IT in the Workplace: How Office Design Shapes Technology

Introduction: The Mutual Influence of IT and the Workspace

The IT community is undoubtedly the fastest-evolving field in modern society, and it has come to impact all aspects of both personal and professional life. Within the professional climate, IT plays a predominant role. It influences, for instance, the means by which a company interacts and communicates with customers, the means by which it produces goods and delivers services, and the means by which it manages all administrative processes.

Yet the relationship between information technology and the organizational workspace is not one-directional. While IT unmistakably shapes the workplace, the workspace itself — its physical design, resource base, and human dynamics — also shapes the information technology choices an organization makes. Understanding this reciprocal relationship is essential for any analysis of IT within an organizational context.

How Information Technology Shapes the Workplace

At the level of the workplace, Information Technology generates numerous concrete impacts. Several key examples illustrate this:

IT changes the nature of work by creating new complexities or by reducing existing ones. Technologies must be continually updated, which means employees must be regularly trained to keep pace with those changes.

IT changes the means by which employees interact — generally by supporting communication efficiency, reducing response time, and easing data collection. At the same time, it can reduce the sense of trust and the feeling of genuine human interaction that characterizes face-to-face work.

How the Workspace Shapes IT Choices

IT changes the functionality of offices by shifting responsibilities and tasks, and it also creates new physical and organizational designs. Modern workplaces, for instance, now commonly feature conference rooms equipped for both direct communication and teleconferencing (Wallace, 2000).

Alongside the ways IT shapes the workspace, the workspace itself exerts a significant influence over IT adoption and success. Two examples illustrate this clearly.

Oticon Case Study: Restructuring Through Information Technology

First, the nature, level of development, and applicability of the IT systems integrated within an organization are influenced by its resource availability — specifically, the financial resources available for acquiring and implementing IT applications.

Second, the success of IT applications depends heavily on employees' responses to them. High levels of resistance indicate low success rates, whereas openness and interest toward new technologies generate higher rates of successful adoption. The human dimension of any workspace is therefore a critical factor in determining whether an IT investment delivers its intended value.

The topic of Information Technology within the workplace is a complex one that benefits from analysis through multiple lenses. A relevant scenario is offered by Oticon, a leading hearing aid device company based in Denmark. Throughout the recent past, the organization had been confronted with serious problems: an overly large and inefficient organizational structure, high levels of bureaucracy, and overall decreased operational productivity. Internal communications were also relatively poor, and the use of information was ineffective.

In order to address these problems, newly appointed chief executive officer Lars Kolind committed to a complex process of organizational restructuring, with the goals of increasing flexibility, productivity, and employee morale. The focal points of the change strategy included dismantling physical boundaries — such as the walls separating individual offices — eliminating bureaucracy, and emphasizing efficient communication (Lagace, 2003). While Information Technology played an essential role throughout the restructuring process, its role was most visible in relation to information management. Kolind focused on reducing paper use and shifting toward electronic means of delivering, assessing, and handling information.

As Wallace (2000) describes: "A global corporation now, Oticon's founders early on decided to change the way work is done, and among those changes is the 'Mail Room.' Here employees receive, read, and shred their mail after scanning it into a computer database for perpetuity."

The initial reaction from staff was resistance, but Kolind placed considerable emphasis on engaging all stakeholders in the change process — though he did so through less conventional methods. Managers were informed that the change process would be set in motion and that those who were not prepared to support it might as well leave the firm. The approach toward employees differed and included the involvement of media attention to add external pressure to the process. Under these circumstances, both managers and employees became actively engaged in the change.

Based on textbook evidence, the approach taken by Lars Kolind might be characterized as problematic, given that it relied on fear and pressure rather than incentives and motivation to secure buy-in. Traditional change management models advise generating active employee involvement through positive engagement in order to reduce resistance. Nonetheless, despite this unconventional approach, the overall success of Oticon's restructuring is indisputable, and the company stands as a compelling model for integrating information technology into the organizational environment.

From the Oticon case, it is clear that Lars Kolind grasped the true importance of Information Technology and the urgency of adopting it within the organizational climate. Had the firm failed to prioritize IT, it would have risked losing its competitive position and potentially faced decline.

Conclusion: The Future of IT in the Workplace

The role of IT within organizational environments is likely to increase in the future, and eventually all people will come to work in settings in which IT is omnipresent. For now, however, working within such a field is highly appealing, as it presents individuals with enormous opportunities for development. Keeping pace with the rate of evolution is acknowledged as challenging, and it is therefore recognized that not everyone is equally positioned to thrive within this rapidly changing landscape.