Artifical firm: Technology, organization and woodward revisited

Abstract Woodward's poineering work is extended by investigating the relationships between technology and organization. Statistical analyses of 1988 Singaporean corporate database confirmed Woodward's 1965 findings that organizations at either end of technological complexity tend to be more similar. More interestingly, the correlational results for artificial intelligence (AI) and information technology (IT) are found to be sharply contrasting. For whilst IT is widely related with internal organization, there seems to be a paucity of such statistically significant correlations for AI. Based on these results wider implications are also drawn for high technology management.

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