any organization. Organizations are influenced by many factors, that are coming from their dynamic surrounding or from organization it, and because the organizational structure is static, it sometimes cannot meet requirements of efficiency and adoptability. That is why studying of organizational structure is one of ways to improve organizational effects. The influence of certain factors on the organizational components is traditionally divided into external factors and internal factors. Sikavica divided internal factors into several groups: goals and strategy, tasks and technology, size, employees, organizational life cycle, products and location. Also, Sikavica divided external factors into market, institutional environment, integration processes, development of science and technology.

Traditional view became improper in modern conditions. Numerous factors, which can be seen as structural and contextual, influence at the same time both structure and the organizational efficiency. Daft describes two dimensions of each organization: structural and contextual. These dimensions describe organizations the same way that personality and physical traits describe people. Structural dimension can be illustrated by structural factors that reveal internal characteristics of an organization. They create a basis for measuring and comparing organizations. On another side there are contextual factors that create a contextual dimension of organization, including its size, technology, environment and goals. There are some factors that can be included in both structural and contextual factors and one of these factors is ICT. ICT impacts not only all the organizational structure elements, but comprehensively changes the effects of all the other mentioned structural and contextual factors, therefore becoming generic factor. In our research we analyze influence of ICT on the public administrations offices in the Varazdin County.

Structural and Contextual factors

We divided structural factors into several groups: formalization, specialization, hierarchy and authority, centralization, professionalism and employees ...