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newman
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THE IMPACT OF IT AND COMPUTERS ON ORGANISATIONS Since computers and IT were first introduced in organisations, the speed of development and usage has increased dramatically. The first computers were large cumbersome objects (usually mainframes) and were generally used for accounting purposes - number crunching in high volume. The picture in the 1990’s is very different. There have been far too many changes in both technology and its usage to discuss within this essay. However, I will highlight some of these and show the impact on the organisation along with the social impact on the employees. When IT and computers were introduced during the 1960s and 1970’s it was only the large, financially secure companies that could afford to purchase them, smaller companies did not have either the money or manpower necessary to implement and maintain them. Organisations that used the technology available quickly reduced both manpower and costs as they realised that many of the mundane tasks could be automated, the smaller companies could not compete with this and a gulf began to develop. As technology continued to change the nature of business and became more accessible and cheaper, many of the smaller companies began to use computers which helped level out the distance between them and the larger organisations. As they had the capacity to process large volumes of transactions in a fraction of the time, they were able to compete once again. Another major change in technology since the 1960’s is software. Initially all software was bespoke and again, only the larger organisations could afford to employ people to write programs, “off the shelf” packages changed all that. These also helped smaller companies become a dominant factor as they could purchase software that suited their needs. Large amounts of data no longer needed to be input manually – it could be scanned in and a report automatically produced using the information. However, this progress also had an impact on the skills that were required by employees. Originally jobs were either clerical, secretarial or managerial. As more people now have PC’s sitting on their desks they are required to have more transferable skills. No longer is it just the secretary who can type – MD’s now type their own correspondence and secretary’s no longer type all day long.
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