On cultures and information technology applications in organizations

Abstract

Some empirical studies concerning usage of new information systems and of general office systems (such as word processing systems) show that all the potential features of those systems have not been used at all. The reason for this is suspected to lie in organizational cultures. There are, however, very few studies on how information technology (IT) applications fit in with an organizational culture. In this paper, firstly, a typology of organizational cultures is presented and, secondly, an analysis is made of how harmonious the fit is between IT applications and a certain cultural type. It is shown that IT applications and organizational cultures mutually affect each other. Advances in IT, together with policy level decisions being made in organizations, may lead to increasingly complex situations. The fit between IT and varieties of organizational culture represents a new challenge for IT design and the IT community.