Organizational Philosophies and Technology Paper - Essay Example

Setting and Managing Ethical Standards with Technology Technology is a body of knowledge organizations can use to create tools and develop skills using scientific method and material to meet an objective or solve a problem (National Institute of Health, 2011). The Diagram below illustrates the flow of technology and its use in solving problems within the organization: Diagram 1: Retrieved from http://science.education.nih.gov/supplements/nih4/technology/guide/lesson1.htmeferences Ethical issues such as trust, privacy, and the reliability of information formerly were the primary focus in discussions about ethics, however with the introduction of emerging technologies into the organizational culture new ethical issues are evolving.

The discussion of ethics and technology is not merely one in which human beings are susceptible or tempted to act unethical or illegally, but is one focused on the new organizational environment emerging between human beings and robots that is creating concern (Santana, Vaccaro & Wood, 2010, pp. 662-663). Santana et al. make the observation that the new informational virtual environments are creating new kinds of interaction resulting in the possibility of higher risks of ethical breaches within the organization.

The process of networking systems of technologies into the organizational culture directly affects behavior influencing organizational design (Santana et al., 2010). Organizations philosophies now must take into account macro-ethics that include animate, inanimate, and informational entities (Santana, Vaccaro & Wood, 2010, pp. 661-663). The new ethical environmental dimensions created by technology are changing. The environments of living and physical things including informational objects such as intelligent software, artificial agents, and robots are requiring leaders to analyze their organizational structural design and internal processes.

Santana et al. uses the example of the informational exchange between human beings and robots or “virtual entities” in which human behavior and activities are affected by decisions made by machines. As an example take for instance a supply chain system in which a machines make the decision to order supplies or materials then issues instructions to human workers to process the request (Santana et al., 2010, p. 662); the ethical issue is not that a machine made the decision but one of who should take responsibility for making the decision in the event the order is incorrect.

The human response is one in which he or she simply was following the instructions and therein is the ethical issue. Scholars question how to draw the lines of responsibility in the new environments and who should make the decision to implement the boundaries created that are affecting the relational interaction between humans and machines. Shaping Organizational Culture with Technology One of the primary challenges of implementing a technology strategy into a culture is how to network the various work units, systems, and communication processes within the organizational structure.

The use of technology requires a system of networks to enable organizations to connect multiple layers of knowledge and information for vertical alignment and horizontal consistency (Barrette, 2005, pp. 221-223). As a noun, “