Technological and Organizational Change

For Monday’s class, I was assigned to read “Writing to Work: How Using E-Mail Can Reflect Technological and Organizational Change”, by Oren Ziv. Ziv discusses and analyzes different sets of e-mails to try to explain how the application has forever modified the different technological and organizational behaviors in different places of work. He demonstrates this by doing a case study on three different workers and how they use e-mail to negotiate technological and organizational conflict, and what they use e-mail amongst workers for.

The participants used as focal points during Ziv’s case study are Michael, Brad and Thomas. They are members of the Technology Planning Services, which is a branch of the Telecommunications department at the university where the research was conducted. Just before this study was done, their department was merged with another and became part of the university’s Academic Information Systems organization. All three participants had been members of this department before the new reorganization, and were fairly familiar with the structure. Their department is responsible for “assessing and evaluating current and future voice communications for the campus, managing local computer and information systems within the department and marketing telecommunications services to the campus.” (Ziv, 246)

Oren Ziv collected data for a six week period in the spring of 1993. He observed team meetings, one-on-one direct report meetings, conducted interviews, and collected all of the e-mail messages that were sent by the three focal points of the data collection. “By contrasting the use of e-mail with the other communicative channels observed, I sought to understand both when and how e-mail communication takes place and the social context that surrounds it.” (Ziv, 248) Once the data was collected it was time for Ziv to analyze it. Ziv had five steps in analyzing the data. First was filtering out excess data and only concentrating on e-mail messages sent by the three focal points of the observation. Second, was focusing on the e-mails sent. He looked for “characteristics related to my research questions and previous research” (Ziv, 249) done on the same subject. After came a “developed set of categories that characterized the communicative purposes found within the e-mails sent.” Fourth he “examined the field notes from the interviews, meetings, and team meetings for evidence of communications for the above and other purposes.” (Ziv, 249) The last step Ziv conducted was that he “examined all of the notes and messages combined for the evidence reflecting the participants perceptions of the organizational and technological changes that took place in the telecommunications department.” (Ziv, 249)

Once all of the data that was collected was analyzed, there were three main questions that Oren Ziv answered by his case study regarding organizational and technological changes. The first is; “How do people work together differently when electronic forms of communication are made available?” (Ziv, 259) During the study “TPS members used e-mail mostly for requesting or providing short answers and establishing the need for a meeting or phone call with members outside telecommunications.” (Ziv, 259” This proved that the staff was trying to close the gap from the prior organizational habits. The next question that was answered; “How do such technologies interact with the social patterns of the workplace?” (ZIv, 261) For the three focal points of the data research the use of e-mail was used as a ‘social action.’ (Ziv, 261) “They ascribed active social meanings and evaluations to the use of computer-mediated communication technologies.” (Ziv, 261) The use of e-mail signified their culture and by taking part in the use of it showed how much of a valuable tool it was to them. The third and final question was; “How does the availability of electronic mail influence the hierarchical structures within the workplace organization?” (Ziv, 261) The use of e-mail “did not flatten organizational hierarchies, but instead interacted with current hierarchical structures.” (ZIv, 261) E-mail represents an ‘ongoing social dialogue,’ and shows that “organizational and technological change are not easily managed, but requires complex webs of human relationships.” (Ziv, 261)

After reading this article it was very interesting to see how the used of e-mail use in the office started off slowly. Looking at the application now compared to then is fascinating because e-mail now is used for many different things. Most of the people on the Internet use e-mail daily as a way of networking them to the world.

Readings used for summary: Ziv, Oren. (1996). Writing to work: How Using E-mail Can Relect Technological and Organizational Change. In Susan C. Herring (Ed.), Computer-mediated communication: Linguistic, social and cross-cultural perspectives (pp. 243-263). Philadelphia: John Benjamins.