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
2/13/02
)
Preliminary Class Business
For "interactive" class next time:
think about what is good about the postindustrial
workplace, and what is bad
From last lecture:
Postindustrialism is "Knowledge
Work"
Postindustrialism is Information Technology
Consequences
of the Change to Postindustrial "Knowledge
Work"
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)
William
H. Davidow & 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)
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):
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"
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)
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)
Summary View of the New "Postindustrial"
Business
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
Answer to the "productivity paradox"
(represented in graph above):
information technology
+ downsizing/restructuring =
"New Economy"
Total fusion of information technology and
the essence of the contemporary business organization.
New Economy companies are about nothing else
than a network structure (and IT infrastructure)
for managing information in modular, variable,
distributed ways.
Analogy: a "Photoshop" corporation
The New Economy is the dream of a perfectly
"virtual corporation" (matterless,
organization-less, commitment-less). (Remember
Zuboff on the "flexible
people")
Dissenters
Against the Corporate World-view and the Corporate
Domination of IT (1): The "Wired"
NGO's
The NGO ("non-governmental organization")
concept:
Community, national, and international social
cause groups working for human rights, workers'
rights, women's rights, environmentalism, etc.;
ranging in politics from non-partisan to radical
left and anarchist.
The "Wired" NGO concept:
Use information technology to network geographically
diverse groups and initiatives
Make access to information part of their very
agenda of global alliance, freedom, and equality
The most important umbrella organizations
devoted to wiring NGO movements around the world:
Institute
for Global Communications (IGC):
began in the U.S. in 1987 and now includes
under its umbrella PeaceNet, EcoNet, WomensNet,
Anti-RacismNet (as well as LaborNet from
1992-1999), and such affiliated groups as
GreenNet in the UK.
Online networks that arose in 1999-2000
and after specifically to organize protest
at the meetings of the World Trade Organization
(e.g., in Seattle and Washington, D.C.)
and the U.S. Democratic and Republican presidential
conventions (in Los Angeles and Philadelphia).
E.g., D2KLA,
the Direct Action Network, Mobilization
for Global Justice, and the Philadelphia
Direct Action Group together with city-based
"indy media" centers focused on
these occasions (e.g., the Seattle, Washington
D.C., and Los Angeles Independent Media
Centers).
Politics of the Wired NGO's:
Freedom of information (freedom to read information;
freedom to publish information)
But: the NGO's also assimilate some of the
"management" viewpoint of corporations
(e.g., the APC's "Managing
Your NGO")
Dissenters
Against the Corporate World-view and the Corporate
Domination of IT (2): Cyberlibertarianism
The Cyberlibertarian Concept:
The belief that the social protocols/communities
of networked information technology create a
new form of politics that makes obsolete both
traditional institutions of power and traditional
political influence or protest groups
Famous cyberlibertarian spokesmen:
Stewart Brand (founder of The
Whole Earth Catalog and The Well, alleged
originator of the statement "information
wants to be free")
Radical and anarchist fringe: e.g., the Mondo
2000 crowd. Also see Mark Dery's book on
the cyber-fringe, Escape Velocity: Cyberculture
at the End of the Century (New York: Grove,
1996)
The Politics of Cyberlibertarianism:
"Information wants to be free"
Anti-government & anti-corporate (esp.
in the wake of the Communications Decency Act
[CDA] of 1996):
John Perry Barlow, "A Declaration
of the Independence of Cyberspace":
"Governments
of the Industrial World, you weary
giants of flesh and steel, I come from
Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On
behalf of the future, I ask you of the
past to leave us alone. You are not
welcome among us. You have no sovereignty
where we gather."
"We
are creating a world that all may enter
without privilege or prejudice accorded
by race, economic power, military
force, or station of birth."
"Your
increasingly obsolete information
industries would perpetuate themselves
by proposing laws, in America and elsewhere,
that claim to own speech itself throughout
the world. These laws would declare
ideas to be another industrial product,
no more noble than pig iron. In our
world, whatever the human mind may create
can be reproduced and distributed infinitely
at no cost. The global conveyance of
thought no longer requires your factories
to accomplish."
Special issues: online privacy, freedom from
censorship, intellectual property
Or: anti-government but secretly pro-business?
According to Richard Barbrook and Andy
Cameron ("The Californian Ideology"),
Vivian Sobchack ("New Age Mutant Ninja
Hackers"), and other critics of cyberlibertarianism:
Information does not want to be free.
What it wants is venture capital.
Jon Katz, "Birth of a Digital Nation":
"From
liberals, this ideology adopts humanism.
It is suspicious of law enforcement. It
abhors censorship. It recoils from extreme
governmental positions like the death
penalty. From conservatives, the ideology
takes notions of promoting economic opportunity,
creating smaller government, and insisting
on personal responsibility.
The digital
young share liberals' suspicions of authority
and concentration of power but have little
of their visceral contempt for corporations
or big business. They share the liberal
analysis that social problems like poverty,
rather than violence on TV, are at the
root of crime. But, unlike liberals, they
want the poor to take more responsibility
for solving their own problems."
Is cyberlibertarianism "escapist"?
an escape from "real" society
and politics?
an escape into the 18th-century past
of Jeffersonian democracy" pre-dating
the problems not only of postindustrialism
but even of industrialism?
an escape into the 19th-century past
of "captains of industry" (of
individuals starting and running companies)?
Or are the critics holding cyberlibertarianism
to an impossible standard?
What politics (including mainstream
politics and NGO politics) cannot be accused
of "escapism" in similar or
different ways?
Is there any effective political movement
today that does not in some way participate
in corporatism?
Can cyberlibertarianism learn to interact
effectively with traditional politics?
(see Jon Katz's sequel to his "Birth
of a Digital Nation": "The
Digital Citizen." Wired / HotWired
5.12 (Dec. 1997).
References
Mark Dery, Escape Velocity: Cyberculture
at the End of the Century (New York: Grove,
1996)
François Fortier, Civil
Society Computer Networks: The Perilous Road
of Cyber-politics, diss (York Univ., Toronto,
1996). Published online. http://www.yorku.ca/research/dkproj/fortier/>.
The New Corporate Form is "Flat":
Downsizing