Technology and Organizational Communication Processes 1 THE IMPACT OF TECHNOLOGY IN ORGANIZATIONAL COMMUNICATION

In this chapter a case study is presented, in which the ethnomethodological approach is used to analyze the impact of the implementation of an information system, called Sispes, on organizational communication processes in the residence for elderly Giovanelli (Italy). Sispes is a web based platform which sustains communication processes and knowledge management according to a customized workflow management system. Adopting structuration theories in the analysis of the case study, and taking inspiration from the philosophical tradition, especially in epistemology and in the analytic philosophy of law, an innovative perspective is adopted, which specifically acknowledges the role played by the communication processes in shaping both the attitudes of the involved actors and the social reality in which they are immersed. According to this perspective, three types of communication processes are presented, namely the normative, descriptive and constructive approach. These latter are then applied to a concrete case study. Technology and Organizational Communication Processes 3 INTRODUCTION It is commonly known that the introduction of any technology system in an organizational reality causes some relevant changes in internal processes and in the workers’ attitude to share knowledge. This chapter investigates the evolution of communication processes within the organization, and the impact of the use of information systems (ISs from hereafter) on knowledge management assets. In order to overcome some problems deriving from the adoption of classical theories on organizational communication processes, a new approach based on a philosophical analysis is introduced, that distinguishes communication processes into three main categories: normative, descriptive and constructive. These latter allow the analysis both of the attitudes of the involved actors and of the social reality in which they are immersed. By applying this new vision to the analysis of the impact of technology on communication processes within a small firm in Italy, the residence for elderly Giovanelli, the chapter investigates how the introduction of an IS, named Sispes, has affected the information strategy of the firm, the workers’ attitude to share information and knowledge, and some communication processes. Finally, the chapter shows that the proposed normative, descriptive an constructive approaches allow to better understand the communication processes’ dynamics. In the two following sections, some background literature (e.g. theories on technological impact and on communication processes within organizations) is presented. In the main part of the chapter, theories on communication processes and a case study are described. Finally, some future trends and final remarks are discussed. 1 This includes the modification of existing practices, the creation of new ones, the modification and creation of concepts and even of physical objects, as we will illustrate in the paper. Technology and Organizational Communication Processes 4 BACKGROUND In the last decades, organizations had to deal with dynamic markets, characterized by specialization of work, outsourcing processes, just in time and distributed production, etc. In this scenario the continuous innovation in technology solutions and its contradicting empirical effects on organizations have maintained a strong interest for researchers who try to develop new and more complete theoretical models. Even if non profit organizations (such as cooperative and social based firms) are working in a more stable environment, the turbulent network of stakeholders influence them. In this scenario, public or private residences for elderly are not an exception, they become part of interorganizational or informal networks, opening their virtual value chain to other companies, outsourcing their non core services and, finally, specializing their core activities such as nursing, medical, and physiotherapeutic services (see for instance Child, 1972; Child and Faulkner, 1998; Cook, 1977; Lowndes and Skelcher, 1998; Murray, 1997; Vangen and Huxham, 2003). This allows residences for elderly to offer a good quality service, improving the guests’ welfare. In order to do that, they have to coordinate a constellation of specialized units, some of which are part of the organization (administration, R&D, etc.) while others refer to different companies (such as restaurant, cleaning, transportation and logistic services). In order to stimulate coordination in a complex environment, innovative Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) solutions are implemented and communication processes are continuously reengineered. The following paragraphs describe some organizational coordination and communication processes, and how ICT, information or knowledge management systems might sustain these processes. Finally, it is argued that these latter are not Technology and Organizational Communication Processes 5 neutral assets in organizations, but are strictly related to pre-existing coordination processes and types of production. Organizational coordination and communication processes The importance of coordination and communication processes has constantly increased at any level of the organization: technical, managerial and institutional (Parsons, 1951). This very complex organizational issue can be studied in accordance with contingency theories, which consider the organization as dependent on the complexity and the dynamicity of the environment in which the firms operate (Emery and Trist, 1960; Lawrence e Lorsch, 1967; Ashby, 1967; Mintzberg, 1983) and on the types of production technology adopted within the organization. For instance, through an empirical analysis of English production firms, Woodward (1965) has discovered that coordination and communication processes might change according to the kind of model of production (called “technology” in the organizational literature) developed within the firm. Also, Thompson (1967) has extended her analysis, depicting the following models: • Long linked technologies: they imply a serial interdependency among single production phases. These are scientifically analyzed and organized, and communication processes have to maintain the efficiency of production phases. • Mediated technologies: they allow people to communicate in order to share opinions, negotiate, and achieve common agreement. Technology has the role of mediator among individuals, and its infrastructure should be very easy to understand and use, thus comprehensible and standardized. • Intensive technology: workers have to use various communication channels, according to their emerging needs. The aim is to achieve new and innovative Technology and Organizational Communication Processes 6 shared opinions, ideas, information, and desires in a non-predefined way, typically developed by teamworks or communities of practice. Taking also into consideration some important studies on knowledge management (KM from hereafter) and IS, coordination and communication processes might be related with the information and KM strategies adopted within the organization. In particular, Davenport et al., (1998) describe four different models, which represent both the way in which information should be organized and the way in which communication processes should be designed: • Information anarchy: every worker manages her/his personal information and networks of communication channels. The dimension of the communication network depends on the ability and attitude of each single agent to manage relationships and communicate with colleagues, customers, suppliers, etc. • Information hierarchy: workers adapt their communication processes to communication channels that are scientifically organized, typically by the management. Usually these are vertical channels, which enable the twofold processes of top down and bottom up communication. • Information feudalism: workers share knowledge within each single unit, teamwork, or community. Communication channels are organized and managed within each single group and there is no official communication channel across units. 2 Knowledge management is a discipline that promotes an integrated approach to the creation, organization, access, and use of an enterprise's information assets. These assets include structured databases, textual information such as policy and procedure documents and, most importantly, the tacit knowledge and expertise of individual employees (Harris et al., 1998). Technology and Organizational Communication Processes 7 • Information federalism: the personalized and informal communication channels, developed within each single unit, are placed side by side with the formal communication processes managed across the firm. Galbraith (1973) argues that complexity, information asymmetry, uncertainty, and strong interdependencies among units force organizations to elaborate information, and to coordinate their activities. Thus, in a complex organization the four models of information strategy are often mixed together in order to satisfy all the organizational needs. Together, the information strategy and the technical complexity of production determine the structural complexity of the firm, and change the types of communication processes. Information and knowledge management systems For long time, a huge amount of organizational resources, in terms of time and money, have been invested in ICT solutions such as very traditional ISs or more innovative KM systems, which aim at effectively and efficiently managing communication processes within and across organizational units. In contrast with the contingency theories described above, practitioners have for long time considered that ISs are neutral assets within the firm, and can be implemented to deterministically direct and change human coordination and communication actions. For instance, ICT, IS and KM systems facilitate synchronous and asynchronous communication processes when there is no physical proximity (Sarbaugh-Thompson and Feldman, 1998), enable knowledge sharing among organizational units, simplify some managerial decision processes, and support the electronic data interchange among firms. The typical KM architecture, described by Davenport and Prusak (1997), is a centralized system, composed by the following elements which enable various communication processes: Technology and Organizational Communication Processes 8 • the enterprise knowledge portal, which provides a unique access point to corporate knowledge, with personalized services. This is often a web-based interface which guarantees, through authentication processes, the creation of personalized channels of communication within the firm; • groupware applications, as chats, forums, discussion groups, e-mails, etc, which enable social interactions within workgroups and across organizational units. The high level of informal communication, that technology can sustain, contributes to make the newcomer feel as a central member of the organization; • workflow management systems, that allow users to model communication and production processes. Different components of KM and IS solutions can sustain a particular information strategy model and a type of production technology rather than another; for instance, workflow management systems may support information hierarchy and long linked technologies, while groupware applications usually favor feudalism in information strategy and intensive production technology. Practitioners usually don’t take into account the organizational complexity and the unpredictability of the effects of an ICT solution. Phenomenological and structuration theories The considerations underlined above determined the inclusion in the research of more phenomenological approaches, focusing on the relations among social actors, organizations (in particular the system of communication and coordination processes), and technologies. Along these lines, Weick (1979; 1996) sees the organization as a system taking in equivocal information from its environment (enactment), trying to make sense out of that information Technology and Organizational Communication Processes 9 (selection), and using in the future what was learned in the past (retention). Organizations evolve as they make sense of themselves and their environment. He argues that technologies are stochastic systems implemented in a very complex environment, thus it is impossible to foresee their positive or negative effects. Thus communication is a key process because of its role in the sense-making processes people use. Also, the structuration theories, based on (Giddens, 1984), show that technologies and social structures are strongly related and interdependent (Orlikowski, 1991; Orlikowski & Gash, 1994; Orlikowski & Robey, 1991). According to these theories, there are strong relationships and interdependences among human actions, institutional roles (the de facto organizational model) and the technology architecture of IS or KM systems in use within the company. In particular, the design of technology should be strongly influenced by the institutional roles and organizational properties. Its introduction forces people to try to understand the processes designed in the system, and often to change their traditional activities. If people adopt the new processes, they introduce new activities, new beliefs, new expectations that in the long term might change the organizational structure of the firm. On the other side, if the traditional activities are too different from those embedded within the system, people tend to desert IS and KM systems, and continue to work as they did before, retaining a stable environment. One of the critical factors of these processes is the interpretative flexibility that exists. In other words, the choice of changing channel of communication or of not adopting the new ICT system very strongly depends from the capability of workers to understand it. Often workers interpret and adopt technology in a way that is not predictable beforehand and might use the same technology in different processes and for different aims. Technology and Organizational Communication Processes 10 To conclude, from what said, it derives that on one hand the effectiveness of IS and KM systems introduced within a firm, are dependent on the information strategy of the firm and the type of production technology that has been developed; on the other hand, the design of these technologies is in its turn affected by the organizational structure, and at the same time by the users. The effects of these interdependencies cannot be clearly foreseen, as they depend on the ability of workers to understand the technology and to adopt/adapt it for their business needs. COMMUNICATION PROCESSES As explained in previous paragraphs, communication has nowadays become one of the most important assets in organizations. This is because organizations cannot be considered just as “containers” of individuals with common aims, but have to be regarded as evolving social contexts in which real persons face various situations and problems (see for instance Foresto, 2004; Klein, 1998; Malizia, 1993). Thus, communication is the means they possess in order to understand and adapt to the dynamics of these changing environments. Classical organizational communication theories The discipline that studies the relations between communicative processes and organizational settings is called “organizational communication”; it has the twofold purpose of: • understanding how communicational processes shape organizations and • understanding how organizational life influences the form and content of communicative acts of the individuals who interact within it. Putnam et al. (1996) singles out three fundamental questions that organizational communication tries to answer: Technology and Organizational Communication Processes 11 • Do communicational processes depend from the type of the organization or, vice versa, the latter depends on communicational processes? • Do communicational fluxes follow the direction of the organizational hierarchy or these fluxes influence the structure and the workflows of the organization? • Is communication a central element in the creation of the identity of an organization or it is merely a functional instrument? Considered the relevant role of technology in communication processes, it is reasonable to add another relevant question to the analysis. • Are communication processes affected by the channel of communication, in particular by technology? Organizational communication includes both internal processes of communication (among the members of the organization itself) and communication towards the outside (how the organization presents itself and exchanges information with external stakeholders). In this chapter only the internal dimension of organizational communication is analyzed. The literature in this discipline has classified communication according to different criteria that we will try to sum up very briefly: • level of formality; • direction of informational fluxes; • content of the messages; • function that it performs; • purpose that it has. The first typology distinguishes between formal communication with its rigidity, precision and authority, which follows predefined patterns and informal communication, which Technology and Organizational Communication Processes 12 is flexible, personal and is free from etiquettes (Stohl and Redding, 1987). Alternative ways to describe informal communication are coordination by feedback (March & Simon, 1958) or by clan mechanisms (Ouchi, 1980). The typology based on informational fluxes is more articulated, as it includes vertical communication (both top-down, from the top management to the basis and bottom-up, from the basis to the top management), horizontal (between individuals who occupy the same positions in the hierarchy), and transversal (or cross-channel, which is similar to the horizontal one in character but involves wider parts of the organization, namely members working for different units). Very traditional works explored these types of information fluxes, for more details see (Simpson, 1959; Welch, 1980; Penley, 1982) The typology based on the content of the messages singles out political messages relative to strategies, correct behaviors etc., basic messages -information for the well functioning of the organizationand messages related to the image -definition of the style of the organization(Tanis, 2008; Watzlawick, et al., 1967). The typology based on the function of the communication sees the properly functional communication as the one in charge of guaranteeing the correct functioning of the organizational “machinery”, the informative communication as the one in charge of the visibility of the enterprise, with its products and services, the creative communication as the one ensuring the promotion of changes and progress and, finally, the formative communication as the one with the function of establishing a sense of belonging through presentations, meetings, parties etc. (Goffman, 1974). The last typology, based on the purposes, includes messages to inform, create involvement, and sell products and services. Companies must communicate with their present Technology and Organizational Communication Processes 13 and potential customers, casting into the role of communicator and promoter (Prandelli and Verona, 2006). Why these classifications are not fit to our target The typologies just presented overlap in many respects and this is not by chance; one thing that they definitely have in common is that they describe the communication processes as they take place inside an organization. They accomplish this aim starting from different perspectives and targeting various aspects but, despite the questions listed in the analysis in (Putnam et al. 1996), they focus much more on communication itself than on the interaction of this latter with the organizational reality and its actors. As the main objective of this work is to understand the changes in the complex interrelations between communication processes, organizational structure, and technologies, we find the solutions offered by the classical theories of organizational communication unsatisfactory. In other terms, our aim is to analyze whether the changes into the communication processes induced by the implementation of an IS for the management of data (developed according to a managerial information strategy and coherent with the technology of production of the firm) give as output the creation of new objects and practices or contribute to create a new organizational reality. The traditional classifications present different aspects of the communication processes, but most of the times these are simultaneously present in organizational life and are intermingled, thus they are not able to properly explain these dynamics. In order to analyze these changes we will propose a new classification anchored in the philosophical tradition. The rationale of our proposal is that of characterizing the different “attitudes” that social actors, inside an organization, can enact with respect to communication Technology and Organizational Communication Processes 14 processes. Finally, this new classification reflects the need to understand the interdependences among organizational structure, actors, and ISs, typically described by structuration theories. Our proposal of classification Our proposal is rooted in the philosophical tradition, especially in epistemology and in the analytic philosophy of law. In the latter ambit, a sharp distinction between normative and descriptive discourse has traditionally been traced (Villa, 1999). This same distinction can be translated in more general terms by the epistemological conception of normativism and descriptivism conceived as different kinds of epistemological analyses. In both traditions a third element, namely contructivism, has lately been added, which presents new peculiar features (see Piaget 1967; Vygotsky 1978). We will rely on these previously proposed classifications and apply them to the study of communication processes, thus indicating three different types of communication; the typology is meant to specifically address the role played by the communication processes in shaping both the attitude of the involved social actors and the social reality in which they are immersed. Under this perspective, the effects of the communication on the organizational reality become the real focus of the analysis. These three types of communication processes are: normative, descriptive and constructive.