|
Position Paper UK-Nordic
Mogens Kühn Pedersen and Jens Hoff
1. What is the task? ICT is a basic technology the growth of which has had an immense impact on both work an leisure for hundreds of millions of people around the world. The growth of the ICT industry has changed the structure of trades and industries in numerous countries. This is especially true for countries such as the USA, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong and India. At the level of the work place ICT has created new types of jobs, demanded new job qualifications and brought forward the establishment of new educations on both the vocational and the academic level. ICT has also altered the borderline between work and leisure through such phenomena as distance work and distance education. Looking at leisure ICT has introduced new modes of entertainment and enlightenment. The PC has become a powerful instrument for both through the constant upgrading of data power, the introduction of CD-ROMs, multimedia techniques and the connection of the PC to global electronic networks. Politically, the establishment of a global information infrastructure, and the move towards an "information society", has caused numerous governments around the world as well as supranational entities such as the OECD and the EU to formulate (national) strategies for the "information society", and to give these strategies high priority. This development has been spurred by the possibilities created by the Internet for massive transferral of data and information and for global electronic commerce. Whereas the social sciences seem to be well aware of the great importance ICT has for the development of society, it is an open question whether the social sciences have developed adequate theories for grasping all the nuances in this development. Thus, empirical research on the importance of ICT for work and leisure seem to have been marked by on the one hand rather critical and pessimistic considerations on technology, and on the other hand by technology optimists, who have seen ICT as a solution to a number of societal problems. However, time seem to have come for a more thorough investigation of the links between the theories of social science and the development of ICT. It might be useful to pose such fundamental questions as: "what impact has the development of ICT, and the different descriptions of this, had on the development of social science theory?" and "Why is social science research on ICT important for society, business and citizens?"
2. Concepts about ICT in the social sciences Apart from the massive material impact ICT has had on society, ICT has also advanced ways of thinking of importance for the social sciences. Examples are network models (# data communication, Internet), organisational memory (#databases), and group ware and teams creating opportunities for new forms of work division and specialisation based on goal attainment and precise descriptions of work processes (# "demand specifications" and other methods for development of information systems). "Cyberspace" and "virtual reality" designates organisational potentials and capacities with no ownership - potentials and capacities which cannot be managed by the known utilities (#WAIS(database search engine), the Internet, WWW, push-technologies, etc.) Thus, in the social sciences we do now encounter concepts like "the virtual organisation", "the extended firm", "distance work", "informated work", and new resources, which cannot be reduced to traditional descriptions of production factors. The concepts mentioned above also functions as images setting out the outline of future society. The best example of such concepts is probably the concept of "network" with the Internet, and its related images of "cyberspace", "global village", etc. as the primary example. In a social science perspective the real challenge seems to be whether this development - a development which is itself inspired or led by these highly suggestive images - can be adequately analysed by existing theories, or whether it requires new theories or a new paradigm in order for us to fully understand its social implications. This question is not easily answered, but what we can do at the moment is to point to a number of paradoxes, where apparently incongruent entities are united in a certain "practice". This confronts researchers with the question about the causes for this "congruence" in practice but "incongruence" in theory. These paradoxes heavily emphasise the need to develop both theory and methodology within this field. Whether this will lead to a further "balkanization" of the social sciences or to paradigms of a more uniting character is impossible to foresee. At the moment both paths of development seem possible. The paradoxes are as follows: 3. Paradoxes The organisation paradox Information and communication technology enables ways of organising work more numerous and different than we can presently describe. Organisation and inter-organisation merge in institutional theory but at a level of abstraction that does not offer any clues as how to describe and assess the variety of issues listed below. Presently we are left with major gaps between organisational practice and organisation theory. 1. Recent developments of ICT has created possibilities for a radical decentralization but simultaneously for a radical centralization. ICT thus dissolves the traditional theoretical antagonism between centralization and decentralization. 2. ICT enables supervision of activities, tasks, employees, etc., down to the minute detail, but ICT also enables individual solutions and adaptation to special cases thus challenging the distinction between control and autonomy. 3. Face-to-face presence in time and space used to be the prerequisite to management and cooperation within an organisation. The telephone cut off the requirement of presence in space but left the need to communicate in synchronous time. The option of telephone meetings did provide some convenience for 3 to 4 persons meeting but not for larger meetings. Businesses operating in several localities in response to international competition has created a tremendous demand for communication vehicles. In most companies the requirement for meetings have been met with by travelling as a high and increasing amount of business travelling proves. Transfer schemes for junior managers between the sites of a corporation have become another solution to the need for communication through community building within a distributed organisation. Both schemes are deficient in terms of either costs or in developing a common business culture and its dynamics. Turning to telecommunications equipment the fax machine has penetrated very fast and completely into business worldwide but has had no effect upon the business culture. Now, the Internet is diffusing worldwide with an even shorter time lag, though in particular in the industrialised countries. Does the Internet applications create a new common business culture and thereby offer common conditions and contingencies for managing multi-site businesses without having to face differences in business culture? 4. Will the Internet applications contribute to the refurbishment of the organisation to ensure its cohesiveness as well as its performance by the establishment of a set of norms written as operational excellence in cyberspace? 5. The Internet has also challenged ways of organising by expanding the effective environment of the organisation far beyond its own premises and neighbours. The Internet has therefore stimulated the use of virtual teams and organisation, meaning that there is no rock solid boundary between the organisation and the environment, since relationships may be unfolding and changing just as is the Internet. Will the virtual organisation rest less upon its cohabitants or coworkers and more upon task interdependence across space and time at a global level? Will the technologies of the Internet also create a common denominator for the virtual organisation? Will the virtual organisation set the standards for the physical organisation though in fact being based upon the latter? 6. Does ICT, that has been implemented in the organisation, compartmentalise social relationship without fragmenting the organisation because of the interdependencies created by the networking of distributed information system (like the client-server structure of the Internet and of intranet systems)? 7. Does ICT coalesce in the shape of new business procedures transforming the nature of the overall organisation in ways nobody has planned for? In other words, is ICT unpredictable in its harness of social relations in spite of the planned nature of all ICT and ICT implementation? 8. How does management in terms of corporate policy and customer support cope with an open organisation, reflecting the increasing number of access points available to customers and interested parties to the business? Issuing guidelines and restrictions, a variety of templates or setting up new public relations offices as elements in an information policy have been advocated. Can ICT not be managed by fiat since users demand are uncontrollable while management cannot manage without ICT in order to cope with the level of complexity of organisation? 9. Multi-site business operating worldwide using modern communication technologies meet the restriction of a short or non-existing time slot for direct (real time) communication. Does the window of communication amongst significant partners grows smaller in spite of the increasing communication capacity? 10. The information systems operating business transactions and processes constitutes a new vehicle for time-dependency within the organisation. Adopting agents (small applications) to conduct transactions and monitor processes takes over responsibility for specific decision making and "timing" from employees or middle management. What does these agents "take over" from the organisation? Does the principle of one (dominant) rationality of organisation become obsolete? How do theory cope with a dual organisation, one unit based upon human interaction and another one based upon digital work and digital communication?What would be the organisation interface between digital operations in one company unit and operations in another? Which new features and models would be needed to encompass all significant aspects of the dual organisation? 11. If managers claim that their business organisations are both learning, optimising, networking and experimenting would they then implement several different types of success criteria? How do they manage "polyvalent" organisations? Is a polyvalent organisation coherent due to the scope of values cherished or will coherence only emerge as a result of the common denominator, the accounting system? 12. If large companies (like IBM) have hundreds of different accounting systems that are incommensurable would this imply that one company cannot be considered one organisation? When is an organisation not one organisation anymore? When does one organisation multiply and into what kind(s) of organisation?
The information paradox What we control we can measure. What we can measure, we may not be able to control (the weather, the social behavior). What we may not know, we may want to know (the motives of the accused criminal to be presented for the court by the prosecutor, the reasons for middle managers behavior). What we don’t know that we know may cause failures or surprises from which we learn (thus learning to know). Etc.! Knowledge is both within and outside the human being representing the subjectiveness of being at the same time as the objectivity of being like others (sharing knowledge). What we don’t know that we don’t know may not be a fixed limit of human cognition because we develop tools that push the limits "further out"! This is the case in the sciences. Is it also the case in the social sciences? It seems to be the case that productive technologies are embraced by entrepreneurs and companies and that the conditions of production are bound to be changed in the wake of the diffusion of technologies. How does technologies manifest themselves to the human being as a social being rather than as "a mechanism of acts"? How far does these changes penetrate into the social relationships, organisations and institutions of society? What is the media of penetration and sedimentation of the technologies? These are all pertinent questions subject to social research. Basic to all these questions we may suggest the existence of a phenomenon that we call information! Why we do not call it language is for the reason of tools. While a language is fully available to all human beings as part of their biological and physical organs information is only availble by a media. The media may be (hand-) print, painting, photo, telegraph, telephone, fax, television or it may be some computer and a network. The tools for handling information is thus not external to information but a defining aspect. The tools generally make for multiplicating the audience, or/and for extending the reach, or/and for storage of the information for some while. Do the information and communication technologies represent another kind of tool than those available as extension of the brute force of man? Do we need to consider new models of ICT in the context of the social sciences because ICT has become so ubiquituous that we experience a change in our way of working and living as well as in our capacity to express ourselves? Or do we need to reconsider these technologies because the digital technology has created the (opportunity to create) reflective media, that is, media that are interactive? 1. By the very definition of information, information is ubiquituous. If any limits to information exist then it must be local limitations, since a global limitation cannot be determined as we know of no way, means or vehicles with which to consider the "amount" of information. If we only have local information we are bound to consider the information incomplete though we do not know how to capture "complete" information. 2. Information is a necessary precondition for decision making. The more complex the problem the more information is required to decide. But the more information available the more complex decision making becomes, which demands even more information to manage. 3. Is any given information ever enough (satisfying)? The question of "enough" information is only possible to answer ex post: did we actually need (use) all available information for this decision? In daily life the question of enough information is only of interest ex ante: what information is enough to be effective, that is to ensure the goal-attainment? 4. Information interpreted as meaning rests its case upon the presumption of trust in the people who’s symbolic action is perceived. So the trust in information is a matter of trust in the source of information. How "much" information about the source is necessary to create "a measure" of trust in information from that source? 5. Whether the information required to build trust is a function of the source, the message itself or a function of the "credibility" of the message as perceived by the individual, it may all come down to repetition (quantity of times received). When is information repeated (with a trust building effect) and when is information the same (and tedious)!
6. The information systems of the 90s have inscribed many a hidden routine within the host organisation. Few if anyone has a full knowledge or a map of all the time sensitive routines including the network. Neither do we find a semantic representation of the semi-automatic intelligent agents that increasingly populate the Internet and the different organisations. How do we inscribe the logics of timing and acting based upon these agents in the organisation chart and in the management’s knowledge of the organisation? 7. With the advent of the Internet we would have to consider the firm of today in terms not only of human relationships and tasks but also in terms of the types and numbes of agent embedded in various real-time and on-line information processing systems. Does the reality of organising outpace the capacity to reflect social relationship in the models of organisation theory? So, is there no organisation but only organising left to consider? 8. Having associated the information and communication technologies with information we have embedded information in history, since these tools are historical creations. If history matters to the tools how does the changing format of information matter to history? Is there any history to be told irrespective of our means to create history through means of information? 9. While we reckon tools to be subject to management according to efficiency and effectiveness we would be inclined to extend the managerial obligation to information. Can we apply the same managerial instruments to information as we can to the technologies of information and communication? Why is the information behavior unaccountable for in terms of the technologies of information? 10. Acknowledging information we are questioned how to distinguish between kinds or types or phenomena of information. Can we distinguish between information and information, in terms of information? Or is it only in terms of media (tools) that we distinguish between information?
The power paradox Discussing power in relation to ICT is most often done in two ways. The first way is closely related to, or implicitely accepts, a certain technology determinism. This approach is prone to discuss how strongly ICT (in and of itself) has changed society in almost all respects. It is a systems-type of approach which operate at a macro-level. Parallel to this is an approach at the micro-level, which try to look at the ways is which concrete uses of ICT in for example one-stop-shops or electronic self-service systems empower or disempower citizens. Both type of approaches has its optimists and its pessimists. Some researchers and commentaters tend to believe that these "technologies of freedom" will create a new era of affluence and increased autonomy for almost everyone, while others point to increasing social polarization and increased registration and supervision of citizens as the main result of the new technologies. However, even though both of these approaches deal explicitely with the "power of ICT", the question of power in relation to this specific technology is most often not dealt with or only dealt with rather superficially. The reason for this might not only be the theoretical deficiencies of the reasearchers working with these questions, but might also be caused by the problems posed by using known theories of power within this field. Thus, a traditional power analysis in which central concepts are resources, capabilities, actors and strategies is rather useless confronted with for example the millions of actors on the Internet, and their differing and ad hoc participation. A modern power analysis emphasising the social construction of meaning and membership resulting in different "fields of power" might bring us closer to an understanding. However, it will still have difficulties in analysing an area in which there is only in certain places fixed rules for the creation of meaning and membership, and where these units are constantly under construction or reconstruction. A whole number of questions are therefore raised when we try to analyze ICT in terms of power. Operating within a traditional framework of power such questions might be: a) how is ICT used (as a resource or a capability) by different societal actors in their pursuit of certain goals? b) does ICT expand the range of possible strategies in intra- and interorganizational games? c) does ICT systematically benefit certain actors at the expense of others? d) how should ICT-applications be designed or what should they look like in order for them to empower citizens?, etc., etc. Operating within a (post-)modern framework of power interesting questions will be: e) what linqustic elements or codes constitute the discourse around ICT? f) what does this mean in terms of the inclusion or exclusion of certain themes and g) what does this mean in terms of possible choices for actors? h) how can these relations be said to express a certain "strategic situation" in society? i) what power relations does this situation mirror? etc., etc. However, both of these frameworks of power could be insufficient if we want to grasp the "power of ICT" in all its details. Indeed, ICT seem to challenge the known approaches to power, and to force us to rethink and reformulate fundamental categories in the power litterature.
The democracy paradox The last ten years have witnessed a boom in litterature on ICT and democracy. However, most of this litterature has a narrow technological point of departure, focusing on either: a) how ICT can finally realize the essence of Athenian democracy: much (direct) democracy for the many, or b) how ICT has made the road towards a totalitarian state both easier and faster. However, little of the litterature within this area has untill now been empirically based, dealing with questions of how different uses of ICT has actually affected democracy in given (national) contexts. The litterature which has shows that untill now the ICT-applications used within the "political world" have basically served to support or strengthen existing forms of democracy. Thus, there is an uneasy and unsatisfactory relationship between ICT and democratic theory. The paradox seems to be that on the one hand ICT has a real potential for innovations in political and democratic practices, but for some reason this potential is either poorly understood and/or suboptimally used. A host of questions seem to pose themselves in order to sort out this paradox. Such questions are for example: a) is a breakthrough in democratic theory a necessary precondition for the development of new ICT-supported forms of democracy at both the local, national and international level? or b) can experiments with new forms of democracy enabled by ICT lead to the formulation of new models of democracy? c) how is the (problematic) relationship between the individual and the community handled in such models? d) is it possible to give the concept "cyberdemocracy" some real substance?, etc. Do politicians, chief executives and civil servants believe in easy solutions to some of the mentioned paradoxes? Will more research in IT along the current lines just be a way of bypassing these questions? Are the researchers able to handle the paradoxes, and produce anwers to the many questions raised?
4. Towards a renewal of theory and methodology When it comes to technology in general, and ICT in particular, social science have used two different "strategies" in dealing with this topic. One strategy has been to deal with technology as a phenomenon which is linked to issues already under consideration or analysis within a given field of social science. Thus, the role of technology is read into or spelled out within these issues and therefore analysed with the existing theoretical tools within a given dicipline. Political science, for example, have tried to understand technology using concepts based on theories on power or democracy, sociology has tried to understand it by looking at changes in the autonomy and world images of individuals and groups, management theory has analysed ICT as a tool for management and organizational development, law has focused on problems of legal security, electronic copyright, encryption, contracts, etc. Thus, what this strategy does is just to add technology or ICT to the list of interesting and analyzeable items thereby continuing the trend of "balkanization" of the social sciences mentioned above. Another strategy has been to look at technology or sociotechnical ensembles as social phenomena sui generis, which therefore creates a need to develop both a special methodology and a special theory in order to properly describe and analyze them. Such an approach is apparent in for example the increasingly popular "social construction of technology" theory. This theory builds on a number of insights from the natural sciences, sociology, anthropology, semiotics, political science and probably even more diciplines, and in this way represents a synthezising theoretical effort. As such it is parallel to other current synthesizing efforts within the social sciences; for example governance theory (concerning the study of interorganizational networks) of the new institutionalism. Both of these theoretical approaches have also, or is now being used for studying (information-)technology; the latter especially in relation to socalled "large technical systems". Even though each of these syntesizing efforts have their own study objects they can also, because of the very broad range of these objects, to a certain extent be said to represent new attempts at establishing "grand theory" or all-encompassing paradigms within the social sciences. However, all of the three will probably resist this label, and emphasize that their ambitions are more modest: to explain or understand a certain phenomenon within a given context and time frame. This modesty is probably caused by the fact that the three theoretical approaches have certain things in common: Firstly, they all - to a greater or lesser extent - depart from a constructivist or anti-essentialist worldview (onthology). Secondly, they have all found solutions to the actor-structure dilemma, leaving room both for actor autonomy as well as an understanding of the constraining/enabling dimension of structures. This also means that researchers working within these approaches have been able to engage in both micro and macro level studies. Thirdly, they all - to a greater or lesser extent - use or recommend an inductively oriented research methodology. Which of these two strategies; the dicipline oriented or the synthesizing that has most analytical milage in terms of ICT is impossible to foresee at the moment. The wisest thing to do therefore seems to be to allow for both a theoretical and methodological pluralism, and hope that such pluralism can bring answers to just some of the many research questions raised above.
5. Themes for workshops Pointing out themes for workshops is to move yet another step forward. It is to recommend, to be normative, and most likely to be subjective. To mirror the treatment of ICT in the social sciences as a whole is an ambitious endeavor. Our suggestions basically relates to political science, business economics and sociology. The role of law, history, anthropology, social psychology, etc. has to a large extent been ignored; basically out of sheer ignorance. However, having considered a number of paradoxes that seem to extend the issues well beyond our disciplines, we hope to have opened avenues also for the development of and contributions from other disciplines. We have chosen paradoxes to sketch a number of issues that we link to ICT. Themes for workshops could then be the paradoxes. Our suggestion is to organize two workshops: one around the organisation and the information paradox and another around the power and the democracy paradoxes. This because such focus would seem to have some correspondance with divides within the relevant research community. Another approach could be to focus on either the different theoretical approaches discussed above or on different research methodologies, and then let such dimensions constitute the basis for the two different workshops. We look forward to a further debate on these matters October 14. Jens Hoff and Mogens Kühn Pedersen
|
Return to top of page Page developed by Christine Hine |