Technology and Organizations

In The Devil in the White City, Erik Larson provides a fictionalized account of the architecture tasks (as well as serial killing) related to the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. Trains (a crucial technology in the modernization of business), enabled a distributed group of architects to participate in this world changing event (e.g., extension of the “raft” foundation enabling skyscrapers, the ultimate choice of AC v DC electricity). Modern technology has enabled a thinning of physical organizational boundaries. I’d like to highlight three organizations that use modern technology infrastructure to enable creative organizational forms by reducing traditional space and time constraints. These examples may be useful in your own settings, or spur you to consider additional opportunities – which I hope you will share with the rest of us via the comments section below.

The Internet is likely a more valuable lever to most of us than are the trains mentioned above. Many modern jobs include work process/product that is amenable to electronic presentation/transport. The point is that technology can provide access to the market and reduce transaction costs, but that this is even easier to the extent that the work itself has a strong electronic component.

I met the principals of oDesk, my first example company, at the 2007 Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco. The 2008 Web 2.0 Expo was last week and I was happy to see them again. They describe oDesk as “..an online staffing marketplace and management platform that provides a convenient way to hire, manage, and pay individuals no matter where they are located.” “Certified professionals. Verified work.”

What initially caught my eye was their “filmstrip view of work performed.” In 1984 I started studying telecommuting. A common lament among managers was that they couldn’t manage without being able to see the work being done – and thus an increased emphasis on electronic monitoring (my term, not oDesk’s). I think the “The Work Diary” – that’s oDesk’s term – provides monitoring as a service versus a more punitive form of monitoring. (For more on the distinctions, see my chapter on monitoring entitled “Social and Technical Aspects of Electronic Monitoring: To Protect and To Serve,” paraphrasing the motto of the LA PD.)

oDesk uses the Internet as a foundation to enable virtual work. They bring together organizations and web/software developers, QA specialists, etc by providing a platform for hiring, managing, and paying professionals from around the world. They are happy to share their results (including a live “oConomy” tracker), so expect to see more about oDesk as I get to know them better.

Pixel Corps, a guild of media developers is my second example. As a “guild” they train both face to face and in a distributed form. They provide low cost licenses of expensive software to their membership via relationships with vendors. Their infrastructure allows for global distribution of the work – including to the developing world. They create on-line “challenges” to extend learning and allow the guild members to get experience working on group projects through “peer to peer learning”. Their website provides a clear description of their approach and goals “Production companies have already begun to use the Pixel Corps as a resource for staffing. As we grow and if we are successful in our training and networking, we could become the most direct route to work. Our growing membership alone offers a building network of freelancers able to trade work among themselves.” “The Pixel Corps is not about simply collecting current computer artists… It’s about providing access to anyone interested in the field…Enthusiasts with little interest in a fulltime career, graphic artists migrating to greener pastures, visual effects artists keeping up with an ever-changing field, educators staying current with industry trends, Students augmenting their schooling, and those who can’t afford traditional schooling but still have the will and drive to enter the industry.”

“We are committed to collecting these individuals, training them to be the best in the world, organizing them to work more efficiently than any other group in the world, providing them with the benefits of collected effort and, together, taking over the industry… and while many will struggle in a changing economy and quickly shifting market, our members will drive the change rather than wait for it to come to them.”

And this perfect statement regarding the social construction of this style of learning and work: “The easiest way to predict the future is to create it.” Guilds are foundational to skilled work. The Oxford English Dictionary places the origin in medieval times. Pixel Corps has reinvigorated this organizational form based on the ability to learn and work virtually.

But even televised sports coverage, something which requires the camera and the action to be physically together, has been enabled by Internet infrastructures. At the Pacific Life Open in Palm Springs, CA, I had the pleasure of a seat directly behind the baseline, such a good seat that it was also where the main TV camera was set up on that court. After four hours of great tennis, I’d had ample opportunity to study the equipment and chat with the cameraman. What made the experience interesting in terms of this post was the European phone numbers on the camera which was being operated by a local freelance cameraman. Each piece of the equipment had a barcode and the name of the equipment rental company, in this case from the UK. A TV network had rented the gear, hired the contractor, and was then providing the video from this secondary court (often where the best action is) to other networks. Contracting was enabled via the Internet. While this contracting approach to media has been around for decades, it is facilitated and spread via current technologies.

Questions: What other organizational forms are offered by broadly available technologies? What are the trade-offs and/or management shifts your firm has had to make to gain value from these new forms? What happens when you try to make a change to a new style of technology-enabled work, but do not make changes in how the work is managed?

My colleagues and I recently published an article making the following point (paraphrasing): Dealing with social and technological systems of organizations in concert, which was a critical part of sociotechnical systems theory in the 1950’s, is an approach that we need to rediscover because information technology has become inextricably intertwined with social relationships in weaving the fabric of organization.

That point describes my perspective and that which underlies each of the posts in this blog (like these examples). However, in talking with some readers, I realized I had never explicitly described the background for this lens. The basic idea is that implementing a new technology or organizational practice is effective only to the extent that practices and technologies are jointly considered as part of the overall design and implementation. Many change failures are the result of a “magic” or “silver bullet” approach where there is an assumption that simply adopting a new technology or practice will have a determined benefit (Markus and Benjamin provide an excellent overview) — For example, thinking that building a team portal for sharing documents and ideas will result in greater team collaboration. However, no silver bullet for integrating technology with organizational practice has yet to be discovered and without this integration is it unlikely that benefits will be realized. A team portal may have no benefit if the team isn’t involved in an overall evolution of practice at the same time as a new tool is designed and implemented. Sometimes it’s a team’s practice that needs to adjust with the opportunity to use a new technology tool. Sometimes it’s a new technology that needs to support a team’s new practice. Ideally, both are being considered at once.

The following are links to some of my key sources (my own work in this area is best represented in “Technology Features as Triggers for Sensemaking” and “Why New Technologies Fail: Overcoming the Invisibility of Implementation”).

Stephen Barley
Technology as an Occasion for Structuring: Evidence from Observations of CT Scanners and the social order of radiology departments

Bijker, Pinch, & Hughes
The Social Construction of Technological Systems

DeSanctis and Poole
Capturing the Complexity in Advanced Technology Use: Adaptive Structuration Theory

Jasperson, Carter, & Zmud
A Comprehensive Conceptualization of the Post-Adoptive Behaviors Associated with IT-Enabled Work Systems

Wanda Orlikowski
The Duality of Technology: Rethinking the Concept of Technology in Organizations

Karl Weick
Technology as Equivoque: Sensemaking in New Technologies

Organization Science Special Issue: Information Technology and Organizational Form and Function

This week I had a great 90 minute conversation with two researchers from a professional association (their association wishes to remain anonymous). They opened the call with a simple, but critical question, “If a CEO wants to get ahead of the virtual work curve, what should he or she be thinking about?” My reply focused on three questions the CEO should consider:

1. Will offshoring/outsourcing be playing a role?
2. Is the organization designed to be effective at virtual work?
3. Are the managers and employees skilled in the practices and tools for supporting virtual work?

I pose the first question as it is often the reason senior management is considering large-scale virtual work. However, as multiple authors have demonstrated, these are complex issues. Aron and Singh provide clear and powerful arguments regarding the importance of being able to measure what you outsource. Chesbrough & Teece provide an additional framework, which Chesbrough has extended into the arena of “open innovation.” Barthelemy provided an early set of considerations related to the “hidden costs of outsourcing.” These authors and many others argue against chasing wage rates and provide cogent methods for making an outsourcing or offshoring decision.



The second question speaks to a point I make in the first session of each of my classes – You can’t change just one thing (and the corollary, you can’t change everything at once). Organizational design is similar to the Skwish baby toy depicted here – if you pull on one node, but do not allow the others to shift, something is going to break. If the organization has been designed for more traditional forms of work (standard hours, face-to-face interaction), it may not be effective in more virtual modes. Multiple examples come to mind of employees being placed on globally dispersed virtual teams, but with their supervisor being chosen from their physical location – and solely because of their physical location. Not all of these local managers have the information necessary to be effective at evaluation and mentoring of employees focused on work unrelated to their own. Better is to consider how the organizational structure, practices, and tools may need to adjust in concert with a shift to more virtual work. Cisco appears to understand this issue with their much publicized creation of the role of Chief Globalization Officer, and the location of this job in Bangalore, India . Wim Elfrink (CGO) says “We are at the edge of a market transition and globalization is in effect about our ability to connect the dots, uniting the right people at the right moment at the right place at the right time.” India is a playing an important role in the global economy and they are structuring to take advantage of that dynamic. It doesn’t take global Fortune 100-scale issues to put such redesign on the table. Even limited efforts at virtual work may fail if the leadership is not prepared for broader organizational change.

The third question is a more micro form of the second, is the organization’s leadership ready to assess whether adjustments are needed in selection, training, and infrastructure to support this change in work design? The process of virtual work is more complex than more traditional forms, though this complexity may offer advantages in terms of access to human and other resources. However, study after study shows that the value cannot be gained without explicit attention to the process and tools needed to support virtual work. This is the genesis of my colleagues’ and my interest in more proactive approaches.

I expect that the aforementioned professional association members are already on their way to taking a proactive approach given their interest in “getting ahead of the curve.” I hope that these three questions provide them head-start around strategic, organizational design, and managerial issues. Please feel free to comment on the proactive measures your organizations have taken as they address more virtual forms of work. If the approach instead was more evolutionary, were there triggering events that helped or hindered the process?