Dealing with Change: New Technologies and the 21st Century Workplace
There is no question that the emergence of new technologies spells change for the organizations that embrace them. The challenge for these organizations is how to respond to these changes.
Evolving technologies often challenge the expertise of knowledge workers, undermine their autonomy and restructure their work arrangements. For example, robots are entering hospital operating rooms and transforming the practice of surgery. Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly challenging the primacy of human decision-making. More broadly, new forms of collaboration, such as online communities of practice or new forms of data-intensive and collaborative science, are emerging.
As Canada Research Chair in Technology, Innovation, and Organizing, Dr. Samer Faraj is focusing on how technological advances are transforming organizations and allowing new forms of coordination and organizing to emerge. In particular, he and his research team are exploring how technology is affecting innovation collaboration in health care, knowledge co-creation in large-scale science networks, and collaborative online communities.
To do this, Faraj and his team are building and leveraging a community of interdisciplinary researchers that will together increase our knowledge of how new technologies, such as intelligent robots and AI, are transforming workplaces, particularly in the health sector.
One of their goals is to explore the complex, emerging issues surrounding how technology—and the innovation it generates—are affecting work and organizing in order to help policy-makers and stakeholders make better decisions related to technology in the 21st century.