Technology Complexity, Uncertainty and Routineness

In the last blog, we discussed about the technology imperative and how it affects the structure of an organization. In todays blog, we look at how technical complexity, uncertainty and routiness are related.

Woodward's study indicated that both unit and continuous processing technologies are associated with low routineness while mass production technologies have high routineness. Thus the relationship between routines of work and technical complexity takes the form of an inverted U. The following diagram indicates the same. 

We could represent Perrow's two dimensional topology of technology into once single dimension of routiness as shown in the following diagram. 

The above 2 diagram shows how both the topologies link technology and social structure in terms of routines and non-routinesss of work.