computer and changing
...cision-making cannot help organisations in this task, and flatter operations become common (Isenbeg, 1995); use of empowerment supports new trend of management practises. Empowerment is the method that managers use to increase the decision-making discretion of employees (Robbins et al, 2000). It is also useful to collect data of customers? needs and enhance the quality of service; organisations remain competitive. Effective empowerment needs changes in structure; commitment of staffs and managers; training, knowledge; and technology, especially the IT (Paper and Johnson, 1998). For all those requirements, IT has effects on them at different levels. IT provides organisations new means of communication, such as e-mail, voice mail, fax, and audio-visual conferences (Dessler, 1999). Thanks to those, managers can communicate quickly with all the staffs in different geographical areas, and are not restricted by the structure and span of control. Workplace no longer needs to be a physical space, and employees can work from home, receive the tasks through the Internet, and extranet (Isenbeg, 1995). IT is not limited as a tool of communication, but with analytical capacity of computers, and their storage, they can store the data, and turn them into information in the forms that are useful for organisations and training (Dessler, 1999). Organisations use database to improve the decision-making process. There is strong relation between IT and new management practises, such as empowerment and self-managed teams. Empowerment and self-managed teams to be effective need to have proper trainings, knowledge to and skills to successfully manage and complete their task. Database and Internet contain considerable amount of information, and staffs can use them to learn and to make decision; organisations become learning. Learning organisation needs to have skills at ? creating, acquiring and transferring knowledge ? (Dessler et al, p.422, 1999). The use of Internet and other means of communication allow the systematic se...