Management by Nosing Around

Abstract

Once a technology is implemented, it has the tendency to "disappear" and to become a tacit part of an organization. Drawing from 350 in-depth and confidential interviews with executives in many industries, we show how the invisibility of technologies strongly contributes to the emergence of industrial crises and disasters, threatening the survival of even large corporations. Stressing the quasi-dependence of most organizations on technologies such as the telephone or information systems and the inherent fragility of these complex technological systems, we indicate 10 strategies that what we call crisis-prepared organizations have implemented to expose the invisibility of their technologies and to challenge their dangerous basic assumptions.

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