Technological Environment

Technology Technology is the making, modification, usage, and knowledge of tools, machines, techniques, crafts, systems, and methods of organization, in order to solve a problem, improve a preexisting solution to a problem, achieve a goal, handle an applied input/output relation or perform a specific function. The term can either be applied generally or to specific areas: examples include construction technology, medical technology, and information technology.

Impact of Technology A) Social Impact of Technology Technology reaches people through business High expectation of consumer System complexity Social change Technological Phases and Social Systems they create

Impact of Technology(cont……) B)Technology and Economy Increase Productivity Need to spend on R&D Jobs tend to become more intellectual Problems of technostructure: Technostructure is a term coined by the economist John Kenneth Galbraith in The New Industrial State (1967) to describe the group of technicians within an enterprise (or an administrative body) with considerable influence and control on its economy. It usually refers to managerial capitalism where the managers and other company leading administrators, scientists, or lawyers retain more power and influence than the shareholders in the decisional and directional process.

Impact of Technology(cont……) 5. Need for Bioprofessional and multiprofessional managers: Today’s business needs bioprofessional and multiprofessional managers. To fill up a factory manager’s post, for instance, the desired qualification stipulated is a degree in engineering and MBA from a recognized institution. 6. Increased regulation and stiff (hard) opposition: Technological advancement is inviting opposition from those who fear that new innovations are a threat to ecology, privacy, simplicity and even the human race. These people oppose the construction of high rise buildings, location of industrial plants that eject harmful effluents, and setting up of hydroelectric plants. 7. Insatiable (Limitless) Demand for capital: Today’s technology necessitates massive investment of money on acquiring or discovering of new ideas and their adoption 8. Rise and decline of products and organizations: A new technology may spawn a major industry but it may also destroy an existing one. 9. Business Boundaries redefined: advances in information technologies have rendered old conceptions of the financial services industry obsolete: insurance firms, banks, and brokerage house can now all be interconnected to provide new financial services, thus blurring long held distinctions among the services by these industries.

C) Plant level implications Technology and Organization structure Resistance (fight )to change Fear of risk Total Quality Management (TQM) Business Process Reengineering (BPRE) Flexible manufacturing system (FMS)

Phase Time period Activity Primary skill Nomadic Agarian Untill 1650 Harvest Manual Agarian 1650-1900 Plant and Harvest Industrial 1900-1960 Material Good Manual & Machine Service 1960-75 Focused Services Machine & Intellectual Knowledge 1975-90 Abstractive Work Intellectual and Electronic