Surfacing Occupational Threats to Electronic Government - A Neglected Role for Organization Development?

摘要

While the process of introducing IT into work organisations warrants an integrated perspective on economic, technical, human and organisational aspects of IT, it appears that technical and economic considerations dominate the practitioner landscape. Paradoxically, when IT fails to deliver as it so often does, human and organisational considerations are the prime determinants of such underperformance and failure. This poses an intractable dilemma for many organisations. The dilemma is of an enduring nature, sustained by the behavioural patterns of polarised occupational groups who have vested, but divergent, interests in exploiting IT. Executive management tend to view the introduction of IT as an economic imperative while IT specialists tend to view it as a technical imperative. The coalescent nature of these two imperatives is such that human and organisational considerations are regularly marginalized and ignored during the process of introducing IT into work organisations. Implementing a more integrated approach to the introduction of IT that accounts for economic, technical, human, and organisational considerations is inherently difficult since the requisite knowledge and expertise are widely dispersed among diverse occupational groups (Clegg et al, 1996; Andriole and Freeman, 1993; Clegg et al, 1997; McDonagh and Coghlan, 1999; 2000). This calls for expertise that cuts across the social, behavioural, computer, mathematical, engineering, management, and even physical sciences' (Andriole and Freeman, 1993). 'Those who understand the technology tend not to appreciate the wider organisational issues, and those who have the knowledge of these are often technically naive. This places a very high premium on finding ways of integrating different forms of knowledge and expertise' (Clegg et al, 1996).