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Chapter 3 Information Systems, Organizations, and Strategy 113

FIGURE 3.3 THE BEHAVIORAL VIEW OF ORGANIZATIONS

The behavioral view of organizations emphasizes group relationships, values, and structures.

work will be done. Most of these arrangements and feelings are not discussed
in any formal rulebook.
How do these definitions of organizations relate to information systems
technology? A technical view of organizations encourages us to focus on
how inputs are combined to create outputs when technology changes are
introduced into the company. The firm is seen as infinitely malleable, with
capital and labor substituting for each other quite easily. But the more real-
istic behavioral definition of an organization suggests that building new
information systems, or rebuilding old ones, involves much more than a
technical rearrangement of machines or workers—that some information
systems change the organizational balance of rights, privileges, obligations,
responsibilities, and feelings that have been established over a long period
of time.
Changing these elements can take a long time, be very disruptive, and
requires more resources to support training and learning. For instance,
the length of time required to implement a new information system effec-
tively is much longer than usually anticipated simply because there is a
lag between implementing a technical system and teaching employees and
managers how to use the system.
Technological change requires changes in who owns and controls
information, who has the right to access and update that information, and
who makes decisions about whom, when, and how. This more complex view
forces us to look at the way work is designed and the procedures used to
achieve outputs.
The technical and behavioral definitions of organizations are not con-
tradictory. Indeed, they complement each other: The technical definition
tells us how thousands of firms in competitive markets combine capital,
labor, and information technology, whereas the behavioral model takes us
inside the individual firm to see how that technology affects the organiza-
tion’s inner workings. Section 3.2 describes how each of these definitions
of organizations can help explain the relationships between information
systems and organizations.

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