E-Behaviour is an exciting new section we are developing to enhance your understanding of how technology is impacting the organization. Topics coming soon include:

Corporate E-mail and Internet Policies
You have probably heard recently about employees abusing their e-mail and Internet privileges. By accessing and passing around "inappropriate" material, employers have had to react to these abuses of the technology by their employees during business hours and on company computers and computer systems. We will explore the issues that effect employees, their colleagues, and the company as a whole.

Telecommuting
As technology advances more companies have been experimenting with telecommuting. This includes employees working from a non-corporate location on a part-time and full-time basis. We will explore the success stories as well as the disasters and the issues that arise for the employee, the employer, and the team environment.

Technology Changes and Training
One of the biggest challenges for organizations today is keeping pace with technology. Companies must continually upgrade hardware and software. With these changes comes the challenge of keeping employees trained on the new systems. In this section we will explore all the angles of this immense struggle.

Introduction
Until we have all this material available, we have a brief introduction —just to wet your appetite!

A Brief Introduction to the E-World, a web accompaniment to Organizational Behaviour by Moorhead, Griffin, Irving, and Coleman

By Samuel Clement

The organization is a constantly evolving thing, changing in response to factors both outside and within itself.

In the past 100 years or so, we have seen many technological innovations emerge, each of which has had an impact on the way in which we interact with each other in organizational settings. Some innovations altered the way we work, and others altered the way we interact with each other. But none have affected us in all aspects of organizational life the way the computer has.

When Babbage first conceptualized his "Difference Engine," I'm sure he never dreamed of the extent to which it would change our lives. After all, in the early years, from Babbage to Watson, most people saw the computer more as a sophisticated counting machine than anything else. Today this "counting machine" dominates more aspects of our daily lives, both outside and inside the organization, than anyone could have ever imagined.

The "E-world" in which we live today has greatly altered how we will work and interact with our colleagues. And these changes seem to take place at an ever increasing pace. Many of us are adapting, but many more feel lost and frustrated by the new electronic world.

Over the next while, I intend to look at some of the issues that the electronic workplace has created. We will consider the effect of simple e-mail, with all of its subtle implications: from the expectation, however unrealistic, that the recipients of our e-messages will reply immediately (a belief we never had with the old-fashioned paper memo), to the loss of privacy that accompanies e-messaging.

I will look at the issues of depersonalization of the workforce, both in the office and among telecommuters. We will consider how expectations for employees seem to change when they work from home, and we will look at alternate forms of work arrangement, such as a number of employees in different locales, all connected by the 'net. We'll examine the advantages and disadvantages of teleconferencing, and study some possible solutions to the problems that arise.

Topics to be covered will include the loss of personal contact and depersonalization in the modern organization; the loss of face-to-face contact, with all that this implies; the development of other means of expressing emotion when we communicate via e-mail (smileys, emoticons, acronyms); the implications of developing on-line classes; and the loss of privacy.

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