Impact of Information Technology on the Secretarial Profession
CHAPTER ONE
OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY
The objectives of this study therefore are:
- To identify the roles and responsibilities of secretaries and their vitality.
- To discuss about the newly introduced office equipment and its impact on secretarial profession.
- To recommend solutions to these secretaries who think their services are no longer necessary and felt threatened on their profession due to innovations.
- The increasing dependence of modern secretaries on modern office equipment as basis for increasing productivity prompts a vivid research work to find out the extent to which such equipment are better used and the effect they have on the secretary.
- This research will serve as a reference source to the National Board for Technical and School Authorities in up-dating their syllabus in secretarial Administration.
CHAPTER TWO
LITERATURE REVIEW
Introduction
This chapter presents an exploration of the various perspectives on the subject of modern technology and secretaries’ productivity. The first part of the review will focus defining a secretary and evaluating the functions and roles associated with this practice. The second part will address the concept of new or modern office technologies and their impact on performance and the last part will discuss productivity and how it can be measured. This review is intended to provide a theoretical framework that will shape data to be gathered from the primary sources.
The Concept Secretary
The word secretary simply means a person who works in an office and manages the organization. Although a secretary is perceived more as a personal assistant or administrative assistant, the professional secretary is one of the most essential human resources in a business organization because he helps make the wheel of the organization to turn. Secretaries provide the unseen services which make the organizations to prosper. Secretaries according to Ahukannah and Ekelegbe (2008) are classified into four categories:
- Professional Secretary: This is the secretary by reason of training, ethics, orientation and skills. He must be an expert in shorthand writing, typewriting and use of computer and ability to deal with office routine activities. This category (in other words termed as confidential secretary) is the researcher area of concern.
- The Honorary Secretary: This is the one who is in charge of the correspondence, records and other business affairs of a society, club and other associations. He is not a professional secretary because he has not acquired the necessary skills/training.
- Private Secretary: This is an employee who deals with correspondence, keep records and files in the office.
- Corporate/Company Secretary: Companies established under the Companies Act 1990 are normally required by the statute to engage the services of a Company Secretary. He/ She takes charge of the administration of the company, as well as functions as secretary to the board of directors. Registrars of government establishment such as polytechnics, universities et cetera are the secretaries of their various institutions who take charge of general administration as well as cover the meetings of their various councils and produce the minutes.
A secretary is a person, whose work consists of supporting management, including executives, using a variety of professional ethics and communication and organizational skills. Wordnet (2008) defines secretary as a person who assists a member of staff or top management level, and who undertakes a lot of administrative tasks for the smooth running of the office. This definition was confirmed by wikipedia (2008) where a secretary is seen as a person employed to write orders, letters, dispatch public or private papers, records and the like, an official scribe, one who attends to correspondence and transacts other business for an association, a public body, or an individual.
A secretary is an indispensable element in achieving organizational goals. He serves as a memory bank in his organization, scrutinizes visitors so as to give the executive enough time to do some other office activities, keep records so as to prevent embracement and the lost of important document which could consequently have a negative effect to the organization.
CHAPTER THREE
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
Introduction
This chapter outlines the methodology adopted for the study. The techniques and the procedures used in undertaking the study have are presented in this section. The chapter therefore highlights on the research design, data requirements and sources, data collection tools and methods, sampling techniques as well as data processing employed for the research.
Research Design and Approaches
A research methodology is an overall approach to addressing a research problem from the theoretical underpinning of the research to the collection, analysis and interpretation of the data (Hussey & Hussey, 1997). It includes a variety of research methods that can be used for collecting, analyzing, and interpreting the data, and determining which specific research methods can be used and how these methods can be used for adequately answering the research question in the research (Creswell & Plano Clark, 2011). In general, a research methodology can be considered as a framework for guiding the researcher towards accomplishing the research objectives (Creswell, 2009).
Selecting an appropriate research methodology to a research project very much depends on the nature of the research (Srivastava & Thomson, 2009). This research aims to investigate the impact of modern office technologies on secretaries productivity levels at the Ministry of Education hence an exploratory research is the appropriate methodology suited for this study.
There are three types of approaches to research including quantitative, qualitative and mixed-methods approaches (Creswell, 2009). Such approaches reflect different philosophical worldviews about the social life that specific researchers bring into the research. Quantitative approaches aim to obtain numeric (hard-data) descriptions of people’s viewpoints and behaviors for testing and verifying specific theories in various situations. Such approaches often use pre-determined questionnaires to collect hard-data and then apply statistical analysis techniques to analyze the collected data for answering the research question (Creswell, 2009). On the other hand, Qualitative approaches commonly use interviews to obtain data on how people’s experience is created and how the social experience is given meaning (Denzin & Lincoln, 2003). Data collected through interviews are analyzed for identifying themes and patterns for constructing complete meanings of the situation being studied with multiple interpretations of the experience of people (Neuman, 2006).
Quantitative and qualitative approaches, however, are commended and criticized for their strengths and weaknesses. Therefore the third approaches comes to light, the mixed-method. A mixed-methods research methodology involves in the adoption of multiple research methods with the use of both quantitative and qualitative data for adequately addressing the research problem (Creswell, 2009). With the use of multiple research methods, biases inherent in quantitative and qualitative methods can be tempered (Sosulski & Lawrence, 2008). Using a mixed-methods research methodology, the power of numbers and generalization outcomes can be balanced with the rich context of the live experiences of people (Sosulski & Lawrence, 2008).
This research uses the mixed-methods approach due to the capacity of the mixed-methods approach to enable the researcher to obtain a more complete view of the research problem being studied. The mixed-methods approach is widely used in research for obtaining multiple viewpoints, perspectives, and standpoints of a research problem with the use of qualitative and quantitative data (Johnson et al., 2007).
CHAPTER FOUR
RESULTS AND ANALYSIS
Introduction
The main aim of this chapter is the presentation and analysis of data collected from the primary research. The data for this study are presented in tabular form and are analyzed subsequently. The analyses are done in line with the research questions and objectives.
Basic Data of Respondents
This aspect of the analysis deals with the basic data of the respondents of the questionnaires. A eighty (80) respondents were selected for this study using different sample methods. Below is the data of the respondents.
CHAPTER FIVE
SUMMARY, CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION
Introduction
This chapter is the last chapter of the report and its aim is to draw conclusions from the findings of the study in correlation with the literature review, objectives of the study and then make recommendations that enhance the supply chain practices in the banking industry.
Summary of the Study
The primary purpose of this study is to examine the impact of modern office technologies on secretaries’ level of productivity at the Head office of the Ministry of Education. Other secondary objectives guided the collection of primary data. A review of existing literature on the subject of Secretarial practices as well as productivity was presented in chapter two. This review explored important issues relating to the concept of secretary, the classification of the functions of the secretary and the secretarial productivity. Beside the secondary data, a primary data was gathered through the use of questionnaires from the sampled population selected for this study. A total of 60 respondents contributed to the findings of this study.
Finding of the study
Consistent with discussions and analysis of the primary data that were presented in chapter four of this study, the following findings are highlighted.
The Existence of Modern Office Equipment or Technologies
The primary data collected clearly indicate that MOE (Ministry of Education, Head office and Greater Accra Regional office), has sufficient modern equipment. The data again showed the five major equipment present include the following;
- Telephone equipment (Land and Mobile)
- Personal computers
- Filling equipment
- Pen drives (Storage)
- Photocopiers
A high Knowledge and Usage of Modern Equipment
The study used employee knowledge of equipment to conclude the level of usage. The correlation is that knowledge suggests usage. Based on this premise the study found that there is a very high knowledge among the staff about these equipment hence the usage of these equipment are significantly high. For instance, respondents’ responses on some equipment were virtually 100%, indicating frequent use. Equipment such as listed below recorded high responses.
- Electronic calculators
- Duplicators
- Filling equipment
- Telephone equipment
- Video equipment
A Relationship Between The Use of Office Equipment And Productivity
The study found that there exist a correlation between the use of office equipment and the level of productivity. 86% of the respondents noted that this relationship exists.
Perceptions on Productivity
The study found varied perceptions among the respondents on productivity. For example,
- The high productivity of the entire department
- The fear of laying off due to improvements in levels of productivity
Conclusions of the Study
In line with the objectives of the study and the data gathered from chapter four, the following conclusions have been reached;
- The Ministry of Education has sufficient modern office equipment and technologies
- There is a high level of usage of these equipment at MOE
- The use of modern office equipment increase productivity of secretarial staff
- The secretarial staff believe they are highly productive.
Recommendations
Consistent Monitoring and Evaluation of the Supply Chain Performance Indicators
Monitoring is the routine and systematic accumulation of information against a plan. The information might be about activities, products or services, users, or about outside factors affecting the organization or project. Evaluation on the other hand is about utilizing monitoring and other information you accumulate to make judgments about the value of any component part of an organization or its projects, products, services or benefits, or about the organization holistically. It is also about utilizing the information to make changes and ameliorations.
Organizations use monitoring and evaluation for to learn about their own activities and results, and to fortify internal plan and development and be accountable to their stakeholders. Generally, organizations undertake two types of monitoring activities to understand how the organization is performing and to identify those areas which require further attention. The two types of monitoring activities are performance monitoring and compliance monitoring.
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