A systems methodology for analysis of institutional involvement in the process of technological change

Abstract

This research considers two critical problems faced by large institutions in strategic level planning and decision-making situations involving the process of technological change. The first is that most decisions are not founded upon a reasonably clear understanding of the dynamics of the processes of change; planners and decision-makers being only vaguely aware of the process of technological change, an awareness that is crucial to effective problem solving. Secondly, most strategic level decisions relating to the process of technological change have significant non-technological dimensions and they tend to rely heavily upon intuition merged with other dimensions of extrarational decision processes. The need flowing from these two problems is for an analytical decision methodology which brings the process of technological change into focus during planning and decision-making while promoting interdisciplinary input to the decision processes and reducing reliance upon intuition. Therefore, the goals of the research are (1) to develop a conceptual model of the process of technological change for merger with (2) an analytical planning and decision-making methodology for strategic level decision processes. The planning and decision-making methodology design is intended to intensely promote staff awareness of the process for technological change while facilitating systematic open-system interdisciplinary analyses of influences upon decisions for input into normally extrarational decision processes. Conceptual models of the process of technological change are formulated in several steps of increasing detail. The first set of models is highly aggregated and is related to a conceptual model of the process of human need. Next a generalized model of the process of technological change is formulated indicating closed-system feedback. Then the process is conceptually modeled with seven subprocesses in two phases..