ICTS – New Organizational Form Linkage in the Australian Context: Theoretical Model and Research Instrument

Abstract

Since the publication of the seminal article ‘Management in the 1980s’ (Leavitt and Whisler, 1958), the relationship between Information and Communications Technology (ICT) and organizations has been one of the most challenging issues for management scholars and researchers. Despite a long tradition of research that has been looking into the relationship between ICTs and organizations, the findings remain inconclusive. In particular, the specific mechanisms by which new information technologies affect and are affected by organizational forms have not been described in any systematic manner. This paper aims to make a contribution to address the above gap in research by developing an instrument and theoretical model that relates ICT and the attributes of new organizational forms (NOFs). Likert-type scale items were used for all scale items. Of the 3770 emails sent to top Australian managers, 312 were completed and returned. An Exploratory Factor Analysis was used to identify the underlying constructs in this research. The research findings provide an instrument whose properties were validated and ready to use in future research.