AUTHOR
Mario Arias-Oliva
ABSTRACT
The information society has arrived, creating a new technological and business environment. The technological framework is based on information and communication technologies, which are constantly increasing capacity and decreasing cost. Global markets, shorter product life cycle, complexity and fast change characterised the business environment. In such new conditions, organisations must adapt to new changing conditions. In order to fit, we propose two main factors that should be considered in organisations if they are to continue operating in new circumstances, strategy and organisation form or structure. Firms should look for new strategies to cope with new conditions. The information technologies provide a fundamental instrument for satisfying new strategic demands. Likewise, if new strategies are developed and new environments adapted to, all aspects of traditional forms of organisations must be changed, like structure, systems, management styles, cultures, skills, etc. There are some new organisational forms based mainly on information technology: Internet, LAN’s, GroupWare, Mobil telecommunications, etc. Some of these new forms, like networked organisation, the task team based organisation, the management matrix organisation, or the lifelong learning organisation, will be described in this paper, taking into consideration the social dimensions that those changes will get on persons, organisations and society.