= one of the main points of the lecture
= quotation to be read in class by instructor |
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Some
Reference Points for Discussion
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Preliminary Class Business
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5. The new corporate form is "flat" (restructuring,
downsizing)
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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)
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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)
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6. The basic unit of the new corporate form is
the "team"
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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)
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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
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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)
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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 |
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- 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
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- Visualizations of Social Networks: 1
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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")
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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)
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9. Job insecurity and stress are systemic
Downsizing
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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)
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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
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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)
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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)
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