Persuasive technology is specifically designed to change what people believe and do.
INTRODUCTIONHave you ever tried to change an entire organization? Changing an organization can be incredibly difficult because many people must change their beliefs, values, and actions quickly and completely for an organizational transformation to occur and sustain.
These types of changes are, of course, exactly what persuasive technologies are designed to drive. As far as we can tell, however, they have rarely been systematically applied to drive organizational transformations.
WHY FOCUS ON ORGANIZATIONAL TRANSFORMATIONS?
Continuous change is the reality for most organizations. The private sector must change to respond to consolidated world markets, intense competition, rapidly developing technology and evolving business
models, among other factors. For example, in order to survive in the highly competitive fast food industry, a company had to implement a new approach to restaurant management in its 1,400 restaurants. The new approach placed much greater emphasis on teamwork and mutual support as well as significantly modifying many operational procedures. This company had to change or it would go out of business.
Similarly, the public sector and nonprofit organizations are constantly pressured to respond to new demands for client services, evolving patient communities, budget crises and many other factors. For instance, in order to ensure strict adherence to regulations during a time of significant budget reductions, a federal agency had to
change the mindset and processes of its safety inspectors. Most organizations must continually change
to survive.
In many cases these changes require the adoption of new values and beliefs and the performance of new functions by many people, sometimes numbering in the thousands of people and sometimes spread around the globe. Driving this type of profound change in such large numbers and diverse circumstances is extremely
difficult. In fact, there are few examples of where such changes have been successfully implemented, at least until the recent application of persuasive technology.
