On the Job of Administrative Assistant in the Digital Era

• Main Authors: Tseng-Hsin Kao, 高增欣
• Other Authors: Rong-An Shang
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2015
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/50981646678763392791

碩士 === 東吳大學 === EMBA高階經營碩士在職專班 === 103 === The new information technology has brought forth changes in many aspects, including impact to how people work. When more and more information technologies applied, there are significant changes to nowadays job contents including qualities and quantities of current employee market. Some job opportunities are reduced or even eliminated, or transformed into different employment approaches. The first waves of impact widespread to secretaries and administrative assistants whose job natures greatly tied to organizational change and process innovation. Their job contents face significant changes. When traditional administration affairs are replaced by systematic flows that run electronically and speedily across the company network, the requirements of human transmissions are greatly reduced. These jobs are gradually evolving with diversified tasks, that enriches the job contents and make more attractive than before. Therefore, to further explore the new infusions of secretaries and administrative assistant roles in information technology era, it’s worthwhile to study how the changing progress impact future career development and individual worker. By means of qualitative research, we have interviewed senior secretaries and administrative assistants in multinational companies in IT industry. Applying Leavitt's diamond model in organizational change, we analyzed interactions between technology, task, structure, people and other facets, and how the changes impact the real work of secretary and administrative assistant after the organization implement information technology. The study found several significant changes after applying information technology: (1) the new IT applications have improved the effectiveness of work, and reduced the respective demand of manpower. (2) The roles and responsibilities have been clearly defined in nowadays organization structures, and cost and flexibility become key criteria in employment of this category. (3) Traditional clerical work has transformed to management by objectives and value team performance. (4) The dynamic and diversified functional assignment require employees to adopt new skills and versatile with multiple roles as team members. These changes also provide new opportunities for employees to progress horizontally into new arenas. We also found employment of secretaries or administrative assistants are now through contracting employment or outsourcing, as there are less official headcounts. This leads to a gap when junior workers want career progression to official headcount. The qualification of new comers, the job transition, and difficulty in accumulating on-job experience and career development all present new challenges to both the employees and companies.