Competency

This competency will allow you to demonstrate your ability to create a presentation for colleagues that will highlight the benefits of technological growth and how such growth impacts society’s structure, organizational structure, individual identity, and language.

Instructions

You have recently started working for a local department store in the Operations Department. Upon settling into your new position, you come to realize that they have outdated business practices. In your past work experience, you have utilized various forms of technology to complete daily job functions and have been part of updating technology to meet the demands of your organization. Technological advances can address all areas of the business including, but not limited to, how applicants apply for positions, the type of phone and computer systems operated, cash register functions, marketing methods, etc. 

You have shared your thoughts with your supervisor, and he has tasked you with putting together a narrated presentation, with visuals for your peers, to share the overall benefits of utilizing modern technology to help improve overall efficiency for the business and help to expand the consumer base for the store.

For this narrated visual presentation, you are to reflect upon and include discussion of the following topics or categories:

• Demonstrate how digital and technological growth can assist the organization:
  • Provide a definition for digital growth.
  • Explain how digital growth has impacted organizations.
  • Describe how digital growth impacts society as a whole and your store in the future.
• Demonstrate how an individual creates their own digital identity, how it can impact organizational identity, and how these can be impacted by changes to technology:
  • Explain some key methods of identity development.
  • How can technology and digital forums help with personal or organizational identity 
  • formation?
  • What do individuals and employees as a whole have to do with developing the identity of an organization?
• Demonstrate challenges and benefits to upgrading technological resources:
  • Describe main sociological theories that can describe an individual or a store’s ability to access technological resources.
  • Identify some key examples of societal change due to technology. What does this imply for your store?
  • What is the digital divide and how can this impact the use of technology in your store?
• Examine your organization through a sociological perspective and explain benefits of change to the organization:
  • Conflict Theory – How is it defined and how would a Conflict Theorist justify upgrades in technology 
  • Symbolic Interaction Theory – How is it defined and how would a Symbolic Interactionist justify or explain the need for upgrades to technology?
  • Outline additional theories that can help explain the need for technological growth at your store.
• Demonstrate the ability to evaluate the evolution of language within online environments and with the use of enhanced technology:
  • Examine some of the changes to technology that have impact language and communication.
  • Discuss differences in access to and familiarity with technology such as generational differences, socioeconomic differences, etc. How might this impact your store?
  • Consider how communication could change within your store for employees and consumers with various types of technology.
• Demonstrate how deviance in the physical and virtual world could impact your store:
  • Provide a definition deviance in both the physical and the virtual world.
  • Explain how deviant behaviors have led to changes at your store and what considerations should be taken into account when upgrading technology at your store. 

Consider Conflict Theory and Symbolic Interaction theory and how they would explain deviance and a method to overcome it at your store. On your final narrated visual, provide a summary that directly ties together your visuals and discussion points, and provide an overall statement of the benefits of updating technological resources to help the store run more efficiently.

Before recording your final narration, rehearse your presentation as if you are delivering it to a live audience so that you are fully prepared. Your presentation should be fluent and fluid in nature so that it is clear that you are the expert on the material that you are presenting to your audience.