Information Technology and Organizational Learning : Managing Behavioral Change in the Digital Age

Because technology continues to change at such a rapid pace, the ability of organizations to operate within a new paradigm of dynamic change emphasizes the need to employ action learning as a way to build competitive learning organizations in the twenty-first century. Information Technology and Organizational Learning integrates some of the fundamental issues bearing on IT today with concepts from organizational, learning theory, providing comprehensive guidance, based on real-life business experiences and concrete research. Information Technology and Organizational Learning also focuses on another aspect of what IT can mean to an organization. IT represents a broadening dimension of business life that affects everything we do inside an organization. This new reality is shaped by the increasing and irreversible dissemination of technology. To maximize the usefulness of its encroaching presence in everyday business affairs, organizations will require an optimal understanding of how to integrate technology into everything they do. To this end, this book breaks new ground on how to approach and conceptualize this salient issue; that is, that the optimization of information and digital technologies is best pursued with a synchronous implementation of organizational learning concepts. Furthermore, these concepts cannot be implemented without utilizing theories of strategic learning. Therefore, this book takes the position that technology literacy requires individual and group strategic learning if it is to transform a business into a technology-based learning organization. Technology-based organizations are defined as those that have implemented a means of successfully integrating technology into their process of organizational learning. Such organizations recognize and experience the reality of technology as part of their everyday business function. It is what many organizations are calling "being digital." Thus, the overall aim of Information Technology and Organizational Learning is to promote organizational learning that disseminates the uses of technology throughout a business, so that IT departments are a partner in its use, as opposed to being its sole owner. The cure to IT project failure, then, is to engage the business in technology decisions in such a way that individuals and business units are fundamentally involved in the process. Such processes need to be designed to dynamically respond to technology opportunities and thus should not be overly bureaucratic. There is a balance between establishing organizations that can readily deal with technology versus those that become too complex and inefficient. Book jacket.