Organizational design can be defined narrowly as the strategic process of shaping an organization's structure and roles to create or optimize capabilities for competition in a given market.
Technology is an important factor to consider in organizational design. Modern organizations can be treated as complex and adaptive systems that include a mix of human and technological interactions. Organizations can utilize technological tools to enhance productivity and to initiate new and more efficient structural designs for the organization, thereby adding potential sources of economic value and competitive advantage.
Technology
Technology has opened doors to incorporating new and advanced forms of organizational design. This is most notably seen through rapid global communications and the ability to constantly and economically be in contact.
Technological Organizational Structures
An example of an organizational structure that has emerged from newer technological trends is what some have called the "virtual organization," which connects a network of organizations via the internet. Over the internet, an organization with a small core can still operate globally as a market leader in its niche. This can dramatically reduce costs and overhead, remove the necessity for an expensive office building, and enable small, dynamic teams to travel and conduct work wherever they are needed.
A similar organizational design that is heavily reliant upon technological capabilities is the network structure. While the network structure existed prior to recent technologies (i.e., affordable communications via internet, cell phones, etc.), the existence of complex telecommunications networks and logistics technologies has greatly increased the viability of this structure.
Technology and Traditional Structures
Technology can also affect other longstanding elements of an organization. For example, information systems allow managers to take a much more analytic view of their businesses than before the advent of such systems. Managers can communicate and delegate much more effectively through using technologies such as email, calendars, online presentations, and other virtual tools.
Technology has also impacted supply chain management—the management of a network of interconnected businesses involved in the provision of product and service packages required by the end customers in a supply chain. Supply chain management now has the capacity to track, forecast, predict, and refine the outbound logistics, contributing to a wide variety of logistical advantages (such as minimizing costs from warehousing, fuel, negative environmental impacts, or packaging).
Technology simplifies the process of managing reports, collecting communications, and keeping in touch, enabling management in more formal structures to take on more workers. Increases in technology have essentially allowed organizations to scale up their companies through more effective and efficient teams.