Logo en.artbmxmagazine.com

Digital culture and organizations

Anonim

Introduction

Today organizations are looking for the fastest way to carry out their activities in an orderly and systematic way, to achieve this the use of new technology is essential for the development of any organization.

In ancient times, the relevant information and documentation of an organization was printed, and in some cases inaccurate, this information passed through many hands before reaching the indicated person who should know it, and in other cases the information was lost or lost.

With the technological advance from the 70's and 80's, information began to use new channels for its distribution and development. The typewriter, slide rules, even calculators and watches were replaced by new technological innovations that offered human beings the ability to improve their skills using new tools, replacing the physical with the digital.

Organizations must delve into the use of these new technologies in order to develop and be more competitive in a more aggressive environment, compared to the times of yesteryear, and moreover, they must use ways of not distributing important and private information in mass media, or make use of of the technologies to carry out improper acts, it is there where the digital culture is born.

Digital culture begins from a classroom when we use new technologies to be able to copy in an exam or have additional information to that which we had already acquired by the study, to large organizations when financial fraud is carried out through technologies., or theft of information from the competition.

1. Technological Advances and the arrival of the digital age

Throughout the 20th century technological development progressed by leaps and bounds, since the inventions of Thomas Alba Edison, Nicholas Tesla and other inventors developed great inventions such as the phonograph, radio and television, developing ways to transmit information in a more concise way and in near real time.

Technological advances underwent 360-degree changes by improving many devices and inventions that are so common today and that at that time were quite a technological marvel. For example, when the Lumiere brothers created the cinematographic camera in the year of 1894, using this device as a tool for fun and relaxation making black and white films, 20 years later it began to be used as a way to visualize what was happening in other parts of the world, later the way of having color in those images was added, for the 60's the way of recording not only more images but also sound was adapted, 10 years ago, anyone could get a video camera and today, this technology is found in our cell phones,And just like this, many other inventions were born out of human needs and have been developed from smaller or less sophisticated ones, to much more complex devices that improve people's daily lives.

There were many useful inventions throughout the last century, but there were some that were born and that today are not just inventions, they are already a necessity for both everyday and professional life, inventions born in the area of ​​electronics, and with these inventions they gave rise to a new era, the digital age.

1.1 The digital age

The beginnings of the digital age have their origin in electronics, they are devices that use electrical energy to make their components work, these components are called analogs. Electronic devices have evolved in their various components, improving their technology. Today if we open any device we will find circuits and microcircuits, these components work in binary form (codes 1 and 0) to perform specific functions in conjunction with microprocessors and task processing chips, which abandon some analog functionalities and become digital gadgets.

Today, technological advances grow and surprise us with each new product that comes onto the market, artificial intelligence personal computers, state-of-the-art video game consoles, smartphones that have more useful tools than a Swiss Army knife, today By day everything is digital, from the purchase of food in supermarkets to the development of a master production program in an organization.

1.2 The use of computers

The digital age was further advanced with the development of personal computers. Computers today are not a luxury, they are a necessity for any organization that wants to be competitive because the automated mechanisms that are used today to carry out certain activities, which are almost impossible or too expensive to carry out by the hand of work, they present an easier way to develop a new product or improve a service to society.

Computers have their first appearance in the history of humanity in the early nineteenth century, because in 1837, Mr. Charles Babbage, designed a fully programmable mechanical computer, called an analytical machine. By 1888, his son Henry Babbage completed a simpler calculation version called The plant.

At the end of the 19th century, Herman Hollerith invented the recording of data on a machine-readable medium using technology already used centuries before in Automata, It was not until 1936, when engineer Alan Turing provided the formalization of new algorithms based on Babbage's, known as Turing's algorithm, providing a model of the electronic digital computer. A year later physicists John Atanasoff and Clifford Berry created the Atanasoff-Berry computer.

With the Second World War, advances in the area of ​​computers began to develop faster with the design of Tommy Flowers and his first programmable computer, the Colossus, and later the ENIAC developed by John von Neumann, these computers were of sizes gigantic and had to be built in an entire room (figure 1).

Figure 1. ENIAC, considered the first programmable computer

Organizations did not use computers until after the Second World War, since their cost was highly elevated and their functionality was not yet as advanced as modern computers. The most modern computers have their true origin after the Second World War, and we will divide it into five generations:

• First generation (1950 - 1958): They were computers that stopped being used only in the military environment and began to be sold in the industry, they are characterized by having a more mechanical than electronic technology, since they used vacuum tubes for their operation, they were very limited in memory and information processing capacity. Organizations had the opportunity to perform the calculation of some processes generally used for linear and integer programming in the production area faster.

• The second generation (1958 - 1964): They were computers that abandoned mechanical technology and were replaced by transistors, where the information entered into them was stored by blocks or batches, also called Batch processing. This information was stored on magnetic tapes until the computer was turned off or the information was printed and therefore emptied from the machine.

• Third generation (1965 - 1974): technology perfected by IBM, in which several transistor integrated circuits could be inserted into a small silicon wafer that was no larger than one square centimeter. Within organizations the era of automation begins, since these computers could be programmable by the same user through languages ​​such as COBOL and RPG and those most used by production systems such as PASCAL and FORTTRAN, the latter the most used by companies that wanted to carry out certain activities a huge number of times and began to use the so-called FORTTRAN Cards, which were punched cards on which programming language was recorded to carry out activities and when the activity required to be changed only it was changed the card,there was no need to reprogram the computer.

• The fourth generation (1975 - 1981): The configuration of the computers had a redesign when using the LSI (Large Sacale Integration) and VLSI (Very Large Scale Integration) circuits, in which the information processing was faster and easier, because it adds the function of distributed processing, the otic disk, and the diffusion of the microcomputer.

In this generation, anyone was able to use a computer, even if they did not know anything about programming, as it was used as word processing, auxiliary calculations, and information retention and creation of computer-made drawings. Companies in the service area, such as banks, and government offices, made use of these new computers to develop better ways of accounting and conducting financial economic analyzes in an easier way.

• Fifth generation (1991 - present): these computers arose from the creation of the microprocessor of tasks, in which the accomplishment of certain tasks was much easier and faster, the capacity of memory and data and information processing is much faster, This is thanks to the substitution of VLSI technology by ULSI (Ultra Large Scale Integration), in addition to the way in which the same system was subdivided into several systems for carrying out each of the activities.

1.3 Information management in the digital age

Organizations are always looking for ways to improve the way in which communication channels are established for better information management. Today, networks between different departments in the workplace are a way, not anything more innovative or new. of transmitting information, but fundamental for the development of the organization.

Since the rise of personal computers, information stopped being just a printed element and technology began to be used to handle information important to the organization. Department stores were no longer used to store papers that contained all the information of a company and Small information storage devices began to be used and the printed documents now contained really important information or summaries of all the information already supported.

Both for everyday life and for organizations, the use of these devices is really useful when transmitting information, some of the most outstanding since the invention of personal computers are:

• The floppy disk, or floppy disk, was a device with a much lower information capacity than current devices, since its invention in 1969 by IBM until 1983, it was the largest device used both personally and by organizations.

• Cd-ROM or compact disc, developed in 1983 by the Sony company in Japan, began as a novel way of transmitting information and mainly software. The organizational impact had a greater boom when it stopped using human numerical capacity using computer calculations, and replaced them with the use of software, later being used to record music albums, thus destroying the use of acetate and for the decade of the 90´s the use of the floppy disk.

• PenDrive memories also called Flash memory and commonly called USB memory, currently the easiest way to carry information anywhere in a completely secure way, since its creation in the Israeli company M-Systems, flash memory has invaded the market and safe which soon make the CDs obsolete.

1.4 The Internet

With the technological advance of computers, new ways of transmitting information were designed. Just after the Second World War, new research in the field of increasing technology began to be generated, and the way to store information on machines was not enough, the need was proposed to send information throughout the world and in a matter of seconds, without the need to be in that place, only occupying the same tools connected by "something", that something is what we know today as the internet.

In 1969, the company ARPANET, managed to make the first connection of two functional computer networks (hence the name Network Interconnection), the first two access points were Leonard Kleinrock and Douglas Engelbart. For 1973 other companies like ARPANET connected, thus achieving the first demonstration of public connection, in the 80's the first DNS services were provided in Europe and USA for government and military use, but it was not until the beginning From the 90's at the CERN convention in Geneva, a group of physicists declare the HTML language and build the world's first web group called the World Wide Web (WWW). Currently there are more than 1.1 billion users surfing the net.

And organizations were not far behind, since the 60's some organizations tried to interconnect in order to have a greater flow of information and data transmission, with the evolution of computers and also the evolution of network interconnection. They managed to connect computers and departments making a network in the early 1990s, and companies like IBM managed to make many of their computers with specific functions interconnected to gather all the information to a single network system in an organization.

Nowadays, most new entrepreneurs or managers of new companies think that it is a novelty to connect an entire organization to a single database, but the reality is that there are organizations that have worked in this way for almost two decades and reaching them would be almost impossible. Organizations must keep in mind that the use of the internet is part of our lives, and in some years, perhaps not too far, it is almost impossible not to be always interacting with each other.

2. Digital culture and business

Computers have been used in organizations since World War II. Its use has intensified so much and changed its character in the last decades. For a typical business, fully fifty percent of its capital investment goes into computers and telecommunications equipment.

While the early computers were primarily used for math and accounting functions and are now used for a much broader range of activities, including process control, new product development, the various forms of organizational communication, and electronic commerce.

Organizations go digital to be competitive, they use technology in any area of ​​the company to improve it and offer products or services with a higher quality, to create a good image and reputation of the organization and above all to reduce costs, obtaining higher utilities.

When the organization has been able to "go digital" and use technology as a tool to achieve its objectives, the use of these technologies carries with it a great responsibility, not only internally, but also externally, with society and the environment with which it interacts.

People today enter the digital world through computers connected to the Internet, when these technologies were no longer a luxury and became a working tool or even a necessity to interact with the world as a means of communication and began To become part of our life and our culture, the digital culture emerged.

Mark Deuze defined digital culture as a set of values, rules and practices shared by a group or groups of people regarding interaction within modern society through technology.

For a person, interacting with the information placed on the internet, on the different servers and the way in which such information is handled depends on the ethics of each person, when occupying that “intellectual property”.

For example, a person who gathers information from various documents posted on the internet, and quotes or gives the importance that the author of such information deserves, is a person who has well-founded ethics, values ​​and principles. Contrary to a person who illegally acquires the intellectual property of others, there are no ethics, there are no rules to keep thinking that everything that is put there is free, and that is part of the digital culture.

And perhaps to carry out a school work or a research document there is not so much problem, but an organization that acquires intellectual property of others, commits criminal acts and will have legal problems in the future, the way in which the organizational information is handled is important and even more so in a medium of communication as massive and important as the internet.

2.1 Digital organizational information

We have already seen before how companies began to give more use to computers and the way in which information is stored or transmitted, currently the use of interconnected networks as a means of communication is the most useful way of reaching masses.

Most organizations make use of the internet in order to have their own site, sometimes even their own server, which allows them to publish information through a web page to countless readers or potential readers.

For a company, disclosing certain information gives good results with old and new clients, through these networks there is greater interaction with clients and they feel connected to the company, even before receiving any good or service.

Imagine an organization that has a website against one that does not have one and both are from the same business line. An organization that has a good website has the opportunity to show the competitive advantages it has, the products and services it manages and can convince the customer without even having direct contact with it, on the other hand a company that does not have a website or suppose you have it but not complete, with diffuse, unclear information, it does not show your competences, on the contrary, it shows weakness.

It is important to know what information is going to be planted in a mass media, what information should go out from the company to the world, and what should be left only for the people involved with the company.

For example, a company that is dedicated to manufacturing cars, on its website can inform about all its models, their prices, quotes, payment methods, product customization, shipping costs, among others, but will not report in bulk., how much production did it have of a car model, how many pieces were ordered in the production area, how many pieces did not comply with the established quality indices, that information does not interest the client, it interests the shareholders and the people involved by the well-being of the organization.

2.1.1 Internal organizational network

There is information that must be transmitted quickly and accurately for the proper functioning, not just of a department but of an entire organization.

Internal networks or work networks improve the way in which information is transmitted in real time, between all the departments of the company, where all the parts that make it up must be connected to each other to express occurrences, failures, improvements, creative ideas, and all this together will help the organization grow.

A good structuring of an internal organizational network serves as the basis for improving performance and good operation from a simultaneous, balanced, coordinated and integrated point of view of all interactions between the different departments and areas that make up an organization.

These interactions range from technical aspects such as maintenance and availability of material in the production area, to the company's decision-making process.

Industries such as CEMEX, FEMSA, APASCO and TAMSA operate in this way, where many departments, department heads and area leaders are connected to a single network, to reduce idle times, work downtime and to report failures and occurrences. while the activities of the company are carried out.

2.2 Non-positive impacts on digital information in organizations

The people involved and not involved in the organization come to present certain anomalies and even go so far as to carry out criminal acts by means of the information, whether established in a work network or in a public network.

These criminal acts are part of our digital culture now, showing us new words to our vocabulary, among them the most notable are:

• Hackers: Those people who invade the computer security of an organization or system through communication networks such as the Internet or those who add errors and failures to a system.

• Crackers: It is used to refer to people who break a security system but invade the system to steal information and in some cases money.

• Pisher: People who gain the trust of the victims indirectly or directly, and obtain important information, in some cases to impersonate the victim virtually.

Organizations should be aware that anyone can harm the organization through criminal acts. Computer fraud can be detrimental to the organization.

For example, in 2006, many banking companies began to be scammed by means of a Trojan-type computer virus, called Sinowal, which led to the theft of more than 500,000 virtual bank accounts, leading to customer dissatisfaction with the company.

The use of hacking is a reality, and organizations are the main affected, its impact can be defined in:

• Loss of income.

• Damage to investor confidence.

• Damage to customer confidence.

• Legal consequences.

• Interruptions in business processes.

• Loss of data and relevant information.

• Damaged reputation

2.3 Digital education in the organization

The impact of digitization on organizations directly affects the workforce. Workers today are easily replaced by machines that perform the same activities in a less expensive, more efficient and faster way, this should make people find themselves forced to find jobs that consist of activities that are not easy to automate or that are they are carried out by some machine, but the reality is different, they feel threatened and do not work well, they think that at any moment they will be fired.

Before workers felt threatened in their jobs by other workers, nowadays they not only feel threatened by other people, but also by machines that will undoubtedly do better and without receiving any pay.

One of the biggest problems that the organization presents is that there are employees that use the company's technology as a means of relaxation and entertainment, resources and time that can be used to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of the company or to minimize expenses. used to carry out activities outside the company.

Companies must be aware of the new culture that is developing, organizations must become centers of education and training for their workers, instilling in them that the changes are good, and that the search for areas of opportunity are now broader and not reduced, that technology is not a toy, it is nothing more than a means of communication, it is a tool to grow humanly and professionally, and perhaps give more competitive advantages when exploring new areas of improvement within the organization.

3. Globalization and digitization trends in companies

This world has changed, communication today is much more effective, and all thanks to the internet. When we speak of globalization we can understand that it is the union from a technological, economic, social and cultural point of view of the whole world.

Before it was a dream to be able to speak to a person in China at these precise moments, and especially the same language, today there are even people who fall in love and marry virtually.

We live in a world where finding out about an event, news or event requires a few seconds for us to find out about it, globalization is now essential for any organization that wants to stay alive.

Organizations today tend to grow towards new markets reaching them through the internet, creating networks that reach countless households and although at first glance it may be a risk it is an area of ​​opportunity for growth, globalization allows to unite to the entire organization, all departments and areas in one, join strategic alliances with another organization or several organizations that increase the competitiveness of the company, and thus seek new business areas (Figure 2).

Figure 2. Globalization as a search for new business areas

3.1 Digital Marketing

Currently, buying online is as simple and normal as any other type of transaction. Organizations had to transform and invest in this type of sale by customers who preferred to stay at home or who are in another part of the world and who hope to acquire a certain product or service.

Digital marketing has evolved together as the internet has evolved since the 90's becoming part of our digital culture.

For example, the term “electronic commerce”, previously meant the facilitation of commercial transactions made through technology such as EDI (Electronic Data Interchange), or the use of Fax, today there is what is called “online commerce”, which involves making transactions through a page or web server.

Electronic commerce can be distinguished in two ways:

• Direct electronic commerce: which is the one in which a digital good or service is acquired, and which is connected and completed completely via virtual means.

For example, when companies like Microsoft sell their software legitimacy codes.

• Indirect electronic commerce: where there are physical goods that even the sale and the transaction are carried out by virtual means, require some traditional physical means for the completion of the transaction. Such is the case of companies like Mercado Libre, which since 1999 has been a company dedicated to online business, using intermediaries to deliver goods.

3.1.1 Key points for the success of Electronic commerce

1. Provide customer value: Offer a good product or a good-priced product line that attracts potential customers.

2. Provide a good service: offer a product or service with friendly attention or offer an attractive website with good colors, animations, videos, among others.

3. Provide personalized attention: replace the transaction by email with another means of communication where the client or the potential client feels more confident.

4. Construction of a secure business model: develop a sales and post-sale plan for customer satisfaction and ensure that your product or service will be satisfactory even if you have only had virtual contact with the organization.

3.2 New scopes for organizations

Organizations are highly linked to the digital culture of society, it is impossible not to realize that the digital age has opened new ways of growth and competitive development just by the use of new technologies. The way how to attract new customers or retain the loyalty of old customers, generates new and innovative ways for any organization as new business tools. So we can mention:

• Mobile - marketing

Cell phones and smart phones have become a functional and totally indispensable device for life in society. Selling products and services through telephone companies has become a new business area for companies, offering their goods and services through SMS messages or through WAP browsers that have limited access to the internet.

• Social networks

New business areas have increased with the use of social networks, where organizations have taken the advertising and sale of their products to a new level, which even becomes pleasant and enjoyable for users.

4. Conclusions

To speak of digital culture is to speak of a whole world of new options, be it for everyday life or for professional life, for organizations the use of new technology is not just based on the automation of their processes and activities, but also to look for new business areas that can make organizations grow and be more competitive.

Many organizations feel overwhelmed by the new technology, others think that a greater investment is required, but we can assure that the organizations in order to grow must try to improve their technology and make use of what today is used by society.

From the use of machines that used analog and mechanical components for their operation to the new electronic devices that work with the voice and movement, they are part of our daily life, part of our culture, and will never cease. Society cannot adapt to companies, it is companies that must adapt to society in order to grow and be able to live in this globalized world where any activity carried out has an almost immediate response.

We can conclude that the digital culture in an organization is the correct use of technology to grow internally and externally, in any area or department of the company, as well as developing a new and unique image before society.

5. Thesis suggestion

"Implementation of an internal work network as a business management tool between all departments of company X"

Objective: To develop and implement a work network which serves as a tool for detecting failures and errors in the different departments, as well as improving communication within the organization.

Bibliographic references

Amezcua, C. (2011). Marketing and sales. Mexico: Pymes Magazine.

Mendoza, H. (2011). Monografias.com. Retrieved on March 27, 2012.

Ramirez, E. (2006). History of Computers. Retrieved on March 27, 2012, from

Rodriguez, L. (2011). Virtual exhibitions will boost the SME business. Mexico: Administer Today.

Russel, G. (2011). Reading in the digital age. Spain: New era.

Wikipedia.org. (2010). Retrieved on March 27, 2012, from.

Digital culture and organizations