Exploration of an Organizational Change Mechanism by RPA

Abstract

The purpose of the paper is to explore the logic that explains the organizational change mechanism starting from robotic process automation (RPA) through multiple case studies. In this paper, we focused on two concepts, “automation” and “augmentation,” for this purpose. Focusing on the differences between individuals and organizations, which have not been fully examined in existing studies, we attempted to clarify the interaction between automation and augmentation through multiple case studies. We took up five departments of major telecommunications company X as multiple-cases. These five departments have in common that they have introduced RPA to carry out organizational change, but there are some differences. We tried to construct the hypothetical theory while paying attention to these commonalities and differences. The data used in the case studies were mainly interview data with each department and archival data such as in-house materials. The following three findings were discovered through the case studies. These are (1) the importance of dialogue in organizational augmentation, (2) disruption of individual augmentation and organizational augmentation, and (3) individual and organizational augmentation promoted by organizational automation. In conclusion, we organized these three findings into the hypothetical mechanism.