Pervasive digitalization and fluid organization

PERVASIVE DIGITALIZATION 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

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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Alessandro Bozzo - alessandrobozzo.wordpress.com

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 COMMISSION’s 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 FUTURE’s forward looking study identifies six drivers—big
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. It’s 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 programmable”—an 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 user’s 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 user’s 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.

We’ve 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 organization’s
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, organization’s 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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REFERENCES

BECK, U. (2000), Il lavoro nell’epoca della fine del lavoro
BROWN B. – SIKES J. (2012),”MINDING YOUR DIGITAL BUSINESS” Business Strategy
Series, vol. 9, No. 2.
CASTELLS, M. (1996), The rise of network society
DOBBS R. – OPPENHEIM J. – THOMPSON F. (2012), “MOBILIZING FOR RESOURCE
REVOLUTION”
ELLEN MACARTHUR FOUNDATION (2012), “TOWARDS THE CIRCULAR ECONOMY”
EUROPEAN COMMISSION (2011), “EUROPEAN FORWARD LOOKING ACTIVITIES:
building the future of “Innovation Union” and European Research Area “, 2011
EUROPEAN COMMISSION/HORIZON 2020 (2011) ,
(http://ec.europa.eu/research/horizon2020/index_en.cfm?pg=workshops&workshop=
future_and_emerging_technologies) “REPORT FROM THE “HORIZON 2020” (THE EU
FRAMEWORK PROGRAMME FOR RESEARCH AND INNOVATION) WORKSHOP: Towards
more inclusive, innovative and secure societies challenge “
HAKKEN , D.J. (2004), “The cyberspace anthropology: a foreword”, in Antropology
Indonesia
INSTITUTE FOR THE FUTURE (2011) “Future work skills “
INSTITUTE FOR THE FUTURE, Future work skills, 2011
J.BUGHIN-M.CHUI-J.MANYICA (2010), , “Clouds, big data, and smart assets: Ten tech-
enabled business trends to watch
KUHN, T. (1970) “The structure of scientific revolution”
KUNDA, G. (1992), Engineering Culture – Control and Commitment ina High-Tech
Corporation
MORGAN, G. (1997), Images Of Organization
OSTERWALDER A. PIGNEUR Y (2010), “Business model generation”
SABETY H. (2009) , "THE EMERGENCE OF FOURTH SECTOR”
SABETY H. (2011) , “THE FOR BENEFIT ENTERPRISE”
SCHEIN, E.H. (1987), Process Consultation
SENNETT, R. (1999) The Corrosion of Character
STRATI, A. (2004), L’analisi organizzativa
WEICK, K.E. (1995), Sensemaking in organization
WILLENIUS, M. (2008) "Taming the dragon: how to tackle the challenge of future
foresight", in

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