Welcome

Need for Managing Technological and Organizational Change

Technology has always played a major role in shaping an organization's structure and processes, as well as being one of the major catalysts for organizational change. Until recently, innovation in process technology-used to transform raw materials and information into goods and services-has been relatively slow and the need to adopt new process technology not particularly pressing. Thus, organizations could adopt it incrementally and find ways for it to complement organizational structures and processes by trial and error. However, technological innovation in the factory and office has accelerated. Organizations cannot afford to adopt new technology by trial and error or to learn gradually how to make new technology and manufacturing practices complement the rest of the organization. They must learn faster and the complementarity achieved must be no less than optimal. It is the mission of the Center for the Management of Technological and Organizational Change (CMTOC) to contribute to meeting this need.

Mission

Many of the barriers to effective utilization of new technology are managerial and organizational, rather than technological per se. The mission of the Center for the Management of Technological and Organizational Change (CMTOC) is to identify organizational and management issues associated with the introduction of new technology, to design and conduct research that generates both theory and practical knowledge for dealing with such issues, and to disseminate research results by a variety of media to the business, research, and educational communities.