Operations Technology and Organization Structure: An Empirical Reappraisal

Abstract

A classification of concepts of technology as operations technology, materials technology, and knowledge technology, is proposed. The construction of scales measuring operations technology at an organizational level of conceptualization, makes it possible to test the broad hypothesis that organizational technology is strongly related to organizational structure, by linear and nonlinear correlational analysis. On a stratified sample of diverse organizations in the English midlands, and on a subset of manufacturing organizations, this sweeping technological imperative hypothesis was generally not supported in successive tests. Operations technology was, however, associated with some variables, which are similar in that all were job-counts denoting the proportions employed in specified categories. This result, together with a detailed comparison with Woodward's findings in south-east Essex, leads to a reinterpretation of the role of technology. Operations technology is shown to affect only those structural variables immediately impinged on by the workflow. Thus the smaller the organization the more completely its structure is pervaded by the immediate effects of this technology; the larger the organization the more these effects are confined to variables such as the proportions employed in activities that are specifically linked with workflow, and technology is not related to the wider administrative and hierarchical structure. This interpretation, it is suggested, offers a synthesis for the long-standing divergence in organization theory between statements by classical management writers of management principles irrespective of technology, and the stress by behavioral scientists on the relevance of technology.