Technological Innovation
Technological Innovation
Technological progress is a crucial thing that must take place in any organization. The advancement of technology may come along with both blessings and curses. The role of a manager in any focused organization is to ensure that the businesses carried out in the organization maximizes on the beneficial part of the technological changes. Harrow, a borough in London is a living testimony of the impacts of technology on the daily affairs of a company. The district is at its stage of incorporating technology in the governance with a critical aim of excellence production of goods and services. The main concentration for this report is on health care facilities in the named borough. Artificial intelligent systems help propel organizations high in terms of service provision. A district that takes significant interest in incorporating the system does far much better than others in the same industry. The endeavor to embrace the advancing technology in the borough of Harrow turns out to be slow due to some factors that are hard to avoid. Various theories help to analyze these difficulties and probably get to know the possible way out. Diffusion of technology is what brings about the urge to change from traditional methods of service provision to the modern ones. As time goes by, new ways of service delivery come to place replacing the old ones. New machines including robots replace human resource in most cases leading to more productivity. The more digitalized the health care provider is, the quicker the rate of service provision, and this saves on the cost of delays in the processes. There exist some factors that drive an institution to go hand in hand with technological innovation as well as hindrances to the same; this calls the institution to work on the obstacles as they accept the drivers for the same.
Overview of Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence, initialized as AI, refers to the use of programmed robots to do data analysis in health care. It is a computerized way of executing services that try to act like the way human beings reason out issues. The machines used in artificial intelligence can recognize the conditions in the environment without necessarily depending on human efforts. Therefore, AI is an excellent way to propel the institution to greater height without requiring much human resource involvement (Tatnall, 2009).
Knowledge without theory is not trustworthy. For the impact of some experience to be felt in the said field of application, some theories must prevail. Technological approaches are those theories that explain the way technology advances and how it causes impact to the society. It also involves the study of the effects of technology on cultural diversity. Technological theories include social, group and analytical approaches (Tatnall, 2009, p. 67).
Social theories try to bring out the interrelationship between technology and human. The main issue of concern here is the impact the two have on each other. Technology affects how human beings think and the actions of human beings affect how technology grows. Social theories can further be subdivided into the social construction of technology, actor-network theory, structuration theory, systems theory, and activity theory (Ho and Lee, 2015).
Analytical theories are the ones that are used by authors to study the literature and try to get the contrast between the work of others and that of their own. Researchers can also use the theory to do some review on the existing works of literature concerning technological advancement. It involves the study of the characteristics that define the structure of the organization, therefore, helping to gauge the degree of contingency. The decision makers raise the impact of the strategies on technological innovation. Through analytical theories, technology is seen as a tool for changing the structure of the organization. Therefore, analytical theories are mainly concerned with analyzing what technology has brought to the corporate world (Ho and Lee, 2015, p. 129).
This theory bases its argument on the processes executed by groups. The influence of communication media is high, and this theory comes in place to explain the relationship between group media and technology. It helps explain how an organization can be affected by using a particular media of communication. There is a mutual relationship that exists between the group media and technology. The braches of this theory include naturalness theory, media richness theory, social presence theory, etcetera (Ho and Lee, 2015, p. 130).
Drivers to Technological Innovation
Technical factors are the factors that lead to work being done or executed. The extent to which the organizational activities can get performed drives the management to think positively on the need for technological innovation. The higher the rate of interoperability of the processes in the health care service the easier the rate of technology involvement. In conjunction with ease of interoperability, the machines will be in a position to multi-tasks leading to management efficiency. The ability to cut down the cost involved in innovation is another thing that stands in place to attract the need for advancement in the matters of technology and artificial intelligence. The ease in which the use of technology is to the health care service makes it easy to implement innovation of the same (Rose, 2009).
Social factor has to do with the way people interact to share information, especially for development purposes. The information in the ears of the stakeholders helps steer the urge to innovate technology in health care services. When society has a positive attitude towards technology, then they may push the institution to think of modernization in terms of aid to better production. Well established communication pathways motivate the health care service providers to come up with new technologies since the same can easily be communicated to the society easily for acceptance (Rose, 2009, p. 26).
Leaders help to come up with an organizational structure that is worth adopting for the organization to see future developments. Leadership is of great concern when it comes to matters of implementation of technological innovation in the said organization. Committed leadership helps the workers to see the need and urgency of incorporating new ways of providing services and this motivates a forward move. The rate at which the leaders can influence their juniors helps the organization to embrace changes in operations. The leadership that gives support and guidance on matters of anticipated changes alongside removing the fear of the unknown from the juniors steers the innovation in technology (Robinson, Drnevich and Marino, 2010).
Hindrances to Technological Adoption
The management fails to implement the new technology due to the fear that the more the organization uses, for example, robots, the more it is likely to dismiss some of the workers. If, for example, the mixing of different chemicals to come up with a therapeutic drug was done by a robot, then the position the employee would occupy gets occupied by this non-living creature. Again the management may argue that the employees are not educated on how to come up with digitalized ways of doing things and this may lead to a slow rate of technological improvement in the firm. A survey done back in the year 2018 by mind Edge affirms this fact (Rose, 2009, p. 28).
The health care center should foster a culture that augments innovation; this will mean that every person will be motivated towards change and as a result technology will find its way in the institution. The employees should get training on how to operate different machines that will help in faster adoption of innovative technology in the processes. Training will also motivate the workers who will see the whole process as a benefit to everyone and not only to the health care center (Tatnall, 2009, p. 69).
Lack of Trust in Artificial Intelligence
The patients in most cases attach less value or trust in artificial intelligence; This is because it is not logical to trust a machine to issue credible prescriptions and recommendations for specific ailments. Errors do occur in the machines due to lack of sufficient competence by the machine operators, and this would lead to poor recommendations if not fake ones. This lack of trust is a significant drawback to the movement with technological advancement by the health care centers (Rose, 2009, p. 30).
The best way to fight the disease of resistance to change is information. Well informed people see a change as a plus their lives and not a minus. Management needs to come out clear on the benefits that come up with artificial intelligence. Since it is in a rational thinker’s mind that robots cannot execute all kinds of tasks performed by human beings, it is of importance to make it clear on the activities that the machine will do and the ones it will not do. When the patients get enlightened on these benefits, possibly they will stop hindering the innovation (Ho and Lee, 2015, p. 132).
Planning is a critical thing to do before any productive action can take place. The reason as to why the implementation of innovative technology doesn’t find its way is that the management fails in one way or the other to plan effectively on the strategies to implement the same. In most cases the health centers think that the introduction of new technology is a minor thing that one can adopt at any time without much ado; this is a drawback to an institution of change in the health care services. Also, poor planning is a contributing factor to slow technological innovation because it leads to poor results (Rose, 2009, p. 32).
Planning is planning to succeed. There must be upfront planning in health care services to ensure that all the necessary resources needed in the institution of new technology are in place. The goals of the institution of artificial intelligence program need to get highlighted in advance for the betterment of the whole agenda. Integration of the functions across the organization should be planned for such that the different activities can be executable simultaneous in light of the technology (Ho and Lee, 2015, p. 134).
Analysis of Harrow’s Adoption of New Technology
Management of Technological Advancement
The behavior of the nurses who deal with public health was analyzed by Chen, among other researchers, and the results of the analysis were that web-based learning is helping to technological innovation. As the nurses get information from the media, they gain momentum in working to be in line with what they have learned. It is of great importance to know the way the nurses (employees) behave concerning the technology. The needs of the nurses must be met for them to perform. The hierarchy of needs theory should be an excellent tool for managing nurses. At Harrow, issues to do with the management of the needs of nurses were questionable and this contributed to reduced morale of the nurses. At any time, the nurses would feel like they gave more of their efforts than they got compensated. The London borough of harrow civilians got irritated by this, and a need was found to change the managing council’s culture in healthcare; This was aimed at bringing new managerial culture’s insight to rectify the situation (Facebook.com, 2019).
The reason for slow innovation was found to be in a way connected to the financial constraints that pressured the borough. The council could even encounter challenges in paying tax revenues due to insufficient funds. Needs of the nurses could not be well attended to following the reasoning that the council had less cash to meet every need. Public information was seen to be hard for the borough to retrieve since the little money earned could not help much; this led to sluggish innovation of the technology. The artificial intelligence could not be well installed since it required huge cash to install and this cash was not in the reach by the council. Manual processes remained as the only way to carry out service provision since the automation could not take place effectively (Ho and Lee, 2015, p. 135).
The leadership in this borough seemed to be futuristic by coming up with charitable missions and visions for the district. The only disturbing issue was that these missions and visions were unattainable. The reason for unattainability was that most of the people were not well trained on the matters to do with technology; the innovation of the new technology thus went on in slow motion (Tatnall, 2009, p. 70).
Some services could not be well extended to the citizens through technology since they were centered on customer concentration. The customers, for example, children, may not comply with the technological requirements during service provision. Therefore, it remained a challenge to implement innovation since the way treatment was done could change leading to less satisfaction of the customers. People believed that the new technology did not provide the security that used to be available in the traditional service provision; this made the people resist innovation (Ho and Lee, 2015, p. 136)
The government could give few amounts of cash to the start-ups that make the start-ups in the sector of medical service provision not see the importance of innovation; if the start-up embraces innovation, then it means that they will ignore their core duties for change. The citizens of the borough did not have trust in the issue of artificial intelligence. The claim was that artificial intelligence could not be equaled to that of humankind. The human beings handle cases gently unlike the case of the robots (Ho and Lee, 2015, p. 137).
The researcher found that financial constraint formed one of the main reasons as to why technological advancement could not be useful in the health service provision in the harrow borough. It was also found that the leadership had plans that could not materialize due to insufficient funds. Inability to incorporate technological advancement in the service provision was attributed to the fact that the customers who demanded the services were not in apposition to participate well with the advancement in innovation. The start-ups were found to receive just a 3% of the total revenue realized by the borough; this reduced the motivation of the start-ups to support the innovation in the borough’s perimeter. The patients were found to lack trust in the artificial intelligent whereby they claimed that it did not equal that of the nurses (Ho and Lee, 2015, p. 138).
From the findings, it is true that the borough of Harrow has many challenges that must be attended to before the innovation in technology and artificial intelligence can take place. Most of the problems originate from limited cash availability while others stem from the inability of most of the customers to cooperate with new technological requirements. Civil employees are also the origin of these challenges. Trust in artificial intelligence is yet another factor that steered the setting in of the difficulties encountered. Therefore, something must be done to ensure that all the sources of challenges get addressed so that innovation can take place (Tatnall, 2009, p. 72).
Explain the Relevance of Technological Advancement to the Civilians
The reasoning is very vital when it comes to an understanding and appreciation of what the society does. The citizens cannot just start appreciating the importance of anything without first getting explained the significance of the same. The leaders in the borough of Harrow should ensure that all the individuals in the territory are given a demonstration of the importance of embracing the evolving technology. The pursuit of turning the thinking of the people will be instrumental especially when the citizens are given a chance to interact with the leaders as they seek clarification on matters of interest. This way the minds of the citizens will change and hopefully there is going to be a reduction in the rate of resistance to innovation (Rose, 2009).
Prove to the People on the Ability of Technology to Solve the Elephant Issues
As the leaders try to come up with artificial intelligence, they should give a sound proof that robots are going to ensure that the rate of service provision will go up; this happens for the benefit of both the service provider and the receiver. It should be Put to light that individual nurses shall address the critical issues like consultations and so forth. If the leadership goes by this recommendation, then no doubt the patients will rebuild trust on the services provided (Rose, 2009, p. 37).
Develop Better Methods of Cash Management
The management should do something to alter the rate of taxes such that more finance gets generated without giving a burden to the civilians. The leaders on the throne should embrace accountability of each cent that comes and goes in and out of the borough. Allocation of resources is supposed to be done optimally to ensure that some cash can go to the motivation of the nurses and other civil workers; this will increase morale in service provision and as a result, lead to innovation effectiveness. A well-motivated individual will always work in close consideration of the goals of the organization (Tatnall, 2009, p. 73).
Here the leaders are advised to make it known that new technology is due to be implemented in the borough. By creating awareness, the civilians will have to take the initiative to discuss the same from different points of view. As they talk, the citizens will develop a sense of acceptance and support to the innovation. Even if the governing council decided to increase the taxes, the citizens will be aware of the essence of the increment and will be ready to give out for the support; this will be effective because the citizens will become mindful of the importance of the technology (Ho and Lee, 2015, p. 139).
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