PERVASIVE DIGITALIZATION and FLUID ORGANIZATION

PERVASIVEDIGITALIZATION and FLUID ORGANIZATION

as dynamic features of future organizing

CLASS O.S.I.A. (ORGANIZZAZIONE DEI SISTEMI INFORMATIVI AZIENDALI) 2012

PROF. DAVID JAMES HAKKEN

STUDY COURSE: LAVORO, ORGANIZAZZIONE, SISTEMI INFORMATIVI (L.O.S.I.)

EXAM PAPER BY ALESSANDRO BOZZO, n. 155631

SEPTEMBER 2012

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Twenty years from now you will be more

disappointed by the things that you didn't

do than by the ones you did do. So throw off

the bowlines. Sail away from the safe

harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails.

Explore. Dream. Discover.

( Mark Twain )

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

1) ABSTRACT

2) INTRODUCTION

3) PERVASIVE DIGITALIZATION

4) FLUID ORGANIZATION

5) REFERENCES

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ABSTRACT

The need for supporting the personal feelings of myself as non frequentante studente

lavoratore with experts views about plausible dynamics of organizing in 20 years

from now, brought me to the search of qualified recent forward looking studies related

to my job together with reading course materials.

The conclusions of this overview lead me to be confident that GLOBAL CONNECTIVITY and WEB 3.0, 4.0 are the most likely dynamic features of future organizing that are associated with the use of digital technologies .

Then I engaged myself in developing a sociological argument for each one of the two

above dynamics as string of logically-connected statements about conditions and

contexts that are likely to be typical organizing assemblages in 20 years and why this

set of conditions/contexts is likely to produce the dynamic identified.

My preference is for structuration theory, based on special attention generally given

to the intentions of the human actors. (Other ways to account for dynamics would

include the practice lens and Actor Network Theory (ANT), in its several forms).

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INTRODUCTION

Discovering something that might be characteristic of the dynamics of organizing in 20

years from now is a very hard task at today crisis times, when we feel that the weight

of unsolved problems (financial troubles, sustainable development, jobless

economy,) and rapid societal change (globalization of commerce and culture,

proliferation and speed of information, evolution of technology and transport) have

built up to the point that the need of a new paradigm (T.KUHN, 1970) replacing the

old one is perceived.

Many forward looking studies developed by public institutions, research companies,

professional associations and industry are looking for options and opportunities for

change before the business is forced to change" (WILLENIUS, 2008).

The background set up through the course materials, the main findings of some recent

qualified forward looking studies in Europe and in US (EUROPEAN COMMISSION,

2011; INSTITUTE FOR THE FUTURE, 2011) and some papers advancing concepts

redefining the possibilities and transforming the nature of organizations (SABETY,

2009; SABETY, 2011; ELLEN MACARTHUR FOUNDATION, 2012) draw a challenging

framework for matching personal feelings as a worker and at the same time as a

student with more objective indications in taking a world view of the driving

forces for change and how specific key forces are affecting the current structure and

future development of the organizations.

FOLLOW-UP FROM LECTURES, SPEAKERS and COURSE MATERIALS

The background set up in my mind by lectures, speakers and course material is

summarized as in the following:

- Technological determinism is overcome by the need to integrate social and

technical dimensions

- Digital technologies change communications at work as well at home

- Productivity would only rise when organizations stopped (HAKKEN, 2004)

treating computers as just a technology ( in Italy, I would say will stop...)

- Aligning information systems and business goals (digital technologies and key

business processes) is fundamental to the success of an enterprise

(OSTERWALDER A. - PIGNEUR Y., 2010)

- Digital technologies are competitive necessity but not lasting vantage

- Particular technologies are central to the mechanisms (McAdam, et al. 2008)

that strongly afford particular social patterns

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INDICATIONS FROM FORWARD LOOKING STUDIES: THE CONTEXT

The main conclusions of the EUROPEAN COMMISSIONs report are:

1. a new model of open and collaborative innovation driven by users should be

developed recognizing the role of innovative ecosystems encompassing both

technological and non-technological aspects such as social, economic and

cultural forces.

2. technological developments and social demands could be translated in future

cross-cutting research and innovation fields such as Human-Technology

cooperation (machines interpreting information, better knowledge of human

brain, etc), Sustainable living spaces and infrastructures for the future,

Environmentally friendly and individually tailored solutions, Renewing

services and production by digital means, Manufacturing on demand and

Urban mining.

3. while Europe has to increase cohesion and convergence on research and

innovation among EU countries, in the newly global innovation networks it has

also to intensify the contacts with world scientific leaders and emerging

countries.

4. European Union research and innovation should grapple with major global

societal challenges like natural resource depletion, energy and climate change

and urbanization, whilst at the same time tackling EU concerns of ageing,

productivity and social cohesion. The nexus between hard sciences and soft

sciences, between engineering and social aspects, between grand challenges

and daily citizens life are increasingly relevant. Future research and innovation

should take these points into consideration.

A more sustainable economy requires shared efforts from citizens, authorities,

researchers and economic stakeholders. Indeed, it implies new socio-political

paradigms and, consequently, of new production and consumption patterns. The key

word to lead to the future seems to be integration: integration between different

stakeholders towards common goals, integration between technologies and socio-

technical systems, integration between different technologies and materials (and

therefore between one industry, its suppliers and its customers), integration between

production and services.

To be competitive, the way of working and, consequently, machines and tools have to

be more and more flexible, in order to adapt very quickly the products to the changing

customers' needs. This means that manufacturing must be self-adaptive,

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reconfigurable, multi-functional and cross-technological, with an user-friendly human-

machine interaction.

The role of ICT will still increase, because industrial processes are more and more

complex, implying the need for computer-aided modeling and simulations.

On the basis of industrial transition, a basic component emerges: human capital.

Multidisciplinary knowledge and competencies of workers will be essential, but also a

new style of management and leadership are needed, more open to creativity,

innovation and adaptability.

THE INSTITUTE FOR THE FUTUREs forward looking study identifies six driversbig

disruptive shifts that are likely to reshape the future landscape with a strong

relevance to future work skills :

1. Extreme longevity: increasing global lifespans change the nature of careers

and learning

2. Rise of smart machines and systems: workplace automation nudges human

workers out of rote, repetitive tasks

3. Computational world: massive increases in sensors and processing power make

the world a programmable system

4. New media ecology: new communication tools require new media literacies

beyond text

5. Super structed organizations: social technologies drive new forms of

production and value creation

6. Globally connected world: increased global interconnectivity puts diversity

and adaptability at the center of organizational operations

The intersection of the two above sets outlines, as plausible dynamics of organizing in

20 years from now, 2 dynamic features of future organizing that are associated with

the use of digital technologies and that are strictly interconnected:

1. PERVASIVE DIGITALIZATION 2. FLUID ORGANIZATIONS

These dynamic features refer in their turn to many items of the ranked list set up at

the workshop on the course examination, like:

The virtual will be the main form of organizations, FLOSS, The rise of network

organizations means they will shrink in size, have a flatter hierarchy, be less controlled

and be more focused on a core business, Organizations will have fewer boundaries,

may be lose them altogether and will be much more like social networks, Typical

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business process will have moved to cyberfacture. Jobs will change greatly: e.g. be

more flexible, with no fixed location, hours, even pay, For the worker, achieving a

good work/life balance will be easier, because it will be policy and because the

separation of work from home will decline.

In the following two section I describe the 2 features PERVASIVE DIGITALIZATION and

FLUID ORGANIZATION of the dynamics of organizing in 20 years and try to construct a

sociologically persuasive argument for why I believe this is likely to be true.

PERVASIVE DIGITALIZATION AND EXPERIENTIAL COMPUTING

Actually we are watching how computational power and digital connections are

growing fast thanks to the internet, the wireless networks and the large adoption of

smartphones. Its the first time that computers are not hard to use instruments set on

desk at home or at office but very friendly light devices that follow every one of us .

The INTERNET and the MOBILE PHONE are transformational technologies converging

in such way to redesign society.

Web 2.0 and social networking offer new ways of communication, new possibilities of

innovation. They offer huge possibilities to revitalize the delivery of public services, but

only if access is assured to those who need the services.

In general, the diffusion of sensors, communications, and processing power into

everyday objects and environments will unleash an unprecedented torrent of data and

the opportunity to see patterns and design systems on a scale never before possible.

Every object, every interaction, everything we come into contact with will be

converted into data. Once we decode the world around us and start seeing it through

the lens of data, we will increasingly focus on manipulating the data to achieve desired

outcomes. Thus we will usher in an era of everything is programmablean era of

thinking about the world in computational, programmable, designable terms.

The collection of enormous quantities of data will enable modeling of social systems

at extreme scales, both micro and macro, helping uncover new patterns and

relationships that were previously invisible. Agencies will increasingly model macro-

level phenomena such as global pandemics to stop their spread across the globe. At a

micro level, individuals will be able to simulate things such as their route to the office

to avoid traffic congestion based on real-time traffic data. Micro and macro-scale

models will mesh to create models that are unprecedented in their complexity and

completeness.

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As a result, whether it is running a business or managing individual health, our work

and personal lives will increasingly demand abilities to interact with data, see patterns

in data, make data-based decisions, and use data to design for desired outcomes.

The combination of mobile devices with sensors can also assist individuals to cope with

their environment in myriad ways. Many more adaptations of sensing with smart-

phones can be expected. Always-on mobile phones will be universal sensors and will

collect data from the users immediate environment and report in real-time. The range

of sensors available is likely to be extended by miniaturization, nano-technology and

even bio-technology. The extent to which the user can control this information is

unclear; as advanced applications produce more and more context information so new

principles of protecting privacy will need elaboration.

New multimedia technologies are bringing about a transformation in the way we

communicate. As technologies for video production, digital animation, augmented

reality, gaming, and media editing, become ever more sophisticated and widespread, a

new ecosystem will take shape around these areas. We are literally developing a new

language, for communication.

This kind of scenario depicted, introduces a new way of intending computing: the

experiential computing (Ihde 1990). A review of four recent studies (Banker and

Kauffman 2004; Orlikowski and Iacono 2001; Orlikowski and Scott 2008; Sidorova

et al. 2008) shows that in the majority of past Information Systems studies,

computing was conceptualized as a discrete symbolic representations of something

in the real world - individuals, teams, products, information, process, organization,

and market. This is what Ihde (1990) refers to the hermeneutical relationship between

users and technology in which the technology is used as a symbolic

representation of something else real. Another way of intending computing is

imagined computing that focuses on what Ihde refers to as an alterity relationship

between technology and users. Alterity is a philosophical term to mean otherness,

often used in the context of self-awareness. Therefore, an alterity relationship refers

to a relationship between users and technology where the technology becomes the

alter ego, being attributed users intention, hopes, and fears. Referring to Stefano De

Paoli lecture, this is the world of computer games and virtual reality, for example,

SecondLife and the World of Warcraft. Avatars in a virtual world may take a

completely different identity from the owner who may have several avatars at the

same time. Digital products and buildings in the virtual world exist only in the realm of

the imagined.

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Contrary to representational computing and imagined computing experiences,

experiential computing focuses on the notion of the embodiment relationship

between technology, world, and people (Ihde 1990). The notion of embodiment that

finds its roots in the philosophy of phenomenology (Boland 1985; Heidegger

1962; Merleau-Ponty 1962; Mingers 2001) means the property of being manifest in

and of the everyday world (Dourish 2001). Here, the social and physical reality is

something that is not experienced through abstraction, but rather is experienced

directly. Therefore, an embodiment relationship refers to a relationship between

technology and users in which the technology mediates lived experiences of the users.

Drawing on Merleau-Ponty (1962), the embodied human experience is conceptualized

as an interaction between our body and the environments characterized by four

dimensions: time, space, other actors, and things (including the natural world).

The digitalization of these four dimensions of human experience forms the basis of

experiential computing. Unlike traditional computing users, the users of this new form

of experiential computing will not necessarily see computing as an activity that is

separate from their everyday activities. Humans will no longer experience

computing as something that is out there, but rather they will live in it.

An emerging sociomateriality lens that emphasizes the indissolubility of social and

technical (Orlikowski and Scott 2008) can be particularly useful in developing precise

understanding on this issue. Among other things, a sociomateriality perspective

emphasizes that material agency and human agency are so entangled with each other

that previously taken-for-granted boundaries are dissolved.

Further in the future, we can envisage that everything, including people, has a web-

address, and that this information plus the capacity to process it can be used to place

all entities in a geographical context in real time. This is potentially a very disruptive

tool; capable perhaps of benefitting society, but also pregnant with possibilities for

exploitation by unscrupulous governments, organizations and individuals.

Experiential computing bring us to consider new ways of working, people with new

skills and a different kind of organizing.

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FLUID ORGANIZATION

Driving forces for change at the global level are interacting between them and create

turbulence and dynamics influencing first of all the lives of the people.

The organizations are the fundamental blocks of society and most human activities

take place through them to meet different needs. At the highest level, business,

government and social sectors dominate the organizational landscape of most

developed economies.

Organizations are products of human design and as such they reflect the cultural

norms, values, priorities and context out of which they are created. The today

organizational models were designed at a time when the world was a very different

place : many different driving forces of rapid societal change have combined to create

a new massively interdependent global culture and economy and organizations are

facing heavy pressures to adjust to a number of challenges worsening of the quality

of our natural environment, declining of the social capital, growing disparity between

rich and poor, etc. - which are ultimately by products and unintended consequences of

organizational design. There is growing recognition that these systemic problems are

rooted in structural failures at the organizational level: solving these problems requires

new ways of thinking and acting on the part of individuals along with new

organizational designs that encourage stakeholders actions consistent with long-term

welfare of our ecological, economic and social systems.

I consider the work in the enterprises as motor of the economy and how dynamics of

enterprises and economy are evolving under new needs and awareness.

New technologies and social media platforms are driving an unprecedented

reorganization of how we produce and create value.

Amplified by a new level of collective intelligence and tapping resources embedded in

social connections with multitudes of others, we can now achieve the kind of scale and

reach previously attainable only by very large organizations.

In other words, we can do things outside of traditional organizational boundaries.

To superstruct means to create structures that go beyond the basic forms and

processes with which we are familiar. It means to collaborate and play at extreme

scales, from the micro to the massive. Learning to use new social tools to work, to

invent, and to govern at these scales is what the next few decades are all about.

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Our tools and technologies shape the kinds of social, economic, and political

organizations we inhabit. Many organizations we are familiar with today, including

educational and corporate ones, are products of centuries-old scientific knowledge

and technologies. Today we see this organizational landscape being disrupted.

In health, organizations such as Curetogether and PatientsLikeMe are allowing people

to aggregate their personal health information to allow for clinical trials and

emergence of expertise outside of traditional labs and doctors offices. In these days

Salvatori Iaconesi, a technology expert with a brain cancer, has started a FLOSS

practice to stimulate participation in finding a solution for his illness.

Science games, from Foldit to GalaxyZoo, are engaging thousands of people to solve

problems no single organization had the resources to do before. Open education

platforms are increasingly making content available to anyone who wants to learn.

A new generation of organizational concepts and work skills is coming not from

traditional management/organizational theories but from fields such as game design,

neuroscience, and happiness psychology. These fields will drive the creation of new

training paradigms and tools.

But there is another aspect that has to be considered: skills to coping cultural changes.

Weve seen that the pervasive digitalization will bring us to change the way we

communicate, with rise of new literacies. Moreover it will reduce the need of

organization to be structured around physical places.

All this considerations involve a tremendous change of what we call culture.

In fact, according with Schein, culture is a pattern of shared basic assumptions that the

group learned as it solved its problems that has worked well enough to be considered

valid and is passed on to new members as the correct way to perceive, think, and feel

in relation to those problems. Schein culture model contains three layers:

Artifacts, that are the visible elements in a culture. Artifacts can be recognized by

people not part of the culture. Artifacts can e.g. be dress codes, furniture, art, work

climate, stories, work processes, organizational structures etc. The outsider might

easily see these artifacts, but might not be able to fully understand why these artifacts

have been established. To understand this, outsiders can look at the espoused values

in the culture.

Espoused values are the values normally espoused by the leading figures of a culture.

Espoused values could e.g. be represented by the philosophies, strategies and goals

sought realized by e.g. leaders. However, the values sought by leaders should be

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supported by some general and shared assumptions about e.g. how a company should

be run, or how employees should be managed. If espoused values by leaders are not in

line with the general assumptions of the culture, this might signal trouble.

Assumptions reflects the shared values within the specific culture. These values are

often ill-defined, and will oftentimes not be especially visible to the members of the

culture. Assumptions and espoused values are possibly not correlated, and the

espoused values may not at all be rooted in the actual values of the culture. This may

cause great problems, where the differences between espoused and actual values may

create frustrations, lack of morale and inefficiency. Core assumptions can e.g. be

assumptions regarding the human nature, human relationships etc.

I want to pay attention to the symbolic artifacts. Symbolic artifacts can assume several

forms that can fit in three categories: organizational practices, communication,

physical artifacts.

How this categories of symbolic artifact (I will consider only physical one in this work),

are affected by the rise of new kind of fluid organization?

Pervasive digitalization and environment fast transformation push organizations to be

extremely flexible. It means that we will be in front of an hardly tuned version of what

Mintzberg describes as adhocracy that seems to be the kind of organization used for

FLOSS projects.

In primis workplaces, as physical artifacts, will be subjected to important

transformations. Generally, workplaces send cultural messages to organizations

members, like where they are, what is the expected behavior, even who they are or

what is their personal, team or organizational identity, what is their status.

Thanks to pervasive digitalization, organizations members can make their own activity

not only in given places but potentially everywhere. Referring to work activities, this

means that work can be configured as deskless job. So, many of us, will be allowed do

work from home. Domestication of work will be a challenge, because combine more

worker freedom but an invisible subordination. If work will still represent the most

important part of our life we can suppose that digital workplaces can rapidly transform

our society in a placeless society.

Other aspects that will be subjected to important changes are communication (as

symbolic artifacts) and management of not synchronized time (as organizational

practice). Unfortunately my time is expired!

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