Modern professionals and their tools: ICT supporting organisational flexibility and control

Abstract

The modern organisation can be characterised in terms of the continuous struggle between providing organisational flexibility and control. Organisational flexibility and informality support the members in facilitating, mentoring, innovating and brokering. Organisational control serves the purpose of coordinating, monitoring, directing and producing. The aim of this paper is to study how modern professionals manage their use of multiple Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in the context of the requirements for organisational flexibility and control. This is accomplished through interviews with 16 modern professionals reflecting upon their use of ICT. The study firstly demonstrates that the multiplicity of ICT possibilities require of the modern professional to reflect upon the technologies they adopt and the specific ways in which they apply the technologies. We also clearly saw both the importance of some technologies, such as email and the unimportance of others, in particular the PDA. Generally, the study demonstrated the importance of flexible and informal ICT, even for the performance of work required to maintain organisational control