Organizational Transformation in the Digital Economy
* Article: ORGANIZATIONAL TRANSFORMATION IN THE DIGITAL ECONOMY. By Mihaela Ulieru and John Verdon. 2009 7th IEEE International Conference on Industrial Informatics (INDIN 2009)
URL = http://www.theimpactinstitute.org/INDIN-2009--FINAL-FORMATTED.pdf
Abstract
"Abstract-This work sets the vision for organizational transformation that will secure competitive advantage in the digital economy, as the border between society – market - organization becomes more permeated to facilitate new types of assemblages of ‘meshworks’ within and across organizational boundaries. We argue that network technologies are feeding the emergence of architectures of participation, protocols of collaboration and the development of new concepts of how work can be accomplished – notably responsible autonomy and peerproduction. The concept of eNetworked ecosystem is used as metaphor for the need to embed responsible autonomy within the organizational structure via a new type of personnel platform and space for non-hierarchical (impersonal) exchange and collaboration which mirrors ‘the invisible hand’ of Adam Smith. Assuming that the transparency of the digital environment will provide for dramatic and ubiquitous accountability of action we consider the parallel with the transparency of “good enough” information carried by the price mechanism that allows people to respond to price through the ‘invisible hand’ of the market. We show how the melting of traditional constraints (e.g. geographical, transactions costs, coordination, job as identity, knowledge scarcity, etc.) makes room to a revolution in all social and political institutional frameworks via the integration of responsible autonomy within a more complex organizational architecture. This new mode of production capitalizes on the transparency inherent in the digital environment to set the conditions for responsible autonomy as foundation for a broader and more equal market for many more people to exchange anything, with anyone, anytime thus generating a ubiquitous expectation that the right individual (customer, employee) can connect to the right situation (product, job) at the right time. We conclude that the simple capacity to do more enabled by the transparency of the trusted situational awareness that allows decentralized action to be incorporated with agility of response through more relaxed organizational policies - will continue to be a force of change fuelled by the ‘organizational survival’ drive to adapt and thrive in the complex and turbulent operational environment of the 21st Century economic reality." (http://www.theimpactinstitute.org/INDIN-2009--FINAL-FORMATTED.pdf)