Organization Theory - 42 (Perrow's typology of technology with examples)

In the last blog, we looked at Thompson's Topology of Technology. In today's blog, we look at Perrow's Topology of Technology.

In the topologies described by Thompson and Woodward, a common problem was that there was only one dominating technology in the organization and it would be challenging if an organization would have more than one technology. For this he used 2 dimensions:

1. Task variability
2. Task analyzability

Task Variability could be defined by the number of exceptions to standard procedures encouraged in the application of a given technology.

Task Analyzability could be defined as the extent to which, when an exception is encountered, there are known analytical methods for dealing with it.

Put on a 2x2 matrix, we could look at it as shown in the diagram below.

The classification of the technology could be as:

1. Routine
2. Craft
3. Engineering
4. Non-routine

An example for each of these is:

1. Routine - The job of a clerk generally has low variation on the kind of activity that (s)he performs and almost always has a known method of solving the problem at hand
2. Craft - The job could be that of a construction worker. The number of exceptions to the standard procedures could be minimal, but when such exceptions occur there is almost always a new case at hand to handle which a new method needs to be involved
3. Engineering - Consider the case of aerospace engineering, every challenge at hand would different exceptions to face and handle every time each requiring a special method to solve. There is a high task variability and high task analyzability in such a scenario
4. Non-routine - A case could be in an RnD lab, when high task variability could be found but there are standard ways to handle the exceptions that come in the means of achieving the objective