Management of technological change: Themes and issues

As part of a programme to help developing countries to maximize the benefits from new technologies, the Commonwealth Secretariat commissioned the writing of case studies on information systems and process automation in a wide range of national contexts. A workshop was held to discuss results from the case studies in thirteen different countries and this article describes some the main results from the work. Themes and issues are discussed under the three headings of national policies for technology development, technology implementation in organizations and human resource development. The case studies are used to illustrate some important policy aspects in each of these areas. A number of recommendations for further initiatives were developed at the Workshop and these are described in the paper.