In the last blog, we looked at long-linked technology and the task interdependence associated there with. In today's blog we look at intensive technology and the nature of task interdependence.
Intensive technology generally comes with a lot higher complexity compared to the long-linked technology. The scope of the task is much task is much higher that an individual's capacity to transform things; it mandates exchange of information between the people working on the task while performing it.
Let us take an example of restaurant to understand the scenario at hand better. The kitchen staff waits for the wait staff to provide orders, and the wait staff is dependent on the kitchen staff to provide meals prepared to the customer's satisfaction. The situation becomes even more complex when we take the situation of a surgeon at work. The surgeon needs to continuously exchange information with the anesthesiologist, assisting doctors and nurses while performing the operation.
We see that in addition to the existence of pooled and sequential task interdependence, we find a new type of task interdependence called - reciprocal task interference. We could diagrammatically understand this through the image shown below.
The primary difference between the sequential and reciprocal task interdependence is that while long-linked technology involves work flow in a single direction, but the intensive technology has complementary work flows. "Mutual adjustment" becomes extremely essential to the operation of intensive technology on the parts of the individuals and units involved due to the reciprocal nature of their task interdependence.
Extreme mutual adjustment mandates the requirement of team work. In teamwork, work inputs to the transformation process are simultaneously acted upon by members of the work team, rather than passing inputs back and forth as in the case for less intensive forms of reciprocal task interdependence. The second example of surgical process is an example for this.
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