Effects of Technological Innovation on Organizations

The formal analysis and diagnosis of organizations, like the process of reading, always rests in applying some kind of theory to the situation being considered. For theories, like readings, are interpretations of reality. We thorize about or "read" situations as we attempt to formulate images and explanations that help us to make sense of their fundamental nature. And an effective analysis, like an effective reading, rests in being able to do this in ways that take account of rival theories or explanations, rather than being committed to a fixed and unshakable point of view.

Gareth Morgan, Images of Organizations p12

We propose to deploy two levels of web-based technology (T1-T2) within three academic organizations (O1-O3), and to conduct an interdisciplinary study of the impact from the world views of the multiple disciplines in this team (V1-V7). For example, an economist will provide a management view by doing an accounting-style study of the effects on costs/benefits, a psychologist will examine the effects on paradigms and cognitive models, a sociologist will do an ethnographic study of the effects on institutional power relationships, and so forth as explained in the viewpoints section of the project description.

The hypothesis of the interdisciplinary study is that the organizational impacts of T1 will be appreciable but less than for T1 and T2 combined, and that the combined impact will be large and generally beneficial, even revolutionary. We do not expect all effects to be seen as beneficial from all viewpoints, just as the effects of the Industrial Revolution were not beneficial from all points of view.

The hypothesis of the deployment component is that T1 and particularly T2, and the new pedagogies they enable, can improve educational productivity and learning outcomes. Education is a significant fraction of the GNP and widely criticized for poor productivity and unsatisfactory outcomes. Our experience with one course suggests that the technologies and pedagogies we're using can improve learning outcomes. This project extends this approach, by an order of magnitude, from one course to an international degree program.

The productivity hypothesis is that we can demonstrate that courses can be assembled from pre-fabricated reusable course components (called tasks) that are developed by teams of specialized labor within the project team and ultimately within other universities or companies . Although we don't expect to achieve the latter goal in this project, we hope that the technologies and pedagogies we will be deploying, in combination with the standards, inspection gauges, and revenue collection mechanisms from our work with the Educom/IMS Coalition [imsproject.org], will help to make the Software Industrial Revolution [Cox90] a reality within education.