Debates over issues associated with the deployment of advanced information and communication technologies (ICT) in the workplace

Assignment :
Debates over issues associated with the deployment of advanced information and communication technologies (ICT) in the workplace continue to raise various concerns. Identify some of the advantages and some of the problems that result from the uses of ICTs in contemporary organizations. What are some of the concerns for workers? And for management? Can the quality of work be affected by technological change?

Word Count : 3,016

Introduction
Information and Communication Technologies is nowadays the lifeline of any contemporary organizations. This study examines the issues associated with the deployment of ICT’s in the workplace.

According to John Varley CEO, Barclays”We believe, from our own experience, that those organisations that signal their commitment to diversity and inclusion, particularly through technology, are reaping increasing commercial benefits. They recognise that investing in accessible and usable technology products and services, workplace environments and facilities opens up new markets, increases productivity and liberates talent, and enables the provision of innovative accessible technologies based on an understanding of individuals’ technological aspirations.”

Emerging business requirements, stemming from a holistic view over an organization activity, places additional pressure on technical infrastructures and call for operational agility and a better alignment between business and technology. (Dimitra Pappa, Lampros K. Stergioulas, 2008).

Through the 1990s organizational leaders increasingly chose to adopt enterprise systems with the belief that they would improve the ability of their organization to achieve its goals (e.g., maximize shareholder value, serve the public, educate students, etc.), (S. Sawyer, R. Southwick, 2002).

Definition and Queries
According to Margaret Rouse (2005) ICT (information and communications technology - or technologies) is an umbrella term that includes any communication device or application, encompassing: radio, television, cellular phones, computer and network hardware and software, satellite systems and so on, as well as the various services and applications associated with them, such as videoconferencing and distance learning

ICT, which is the acronym for information and communication technology can be defined as: “combination of computer, video and telecommunication technologies, as observed in the use of multimedia computers and networks and also services which are based on them” (Van Damme, 2003).

Nowadays a lot of companies are looking towards cloud computing, where according to NIST 2009 it is defined as a model for enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction. Robinson, Neil; Valeri, Lorenzo; Cave, Jonathan (2011)

The following are some examples of ICT devices
Mainframe Computer - used by large organizations for bulk data processing.
Minicomputer - Minicomputer is a smaller version of mainframe computer and is used in mid-sized organizations.
Supercomputer - supercomputers are used for high intensive calculation tasks such as: Weather Forecasting, Climate Research, Physical Simulations.
PC. PC stands for Personal Computer.
Laptop - A portable personal computer
Microcomputers - eg: iPad, Samsung Note and Samsung TAB would belong to this category.
Smartphones : Mobile phone with additional features like touch screen, camera, and various applications that can be downloaded to these devices.
FAX Machine: used to send fax messages over
Networks: Local Area Network use Routers and Switches and Wide Area Network : Telecommunication use fiber optic cables and Satellite to link up continents

The following are some of the ICT software used.
Emails: Used to send messages in the form of attachments, text or graphics , nowadays voice and video messages also can be send via emails
Video conferencing: You can have meetings that are held in different geographical locations virtually.
Internet: Global system of interconnected computers, servers and networks. eg: world wide web
CD/DVD/Blu-Ray: Can hold software or be used to store data
Computer Aided Manufacture (CAM): Computers and Robots used to control machines and devices
Point of Sale: Aid in stock control, used in supermarkets and other businesses.
Database: Is an organized collection of data. eg: Oracle , Microsoft SQL.
Word Processing and Presentation packages: Used to create documents and presentations eg: Word , Excel, Powerpoint
Computer Aided Design: Mainly used by Architects, Designers and Engineers eg: Autocad .
Decision making Packages: Analytical tools for managers. eg: DPL, MM4XL Software .
Project Management Packages: Enables teams to organize according to business needs eg: Microsoft Office Project, JobPro.

Through this review, we need to address the following vital questions.
Advantages and some problems that result from the use of ICT’s
Concerns for the implementation of ICT’s for employees(workers) and management
Can the quality of work be affected by technological change

Advantages and issues with ICT

According to Melvin Kranzberg 1986 “Technology is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral...technology’s interaction with the social ecology is such that technical developments frequently have environmental, social, and human consequences that go far beyond the immediate purposes of the technical devices and practices themselves.”

Therefore we can take a look at some of the advantages and issues with using ICT’s

Advantages:
ICT’s can be used as an enabler. Information and Communications Technologies are key to sustainable logistics and transport. It is however important to take note that ICT are enablers for solutions rather than solutions in themselves
Video conferencing and e-commerce are replacing physical services with their virtual offerings
Usage of internal communicators (such as ICQ or Skype, Microsoft LYNC, Cisco Jabber).
LYNC 2013 can be federated with other companies; so that they can effectively reduce the call cost used among branch, affiliated or partner companies
Increase in performance, efficient business process ITIL Standards. It provides guidance to organizations on how to use IT as a tool to facilitate business change, transformation and growth.
Business knowledge management facilitates sharing of resources, expertise and advice. The world is now a global village. Companies and partners shares information securely, reliably and at lightning speed.
Customer service, recruitment and training
Intelligent ICT applications, websites and flexible reporting software’s.
Cutting edge and innovative breakthrough in Information and Communication technology leads to better business growth and success.
Implementation of IT Disaster Recovery sites over geographical boundaries have made ICT’s resilient to forces of nature, war , espionage, natural calamities and other unforeseen events.
Businesses can remain open 24x7 due to improvement in ICT over the ages and all over the globe

Issues:
Unskilled ICT workers. They do not have the required training or experience.
High costs of deploying and implementation of ICT Hardware and Software.
The collapse in the economy of developed countries like Greece, Spain, Ireland etc, leads to a downturn in investment that is required for ICT infrastructure projects
Corporate companies postpone plans to upgrade mobile phone contracts and advice their users to use the phone’s wisely due to high costs of phone calls.
All software and hardware always have an end of life, which means that the companies developing the software and manufacturing the hardware will not support these products. New products have to be bought or upgraded.
The old ICT products are sometimes full of bugs or defects, which keep these products vulnerable to attacks and hacks. Advanced firewalls, Intrusion Prevention Systems, Intrusion detection systems, Antivirus programs need to be implemented to keep the network and software safe from hackers.
Weak ICT support can be expected in fields of Aligning employees with the needs of customers or clients, Drive member satisfaction, profits and long-term success and both main drivers of Interviewing and recruiting process; these factors probably cannot be properly supported by ICT tools, and remain soft-skill based.(Oškrdal Václav, Pavlíček Antonín, Jelínková Petra, 2011)

The Smart 2020 report confirmed that the full life cycle carbon footprint of the ICT industry represents around 2% of worldwide emissions, and is growing at 6% compound annual growth. To balance this, ICT has an enabling effect where by other sectors benefit from increased energy efficiencies and energy use reductions. The scale of this ICT-enabled opportunity was found to be equivalent to 15% of all global emissions by 2020. (Jyoti Banerjee and Cristina Bueti, 2012.)

Telecoms network infrastructure and devices are responsible for over a third of the ICT industry GHG emissions, according to the Smart 2020 report. Thanks to new technologies and energy-efficient products, the energy usage per device is improving. (Jyoti Banerjee and Cristina Bueti, 2012.)

Unemployment is one of the outcomes of streamlining ICT business processes. The reasons which affect ICT mainly are outsourcing.

ICT Approach through organizations
ICT has many uses within organisations, specialised use depend on the nature of the organisation.
According to Handy (1984, 1989, 1994) organizations can be classified as follows
The shamrock organisation
Composed of three interlocking groups of workers – a small group of specialist core workers, a contractual group and a flexible labour force.
The federal organization
Consists of a variety of individual groups of organisations allied together. Modern organisations need the flexibility of being small, but also the resources available to large corporations.
The triple I organisation constitute the key intellectual capabilities of future organisations and from these the organisation will derive added value. Require smart people and smart machines to be effective.

Most contemporary organizations fall into the third type category, where barriers are flattened and information flow is vital to the running of the organization. Advanced ICT helps in making these organizations more successful.

Examples of uses of ICT’s

In present times, IT professionals are asked to manage more information and deliver that to users with increased quality of service in a timely manner. Greater stress is also laid on reducing overall budgets and gaining a greater return on investments. (Mark Townsend, 2009)

Mr. Reyburn says he isn 't saving on distribution costs—Apple takes a 30% cut on revenue from apps sold in its store, about the same as what he was paying by distributing CDs and other packaged software. But he says the Apple store opens his business up to dozens of countries that would previously be unreachable. "Now effectively Apple is our distributor everywhere. Technology is giving rise to various new means of business sales.

Internet webpages : The technological landscape of the business world has changed dramatically in recent years. Developments such as the rise of cloud computing, big data analytics and more have greatly affected the way in which organizations pursue their corporate objectives in virtually every capacity.

A number of organizations use technology to gain a competitive advantage and design creative applications that allow them to compete more effectively. A good example of strategic use of IT comes in the drug supply industry. McKesson Corporation developed a system called Economist that increased and protected its share of the market. The first version of the system featured hand-held terminals used by McKesson customers, generally drugstores. When a product was out of stock or the stock was low, an employee checking store shelves read a product code from the shelf label and keyed it into the terminal. On completion of the inventory, the terminal was used to transmit the order over telephone lines to McKesson 's central computer.

Another company that is always in the lookout and developing extraordinary ICT solutions is Google. Google provides a variety of ICT technologies that is replacing traditional office software packages like word and excel. Google Docs is a collaborative work environment for word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations. Multiple editors can be working on the same file at the same time. All revisions are saved, individual changes by editors can be reviewed, and the file can be accessed from any computer on the internet.

What are some of the concerns for workers & for management?

Technical guidance is required for all workers. That includes proper assessment and training for all ICT related employees. The lack of experience, confidence and competence among workers and managers is among the factors that interfere in the deployment of ICT. It is the duty of managers to hire employees that fit the skill set of the job required and provide additional training to improve the quality of the staff. Managers also need to keep themselves updated with the latest in ICT.
According to Malcolm Fry, IT Service Management has become both more sophisticated and more critical to the business. We are now in an era in which an IT failure or error can interrupt critical business processes, severely damage a corporation’s image, affect the bottom line, and even impact a company’s stock valuation. Processes like ITIL help keep in check these failures and leads to a streamline approach to business continuity. Managers have to make sure these procedures are followed properly by providing regular training in ITIL processes to workers and employees.

Information overload: Managers nowadays are overwhelmed by information provided to them and this decreases the efficiency of their decision making process. Managers need to find and utlilize the information to the optimal level by using better data analysis software and reporting tools.
For Marketing and Sales Managers, the task of reaching more people, faster and cheaper is the ultimate goal. ICT’s help these managers to achieve their goals with ease by having mobile users given access to company resources remotely.
Obsolete technology: Managers are tasked with the decision to reuse the technology or upgrading of existing technologies.
Disposing of ICT’s. Nowadays waste prevention, reuse and recycling of ICT products are considered before disposing the wastes.
Improve Quality of service. Perceived service quality is the overall support delivered by the ICT service provider, which is measured in terms of assurance, empathy and responsiveness Delone & Mclean, (2003)

Managers employee standardization as means to reduce cost. A lot of employees have various needs with regards to ICT technology. Deploying a “one fit all “strategy, managers can now save and reduce cost.

How Quality of work to be affected by Technological change

With the advent of technological change it has been noticed that there is an increased demand for skilled labour and this leads to improved work habits and practices. The quality of work gets affected due to the widening gap between unskilled and skilled labour, this leads to wage inequality.

According to Clair Brown and Ben Campbell “Firms or industries that implement skill-biased technological change ("high-tech firms") will hire relatively more high-skilled workers than low-skilled workers”

For example in the company that I am working as a consultant (Kuwait Petroleum Corporation - Oil Sector Organisation), previous to 2004, all marketing applications were divided under different departments. Each department used to develop and cater to their own ICT, websites and marketing applications needs. With the merging of all IT personnel in 2005, it was decided to implement a single, integrated system called the Management Information System (MIS). This system ie., Kuwait Petroleum Corporation International Marketing (KPC-IM) in collaboration with the Information Technology Department had embarked on a strategic initiative with the objective of replacing the current KPC-IM applications with an integrated solution that consists of world class software to support its current and future IM needs, it would facilitate a faster and smoother information flow across the departments, and also adopt the leading business practices.

Although all steps were taken to collaborate with the users of these applications, with the required training, the users did not respond favorably to the new System. The decided to revert back to the old applications. There were a few approvals of certain new features which they liked and had somewhat of a similar feel to the older applications.

The quality of work will have an impact on work and productivity with the delay in implementing new ICT’s.

ICT implementation is often a political and emotional process (Zorn, 2002) that may displace jobs (Hector, 2003). This also is a fear among most managers and employee alike.

There is also another study conducted by Theodore, Chris, John they concluded that those who had been most affected by ICTs in their workplaces reported consistently being more satisfied with their roles and pay. Given that what we called Role Satisfaction comprised satisfaction with task variety, challenge, meaningfulness, development opportunities, promotion opportunities, as well as overall satisfaction, the message is that these participants tended to see their work becoming more interesting as a result of increased ICT adoption and use.

Conclusions

The conclusions of this study are mostly theoretical; the main purpose was to offer examples to show some of the advantages and problems associated with ICT’s in Corporate Organizations.
We found out that there are more advantages of using ICT’s in the modern days. Also we know that with increase in skill and training of employees and managers alike in IT business processes, we can enhance the existing capabilities of ICT’s.
In order to benefit from their investment strategic human resource management which considers improvement of workers skill through training, apprenticeship and development should be given to the employee before new technology is introduced. Dr. Yunus, Waidi (2011)
More and more companies are relying on technology to improve their strategic thinking that integrates IT and business needs, with ever limited IT resources and budgets.
In many developing or underdeveloped countries, the use of ICT’s have various complex and political issues, but for those developing countries that are hard focused on using these technologies, it is providing to be a boon as it helps in the easing the economy and also in some cases make bureaucracy transparent , thus helping in getting rid of corruption.
It is observed that nowadays with clustered databases with high availability and the implementation of a unified and consolidated ERP Package for all internal applications, the trend is towards collaborating all parts of the systems into one package.
Another new feature of the ICT is the emerging trend of cloud computing. Cloud computing is the future where existing platforms can be supported and be enhanced by increasing the capabilities of ICTs.
ICT’s have a large impact on humans and the business within the organization.
The age of smartphones which integrates all the technology of a computer and telephone , enabling employees and managers alike to utilize the power of ICT to the fullest. New apps on the smartphones are replacing traditional computers and other telecommunication devices.
It is noticed that the younger generation learn to use and apply what is now called as social networking like Facebook , twitter etc.
Deployment of ICT’s will favourably improve the quality of work. Better understanding of the business needs is required to provide better service.

REFERENCES

Dimitra Pappa, Lampros K. Stergioulas, 2008. “The emerging role of corporate information systems: An example from the area of business process-oriented learning”. Int. Journal of Business Science and Applied Management, Volume 3, Issue 2, 2008:pp.37-48.

S. Sawyer ,R. Southwick, 2002. “Temporal Issues in Information and Communication Technology-Enabled Organizational Change: Evidence From an Enterprise Systems Implementation”. The Information Society, 18, 2002: pp. 263–280

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Mark Townsend. (June 2009). “Lowering your IT Costs with Oracle Database 11g Release 2”. An Oracle White Paper : pp.1.

Kranzberg, M. (1986) ‘Technology and history: kranzberg’s laws’, Technology and Culture, vol. 27, no. 3, pp. 544–560.

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References: Dimitra Pappa, Lampros K. Stergioulas, 2008. “The emerging role of corporate information systems: An example from the area of business process-oriented learning”. Int. Journal of Business Science and Applied Management, Volume 3, Issue 2, 2008:pp.37-48. S. Sawyer ,R. Southwick, 2002. “Temporal Issues in Information and Communication Technology-Enabled Organizational Change: Evidence From an Enterprise Systems Implementation”. The Information Society, 18, 2002: pp. 263–280 Brooks, A Mark Townsend. (June 2009). “Lowering your IT Costs with Oracle Database 11g Release 2”. An Oracle White Paper : pp.1. Kranzberg, M. (1986) ‘Technology and history: kranzberg’s laws’, Technology and Culture, vol. 27, no. 3, pp. 544–560. Oškrdal Václav, Pavlíček Antonín, Jelínková Petra, 2011. “Processes, Performance Drivers and ICT Tools in Human Resources Management” John Varley, CEO, Barclays (2009-2010 ) . ‘Accessible Information and Communication Technologies’ 15th April 2013 , from http://www.onevoiceict.org/sites/default/files/Accessible%20ICT%20-%20Benefits%20to%20Business%20and%20Society.pdf Van Damme, G. (2003). ICT in Practice for Physical Education & Sports http://www.sports-media.org/Sporttapolisnewsletter5.htm Margaret Rouses (September 2005) http://searchcio-midmarket.techtarget.com/definition/ICT Robinson, Neil; Valeri, Lorenzo; Cave, Jonathan., 2011 Delone, W. H., &Mclean, E. R. (2003). The Delone and Mclean Model of information systems success: A ten-year update. Journal of Management information systems, 19(4): 9-30. Handy, C. (1984), The Future of Work, London: Blackwell Theodore E Hector, C. (2003). Information technology use and employment change in New Zealand industries. New Zealand Journal of Industrial Relations, 28(3), pp.212-228.