Business Organizations, Describe How Recent Technological Developments

¶ … Business Organizations," describe how recent technological developments are impacting the organizational structure of a 'software house'. The internal organizational structure of a business is one of the key elements in predicting if a new, particular venture made by the business will succeed or fail. However, in the computer software industry, another key component is thrown into the mix and the friction between the internal workings of an organization and the external business environment.

Computer software is one of the most volatile markets because of the rapid nature of technological development and change. What was previously a necessity for computer consumers can rapidly be rendered obsolete by shifts in technological development. Conversely, an effective new technology or software might not 'catch on' because it is incompatible with all currently existing popular hardware systems used in many businesses and schools.

Furthermore, individuals outside the immediate software industry may be resistant to changing their computer systems on a wide-ranging basis or find the new software too complicated to be 'user friendly.' Computer software must be compatible with currently existing systems yet be interesting and exciting enough to draw the consumer's eye. A software firm must be technologically on the cutting edge, yet responsive to the emotional needs of the consumer market.

The software industry requires every firm to have an organizational structure that is communicative between the technical staff, the advertising staff, and the financially focused staff who has an eye on the company's economic status and 'bottom line.' The human resources and managerial staff must be able to manage any potential conflicts that could occur between these different departments and different aspects of the organization's business hierarchy.

In a software firm, these conflicts are not purely hierarchical, as it is not that one department is superior to the other, but rather that each horizontal element of the business structure is necessary to the firm's ability to operate to its maximum efficacy. Thus, there is divided nature to the horizontal structure most software firms. Most firms, regardless of industry, exhibit some friction between members and departments of the organization. Software firms are usually divided between technically oriented and financially oriented personnel.

These individuals are often quite separate in the internal hierarchy of the firm and have different backgrounds and different views of what constitutes success. The former staff members are often more forward thinking in nature, the latter more of the moment and the immediate economic environment. For instance, highly computer literate programmers who actually write the software and the information systems managers who manage the different departments of the organization will have different educations and different ideas of what will yield the greatest ultimate financial dividends.

Systems analysts usually must translate business problems into solutions and act as liaisons between the information systems department and rest of the organization, but these different views cannot always be reconciled, as they are dependent upon different informational bases, one technical and the other economic. Conflicts often arise between these different in 'translating' technical problems into business problems and then finding solutions to both proposed queries. These only add to the traditional conflicts between workers and management that can occur in any business organizational hierarchy.

However, as the technical and financial staffs are often separate, and neither has a clear priority in the hierarchy, conflicts can spiral out of control without proper management. For instance, conflict exacerbated when the technical staff believes in a product's quality, while the advertising staff, for instance, thinks the product is unmarketable in the immediate economic environment, or the financial aspect of the business believes the prospective software to be too costly to manufacture. Also, rapid shifts in technology are particularly detrimental to small business organizations.

Large firms can conduct marketplace transactions and spread their costs out internally when floating a prospective new software application. But small firms cannot operate upon the principles of economies of scale. They are the most affected business organizations by exogenous or external market forces. Even if they produce a relatively effective or efficient product, if most of their success is predicated upon a relatively small range of products, they will be unable to compete and to weather a difficult economic time if any one particular product is adversely affected.

More diversified businesses have a greater ability to stay afloat if one aspect of their product inventories are rendered obsolete, though a more diversified software company does run the risk of diluting its product base. By simply expanding its offerings, a company may fall behind in contributing to the.