Mullins L.J. Management and organisational behaviour, Seventh edition

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go through all the stages mentioned here in the same order, and exactly as delineated.

We know from case study research that the adoption and introduction of new technol-

ogy is an iterative, contested and political process, with all that this implies.

Let us

briefly look at each of these stages in turn.

This stage is triggered by someone having the idea to introduce some form of new

technology into the organisation. What is the nature of his or her job and expertise?

Where did the idea come from – a business magazine, a conference, a competitor, or

maybe a technology supplier? Who else, if anyone, was involved at this early stage? It

is likely that employees’ and managers’ varying organisational backgrounds, training,

qualifications, expertise, and orientations will have an effect upon how the technology

adoption process unfolds and is shaped from this point onwards – for instance, in

terms of the objectives which are set for the introduction of the new technology, and

the strategy of adoption and introduction which is deployed.

A wide range of strategies and objectives for new technology adoption and introduc-

tion can and have been pursued.

It sometimes happens that the initiators go on to

become ‘change agents’ if they follow their proposal through and help to manage the

organisational and technological change implementation process. (One thing is cer-

tain: technical change always involves organisational change, although the reverse

does not follow.)

The role of personnel/human resource specialists in the new technology adoption

process provides an interesting example of how people with particular perspectives and

expertise on aspects of organisational work might – and indeed have – influenced the

process. They are the ‘people specialists’ in organisations, and should be aware of issues

such as alternative forms of job design and working practices, skill and deskilling possi-

bilities. Have they been initiators, for example, or have they only had a marginal

involvement, if any, after other people have already made the key decisions? The short

answer to the latter question is probably ‘yes’ and this has implications for the quality

of the way in which the technology–people dimension is handled.

Preece and Harrison

found that personnel specialists are sometimes in organisational positions which

CHAPTER 17 TECHNOLOGY AND ORGANISATIONS

675

Figure 17.2 Stages in new technology adoption and introduction

(Source: Preece, D. A. Organisations and Technical Change: Strategy, Objectives and Involvement, Routledge/ITBP (1995), p. 7.)

Initiation

provide them with the opportunity to act as particularly effective ‘new technology

change agents’ through their cross-organisational brief.

Based upon a detailed examin-

ation of the survey and case study data which was available, Legge, however, concluded

that even when personnel considerations have not been ignored:

the role of personnel specialists appears to be one of late-in-the-day facilitators of implementa-

tion, constrained by technical and financial parameters over which they have little say and to

which they can merely react.

Legge suggests that there were three main reasons for this low level of involvement of

personnel specialists:

1 Employees have been secondary to other considerations in the choice and imple-

mentation of new technology, and thus personnel specialists’ peripheral and

reactive involvement is only to be expected.

2 As employees typically welcome rather than resist new technology, personnel spe-

cialists’ involvement did not take off at implementation either (for example, they

were rarely required to deal with tricky and complex issues relating to pay, gradings,

employment, etc.).

3 Even on the odd occasion when resistance did occur, personnel’s role was not seen

as being crucial because of the weaknesses and divisions of the trade unions and

employees more generally.

An additional factor is that there were no personnel specialists in the great majority of

organisations. Even on a fairly broad definition of ‘personnel specialist’, only 15 and

17 per cent of the Workplace Industrial Relations Survey (WIRS) of UK establishments

had them in 1984 and 1990 respectively, although this figure had risen to 30 per cent

by the time of the 1998 survey.

What part, then, did personnel/HRM considerations (as distinct from specialists)

play in technical change? By the early 1990s there was some evidence that personnel

considerations had come to play a more important role, but ‘as an executive and line

management rather than personnel specialist concern’.

This, according to Storey,

had been occurring in situations where managers had sought to develop employee

commitment to, and effective utilisation of, new technology through consultation,

team-building and training, and:

has often been in the context of devolved management and the revitalisation and legitimisation

of line management transformed into ‘manufacturing’ or ‘business’ managers eager to experi-

ment with non-proceduralised approaches to managing change.

On the basis of the above it would seem safe to conclude that personnel specialists typ-

ically had little, if any, involvement in the technology adoption phase.

This stage involves the more detailed work which follows initiation, assuming that the

idea has sparked some interest in the organisation (not least, among people who have

the power/authority to commit resources to the emergent project). It includes search-

ing for further information inside and outside the company (possibly involving talking

to hardware and software suppliers), looking at what competitors are doing, and get-

ting other people involved.

This is a crucial stage in the progression of the proposal, in that it is here that the

sponsors (note the change of terminology now from ‘initiators’, given that the idea

has reached this stage) either get the agreement of senior managers to invest in the

technology, or have to resubmit or abandon the project. It is structured, in essence,

around the estimation of costs and benefits and projections about rates of return (or

some similar measure) from the investment over a certain time period.

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PART 6 ORGANISATIONAL STRUCTURES

Progression

and feasibility

Investment

decision

This stage may be the first occasion on which the objectives for the introduction of

new technology are formally articulated, if only for the simple reason that this has to be

done for a presentation to the Board. The meaningfulness and influence of this quantifi-

cation and formalisation of technology benefits (and costs) are debatable, for, as

observed above, technology adoption and introduction processes are inherently political

and social, and therefore open to shaping by the various actors and groups involved.

Planning and systems design follows the approval of the investment by senior managers,

and involves a more detailed consideration and resolution of such matters as which sup-

plier(s) should be used and their selection, preparation for introduction (training,

communication, etc.), changes to working practices and job designs, payment and grad-

ing for working with the new technology, wiring and other technical and facilities

preparation. This may be the first occasion on which the eventual users of the technol-

ogy (either directly or indirectly – that is, via representatives) have been involved in the

adoption process. If this is the case, it may say something about the organisation’s man-

agerial style towards employees. Many of the key decisions have now been taken about

the technological and associated organisational changes, and therefore there is less

opportunity or space left for users to exercise influence upon these matters. This might

be indicative of a ‘direct control’

and ‘low-involvement/low-trust culture’.

It is at this stage that the technology first comes to have, as it were, a physical presence

within the adopting organisation, and hence we move into the second main phase. In

essence, the introduction stage involves working on the technology and the associated

organisational changes with a view to making them effectively usable in an ‘everyday’

mode. When this is achieved, the stage shades into the next one – ‘operationalisation’.

Examples of the more strictly technical work include putting in the necessary wiring,

locating the workstations, providing the necessary ambient conditions and facilities.

With respect to the organisational aspects, these can include familiarisation training

of users, pilots and trials of the technology, and supplier support and advice.

It should be noted that this is by no means necessarily a straightforward and

uneventful stage. It might well take many months of effort and frustration before the

technology is fully operational; indeed, there is a sense in which the technology may

never become ‘fully operational’ due to continual and unresolvable problems. This is

one of the main reasons why it is so important to spend time at the adoption phase

trying to ensure that the organisation actually does need this technology and that, if it

does, all relevant people understand why and have the necessary training and expertise

to use and/or manage it (quite apart from all the other infrastructure requirements).

It is at this stage that the technology comes into everyday use in the organisation, and

hence the managers and/or employees who use the technology on a day-to-day basis

come to understand what it can do and its limitations, and play a part in shaping the

way in which it is utilised and what the organisation gains from it. The extent of the

opportunity employees have here will depend in part upon earlier decisions taken by

managers and others about matters such as the number of staff required, job design

around the technology (reskilling, deskilling, upskilling, etc.) and working practices.

In any event, the users are likely to have at least a limited amount of discretion with

regard to the utilisation of the technology. It is certainly in both the organisation’s and

the users’ interests that they do have discretion and autonomy at the job level in order

that the potential of the technology can be realised through the way in which it is

used. We discussed new technology’s inherent flexibility earlier; add to this the unpre-

dictability and ever-changing nature of the environments faced by many

contemporary organisations and hence the need to be responsive and flexible, and

therefore for employees to be able to work in a flexible and informed manner. Indeed,

CHAPTER 17 TECHNOLOGY AND ORGANISATIONS

677

Planning and

systems

design

Introduction

Operational-

isation

it can be argued that a particular technical change only comes to have value or utility

to an organisation precisely if the users develop and work with it in such a way that

they themselves create this utility.

The essence of the evaluation stage is that the organisation learns from its new tech-

nology adoption and operationalisation experiences, and is able to pass on that

learning in subsequent introductions of new technology within the organisation or

elsewhere (for example, within other divisions of the same company). Evaluation does

not always occur in practice, however, not least for political reasons; for example, the

benefits which were projected by a particular person or department have not been

achieved in practice, while the cost has been greater than anticipated (to take a ‘worst-

case’ scenario). Such people may well prefer to ‘forget’ about having an evaluation.

Comment

It is important to reiterate that this framework is a heuristic device. It is not implied

that all organisations have to go through all these stages in a linear, sequential order;

what occurs in practice varies from one organisation to another and over time in the

same organisation. Practice is always much more messy and uneven than is outlined in

any models, and often involves, for example, iteration from a ‘later’ stage to an earlier

one. (Indeed, the new technology adoption process may get ‘stuck’ at an earlier stage

and never proceed to introduction.) The stages in the model can be viewed as critical

junctures at which there is at least the possibility that various actors will become

involved in the process and shape it and the outcomes that follow.

The process of new technology adoption and introduction, then, is imbued with

political and other social objectives and strategies. New technology allows of a degree

of shaping and flexibility, but not in a completely open-ended way. In other words, the

technology itself does make a difference and is but one factor in and without the

organisation influencing the nature of the work that people do and how they do it.

While the users may well have either not been involved at all, or only marginally, in

the process of technology adoption, it does not follow that they will not have any

impact during the operationalisation stage, in terms of such aspects as working prac-

tices, tasks, decisions about methods, and tools and techniques. Indeed given that

most organisations are undergoing a continuous process of change, there is likely to be

a continuing need for exactly this sort of intervention.

Preece, Steven and Steven

found that when Bass Taverns introduced an EPOS system

and WAN into its managed estate of public houses in the 1990s, a key objective was to

facilitate the capturing and dissemination of control information among management.

They show that at the same time, once they became familiar with the capabilities of the

technology, many licensed house managers also used the technology in an imaginative

and, in a sense, ‘liberating’ way. For example, they now had the data relating to their

own hostelry before their local manager, and were able to discuss it from a more

‘informed’ position.

While, then, employees may not be involved in the original design of the changed

or new jobs around the technology, they are necessarily involved in the ‘design-in-use’,

or ‘valuing’, or ‘configuration’ of the socio-technical ‘ensemble’.

What is more, incre-

mental changes such as these, taking place over an extended period of time, can lead

to quite extensive changes in the nature of jobs and working practices – but there are

constraints upon how far this can go. These include managers’ (senior and middle)

objectives, strategies and decision-making; linkages with other jobs and departments/

sections/divisions across the organisation; the employment contract; agreements

which have been entered into between management and trade union(s) (for example

with regard to working practices and work allocation).

While many of the key decisions may well have been taken by this stage, therefore,

and, most likely, by managers or technical specialists, the day-to-day involvement and

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PART 6 ORGANISATIONAL STRUCTURES

Evaluation

contribution of employees is necessary in order that the potential benefits of the new

technology are realised in practice. Thus, managers can be said to have an interest in

simultaneously controlling the work of employees and gaining their commitment to

accepting and looking for new, more effective and efficient, ways of working.

This section draws upon two case studies conducted by the author which examined in

detail social, managerial, and political issues and processes associated with technologi-

cal change. Any ‘outcomes’ – for example, in terms of the ‘net benefit’ to the

organisation in financial and economic terms (as measured by payback, discounted

cash flow, internal rate of return, or whatever other measure is used) or to users in

monetary and/or job satisfaction terms – are always a result of the technological/organ-

isational configuration, or socio-technical ensemble (whether it has ‘stabilised’ or not).

(The organisations have been given fictitious names in order to preserve confiden-

tiality. ‘Tawny Taverns’ is a UK public house retailing company and ‘Redstart

Computers’ is a computer manufacturer and distributor company.

CHAPTER 17 TECHNOLOGY AND ORGANISATIONS

CASE STUDIES IN TECHNOLOGICAL/ORGANISATIONAL CHANGE

The first case study focuses upon the introduction of

an Electronic Point-of- Sale (EPOS) system into one

of the UK’s largest public house retailing companies.

The EPOS system was installed in around 2800 man-

aged houses between 1991 and 1994, with some

2800 public house managers and 2300 partners

being trained in the use of the new technology in

addition to approx. 40,000 bar staff. This was the

largest investment in IT which the company had

ever made (involving £55 million of expenditure),

and, indeed, at the time of the roll-out was also the

most extensive such investment in Europe over this

time period. While the company had by this time

implemented IT in various applications in its offices

(such as word processing and finance packages),

there had been no investment in IT in the core part

of the business – that is, the public houses. This

major technological change formed a key part of the

strategic organisational change programme upon

which the organisation had embarked in the early

1990s, and was aimed at reducing costs (e.g.

through better stock and staffing costs control) and

encouraging and facilitating business development

and expansion through the capturing, analysis and

provision of more and more timely and localised

data and information (such as on pricing, promo-

tions and profitable lines). What is more, this

information would be immediately available to and

under the control of the public house manager,

rather than, for example, a local area manager, who

would then periodically relay the information – typi-

cally in a ‘knowledge-as-power’ vertical control mode

– to the pub manager, drawing upon the previous

stock-taking and documentation audit. It should be

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CASE STUDY 17.1

A thirst for technology: new systems at the bars of Tawny

Taverns

Photo: Robert Lawson/Anthony Blake Picture Library

PART 6 ORGANISATIONAL STRUCTURES

noted, however, that, via the electronic/telecommu-

nications networks which linked the EPOS tills and

the ‘back-of-pub’ computer to computers in regional

and head office, the same data/information was also

available to middle and senior managers.

The training was carried out by regional training

teams, which took up to six people at a time for a

minimum of three days’ off-the-job training.

Because of the regional variations in stock control

and till systems, training programmes had to be tai-

lored for each pub. Pub managers, their partners and

bar staff had to learn and adopt new processes and

working practices. The pub managers learned how

to train and coach their own staff in the EPOS

system, once they had completed their own training

modules. Specialised IT training was also provided

for management and corporate staff outwith the

public house estate. District Managers and Retail

Directors were trained how to use EPOS for business

planning, staff scheduling, productivity improve-

ment, and other purposes.

What did the pub and regional managers make of

the EPOS system? Let us look at a few representative

interview extracts to gain some insight into what

happened in practice and what staff thought of the

EPOS system:

A lot of LHMs left when EPOS replaced ordinary tills –

they were frightened of it. But now I’ve got used to it, I

can mess about with it, find out how much profit I’ve

made that day, etc. I can even check on a person. You

know, you’ve got one of your staff who’s maybe skiv-

ing, you can check back and see what she’s taken in

that hour. It could, though, be genuine mistake, e.g.

someone learning ... it would then show up on the

stocktake ... If a shortage shows up on the till I can go

upstairs and find out exactly who’s done what, and

then say something to them ... then perhaps you are

into training (pub manager, London).

You now spend more time in the back office. It’s a

good tool for analysing the business, for example line

checks can identify straightaway if there’s a stock

problem with staff, rather than waiting a month and

in the meantime they’ve had £1000 ... but this is all

additional admin. time, because we are now doing

telesales work, stocktaking, wages, etc. – we are replac-

ing these people (pub manager, Sheffield).

I think it’s really good. It makes our job a lot easier –

stock control, everything, is itemised on the till. I’m

using it for monitoring and keeping control – stocks,

lines, checking up on a member of staff if you think

they are fiddling – going into the back office to do this.

Probably a lot of people don’t use it to its full poten-

tial. I’ve not had any proper training on EPOS, I

taught myself and learnt from another LHM. We need

EPOS training courses, especially for new managers.

You end up learning from other managers in your

team. Its much easier this way – you know the people

concerned, and don’t get so embarrassed. EPOS is not

that useful for business development, only as regards

sales reports, which products you’ve been selling,

when, etc. (pub manager, Nottingham).

Initially, the EPOS system was looked at by the [pub]

managers as being the ultimate control tool for the

company, and to a lesser degree that view is still main-

tained. We have to get through a sort of cultural

change where you say to managers ‘it should be a

given that your stocks are right, you’re doing the line

check, you’re doing the basic control features, because

that is an integral part of your job. But you must also

use this to try and develop things as well.’ There’s a lot

of people that do go into the system and they pull off

things and look at it, but they don’t act on it, they

don’t look to the reasons why, and draw up some

action plan (regional manager, London).

A lot is due to the initial training on the system. It

was the largest IT roll-out in Europe when it hap-

pened. Training on the day had to cater for the control

side, because that was long-term how it was going to

pay for itself. There should have been a follow-up on

business development: ‘this is what else it can do, how

it can help to develop and improve things.’ The com-

pany is not prepared to make this spend – it didn’t see

it as an investment (pub manager, Birmingham).

Here are some of the key messages from these inter-

view comments:

■ A managerial control orientation predominated

(Zuboff’s

‘automating’ as against ‘informating’

focus), that is control over the pub’s activities and

business, which included, of course, the staff

employed there. However, while employees were

being monitored, this was not always or necessar-

ily in a ‘negative’ way – for example, it was

sometimes discovered that genuine mistakes were

being made (not ‘skiving’), and this could lead to

some extra help for the member of staff con-

cerned. There was always a danger under the

pre-EPOS regime that staff would be unfairly dis-

missed – presumably this was less likely now.

■ The pub managers were now, with the EPOS

system, doing work which previously would have

been done by head office or regional support staff.

Case study 17.1 continued

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CHAPTER 17 TECHNOLOGY AND ORGANISATIONS

■ There was a feeling that the IT was not being used

to its full potential. The lack of, inappropriate-

ness, or non-timeliness of the training were

contributory factors. It is interesting that team-

working among pub managers, which was

another key element of the strategic change ini-

tiative, came to the rescue in some cases, as pub

managers who had learnt how to use the technol-

ogy were training those in their teams who could

not – indeed this informal training appeared to

be more effective for some people anyway, as

they didn’t, for example, feel so nervous.

■ There was a suspicion that the training, especially

the initial training, had focused upon the control

aspects of the EPOS system because this had been

the main way in which the investment had been

financially justified (for example, through the

cost savings which could be made from improved

stock and wages control). Subsequently, it was felt

that more training should have been provided on

other business activities or operations, such as

marketing, product promotion and business

development.

The above brief overview of a particular technological

change illustrates the ways in which managerial and

staff orientations and perceptions, and extant work-

ing practices, influence how technology is used and

what it is used for. Another illustration is provided by

the research of

Smith,

who studied the implications

of the introduction of EPOS technology in retailing

for organisational centralisation and the delegation of

management control. Smith interviewed store and

head office managers with EPOS experience in 14 UK

retailing companies, finding that ‘EPOS technology

was being used in some cases to extend further the

centralisation of management control over retailing

operations at headquarters level and in others to sup-

port existing policies to delegate decision-making to

stores’.

The centralisation policy resulted in EPOS

data not being made available to store managers,

with all buying and ordering decisions being made by

head office using the new computerised information.

Head office managers found themselves ‘deluged

with data they did not know what to do with’.

Unexplained regional variations in sales patterns

occurred when the decisions of central buyers failed

to result in the expected sales. Store managers com-

plained that this was because their local knowledge

was ignored. ‘In fact, the traditional entrepreneurial

skills of the store manager were eroded by the EPOS

system, headquarters managers preferring the “safer”

marginal and incremental improvements in perform-

ance that could be achieved by centralized

decision-making.’

In contrast, in another group of retailers (a

national clothing chain and four ‘prestige’ retailers),

EPOS was used in a very different way, with much

more delegation of decision-making to the store level,

and managers there having considerable autonomy.

Here, entrepreneurial retailing skills were seen as very

important, and the buying and selling aspects of

retailing were not rigidly separated, but, rather, ‘these

were located at store level in the belief that knowl-

edge about what would sell came from a close

interaction with shop staff and customers. The bene-

fits of EPOS technology in these cases were derived

from the way they could support delegated decision-

making at store level and assist high-quality

and

well-paid salespeople in the task of selling goods in a

courteous and well-informed way to customers.’

The reduction of head office and store costs

through technological change has been a common

occurrence in retailing in recent years, and raises the

question as to whether such change is indeed essen-

tially a cost-cutting exercise or whether, on the other

hand, it is alternatively, or also, seen as a means of

facilitating the redesign of work and jobs, as in the

case of Tawny Taverns. In any event, whether such

change in practice leads to new ways of working is

another matter. Du Gay

has observed:

As basic data-entry and data-processing are increas-

ingly automated in stores and warehouses, costs at

head office are also reduced ... the process of techno-

logical change in large-scale retail enterprises has

resulted in much head office work becoming more ana-

lytic and investigative and less involved with basic

data entry or processing. EDP technology also allows

greater management surveillance and control of the

labour process. Increasingly, EPOS technology is being

used for labour monitoring and scheduling and for

control of pilferage, allowing for a greater degree of

management control over labour utilization and cost.

The EPOS project management team in Tawny

Taverns were aware of the risks of introducing new

working methods, but anticipated that, along with

the training and new technology, they would lead

to significant business gains. On the basis of our

research in the organisation, and drawing upon our

interviews, questionnaire returns, focus groups and

participant observation, we came to the view that in

practice the majority of the pub managers embraced

the new technology. This was the result of a combi-

nation of factors:

■ By the time the pub managers had completed

their initial training programme and had

returned to their pubs, the new equipment was

installed and waiting to be ‘booted-up’. A quali-

fied trainer and coach was available locally to

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PART 6 ORGANISATIONAL STRUCTURES

help with bar staff training, and only when the

pub managers were fully satisfied with the

progress of their team on the new system was the

trainer ‘signed off’ by the manager (in total, over

£10million was spent on the EPOS training and

education programme).

■ They now had real-time data on a number of

aspects of their pub’s operations, such as staff,

beer throughput, and customers. They soon

realised that the new technology would help

them to obtain better control over the business.

■

The EPOS technology, linked back office computer

and connected electronic/telecommunications facil-

ity across the organisation, gave them much of the

same information and knowledge at, if not before,

the same time as the managers senior to them, and

thus gave them ‘knowledge power’ which they had

not previously possessed. Given that, for example,

revenue, stock and cash data was available simulta-

neously to the pub manager, stock taker and

regional manager, the latter could no longer control

the former in a ‘knowledge is power’ mode.

Given the IT infrastructure which was put in place

across the company, a number of the pub managers

found themselves suffering from information over-

load, and in danger of spending too much time on

the computer in the back office, rather than in front

of their customers. Here, then, was another challenge

for them: to learn to convert data into information,

to summarise data, to weed out spurious data, and,

crucially, to say ‘no’ when overloaded.

Case study 17.1 continued

682

CASE STUDY 17.2

Web page not found: internal communications at Redstart

Computers

This case study is based upon a research project

which examined the social, managerial and organi-

sational issues arising out of the adoption and

implementation of intranet technology. The find-

ings reported upon here derive from one of our

sample of organisations, a computer manufacturer

and supplier company located on the south coast of

England, employing around 1500 staff across the

US and Europe, with the great majority working at

this head office, which is also the main manufac-

turing plant. Over 40 individual interviews, lasting

between 30 minutes and two and a half hours

(tape-recorded with the interviewee’s permission,

and subsequently transcribed), have been con-

ducted, one half when the intranet was in the early

process of introduction in June and July 1997 and

the other half some six months later. A wide range

of people from the company were interviewed from

a variety of specialisms and levels in the hierarchy.

The extracts below are taken from the second round

of interviews.

The transcripts and associated analysis have been

used for our present purposes in order to draw

together two contrasting – or ‘polarised’ – sets of

views expressed by employees about the company’s

intranet, that is, on the one hand those people who

felt that ‘little had changed’ and on the other those

who felt that things had changed significantly as a

result of the intranet implementation. Of course,

there were also many people who took a view some-

where in between, for example talking about a

certain amount of change having taken place, whilst

at the same time arguing that things had not

changed that much; other people had views which

might best be referred to as ambivalent or ‘mixed’.

These comments are not presented here, as the aim

is to illustrate and analyse the wide divergence of

views which have been found about the (same)

technology – to which everyone interviewed had, in

principle at least, equal access.

The notation adopted for the transcripts is as

follows:

INT = Interviewer

IS = IS/IT specialist

LM = Line manager

NM = the IT software which the intranet replaced

PD = Personnel Director

SEC = Secretary

SM = Senior manager

TS = Technical specialist

Let us look first of all at the comments of those

people who thought that there had been little, if

any, change.

CHAPTER 17 TECHNOLOGY AND ORGANISATIONS

683

‘LITTLE HAS CHANGED’

LM: But I haven’t accessed a single departmental

home page or a single personal home page for any

useful business reason since the intranet has been

in effect.

TS: I think maybe this is part of, ah, sort of use, not

even use of culture but intranet culture which we are

just putting up with, ah’m, I don’t know why we have

got, ah, an organised way of producing departmental

and personal pages on the intranet, there seems to be a

fad that has grown up on the intranet and we have

paid homage to and lip service to, and put in place on

our intranet rather than recognising it for the com-

plete waste of time and effort I believe it is.

SEC 1: Yeah, I don’t think it was that, I don’t think

it was that a big a change, I thought it was wonder-

ful, marvellous, hooray let’s move into the

twentieth century at least. But I don’t think things

have really changed that much for most of the

people out there, because they still use it in exactly

the same way as they used NM.

SEC 2: They still have too much mail coming to

them personally, still too much actually gets sent

out individually as opposed to being posted on the

web page, but maybe that’s because they haven’t

quite grasped the idea of the groups and the user

pages and things. We’re only now doing this course,

‘Intranet Best Practices’, where they go, where they

explain a bit more about posting things on group

pages or user pages or whatever. I don’t think people

really have been fully aware of what the intranet

can do unless they are particularly keen on PCs and

enjoy playing with things, but a lot of them I think

just use it to send messages and look in their diary,

they don’t really know what it should be used for.

IS: I think that there was initially there was a huge

bubble of work to get it in and then there was the

kind of, ‘Well, now we have got it, let’s do what we

did before’, but using intranet rather than NM, and

so the initial access was almost ‘Look, this thing that

you did before, you know with NM, you can now do

with intranet like this’, that’s what people were driv-

ing for, people were saying how do I do exactly the

same thing that I did on NM but on the intranet?

Not really saying, how can I best do my job using

intranet as a tool.

SM: I don’t find really that there’s been any substan-

tial change, ahm, as I say from that point of view. I

think that people don’t like change, if the people

have been around for a long time using a diary man-

agement system through NM and got used to the

quirks and things, somebody going to put in a totally

new system, they will think ‘Oh, this isn’t going to

work as well’, but I don’t have any problems, ahm,

now the majority of the time the secretary sets up the

diary and does all the diary work but I am just as

competent at doing that myself.

By contrast, there were people who thought that

some significant change had taken place associated

with the introduction of the intranet.

‘THINGS HAVE CHANGED’

LM: The system is streets ahead of what we used to

have, and the way you can structure it, the sort of

linkages, so you have got one set of data in one place

and you can click on an icon and get through to that

core piece of information from pretty much wherever

you happen to be in the network, it is streets ahead.

PD: I think having things like our own home pages,

and it just feels like our system and not the system

that many of us were used to for many, many years,

it makes people think slightly differently, and I

think whenever you have a change event, and you

will know this, it allows you to have, you can use it

as a way of putting in other changes like, if you

want to know, you can put announcements on the

home page, you have to keep yourself up to date,

you have to look at the home pages, it’s not going

to be delivered to you, once you make a change it

allows other changes to happen, so I think yes the

technology is very powerful.

TS: Well, yeah, we have a virtual organisation

anyway when you think about it, my department is

across two continents, and we communicate fairly

effectively, I think. We wouldn’t have been able to

communicate effectively if we didn’t have IT. The

fact that I can send and they can send me video pic-

tures if they wanted, sound files or competitors’

software very easily says a lot I think of the way we

do our business.

LM: And the difference with this is obviously if you

are issuing that new plan you can just append a

spreadsheet to the note and send it as a piece of

electronic mail, ahm, which is great. So, yes, I think

some of the communication has stopped, some of

the communication is easier to deal with and some

has changed medium. So people, I believe, are using

the telephone where they used to send notes, which

is absolutely excellent, and people are sending faxes

where they used to send notes.

[INT: Does it make it easier to find out what is going

on elsewhere?]

LM: Yes, it has, because one of the things you have

got is the functional home pages, the QMS content

and the departmental home pages makes it easier

to understand who does what, and what their

processes and procedures are. I mean, that is much

PART 6 ORGANISATIONAL STRUCTURES

more readily available and much more easy to

understand than it ever was before. Now, if you click

on another area, like business unit or support area,

you will probably find some quite sophisticated flow

charts and related procedures and organisation

charts, which are very easy to look at and under-

stand, and probably because of this they are more

up to date than they used to be. So that, in that

respect, it is easier to find out what other people are

up to, and I don’t know how much it is used, but

there are some useful information pages set up.

DISCUSSION

When the two sets of comments are put together,

along with the other data which we have collected

but not been able to reproduce here, a number of

issues can be identified:

■ Not only is some intranet work seen as a ‘waste of

time’, but there may also be an element of ‘fad-

dism’ here, that is, some staff appeared to be

posting up data/information in order to demon-

strate how ‘up-to-date’ they are and ‘keen,

motivated’ employees.

■ The intranet technology is being used by some

people as if it were the old technology it has

replaced (the ‘NM’ system). That is, it is being

used to do the same things as before (email, diary

management, etc.), and nothing new.

■ There is a recognition that the intranet has a lot

to offer, and yet many people have not begun to

tap this potential (in some cases, apparently, due

to a lack of training, or inappropriate training).

■ One reason for low usage in some cases is that

some staff have not ‘played around’ with the new

technology, in part because there is a fear of doing

so, especially if this is to risk showing up one’s lack

of skill/understanding in front of colleagues.

■ Some people are simply too busy either to go on

the training courses which were offered, or to

‘suck it and see’. Of course, this might be a ‘post

hoc’ rationalisation.

■ The ‘long-time servers’ at the company had

become very familiar with the NM system, and

were very comfortable with it. Thus, they perhaps

found it more difficult to adjust than people who

had not been with the company for long. There

may also, of course, be an ‘age factor’ at work

here – the longer-time servers/older staff tending

not to have had the same extent of exposure to

new technology from early life.

■ Seniority in the organization can make a differ-

ence, e.g. having a secretary who can make the

necessary ‘adjustments’ and tell you what needs

to be done, or, perhaps do the intranet-related

work for you.

■ ‘

The intranet feels like our own system.’ This was an

allusion to the fact that the NM system was associ-

ated in the minds of those staff who had worked

with the company for some time with the previous

owner of the organisation, a major US-owned

multinational corporation. One of the objectives set

for whatever technology replaced the NM system

was that it must allow the company to not only

technically free itself from dependence upon its

previous owner, but, equally importantly, should

thereby provide a ‘

demonstration’ of that inde-

pendence. In other words, this technological

change was seen as a cultural as well as a technical

phenomena by senior management and IS person-

nel (‘you can no longer count on “big brother/

sister” to bale you out’, etc.).

■ The intranet is a ‘pull’ as against ‘push’ technologi-

cal/organisational configuration: people now have

to make an effort to find out what’s there, rather

than relying on other people sending material.

■ Following on from the above point, what, there-

fore, people place on the intranet (e.g. the web

pages they create) can be seen as a clue to the

way they are thinking – what they feel is impor-

tant, what they want to share, how they/their

department wants to be seen, etc.

Thus, one’s view or perception of the intranet – or the

view which one portrays – in part depends upon

where one is coming from, such as the job, experience,

training, etc., one has. Some people were of the view

that, some six months or so after the beginning of the

implementation period (January–July 1997), intranet

introduction was more-or-less complete. Others, such

as IS staff, took a very different view: this was just the

beginning. In our view, ‘the future is (relatively) open’.

One of the reasons why we feel this is so, is that the

technology and the organisation collapse into each

other in many ways when one is dealing with such a

pervasive, configurable and malleable technology.

One illustration of the above point relates to the

interview talk of ‘needing to be more proactive’ with

an intranet. This has affinities with the so-called

‘enterprise culture’

: to not be ‘proactive’ is to risk

being labelled ‘out of touch’ and ‘dinosaur-like’. What

is more, even if one does not use it that much or have

much understanding of it in a technical sense, does

this really matter, so long as one can use the discourse

and get others to do the detailed work, whilst letting

others make the running on the IS/IT front?

Case study 17.2 continued

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