Impacts of ICT on Individuals, Organizations and Society

Now day, we are living in an information society. Majority of activities whatever on individuals, organizations or society that are heavily depend on information communication technology (ICT). In other words, ICT infiltrates our daily live even social activity and it is an innovation to drive society progress. Therefore, this essay mainly focuses on the predominantly advantageous of ICT application and aim to clarify some major impacts on individuals, organizations and society. This essay will commence with the discussion of ICT impacts on some specific issues such as quality of life, social contact, business operation, working style, e-commerce and e-government which are relate to individuals, organizations and society. To identify and evaluate the presented academic views, the examples will be provide based on real situations.

From individuals' perspective, the ICT effects tend to positive track, especially act on quality of life. Quality of life refers to measures of how well people could achieve a desirable standard of living (Turban, Leidner, Mclean, & Wetherbe, 2008). It is concerned as an initial intention of effect by ICT. The benefit of ICT on people's life may be nuanced, because of people define and experience quality of life in many different ways. But people have to admit ICT contribute to improvement in quality of life in several ways, say, safety, health, social contact. In these days, some distinctly improvements in the quality of life arise from the ability of computers to make decisions (Turban, Leidner, Mclean, & Wetherbe, 2008). For example, Global positioning systems (GPSs) a very prevalence tool in most developed countries. It is an integrated guidance system that GPSs associated with geographic information systems (GISs) to equip modern vehicles. GPSs and GISs provide oriented navigational information to driver based on ICT. In result, it upgraded the level of safety and convenience to end users. According to human and social science, social contact is the other one major impact of ICT on individuals. People are major components of society, means people have to interact with society. ICT offer unique channels to individuals whom want to send or receive information with society for divers' purpose such as interpersonal communication. For instance, it is a very hypersensitive incident about Tibet independency movement in China currently. Many people are concerned about that issue and searching or comment news in media channel such as television, broadcasting and internet. Therefore, each of these examples aimed to expatiate and evaluate the significant roles that impacts of ICT played on individuals.

The impacts of ICT are not only on individuals, but also are expected in organizations. It may result in many changes in authority, power and job content, as well as personnel management and human resources management (Turban, Leidner, Mclean, & Wetherbe, 2008). The impacts of ICT application on business operations are notable and direct. ICT provides more efficiently processes to reduce wastes and costs in diverse ways such as human resource, spending on transaction, and customer service (Qiang, Clarke, & Halewood, 2006). There are some major changes of ICT applications on both internal organization and external organization. Refer to internal organization, employees are regularly use computers and intranet in workplace to transfer information, share electronic document and processing data. According to external organization, companies could use e-mail and Web site to contact with its customers or suppliers. In addition, the business is towards to new forms that differ as traditional structure. 'E-business' is an oriented in further. Therefore, the significant impacts of ICT on organization not only emerge on development of flexible work practices but also changing organization's structure. For instance, virtual team is an outcome of ICT application. A virtual team is also called geographically dispersed team (GDT). It is a team of individuals who have common goals and work in different locations even in different times. The team could communicate and share information electronically that means no restricted to geographical location. The benefits of virtual teams could be created alliances and mergers between organizations and spread the market into different market segmentation. Cutting costs also is another consideration. Whereas, there are also some disadvantages of ICT applications in organizations, say, the invasion of employees' privacy originated from electronic monitoring in workplace and data leak problems. In balance, we have to recognize the positive strength of ICT as an efficiency and performance that act on organization.

Concerning impacts of ICT on society, it is a transformation from industrial economy to network economy. E-commerce is an outcome in network economy. It offers people buying and selling products or services based on electronic systems on internet. This innovation is not only a standard to measure economic progress, but also measure the development of a knowledge society (Efraim, David, Dennis & Jae, 2006). Promoting the development of a knowledge society is a strategy adopted by governments that aim to develop economic at the local, regional and national levels (Janet & Pak, 2005). Obviously, a knowledge society and economic development are interacted under ICT's effects. Another measurable impact of ICT on society is democracy. Form this perspective, ICT could expedite the interaction immediately between government and people, and create high level of trust, transparency and responsiveness as a result. E-government is adopted by most of countries that use internet and web site as a platform for providing government support and social services to citizens. The importances of e-government on society emerge on its convenience and accessibility for public relations. With many positive impacts of ICT on changing society, however, digital divide is a problem. It is a gap between people who can use ICT and who can't use it. This gap occurred in different levels of society, for instance, digital divide between poor and rich ranks, different races, educated and uneducated people. Relate to democracy, if digital divide as a problem in on-line voting, means people who without access to IT will lose the capacity of participation. It is a potential risk to society because of the result is incompatible whit democracy. Government should envisage digital divide and try to reduce the gap, in result, ICT will exert all powers to benefit the society.

In conclusion, ICT has many impacts on individuals, organization and society. To be specific, it refers to broad aspects in quality of life, business operation, working style, economy development and society stabilization. Howeverhe consequences may be both positive and negative. We should admit the positive impacts of ICT that act on people and society. At the same time, we also have to avoid the negative influences of ICT, for instance, overload information and digital divide. In addition, ICT interact with society progress, whatever ICT or society makes progressfinally will create new demands and new technologies by people in future.

Reference:1.Efraim, T., David, K,. Dennis, V,.& Jae, L. (2006). Electronic Commerce. United States of America.

2.Janet,T, & Pak, Y. (2005). Learning regions in New Zealand: The role of ICT. International journal of education and development using information and communication technology (IJEDICT), Vol. 1, Issue 4, pp. 54-68.

3.Turban, E., McLean, E, & Wetherbe, J. (2008). Information technology for management: transforming business in the digital economy (6th ed.). New York: John Wiley.

4.Qiang,Z.W., Clarke, G.,& Halewood, N. (2006). The role of ICT in doing business. In The World Bank, Information and communications for development: global trends and policies (pp.57-85). Washington D C.: The Word Bank.

5.Wikipedia. (2008). Virtual Team. Retrieved 15th March 2008 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_team.