Alan Liu, English 25 (Literature & Culture of Information) Study Materials: Class Notes

This page contains materials intended to facilitate class discussion (excerpts from readings, outlines of issues, links to resources, etc.). The materials are not necessarily the same as the instructor's teaching notes and are not designed to represent a full exposition or argument. This page is subject to revision as the instructor finalizes preparation. (Last revised 7/25/01 ) (recommended browser)

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Preliminary Class Business
Aesthetic Ideology in the Information Age: Reprise and Discussion
Introduction to the "Age of Knowledge Work"
The Argument of Postindustrialism
References

Some Reference Points for Discussion

Preliminary Class Business

About the "reprise and discussion" classes on the lecture schedule

Aesthetic Ideology in the Information Age: Reprise and Discussion

See Class 5 notes

Introduction to the "Age of Knowledge Work"

"Postmodern" and "Postindustrial" (also "Late-Capitalist" or "Post-Capitalist")
- Daniel Bell, The Coming of Post-Industrial Society: A Venture in Social Forecasting (New York: Basic, 1973)
- Alain Touraine, The Post-Industrial Society, trans. L. F. X. Mayhew (New York: Random House, 1971)
- Alvin Toffler, The Third Wave (New York: Bantam, 1981)
- Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Durham: Duke Univ. Press, 1991)
- Manuel Castells, The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture, 3 vols. (Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 1996-97)
Consumption vs. production perspectives on postindustrialism
Getting an initial grasp of the issues from the perspective of production:
- Dumb work we have done
- How did work become so dumb?
  —contrast agrarian and craftsman labor
  —Frederick Taylor and "Scientific Management"
- Why and how is work now "smart"?

See also the Alan Liu's

Web site: Palinurus: The Academy and the Corporation—Teaching the Humanities in a Restructured World
Essay: "Knowledge in the Age of Knowledge Work," Profession 1999: 113-24
References (below)

The Argument of Postindustrialism (aka "Advanced Capitalism" "Late Capitalism," "Global Capitalism," "Information Economy," "New Economy")

Premise: It's a "New World"
The Knowledge Work Thesis
- 4. The business of the "first world" in the new world is "knowledge work"
The Restructuring Thesis (cf., "reengineering" movement)
- 5. The new corporate form is "flat" (restructuring, downsizing)
- 6. The basic unit of the new corporate form is the "team"
Summative Theses
- 7. Advanced capitalism (1-7 above) is integral with information technology
- 8. Business is culture
The Dark Side of the Force
- 9. Job insecurity and stress are systemic

back to overall argument about postindustrialism

1. Corporate business supersedes other forms of social and political organization

Peter Drucker, Post-Capitalist Society (1993):

Most people when they hear the word "management" still hear "business management." Management did indeed first emerge in its present form in large-scale business organizations. When I began to work on management some fifty years ago, I too concentrated on business management. But we soon learned that management is needed in all modern organizations. In fact, we, soon learned that it is needed even more in organizations that are not businesses, whether not-for-profit but non-governmental organizations (what in this book I propose we call the "social sector") or government agencies. These organizations need management the most precisely because they lack the discipline of the "bottom line" under which business operates. That management is not confined to business was recognized first in the United States. But it is now becoming accepted in every developed country.

We now know that management is a generic function of all organizations, whatever their specific mission. It is the generic organ of the knowledge society. (p. 43)
Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline (1990):

"Our grandfathers worked six days a week to earn what most of us now earn by Tuesday afternoon," says Bill O'Brien, CEO of Hanover Insurance. "The ferment in management will continue until we build organizations that are more consistent with man's higher aspirations beyond food, shelter and belonging."

Moreover, many who share these values are now in leadership positions. I find a growing number of organizational leaders who, while still a minority, feel they are part of a profound evolution in the nature of work as a social institution. "Why can't we do good works at work?" asked Edward Simon, president of Herman Miller, recently. "Business is the only institution that has a chance, as far as I can see, to fundamentally improve the injustice that exists in the world. But first, we will have to move through the barriers that are keeping us from being truly vision-led and capable of learning." (p. 5)
Armand Mattelart, Mapping World Communications (1991):

These books [by the business consultants and gurus] which enjoyed a transnational readership far broader than just business executives, provided a medium for the followers of the new business doctrine. . . . The norms and references of the welfare state, public service, and the constraining play of social forces, all tended to cede power to private interests and the free play of market forces. Not that the state tends to disappear or lose its monopoly of rule-making, nor that the two "regimes of truth" are impermeable one to another—far from it—but the fact that the corporation and the freedom of the entrepreneur became the center of gravity of society resulted in a redistribution of hierarchies and priorities and the roles of other actors. In short, what changed was the whole way of producing consensus, of cementing the general will.

"The field of management," wrote the sociologist Michel Vilette in 1988, "has contaminated all segments of society and is perceived as a universal cultural model." Not only did the corporation become a full actor in public life, expressing itself more and more openly and acting politically on all of society's problems, but its rules of functioning, its scale of values, and its ways of communicating all progressively impregnated the whole body social. "Managerial" logic was instituted as the norm for managing social relations. (pp. 207-208)
Cyberpunk Fiction

2. Business is global competition

Joseph H. Boyett and Henry P. Conn, Workplace 2000 (1992):

Why are these changes occurring? Because they have to occur. The 1980s taught some bitter lessons to American business leaders. Faced with accelerated global competition, it became evident that . . . America wasn't good enough. . . . They were beating us because they tried harder and expected more—better quality, better service, and faster innovation. (p. 8)
Robert B. Reich, The Work of Nations (1991):

We are living through a transformation that will rearrange the politics and economics of the coming century. There will be no national products or technologies, no national corporations, no national industries. There will no longer be national economies. . . . (p. 3)

The new organizational webs of high-value enterprise, which are replacing the old core pyramids of high-volume enterprise, are reaching across the globe. Thus there is coming to be no such organization as an "American" (or British or French or Japanese or West German) corporation, nor any finished good called an "American" (or British or French or Japanese or West German) product.

The old American multinational corporation was controlled from its American headquarters. . . . But this kind of top-down control and centralized ownership is impossible in the weblike organization of the high-value enterprise. . . .As the world shrinks through efficiencies in telecommunications and transportation, such groups in one nation are able to combine their skills with those of people located in other nations in order to provide the greatest value to customers located almost anywhere. The threads of the global web are computers, facsimile machines, satellites, high-resolution monitors, and modems—all of them linking designers, engineers, contractors, licensees, and dealers worldwide.

Of course, many nations still try to inhibit the flow of knowledge and money across their borders. (pp. 110-11)
Peter Drucker, Post-Capitalist Society (1993):

The Megastate has reached a dead end. But, alas, there is no going back to yesterday's nation-state. . . . For new forces are rising that both outflank and undermine the nation-state. (p. 140) [see also his next chapter on "Transnationalism, Regionalism, and Tribalism"]

3. Business is "creative destruction" ("change," "innovation")

Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (1942):

[excerpt from pp. 82-84]
Business Week, Special Double Issue on "The 21st Century Corporation"
- From lead article on "The Creative Economy," 21-28 Aug. 2000: 76-82
  
  Now the Industrial Economy is giving way to the Creative Economy, and corporations are at another crossroads. Attributes that made them ideal for the 20th century could cripple them in the 21st. So they will have to change, dramatically. The Darwinian struggle of daily business will be won by the people—and the organizations—that adapt most successfully to the new world that is unfolding (p. 78)
- From Tom Peters article on "The New Wired World of Work": 172-74
  
  Passion For Renewal: You've got to constantly improve and, on occasion, reinvent yourself. . . . I love to read Dilbert and usually choke with laughter. But I have a problem with the subtext: My company stinks, my boss stinks, my job stinks. If that's your take—at this moment of monumental change and gargantuan opportunity—then I can only feel sad for you. We get to reinvent the world. I feel so damn lucky! (p. 174)
- From concluding Editorial, "The 21st Century Corporation": 278
  
  Innovation builds profits . . . In an information economy, companies can gain an edge through new ideas and products that increase in value as more people use them. . . . But the emphasis is on "temporary." Knowledge-based products and networks can quickly disappear in a burst of Schumpeterian creative destruction. So corporations must innovate rapidly and continuously.
Joseph H. Boyett and Henry P. Conn, Workplace 2000 (1992):

In Workplace 2000, flexibility and creativity will be more important for success than endurance and loyalty. (p. 4)

Compare the genre of information technology "prophecies"

Michael Dertouzos, What Will Be: How the New World of Information Will Change Our Lives (New York: Harper, 1998)
Bill Gates, The Road Ahead, rev. ed. (New York: Penguin, 1996)

Pause for Reflection: Whither History?

Michael Hammer & James Champy, Reengineering the Corporation: A Manifesto for Business Revolution (New York: Harper, 1993):

When someone asks us for a quick definition of business reengineering, we say it means "starting over." It doesn't mean tinkering with what already exists or making incremental changes that leave basic structures intact" (p. 31).
Peter Drucker, Managing in Turbulent Times (New York: Harper & Row, 1980):

Innovation means, first, the systematic sloughing off of yesterday. (p. 60)
Herman Bryant Maynard, Jr., and Susan E. Mehrtens, The Fourth Wave: Business in the 21st Century (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 1993):

The First Wave of change, the agricultural revolution, has essentially ended and will not be of concern here. The Second Wave, coincidental with industrialization, has covered much of the Earth and continues to spread, while a new, postindustrial Third Wave is gathering force in the modern industrial nations. We see a Fourth Wave following close upon the Third. (pp. 5-6)

4. The business of the "first world" in the new world is "knowledge work"

The rise of knowledge work in the early and mid 20th century:

Shift from the original middle class (farmers, craftsmen, small business owners) to the "new middle class" (salaried managers and clerical workers) (case study: business in the 50s)
Shift from farming to manufacturing, and later manufacturing to "service industries" (also: the outsourcing of manufacturing to developing countries)
Adoption of information technology and the recognition of "knowledge work"

Peter Drucker, Post-Capitalist Society (1993):

The basic economic resource—"the means of production," to use the economist's term—is no longer capital, nor natural resources (the economist's "land"), nor "labor." It is and will be knowledge. . . . The leading social groups of the knowledge society will be "knowledge workers—knowledge executives who know how to allocate knowledge to productive use. . . . Practically all these knowledge people will be employed in organizations.

Knowledge is now fast becoming the sole factor of production, sidelining both capital and labor. It may be premature (and certainly would be presumptuous) to call ours a "knowledge society"; so far, we have only a knowledge economy. But our society is surely "post-capitalist." (pp. 8, 20)

Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization (1990):

. . . "learning organizations," organizations where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning how to learn together. (p. 3)

To grasp the meaning of "metanoia" is to grasp the deeper meaning of "learning," for learning also involves a fundamental shift or movement of mind. (p. 13)
William H. Davidow and Michael S. Malone, The Virtual Corporation (1992):

Throughout most American history, the unwritten definition of worker included lack of education. (p. 187)

. . . the process of becoming a virtual corporation, before and after everything, is about learning. . . . the virtual corporation is a learning entity, struggling to understand its mercurial operating environment so as to successfully adapt to it. (p. 194)

The virtual corporation is a learning organization. At any given moment it is a collection of skills, talents, and experiences that reside in the minds of its managers and workers, and a body of information relating to its products, its internal structure, and its business relationships. . . . (p. 203)
Joseph H. Boyett and Henry P. Conn, Workplace 2000 (1992):

The world itself is changing in respect to how and what type of human effort is valued. We are moving from a world in which human value was derived from physical prowess to one in which value is a function of mental acuity. We are moving from a world in which the strong not only survived, but prospered, into one in which the "philosopher," "thinker," "innovator," "creator," and "problem solver" is king. Perhaps George Gilder, author of Microcosm: The Quantum Revolution in Economics and Technology, said it best when he wrote: "The central event of the 20th century is the overthrow of matter. . . . " (pp. 277-78)
Robert B. Reich, The Work of Nations (1991):

Speed and agility are so important to the high-value enterprise that it cannot be weighed down with large overhead costs like office buildings, plant, equipment, and payroll. It must be able to switch direction quickly, pursue options when they arise, discover new linkages between problems and solutions wherever they may lie.

In the old high-volume enterprise, fixed costs such as factories, equipment, warehouses, and large payrolls were necessary in order to achieve control and predictability. In the high-value enterprise, they are an unnecessary burden. Here, all that really counts is rapid problem-identifying and problem-solving—the marriage of technical insight with marketing know-how, blessed by strategic and financial acumen. Everything else—all of the more standardized pieces—can be obtained as needed. Office space, factories, and warehouses can be rented; standard equipment can be leased; standard components can be bought wholesale from cheap producers (many of them overseas); secretaries, routine data processors, bookkeepers, and routine production workers can be hired temporarily. (pp. 89-90)
Thomas A. Stewart, Intellectual Capital: The New Wealth of Organizations (1997):

We grew up in the Industrial Age. It is gone, supplanted by the Information Age. The economic world we are leaving was one whose main sources of wealth were physical. The things we bought and sold were, well, things; you could touch them, smell them, kick their tires, slam their doors and hear a satisfying thud. . . . In this new era, wealth is the product of knowledge. Knowledge and information–not just scientific knowledge, but news, advice, entertainment, communication, service–have become the economy's primary raw materials and its most important products. Knowledge is what we buy and sell. You can't smell it or touch it. . . . The capital assets that are needed to create wealth today are not land, not physical labor, not machine tools and factories: They are, instead, knowledge assets. (p. x)
"Lifelong Learning"

Joseph H. Boyett and Henry P. Conn, Workplace 2000 (1992):

Continuous learning will become commonplace to create a more flexible work force, provide employees with the skills necessary to take advantage of rapidly changing technology, and prepare employees for new jobs inside or outside the company when their old jobs are replaced by technology or eliminated due to changes in customer demands. To be successful, Americans will have to seek out training opportunities to supplement their existing skills and to learn new skills. . . . Many Americans will need to supplement the training their company provides with training they take on their own time at their own cost. (pp. 7-8)

William H. Davidow and Michael S. Malone, The Virtual Corporation (1992):

The individuals who make up the virtual corporation—employees, contractors, even suppliers and customers—more than anything else must be full-time learners. This doesn't mean "trained." Simple skill development is not enough for the continuous and radical changes of virtualized business. Rather, participants must learn how to learn. They must be equipped with the conceptual skills required to deal with perpetual change. (p. 195)
"Pay for knowledge"

Joseph H. Boyett and Henry P. Conn, Workplace 2000 (1992):

In addition to installing incentive pay as a substantial portion of total compensation, many companies will adopt a "pay-for-knowledge" system. In these companies, workers will have the opportunity to increase their base pay by learning and maintaining skills to perform multiple jobs within the organization. (p. 6)

Pause for Reflection: Where Does "Life" Fit in the Schedule?

See works on increase in work hours and blurring of line between work and home

5. The new corporate form is "flat" (restructuring, downsizing)

Manuel Castells, The Rise of the Network Community, Vol. 1 of The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture (1996):

The corporation itself has changed its organizational model, to adapt to the conditions of unpredictability ushered in by rapid economic and technological change. The main shift can be characterized as the shift from vertical bureaucracies to the horizontal corporation. The horizontal corporation seems to be characterized by seven main trends: organization around process, not task; a flat hierarchy; team management; measuring performance by customer satisfaction; rewards based on team performance; maximization of contacts with suppliers and customers; information, training, and retraining of employees at all levels. (p. 164)
William H. Davidow and Michael S. Malone, The Virtual Corporation (1992):

At one manufacturing company after another, middle management—the most populous of industrial professions a quarter-century ago—is fast becoming an endangered species. Some executives have even grown vehement in their desire to root out what they see as an impediment to success. Industry Week quotes Richard C. Miller, founder and vice president of Aries Technology, as assigning middle managers much of the blame for American industry not adapting quickly enough to new technology. Says Miller: "I'm not real impressed with middle managers. Many are [just] hiding out until they retire. There are times when I would like to take middle managers by the necks, hang them against the wall and ask: 'Don't you realize the company is going to be out of business in five to ten years if you take that attitude?'" (pp. 61-62)
Joseph H. Boyett and Henry P. Conn, Workplace 2000 (1992):

The company that employs the average American in the future will be flatter, leaner, and more aggressive than the company he or she works for today. It will have to be that way in order to have the flexibility to respond to rapidly changing customer demands. Downsizing has made this flatter workplace a reality in most companies even today, and this trend toward flattening the organization will continue. The layers of management, supervision, and support that were eliminated during the 1980s will not return. (p. 2)
The "virtual," "networked," "web," "flat," "fishnet," "cluster," "relational," "virtual," "crazy," "boundaryless," "democratic" organization:

William H. Davidow and Michael S. Malone, The Virtual Corporation (1992):

What will a virtual corporation look like? There is no single answer. To the outside observer, it will appear almost edgeless, with permeable and continuously changing interfaces between company, supplier, and customers. From the inside the firm the view will be no less amorphous, with traditional offices, departments, and operating divisions constantly reforming according to need. (pp. 5-6)

Manuel Castells, The Rise of the Network Community (1996):

It is the convergence and interaction between a new technological paradigm and a new organizational logic that constitutes the historical foundation of the informational economy. (p. 152)

Networks are the fundamental stuff of which new organizations are and will be made. (p. 168)

Under the conditions of fast technological change, networks, not firms, have become the actual operating unit. In other words, through the interaction between organizational crisis and change and new information technologies a new organizational form has emerged as characteristic of the informational/global economy: the network enterprise. (p. 171)

. . . I propose what I believe to be a potentially useful . . . definition of the network enterprise: that specific form of enterprise whose system of means is constituted by the intersection of segments of autonomous systems of goals. Thus, the components of the network are both autonomous and dependent vis-à-vis the network, and may be a part of other networks, and therefore of other systems of means aimed at other goals. The performance of a given network will then depend on two fundamental attributes of the network: its connectedness, that is its structural ability to facilitate noise-free communication between its components; its consistency, that is the extent to which there is sharing of interests between the network's goals and the goals of its components. (p. 171)
Flexible, just-in-time, designed-for-manufacture, quality production

Manuel Castells, The Rise of the Network Community (1996):

Some elements of [the Japanese] model are well known: the kan-ban (or "just in time") system of supplies, by which inventories are eliminated or reduced substantially through delivery from the suppliers to the production site at the exact required time and with the characteristics specified for the production line; "total quality control" of products in the production process, aiming at near-zero defects and best use of resources. . . . (p. 157)

6. The basic unit of the new corporate form is the "team"

Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline (1990):

Most of us at one time or another have been part of a great "team," a group of people who functioned together in an extraordinary way—who trusted one another, who complemented each others' strengths and compensated for each others' limitations, who had common goals that were larger than individual goals, and who produced extraordinary results. . . . Many say that they have spend much of their life looking for that experience again. (p. 4)

Team learning is vital because teams, not individuals, are the fundamental learning unit in modern organizations. This is where "the rubber meets the road"; unless teams can learn, the organization cannot learn. (p. 10)
William H. Davidow and Michael S. Malone, The Virtual Corporation (1992):

The empowerment of employees, combined with the cross-disciplinary nature of virtual products, will demand a perpetual mixing and matching of individuals with unique skills. These individuals, as their talents fit, will coalesce around a particular task, and when that task is completed will separate to reform in a new configuration around the next task. The effect will be something like atoms temporarily joining together to form molecules, then breaking up to form a whole new set of bonds. (pp. 198-99)
Joseph H. Boyett and Henry P. Conn, Workplace 2000 (1992):

The first thing that will likely strike our new employee is that his or her team is physically and psychologically separated from the rest of the organization. There will be clear physical and task boundaries and measurement of the team's input and output. Both physically and emotionally the team will be like a small business unto itself; teams will be analogous to small shops or boutiques in a shopping mall—each shop is part of a larger whole, but separate and distinct.
Observing the team in operation, our new employee will notice that there appear to be no clear job distinctions. Team members move from job to job as the need arises. No one is ever standing idle waiting for something to do. . . .
. . . Regular team meetings, he or she will learn, are the centerpiece of team coordination, planning, scheduling, performance monitoring, and problem-solving efforts. (p. 255)
Worker "empowerment"

Joseph H. Boyett and Henry P. Conn, Workplace 2000 (1992):

In Workplace 2000, the newest and lowest-level employee will be expected to know more about the company that employs him or her than many middle managers and most supervisors knew . . . in the 1970s and 1980s. (p. 47)

William H. Davidow and Michael S. Malone, The Virtual Corporation (1992):

The most stunning feature of the new work life will be the independence involved. What has been until now the reward for an exceptional few salespeople, researchers, and specialists will increasingly become the rule. (p. 214)

Manuel Castells, The Rise of the Network Community ( 1996):

Some elements of [the Japanese] model are well known: . . . workers' involvement in the production process, by using team work, decentralized initiative, greater autonomy of decision on the shop floor, rewards for team performance, and a flat management hierarchy with few status symbols in the daily life of the firm. (p. 157)

What [Ikujiro Nonaka] labels "the knowledge-creating company" is based on the organizational interaction between "explicit knowledge" and "tacit knowledge" at the source of innovation. He argues that much of the knowledge accumulated in the firm is made out of experience, and cannot be communicated by workers under excessively formalized management procedures. And yet the sources of innovation multiply when organizations are able to establish bridges to transfer tacit into explicit knowledge, explicit into tacit knowledge, tacit into tacit, and explicit into explicit. (p. 159)

R. Roosevelt Thomas, Jr., Beyond Race and Gender: Unleashing the Power of Your Total Work Force by Managing Diversity (1991):

Another word for the process of tapping employees' full potential is "empowerment". . . . In fact, a managing diversity capability is implicit in several innovations already in process in progressive organizations. Some corporations, for example, are moving to "push decision making down." Others are implementing "total quality" initiatives. Still others have downsized their work forces in search of greater efficiency and productivity. All of these initiatives, however they differ, have one aspect in common: Their success depends on the ability to empower the total work force. (p. 10)

[For a contrarian view, see Mike Parker and Jane Slaughter, Choosing Sides: Unions and the Team Concept (Detroit: Labor Notes / South End Press, 1988)]
"Diversity Management"

R. Roosevelt Thomas, Jr., Beyond Race and Gender: Unleashing the Power of Your Total Work Force by Managing Diversity (1991):

To this point, we have unearthed the core cultural assumptions, or roots, that determine a company's behavior with respect to diversity issues, and we have analyzed the impact of those cultural roots on the success of a managing diversity approach. Quite an accomplishment. Now the task is to identify what roots need to be changed, and in which direction. To do that, we contrast the current roots with the desired roots. . . .

The manager driving the root modification—the change agent—must develop a full-scale plan for deliberately and definitively bringing about the change. Changing roots requires direct and straightforward action steps, as opposed to indirect approaches. Work on the root level is laborious. For every root, there are many branches, multiple corporate decisions and actions, and each one has its constituencies. Be prepared for opposition. Deeply entrenched roots have developed some powerful defenders. Whenever these "root guards" hear the words "change" and "roots'' in the same sentence, they snap to attention and ask in unison, "What root do you propose to change?"

. . . Corporate root change is not for the squeamish. Yet managers committed to equal opportunity for all employees must exert the effort. The reward is a strategic advantage over the competition. (Pp. 53-54)

Diversity includes everyone; it is not something that is defined by race or gender. It extends to age, personal and corporate background, education, function, and personality. It includes lifestyle, sexual preference, geographic origin, tenure with the organization, exempt or nonexempt status, and management or nonmanagement. It also shows up clearly with companies involved in acquisitions and mergers. In this expanded context, white males are as diverse as their colleagues. A commitment to diversity is a commitment to all employees, not an attempt at preferential treatment. (p. 10-11

7. Advanced capitalism (1-6 above) is integral with information technology

A. Information Tech Facilitates Postindustrialism

Joseph H. Boyett and Henry P. Conn, Workplace 2000 (1992):

In part, the downsizing that occurred in the 1980s was made possible by a new generation of technology that is less expensive, more flexible, and enables employees at the lowest level of an organization to make critical decisions. (p. 2)

. . . success in the organization will flow to those who can effectively use the data. . . . Americans who want to succeed will need the ability to analyze data, draw conclusions, and present recommendations. Computer literacy and at least a rudimentary knowledge of statistics for business will be critical for advancement or even to survive! (p. 5)

The ability of large American companies to reconfigure themselves to look and act like small businesses can, at least in part, by attributed to the development of new technology that makes whole layers of managers and their staffs unnecessary. Those layers (such as group executives, corporate directors, and assistant vice presidents) whose primary function is to either filter information and, in some cases, manipulate data being passed up from lower levels or make routine decisions will be particularly vulnerable to technology. . . . In Workplace 2000, upper management in practically every company will have the technological tools not only to review company-wide performance on a personal computer but to tap directly into performance at the lowest level. (p. 23)

Entire layers of management and supervision will be erased from the organization chart. Traditional ideas about a "span of control" where a manager or supervisor was needed for every four, five,or six employees are being discarded. Instead of a narrow span of control, companies are now beginning to look at a much broader span of communication or span of information as the basis for establishing the number and levels of management. (p. 28)
Manuel Castells, The Rise of the Network Community (1996):

Thus, informationalism was linked to the expansion and rejuvenation of capitalism, as industrialism was linked to its constitution as a mode of production. (p. 19)

Information coming from specific time and space is the crucial factor. Information technology allows simultaneously for the decentralized retrieval of such information and for its integration into a flexible system of strategy-making. This cross-border structure allows small and medium businesses to link up with major corporations, forming networks that are able to innovate and adapt relentlessly. (p. 165)

Networks are the fundamental stuff of which new organizations are and will be made. And they are able to form and expand all over the main streets and back alleys of the global economy because of their reliance on the information power provided by the new technological paradigm. (p. 168)

B. Information Tech Represents Postindustrialism

The early "Productivity Paradox" of IT (information technology)

Thomas K. Landauer, The Trouble with Computers: Usefulness, Usability, and Productivity (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1995)
Stephen S. Roach, Technology Imperatives (New York: Morgan Stanley, 1992)
Paul A. Strassman, Information Payoff: The Transformation of Work in the Electronic Age (New York: Free Press / Macmillan, 1985)

IT capital and productivity in the service sector. Data from Stephen S. Roach, Technology Imperatives; chart from Thomas K. Landauer, The Trouble with Computers, p. 31

IT as symbolism, myth, and "spirit"
- J. Feldman and J. March, "Information in Organizations as Signal and Symbol" (1981):
  
  "Using information, asking for information, and justifying decisions in terms of information have all come to be significant ways in which we symbolize that [a] process is legitimate, that we are good decision makers, and that our organizations are well managed" (p. 178)
- Andrew J. Flanagin
  - "Internet Use in the Contemporary Media Environment," Human Communication Research, 27 (2001): 153-81
  - "Social Pressures on Organizational Website Adoption," Human Communication Research 26 (2000): 618-646
- Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization (1990): (pp. 13, 11)
- Manuel Castells, The Rise of Network Society, vol. 1 of The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture (Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 1996-97):
  
  "The 'spirit of informationalism' is the culture of 'creative destruction' accelerated to the speed of the optoelectronic circuits that process its signals. Schumpeter meets Weber in the cyberspace of the network enterprise" (p. 199)
- John Seely Brown & Paul Duguid, The Social Life of Information (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2000):
  
  "Today, it's the myth of information that is overpowering richer explanations. . . . In particular, the myth tends to wage a continual war against aspects of society that play a critical role in shaping not only society, but information itself, making information useful and giving it value and meaning." (pp. 32-33)
- "Network = Business = Society"
  - Visualizations of the Internet: 1 | 2 2a | 3 |
  - Visualizations of Social Networks: 1

8. Business is culture

Tom Peters and Robert H. Waterman, In Search of Excellence (1982):
Perhaps culture was taboo as a topic following William H. Whyte, Jr.'s The Organization Man and the conformist, gray flannel suit image that he put forward. But what seems to have been overlooked by Whyte, and management theorists until recently, is what . . . we call the "loose-tight" properties of excellent companies. In the very same institutions in which culture is so dominant, the highest levels of true autonomy occur. The culture regulates rigorously the few variables that do count, and it provides meaning. But within those qualitative values (and in almost all other dimensions), people are encouraged to stick out, to innovate. (p. 105, from the section on "The Importance of Culture")
Manuel Castells, The Rise of the Network Community (1996):

But there is indeed a common cultural code in the diverse workings of the network enterprise. It is made of many cultures, many values, many projects, that cross through the minds and inform the strategies of the various participants in the networks, changing at the same pace as the network's members, and following the organizational and cultural transformation of the units of the network. It is a culture, indeed, but a culture of the ephemeral, a culture of each strategic decision, a patchwork of experiences and interests, rather than a charter of rights and obligations. It is a multifaceted, virtual culture, as in the visual experiences created by computers in cyberspace by rearranging reality. It is not a fantasy, it is a material force because it informs, and enforces, powerful economic decisions at every moment in the life of the network. But it does not stay long: it goes into the computer's memory as raw material of past successes and failures. The network enterprise learns to live within this virtual culture. Any attempt at crystallizing the position in the network as a cultural code in a particular time and space sentences the network to obsolescence, since it becomes too rigid for the variable geometry required by informationalism. The "spirit of informationalism" is the culture of "creative destruction" accelerated to the speed of the optoelectronic circuits that process its signals. Schumpeter meets Weber in the cyberspace of the network enterprise. (p. 199)

9. Job insecurity and stress are systemic

Downsizing

Joseph H. Boyett and Henry P. Conn, Workplace 2000 (1992):

Downsizing has made this flatter workplace a reality . . . and this trend toward flattening the corporation will continue. The layers of management, supervision, and support that were eliminated during the 1980s will not return. . . . Continued rapid advancement in technology will make further belt-tightening possible. In short, Americans who process information, analyze information, and/or make routine decisions are likely to find their positions in danger within the next decade. (p. 2)

Some types of jobs are becoming what Robert Tomasko, author of Downsizing, calls an "endangered species." Who is endangered? Planners, economists, corporate marketing and public relations staffs, analysts of all types—anyone who sits around "thinking" and "advising." (p. 27)
Manuel Castells, The Rise of the Network Community ( 1996):

It should not be surprising that information technologies . . . replace work that can be encoded in a programmable sequence and enhance work that requires analysis, decision, and reprogramming capabilities in real time at a level that only the human brain can master. Every other activity . . . is potentially susceptible of automation, and thus the labor engaged in it is expendable. . . . (p. 242)

Job insecurity, lateral movement, and flextiming

Joseph H. Boyett and Henry P. Conn, Workplace 2000 (1992):

In the next decade, no job will be entirely secure, whether inside or outside of a large company. . . . It is very unlikely that most Americans will be able to join one company and stay with it throughout their working life. In fact, the average American will most likely work in ten or more different types of jobs and at least five different companies before he or she retires. (p. 3)

In Workplace 2000, traditional paths of career advancement will be closed for most people. They won't be promoted because there simply won't be a job to promote them into. . . . At best, the typical employee can expect a few promotions and a number of lateral moves. (p. 29)
Manuel Castells, The Rise of the Network Community (1996):

The prevailing model for labor in the new, information-based economy is that of a core labor force, formed by information-based managers and by those whom [Robert] Reich calls "symbolic analysts," and a disposable labor force that can be automated and/or hired/fired/offshored, depending upon market demand and labor costs. (p. 272)

Stress

Joseph H. Boyett and Henry P. Conn, Workplace 2000 (1992):

With these changes, tremendous responsibilities will be shifted to workers and their peers for planning, scheduling, organizing, directing, and controlling their own work process.
This new and expanded role for employees will exert enormous pressures on employees and companies alike to invest in education and retraining. (p. 7)
William H. Davidow and Michael S. Malone, The Virtual Corporation (1992):

But the greatest daily challenge to the workers and the management that supports them will be dealing with the unpredictability of life in the virtual corporation, where perpetual flux will be the rule. If every revolution brings with it the potential for tragedy, then here is where it is most likely to occur.
. . . even in the United States, there is a sizable percentage of people who are change aversive. . . . What happens to these people, many of them highly successful in the traditional firm? . . . those who once thrived may discover themselves disoriented, alienated, and overwhelmed by the new work style. (pp. 215-16)

References ( = especially recommended):