Proceedings of 27th International Business Research Conference
12 - 13 June 2014, Ryerson University, Toronto, Canada, ISBN: 978-1-922069-53-5
Exploring the Relationship between Organizational
Structure and Technological Implementation
Guy Downs and Layla Alfawzan
In this paper, we explore the question of how job design
relates to individuals’ perceptions of the success of internal
technological change. We distributed a survey instrument to
forty-two Saudi Arabian professionals, and asked them the
degree to which their job design is formalized, mechanized and
specialized, as well as the degree to which the respondents feel
that their firm’s technological changes have been successful.
After creating a scale for each of these four variables, we
conducted a correlational analysis between the variable that
measures the perceived success of the technological
implementation and each of the three job design variables
(formalization, mechanization, specialization). The results of this
analysis suggest that the degree of formalization in a given job
design has a statistically significant positive correlation with the
perception that the technological implementation was a success;
the variables that captures mechanization and specialization,
however, show no statistically significant relationship with the
success of technological change. To conclude, we note the fact
that this finding is, in many respects, consistent with those
findings of researchers who have conducted similar studies, and
endeavor to offer some possible explanations for why these
relationship may seem to persist across cultures and different
work environments.
Field of Research: Management Science
1: Introduction
The question as to how facets of organizational structure such as formalization,
mechanization and specialization affect the impact and value of new
technologies introduced to an organization is one that has bedeviled researchers
for years. On the one hand, most students of innovation would seem to concur
that, at least in theory, the degree to which work systems are formalized and
mechanized within an organization should correlate negatively with the firm‟s
ability to successfully assimilate new technologies. Such is the conclusion drawn
by Aiken and Hage (1971) and Burns and Stalker (1994), who argue that organic
work systems should better facilitate innovation than more mechanistic systems.
_________________________________________
Guy Downs, Eastern Michigan University 122 Sill, Ypsilanti Mi, 48198, gdowns1@emich.edu
Layla Alfawzan, Eastern Michigan University, 122 Sill, Ypsilanti Mi, 48198, lalfawzan@emich.edu
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Proceedings of 27th International Business Research Conference
12 - 13 June 2014, Ryerson University, Toronto, Canada, ISBN: 978-1-922069-53-5
Problems arise, however, when this theory is empirically tested (Bodewes, 2002).
Although one of the reasons this might be problematic is due to the difficulties
faced with trying to operationalize a term as nebulous as „innovation‟ (Wolfe,
1994), Bodewes (2002) argues that the primary difficulty lies in the fact that the
concept of formalization has been poorly defined, and that most studies fail to
recognize that the degree of formalization (however defined) can vary greatly
amongst divisions and departments in a given organization. This relates to the
notion posited by Downs and Mohr (1976), who argue that what‟s missing is a
theory of innovation. While these studies have different points of emphasis (on
formalization and innovation, respectively), we do see a commonality in both of
these studies, which is the resistance of key terms to efforts to operationalize
them.
While the problems associated with operationalizing the critical variables in
studies relating to organizational structure and technological change have been
well documented, one of the other difficulties that has received considerably less
attention is the problem with finding a theory that adequately explains the
relationship between these two variables. One such theory, known as
contingency theory, asserts that “organizational effectiveness results from fitting
characteristics of the organization, such as its structure, to contingencies that
reflect the situation of the organization” (Donaldson, 2001, p.1). Looking at this
from a technological perspective, this means that the value derived from a given
technology is wholly dependent on its „fit‟ within the larger organizational context.
While this theory is useful (and, it would seem, an improvement over the „one
size fits all‟ arguments that were at least partially responsible for limiting the
scope and utility of earlier managerial concepts, such as Scientific Management),
one great drawback to this theory is that it requires the adherent to think of
organizational structure as something that is „fixed‟ (for, if structure were mutable
and ever-changing, it would be impossible to find a „fit‟ between structure and a
given contingency).
One theory that addresses this shortcoming is the theory of structuration, which
argues for “social reality as constituted by both subjective human actors and by
objective institutional properties” (Morton and Qing, 2008). In this framework
technology and structure are seen as interactive entities, where each shapes and
influences the other. While this theory may seem more attractive, one issue that
immediately arises in its application is the fact that technological change must be
regarded as an endogenous variable. Thus, in a model where the value of a
given technological change is seen as the dependent variable, and given facets
of organizational structure are seen as explanatory variables, one must account
for the fact that the theory of structuration insists that not only is the value
conferred by a technological change a function of structure, but that
organizational structure is a function of technological change. When viewed in
this light, looking to isolate causal relationships structure and technology
becomes a nearly intractable problem, since any study that grounds exploration
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Proceedings of 27th International Business Research Conference
12 - 13 June 2014, Ryerson University, Toronto, Canada, ISBN: 978-1-922069-53-5
of the relationship between technological change and organizational structure in
the theory of structuration is the model must contend with endogenaity.
2: Literature Review
The current magnitude of globalization and the rapid pace of technological
change represent complex challenges to organizations, particularly those
seeking employee acceptance of technological change in a multinational setting,
where employees may exhibit resistance to change for a variety of different
reasons. Cultural differences have received extensive attention with respect to
their impact on people‟s values and behavior, which, as argued by many scholars,
condition the ways in which technology is interpreted and given meaning. Hence,
as globalization continues, it is inevitable to extend the research on technology
implementation and acceptance to address the role of cultural differences.
Hofstede‟s (1980) four cultural dimensions, which are arguably among the most
cited and influential cultural measures published to date, serve as a strong
theoretical base for the majority of efforts addressing the relationship between
culture and technological implementation. They were the outcome of Hofstede‟s
(1980) extensive study on cultural value variances among 88,000 managers,
where he found that the measures of uncertainty avoidance, individualism,
masculinity, and power distance were unequally represented across countries. A
fifth measure, long-term orientation, was added to the original dimensions in later
efforts (Hofstede and bond, 1988).
Applying these dimensions, Shane (!993) investigated cultural influences on the
national rate of innovation, measured in per capita numbers of trademarks, for 33
countries. He discovered that a high rate of innovation, in addition to being
associated with individualism and low power distance, was tightly linked to the
cultural tendency towards uncertainty acceptance. This finding suggested that
generous investments in research may not necessarily be the key to increasing a
country‟s level of innovation, and that governments may need to reshape citizens
attitudes in order to have an innovation-compatible society of individualistic,
accepting of change, and non-power distant people. Such an argument may give
support and reason to the evidence of many hierarchical and collectivist Asian
countries becoming more innovative. Shane (1993) sought explanation of why
cultural difference tend to affect the rate of innovation in institutional theory,
which dictates that organizations are affected by the societies in which they
function (Granovetter 1985) and reflect their beliefs (Zucker 1977).
Originally developed based on the theory of reasoned action proposed by
Fishbein and Ajzen(1975), Davis‟s Technology Acceptance Model (1986,1989)
(TAM) is extensively utilized in research practices exploring cultural impacts on
technological implementation, and in combination with Hofstede‟s (1980) cultural
measures on numerous occasions. TAM argues that people‟s attitudes towards
the use of technology are affected by the perceived usefulness and perceived
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Proceedings of 27th International Business Research Conference
12 - 13 June 2014, Ryerson University, Toronto, Canada, ISBN: 978-1-922069-53-5
ease of use of the technology. The attitude towards use would result in an
intention to use, which would in turn lead to actual use.
Among the various scholars applying TAM was Straub (1997), who tested the
model across three different countries: Japan, Switzerland, and the United States.
He found overall support for the model in both Switzerland and the United States,
but not in Japan. This implied that TAM was not equally predictive of technology
acceptance across cultures. Using Hofstede‟s (1980) four cultural dimensions, he
attributed the different result in Japan to their cultural tendency towards higher
levels of power distance and uncertainty avoidance, collectivist views, and
assertiveness. The study was followed up by Rose and Straub‟s (1998)
examination of IT adoption and use across five Middle Eastern countries (Egypt,
Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and the Sudan), again using TAM. The model
was found to explain 40% of the variance in IT use across the region, and the
results were later used by Straub et al. (2001) to develop a cultural influence
model which proposed that Arab complex societal beliefs were a strong predictor
of resistance to IT transfer.
In a similar but more focused effort, Akour and Dwairi (2011) found overall
support for TAM among Jordanian university faculty members. They discovered
that two important stimulators of faculty‟s behavior towards the integration of
computer technology into academic practices were symbolism and top
management support. Contrary to the implications of Hofstede‟s cultural
dimensions, which indicated that Jordanian cultural attributes would obstruct
technology acceptance, adequate variations were recorded for computer use
among faculty members. This led Akour and Dwairi to believe that differences in
Hofstede‟s cultural topology for a single culture may indeed be possible.
Driven by the current trend towards globalization and the vitality of reaching a
better understanding of cultural influences on multinational IT implementations,
Veiga et al. (2001) extended Davis‟s TAM to include four of Hofstede‟s cultural
dimensions: individualism, uncertainty avoidance, power distance, and long-term
orientation. The extended model proposed that technology acceptance is
influenced by how key variables associated with the implementation process are
affected by culture. Hence, it suggested that implementation efforts attuned to
these impacts would have the potential to enrich perceived usefulness and
attitudes towards use, and in turn, increase technology acceptance.
When exploring the literature pertaining to different cultures‟ attitudes towards
technological change, one observes a wide variety of differing reactions, in cases
towards a single technology. In an effort to explore cultural impacts on
technological implementation in an empirical setting, Robey and Rodriguez-Diaz
(1989) describe the experience of a multinational airline company going through
the implementation of an automated accounting system in two of its Latin
American subsidiaries: Chile and Panama. In Chile, where the implementation
took place first, the technology represented a general threat to workers and local
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Proceedings of 27th International Business Research Conference
12 - 13 June 2014, Ryerson University, Toronto, Canada, ISBN: 978-1-922069-53-5
management, who associated it with loss of power and status. These attitudes
were not stimulated by the inherent characteristics of the technology itself, but
were rather the consequence of a cultural-insensitive way of implementing the
technology. Spanish manuals were not provided, local management‟s choice of
an administrator was overridden, and the international division was completely
bypassed. An entire different experience was observed in Panama, however,
where workers showed eager acceptance of the system. This was a result of
several adjustments made to the implementation process, which presented the
system as a local product compatible with the business culture in the
Panamanian subsidiary. One might argue that the difference in implementation
outcomes was merely the result of different implementation practices, which
relates in no way to cultural variances. While the study provides no hard
evidence to disprove that, Robey and Rodriguez-Diaz explained that many
successful projects were implemented in the US using the same approach
utilized in Chile, which emphasizes the role of cultural differences.
The relationship between skill and workers‟ attitudes towards technological
change in the UK was explored by Rolfe (2007), who defined the impact of skill in
terms of technical complexity and discretion. While discretion was found to be
less affected by technological change and more dependent on organizational
structure, technical complexity seemed to be heavily influenced by the adoption
of new technologies. Clerical workers who experienced complete automation of
jobs without being compensated for learning new skills, or in other words were
deskilled by the technology, had negative attitudes towards the change. On the
other hand, despite experiencing a level of job automation as well, professional
workers were much more favorable of the change because it allowed them to
creatively utilize the technology in enhancing their skills. Rolfe noted, on several
instances, that workers‟ negative attitudes towards technological change were
most probably reflective of their dissatisfaction with the accompanying
organizational change, not the technology itself. Pardo et al. (2002) found that
high levels of individual interest in and knowledge of biotechnology issues,
general technological optimism, and belief in the overall promise of the
technology induced positive perceptions of biotech applications among European
Union citizens.
Al-Gahtani et al. (2007) conducted a study to examine the extent to which the
unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) was determinant of
the intention to use and the usage behavior among Saudi knowledge workers.
They discovered that Saudi workers‟ intentions were affected by performance
expectancy and subjective norm, although the latter‟s impact seemed to diminish
with increasing age and years of experience using computers. Similarly, workers
were found to be less impacted by effort expectancy as the years of experience
using computers increased. Induced by manufacturers‟ unexplained avoidance of
investing in technology, which caused a decline in Hong Kong‟s manufacturing
industry in the 1990‟s, Au and Enderwick (2000) explored the cognitive process
through which companies‟ attitudes towards technology adoption were formed.
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Proceedings of 27th International Business Research Conference
12 - 13 June 2014, Ryerson University, Toronto, Canada, ISBN: 978-1-922069-53-5
Despite the lack of evidence to support an impact of external environmental
forces on the formation of an intention to adopt a technology, the process was
found to be affected by six beliefs: perceived difficulty, adoptive experiences,
suppliers‟ commitment to the firm, perceived benefits, compatibility, and
enhanced value
Bamane (1994) argues, through his study of a recent technological
implementation at a company of the Indian chemical industry, that employees
tend to exhibit high levels of resistance to the technology due to their lack of
involvement in change decisions. In a study that explored online and mobile
banking use in China, Laforet and Li (2005) discovered that typical users were
high-earning males who, contrary to what has been observed in western
societies, were not necessarily young or highly educated. While sufficient levels
of prior experience with computers were found to encourage the adoption of
electronic banking, the key determinant of Chinese consumers‟ behavior towards
the technology was their perception of the risk involved, which was usually high.
Security was of utmost importance to them that aspects of electronic banking
such as convenience, ease of use, and access to a wide variety of services did
not matter much to them. Laforet and Li traced this back to cultural influences,
where behaviors such as tendency to avoid uncertainty, management of one‟s
own finances, and use of cash rather than debit/credit cards are popular among
the Chinese. When compared to their Asian counterparts in Singapore, Chinese
consumers were found to be less impacted by technological advancement. While
Singaporeans seemed to exhibit similar confidentiality concerns, they showed
more positive attitudes towards the experience of new technologies (Gerrard and
Cunningham, 2003).
3: Methodology
The instrument was distributed to 42 Saudi Arabian professionals via an online
platform. This limitation was imposed for one reason; namely, that it seems
entirely possible that one of the problems with finding consistent correlative
relationships between variables related to change and those relating to structure
is that many studies have not explicitly controlled for differences amongst the
cultures in which the organizations profiled in these studies are rooted. By
imposing this limitation we hope to control for this.
The assessment instrument included a total of twenty-six items, fifteen of which
were intended to measure participants‟ perceptions of the effectiveness of the
most recent technological implementation at their organization. These were
collected from Dr. Alphonso Bellamy, a professor of Technology Studies at
Eastern Michigan University. The remaining eleven items were used to measure
levels of job formalization, mechanization, and specialization for each participant
and were developed based on a review of the literature. The items were rated on
two 5-point Likert scales of measurement, which ranged from Not Utilized to
Extensively Utilized for the first six items, and from Agree to Disagree for the rest.
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Proceedings of 27th International Business Research Conference
12 - 13 June 2014, Ryerson University, Toronto, Canada, ISBN: 978-1-922069-53-5
A total of four measures were calculated for each respondent: implementation
effectiveness, formalization, mechanization, and specialization, which were later
utilized in the analysis. A brief discussion of these four variables follows.
Implementation effectiveness: The degree to which the respondent felt that a
recent technological change within the workplace was effective. This portion of
the instrument was divided into two sections; one section that consisted of six
questions that asked the respondent for their thoughts on the planning process,
and nine questions that asked the respondent for their thoughts on the
implementation process. We did not impose any restrictions on what kinds of
technological changes the respondents should consider when answering the
questions in this scale; rather, we permitted our respondents to consider any
change with which they were familiar and about which they had formed an
opinion.
Formalization: This portion of the survey consisted of five questions, each of
which was designed to determine the extent to which the respondent‟s job duties
have been codified and clearly articulated by their supervisor(s).
Mechanization: The extent to which the respondent is dependent on machines,
tools and equipment to complete their daily tasks.
Specialization: The extent to which the respondent‟s job duties are narrowly
defined (specialized).
Findings/Discussion:
After the data had been compiled we conducted a correlational analysis. This
study yielded three correlation coefficients:
1) The correlation between the success of the technological change and the
extent to which the respondent‟s job duties are formalized.
2) The correlation between the success of the technological change and the
extent to which the respondent‟s job duties are mechanized.
3) The correlation between the success of the technological change and the
extent to which the respondent‟s job duties are specialized.
The results of this analysis are as follows:
Variable
Variable
Tech. Change
Tech. Change
Tech. Change
Formalization
Mechanization
Specialization
Correlation
Coefficient
.348
-.137
.262
P score
.023
.615
.092
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Proceedings of 27th International Business Research Conference
12 - 13 June 2014, Ryerson University, Toronto, Canada, ISBN: 978-1-922069-53-5
4: Conclusion/Implications
The one coefficient that is significant at the 95% level is the correlation between
formalization and the success of the technological change. This is consonant
with the findings of Yoo, Huang and Lee (2012), who also found a positive
correlative relationship between formalization and technology acceptance, as
well as the finding of Morton and Hu (2008), who found that some organizations
with high levels of formalization (i.e., machine bureaucracies) were more likely to
benefit from the implementation of technologies such as ERP systems.
There are a few implications of this study that are worth noting. First, and
perhaps most importantly, there is the implication that the relationship between
job design and perceptions of the success of technological change is not
moderated by cultural dynamics; i.e., that this relationship holds across cultures.
Secondly, there is the fact that the results of this study reinforce the findings of
previous researchers who have explored this very question. At first blush, one
might assume that individuals in with a less formalized job design would have a
more favorable opinion of the success of the organization‟s technological
changes, since we tend to associate less formalization with more horizontal
organizational structures; and, in turn, more horizontal organizational structures
with a greater acceptance of internal changes (be they technological or processbased). However, yet again we find that this relationship simply does not seem to
hold when it is empirically tested.
The reasons why we see this positive relationship between the formalization of
job design and the perceived success of technological change is unclear, and an
investigation into this issue is, unfortunately, beyond the scope of this paper. One
possibility, however, is that individuals whose job designs are more formalized
are more likely to perceive a technological change as successful, regardless of
the actual degree of the change‟s success. Another possibility is that the
organizational conditions in which highly formalized job designs persist are also
the kinds of conditions which enjoy more successful technological changes; in
other words, the relationship here may be purely correlational, and not at all
causal. Should this be the case, then clearly the next step would be to determine
what conditions (or set of conditions) are not only responsible for creating and
sustaining formalized job designs, but also for creating an organizational
environment in which technological changes are frequently seen as successful.
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Proceedings of 27th International Business Research Conference
12 - 13 June 2014, Ryerson University, Toronto, Canada, ISBN: 978-1-922069-53-5
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