New Technology Introduction and Work Stress

Roland Ferenc Szilas

The development of new technologies like robotics, artificial intelligence,and virtual reality has placed technology once again in the center of management research. A great amount of research is oriented towards the social, political and economic consequences of this so-called age of the 4^th industrial revolution. One of the most important aspects of this transitional economic period is the characteristics of the internal technological change processes within organizations and the associated decision-making procedure.Introduction of new technologies can be handled with a technological determinist attitude, with a socio-technical systems approach or with a more radical processual approach. In this paper we present and describe the technological determinist approach that is dominant in the Central-European manufacturing sector.A case study method with qualitative research methodology is used to illustrate how this determinist attitude to technology is contributing to the development of work stress, control over groups of employees and impoverished jobs in a Hungarian manufacturing plant.