Notes from: Raine, Lee and Barry Wellman. 2012. Networked: The New Social Operating System. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.

PART II: HOW NETWORKED INDIVIDUALISM WORKS

CHAPTER 7 – NETWORKED WORK

Introduction

• Secretaries, typewriters, cubicles, pen stands, and bottles of scotch were once indispensable features of the modern American office (see 10 “extinct” Mad Men era office staples:
• William H. Whyte’s 1956 observations of corporate America in The Organization Man paint a less fictional and more archetypical picture of how men conformed to and worked in hierarchal organizational structures.
• Much has changed since then, however.
• The Internet, Mobile, and Social Network Revolutions have transformed how we work.
• Following the Industrial Revolution, large factories and offices, small retail groups, and solitary workers (e.g., long-haul truck drivers) dominated the image of production and distribution.
• Such were the prototypes of the post-WWII Keynesian and Fordist moments of economic growth in America.
• Many Americans now work in a global economy.
• There are three caveats relevant to understanding how networked individuals do networked work in networked organizations:
• Rainie and Wellman’s analysis is tentative because there is more information on how networked organizations should operate than there is on how they actually operate.
• Neither all workers nor all organizations in North America have become connected.
• In many developed countries, only a small percentage of the global workforce use information and communications technologies (ICTs) to enhance their connectivity.
•  Searching for Work in the Digital Era. Aaron Smith. Pew Research Center: Internet, Science, and Tech, November 19, 2015 (pdf)

Fostering the Turn to Networked Work in Networked Organizations

Five trends have helped to precipitate networked work in networked organizations

1. The globalization of work, consumerism, and travel has extended corporate reach.
2. Many developed countries have shifted from atom work (processing materials) to bit work (processing information).
3. The Internet and Mobile Revolutions accelerated this shift to bit work.
4. The internet made it possible for organizations and workplaces to exist anywhere.
5. Mobile technologies made it possible for some bit workers to work from anywhere.  

The Diffusion and Use of ICTs

• Organizations and civilizations have always achieved long-distance communication.
• Egyptian granaries were used to help feed the Roman Empire.
• Morse code and the telegraph, railroads, and landline telephones facilitated long-distance networking, but these types of communication and connection were relatively slow, intermittent, and expensive.
• A major transformation occurred when computers, at one time giant mainframes that could fill an entire room—1951 UNIVAC I, became smaller, more personal, and user friendly—1984 Macintosh.
• Annual corporate IT investment increased $5 billion to $35 billion between 1970 and 2008.
• As of 2011, personal ICT technologies were so diffused throughout the public at large that 76% of full-time workers and 53% of part-time workers used the internet for work.
• Now most homes and workplaces have at least one personal computer and internet access.
• The Pew Internet Networked Workers Survey (2008) revealed that among networked workers:
• 93% own a cell phone, compared with 78% of all American adults.
• 85% own a desktop computer, compared with 65% of all adults.
• 61% own a laptop computer, compared with 39% of all adults.
• 27% own a Blackberry, Palm or other personal digital assistant, compared with 13% of all adults.
• ICTs are more diffused now than ever, connecting workers at unprecedented rates and making life at work more relaxing and leisurely.
• In fact, the same 2008 survey found that shopping is among the most popular online leisure activities at work, with 22% of employed internet users reporting at least some at-work purchasing.
• With these technological innovations, compared to workers who do not use ICTs, networked workers work longer hours, are more stressed, and are often distracted by online activities. Yet, overall, networked workers are also more productive, collaborative, and flexible

How Networked Workers Operate

• If the Mad Men era workgroups could be defined as being confined to “fishbowl” office spaces, the networked organization is more like a “switchboard”.
• Instead of all interpersonal communications being visible, as if in a fishbowl, workers are able to plug in directly with one another.  
• Information shared within and without the networked organization now resembles “cloud” storage more than personal desktop storage.
• Being autonomous, creative, collaborative, dispersible, and flexible are qualities both desired and fostered in the networked worker.
• These features can also cause issues in networked work. Building a sense of loyalty to an organization and completing projects in a timely manner can be difficult when workers frequently move around, collaborate, and span workgroups and organizational boundaries.
• The use of ICTs at work facilitates friendship and productivity by encouraging multiplex relationships—people who socialize with one another as both friends and colleagues at work.
• Workplace design in networked organizations favors open, fluid spatial arrangement that encourages interactions: Enter the Googleplex.

The Rise of Networked Organizations

• The flatter, more decentralized, and less hierarchical organizational structure of networked organizations appear to promote more interdepartmental communication, “glocal” relationships, multitasking, and knowledge brokering.
• Informal interaction and sociability are encouraged to develop supportive networks of information exchange.
• Decentralized networks nurture efficacies for collaborative problem-solving, creativity, and autonomy to find and use knowledge.

• An organization’s structure is strongly influenced by the central technology the organization uses. By the same token, organizations can shape technological change through their ability to affect the supply and demand for a particular technology.
• This interdependent view of organizations and technological change runs counter to the notion that technology develops independently and solely determines organization behavior, performance, and progress (see technological determinism).

• The picture of flexible and creative teams collaborating in a networked organization may seem too appealing to be resisted by any organization, but in reality, many organizations continue to operate as traditional bureaucratic hierarchies in whole or in part.

Working in Multiple Teams

• The trend toward working as a part of a self-directed team seems to be growing. Pew Internet has found that:
• 64% of American workers work in at least one team.
• 41% work with multiple teams.
• 23% work with only one workgroup.
• 15% work with at least five teams.
• At another extreme, 30% of Americans work alone as shopkeepers, truck drivers, etc.
• The Intel Company exemplifies an organization that employs multiple teams of bit workers who collaborate globally using ICTs.
• Cultural diversity and spatial spread within a team do not appear to diminish performance, but using incompatible ICTs does.

Blurring the Home-Work Boundary

• With all of the innovative means of connecting people and doing work that have come packaged in with the Internet and Mobile revolutions, there has also been a blurring of the boundaries between work life and home life.
• This blurring does not take place between just home and work. Some networked workers have become “teleworkers”, working not only from home, but also from planes, trains, and automobiles.
• 60% of American workers do some work from home, 18% work from home almost every day, and 63% make or receive phone calls related to work during the weekends and on sick days.
• Family sociologists suggest that telework can present both an obstacle and solution to what they refer to as the “work-life balance”.
• While being able to work from almost anywhere may be a convenience for some, depending on occupation, others reported to Pew Internet that blurred home-work boundaries increase working hours and intensify stress.
• Some teleworkers such as Olivia, who took part in the Connected Lives study, report that they enjoy being able to control their workflow from home, but also fear that their careers may be limited if they are not “visible”—not meeting their colleagues face-to-face on a regular basis.

Net and Jet: Entrepreneurs Linking North America and China

• As much as dependence upon and innovative uses of ICTs have soared, so has airline travel.
• Networked organizations also rely on in-person contact to build interorganizational trust.
• Though internet and mobile networking may be viable for most information exchanges between Chinese and Canadian entrepreneurs, “jet setting” is required to gain “tacit knowledge: the unwritten lore of organizational memories and know-how.”  

The Distributed Designs of the Boeing 777 and 787 Airliners

• The design of the Boeing 777 needed to be completed quickly, and so the company relied on global interorganizational collaboration to finish the project. More than a dozen countries participated in the design process.
• Face-to-face team- and trust-building were essential to the design process, and the use of ICTs enabled successful collaboration between virtual teams. ICTs supported four dimensions of virtual collaboration:
• Task coordination between virtual team members.
• External connectivity needed to link the virtual teams with outside organizations.
• “Distributed cognition” across team members, allowing them to engage their own diverse perspectives.
• The use of optimal interactive media to share ideas.
• When working on the 787 project, Boeing extended their distributed networked organizational structure beyond simply linking bits—ideas. They attempted to link atoms—parts. This resulted in a collaborative nightmare between Boeing and parts suppliers. This set the project back by three years and billions of dollars. 

Networked Work On and Offline

• ICTs afford both possibilities and constraints, and the shift from organization men to networked individuals in networked organizations has made work at the same time more flexible and more tenuous. 
• While meeting face-to-face may be needed to gain tacit knowledge about other organizations and share in social cues, ICTs can be used to enable long-distance relationships.

Above all, the time and space flexibility afforded by ICTs fits the emerging networked organizational structure and networked individualism.

Chapter 8: Culture from, Van Dijk. 2012. The Network Society, 3rd edition. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Chapter 8: Networked Creators

Back to The Networked Society Lecture Notes

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