| dc.description.abstract | Changes in technology have easily observable side effects on organizational issues like work tasks. Job design, organizational structure, knowledge and skills required, and values, attitudes and behavior of employees. Substantive change in one or more of the above factors leads to perceived or actual psychological threat of job displacement, reduction in economic security, disruption of social arrangements, and redefining of authority relationships. This could threaten the psychological and social status of an employee, triggering off resistance to change. Existing Indian literature emphasizes the link between technology change and organizational systems. using the psychological outcomes of the endures as implied rather than directly tested. Most studies have focused on the organization rather than the worker. Worker goals and response becomes important as advanced technology requires substantial human support to operate effectively.
This research proposes to understand technological change from the worker’s point of view. It studies attitude of workers towards technological change and their perception of the consequent change in the organizational variables of managerial response to change, preparation for change, training, stress, job design, and interpersonal interaction.
The main questions that the study addresses are:
• What is the worker’s attitude towards technological change?
• What are the fears and apprehensions that he has towards these changes?
• What is his perception of the management’s reaction to these changes? How does he perceive the changes in the organizational and human resource (HR) sub-systems like job design, amount of stress, communication, decision making, training and interpersonal interaction.
• Is there a difference in the attitude of the worker' across work experience.
• Is there a difference in the worker’s attitude across different socio-industrial environments?
To answer the above questions, questionnaire survey and in-depth interview were conducted. The instrument for the study consisted of ‘attitude towards technological change’ scales a checklist for ‘fears and apprehensions regarding technological change’ and a questionnaire to understand the worker’s perception of the changes in the organizational and HR variables. The focus of study is the Indian Automobile Industry which is going through radical technological changes. Nine companies were part of this study. These companies fall into three different socio-industrial environments.
The main results are as follows:
• The overall attitude of the worker who has experienced technological change is positive.
• However he fears management’s preference for more educated and trained workers for the new technology. He knows that technological changes will bring about substantial changes in job design. He is concerned that different kind of responsibilities and problems will arise, making the work more difficult.
• His attitude is determined mainly by ease of communication with peers and the management, the nature of changes in his job design and amount of clarity he has towards management’s objective behind change. Higher the accessibility with management and peers increase in responsibility and control on the job and greater clarity on management’ objectives behind the changes will result in a more positive attitude towards technological change. Work experience and degree of stress have an inverse relationship with attitude.
• There is variation in the determinants of attitude across work experience. Workers with lower work experience are concerned about job features and learning whereas workers with high work experience are concerned about redundancy of the skills and losing their job.
• There is variation in the determinant of attitude across three different socio-industrial environments of India. In an environment of trust between management and worker , the attitude is very positive and concerns are mainly for job content. In an environment where there is low trust between the management and worker the main issues are related to the management’s response to the changes.
The Indian worker is not averse to technological change. He realizes the inevitability of change and that it will not hinder his existence and well being. This outlook of worker has implication for the management which plans to bring technological changes in the manufacturing units. The study highlights the workers need for open and frank communication. To build an environment conductive to change the worker has to be taken into full confidence. Training is important not only for meeting the skill requirement of new technology but also for the worker to feel capable of dealing with the changed technical and organizational systems. | en |
