Question

Using an example of a contemporary information technology, describe each of Masuda’s predictions for our information society: (a) Foster voluntary communities; (b) Break down hierarchies; (c) Empower citizen movements; (d) Spur individual knowledge creation. (One technology might explain all 4, or you can use different technologies for each prediction.)

Answer 1

At the beginning of the widespread application of computers, Yoneji Masuda anticipated the emergence of an information society:

Masuda (1905–95) was one of the pioneers of computerisation in Japan. In the 1960s and 1970s, he wrote a number of important reports for the Japanese Government on the likely social impact of computers, including, in 1972, The Plan for Information Society: A National Goal toward the Year 2000. Following is an extract from one of his best-known books, The Information Society as Post-Industrial Society, published in English in 1980.

When we look back over the development of human society, we see that human history has embraced three types of society: hunting, agricultural, and industrial. It is important to note that rapid innovations in the system of societal technology have usually become axial forces that have brought about these societal transformations …

Man is now standing at the threshold of a period of innovation in a new societal technology based on the combination of computer and communications technology. This is a completely new type of societal technology, quite unlike any of the past. Its substance is information, which is invisible.

The transformation of society is the result of innovations which, in the past, have always been concerned with physical productivity. The current innovation in societal technology, however, is not concerned with the productivity of material goods, but with information productivity, and for this reason can be expected to bring about fundamental changes in human values, in trends of thought, and in the political and economic structures of society.

In industrial society, the motive power revolution resulting from the invention of the steam engine rapidly increased material productive power, and made possible the mass production of goods and services and the rapid transportation of goods. In the information society, ‘an information revolution’ resulting from development of the computer will rapidly expand information productive power, and make possible the mass production of cognitive, systematised information, technology and knowledge.

The economic structure of industrial society is characterized by

(1) a sales-oriented commodity economy

(2) specialization of production utilizing divisions of labor

(3) complete division of production and consumption between enterprise and household.

In the information society (1) information, the axis of socio-economic development, will be produced by the information utility a computer-based public infrastructure

(2) self-production of information by users will increase; information will accumulate

(3) this accumulated information will expand through synergetic production and shared utilization and

(4) the economy will change structurally from an exchange economy to a synergetic economy.

In industrial society, the most important subject of social activity is the enterprise, the economic group. There are three areas: private enterprise, public enterprise, and a third sector of government ownership and private management. In the information society, the most important subject of social activity will be the voluntary community, a socio-economic group that can be broadly divided into local communities and informational communities.

The spirit of industrial society has been the renaissance spirit of human liberation, which ethically means respect for fundamental human rights and emphasis on the dignity of the individual, and a spirit of brotherly love to rectify inequalities. The spirit of the information society will be the spirit of globalism, a symbiosis in which man and nature can live together in harmony, consisting of ethically strict self-discipline and social contribution.

Foster Community:

Foster Community is born out of the Travis County Collaborative for Children (TCCC), a bold and ambitious initiative catalyzed by the Karyn Purvis Institute of Child Development at Texas Christian University. The TCCC works to bring system-wide change to the way foster children in Travis County are cared for during, and after, their time in state custody.

Partnerships for Children serves as the backbone support for the Foster Community initiative. Launched in the fall of 2017 with support from the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, Foster Community is a network of nonprofits, government agencies and community leaders dedicated to increasing the number and diversity of healing foster and adoptive families in Central Texas. Using a grassroots community engagement strategy, a centralized website, and collaborative recruitment materials, Foster Community seeks to amplify the efforts of its partner organizations while reaching new populations to support children in foster care and their families.

Breaking down traditional hierarchies to succeed:

On day one of the HRD Summit Nilofer Merchant and Bosch's Rosa Lee described the importance of empowering people to contribute

Organisations must break down traditional hierarchies to succeed in an increasingly VUCA world, according to several speakers on day one of the 2018 HRD Summit in Birmingham.

Starting the day with a keynote speech, Thinkers50-ranked business author Nilofer Merchant described how, having disobeyed her parents in choosing further education and work over an arranged marriage, she discovered upon entering business that colleagues put her in ‘a pre-determined box' in much the same way as her family had.

“[My family] saw an Indian, Islamic girl… not an individual with unique ambitions for what she wanted for herself,” reported Merchant, relating how she quickly realised in different companies that there were always people in the room, like herself, wanting to contribute but never being asked to.

Merchant gave the example of a meeting at Apple where she researched the topic ahead of time and thought of questions she wanted to ask. “I was ready to contribute but it took just a minute to realise that no-one was making any eye contact with me,” she said.

The same pattern kept playing out: “It was only MBA types in this room [that got to contribute], only sales and marketing in this room… in this room the CEO is in charge,” Merchant reported. “And at any given time there were people sat there ready to help solve the problems of the day but they got passed over.”

Breaking down such hierarchies and preconceived assumptions about different sorts of people could be the key, however, to ensuring businesses succeed in challenging times, Merchant said: “I thought ‘that could be the disruptive force for how business changes,'" she said.

“We are at a crisis moment when we can’t come up with fresh ideas… [but we can] use our people to do that,” she said, adding that not being able to innovate as a company “isn’t a minor problem”.

“These people can help you innovate to the future,” she stated.

Also speaking at the event, senior VP of Bosch corporate HR Rosa Lee, shared the way her company has started to adopt less formal, Scrum, project-based approaches.

The company has started dispensing with formal titles and making hiring decisions as teams, Lee reported. Bosch also trialled team compensation, where staff determined each others’ pay. But employees said they didn’t feel ready for this even after nine months of agile working, reported Lee.

She described how HR systems must change to support less hierarchical, more agile ways of working. “None of the existing HR systems will work” in such a context, she said, citing the example of performance management. Describing how Bosch has now shifted to become an Internet of Things (IoT) business, Lee said: “In a software business you do projects every six to eight months so you don’t have a manager who can appraise you annually.”

Such a significant shift has not been without challenges, related Lee. People like to belong to certain departments and stratas within organisations, she explained, with staff at first feeling that they no longer “had their home turf” and had lost their identities.

She added that, despite being highly worthwhile eventually, “it’s very difficult to do team feedback”.

Speaking at another session, on ‘Getting people to drive commercial performance in VUCA times', managing director at Notion Dominic Ashley-Timms stressed the scale of the challenge an ever-quickening pace of change presents, highlighting that world knowledge now doubles every 13 months. (Compared with the end of World War II for example, when it's thought world knowledge was doubling every 25 years.)

Regarding the need for organisations to rapidly experiment, innovate and move in new directions, Ashley-Timms quoted writer and speaker Reva Basch, urging companies to realise the power “not of hiring cleverer people to come up with answers, but of getting people to ask better questions”.

Educate. Empower. Revolt:

This analysis examines how citizen journalism in two very resource-poor areas in India is mobilizing communities and sparking movements demanding change. The Video Volunteers and CGNET Swara are two citizen journalism organizations that work in Central India, in areas whose human and development indexes are among the lowest in the country. Citizen journalism has been studied both as a consequence and as an instigator of social revolution. The Arab Spring movement and the case of Mohamed Bouazizi in the 2010 Tunisian uprisings are prominent recent examples. But citizen journalism in these and similar cases usually focus on the framing of martyr narratives where individuals and their protests or reactions against human rights atrocities make them “a symbol of the struggle for justice, dignity and freedom.” Through a content analysis of 400 news stories posted in the year 2015–2016 and qualitative interviews with 30 participants and a focus group of 15 participants, this study analyses how the Video Volunteers and CGNET Swara train citizens to produce news, the kinds of frame that are used to mobilize audiences, and encourage them to articulate outrage against the many human rights atrocities that occur in these areas. Findings show that citizen journalism succeeds because of the culturally resonant frames used and effective frame alignment that resonate with their main audiences and producers. The news produced and disseminated activates connective structures to facilitate collective action among audiences and communities who earlier had little means or recourse to address such issues. This collective action encourages participants to gather offline to fight for their demands and positively transform their communities.

Knowledge Creation :

The ability to create new knowledge is often at the heart of the organization's competitive advantage. Sometimes this issue is not treated as part of knowledge management since it borders and overlaps with innovation management (Wellman 2009). Since I chose a broader knowledge management definition, I very much regard it as a part of the process, and I will refer (albeit superficially) to some theories that pertain to innovation.

Knowledge creation according to the Nonaka's SECI model is about continuous transfer, combination, and conversion of the different types of knowledge, as users practice, interact, and learn. Cook and Brown (1999) distinguish between knowledge and knowing, and suggest that knowledge creation is a product of the interplay between them. The shift in condition between the possession of knowledge and the act of knowing - something that comes about through practice, action, and interaction- is the driving force in the creation of new knowledge. Furthermore, in order for this interplay to be most fruitful, it is important to support unstructured work environments in areas where creativity and innovation are important.

Knowledge sharing and knowledge creation thus go hand in hand. Knowledge is created through practice, collaboration, interaction, and education, as the different knowledge types are shared and converted. Beyond this, knowledge creation is also supported by relevant information and data which can improve decisions and serve as building blocks in the creation of new knowledge.

Managing Knowledge Creation

The role of management in the knowledge creation process is thus as follows:

To enable and encourage knowledge sharing: On the tactical side, as described in the previous subsection, management must understand where and in what forms knowledge exists. They must then provide the right forums for knowledge to be shared. For tacit knowledge this implies a particular emphasis on informal communication, while for explicit knowledge this implies a focus on a variety of IT systems. On the strategic side (to be discussed in-depth later), management must create/design the right environments, processes, and systems that provide the means and willingness for it to take place.

To create a suitable work environment: This includes the notion of creating an interplay between knowledge and knowing. It implies offering relevant courses and education, but most importantly allowing new knowledge to be created through interaction, practice, and experimentation. Botha et al (2008) point to the importance of shared experiences in the knowledge creation process when dealing with tacit knowledge, and the need for an environment where these can be formed. March (1988) discusses how our cultural norms often stifle innovation and new knowledge creation. He advocates environments where we recognize that goals can be created through action, where intuition is accepted and valued, and where experience is nothing more than a theory. These concepts bring us back to the concept of theory in use (referring to work environments that do not follow strict, "official" rules and procedures), and the acceptance and support of environments that allow brainstorming, trial and error, and unstructured interaction.

As an example, from innovation theory, one can refer to the practice of establishing teams to solve problems, unhindered by the bureaucracy that may exist in the firm. Peters (1988) refers to the value of chaos and the advantage of smaller, fast-acting teams. One common alternative is the use of cross-functional project teams. These are usually a group of experts from different parts of the organization, led by a "generalist" project leader. If these teams are allowed the freedom to experiment and work in an autonomous, or virtually autonomous environment, it can be a great catalyst for innovation and new knowledge creation. Then, once the task is complete, the members return to their role in the organization, helping to spread this knowledge back into their own community of practice. The project team itself can also facilitate the creation of bridges between communities of practice, and at times may even serve as a way to extend them. Variations of this concept can be seen in several places in innovation theory, notably in Nonaka and Takeuchi's self-organizing project teams in the hypertext organization.

To provide systems that support the work process: These can be groupware systems that facilitate communication or brainstorming. However, they must not interfere with creative processes or communities of practice, or enforce rigid organizational practices (espoused theory).

To provide knowledge workers with timely, relevant information and data. In today's fast paced environment this is virtually synonymous with the implementation of IT systems which can store, retrieve, organize, and present information and data in a helpful way.

IT and Knowledge Creation

The use of IT is very much the same as it is for knowledge sharing, allowing for some degree of support in the transfer of all knowledge types. One important aspect is that it must support, and not interfere with, informal collaboration. For example, groupware systems can be used to enhance communication between communities or teams, particularly if they support varied (e.g. video, audio, text - according to the needs of the individual firm), informal communication.

Apart from this, IT also has an important role through information management, by providing access to data and information, and allowing the manager to perform in-depth analyses. More than that, IT systems can also be programmed to spot trends in data and information and present that to the manager. This essentially enables the manager to make better decisions and aids knowledge creation by providing some of the building blocks for new knowledge.

IT tools can also be used in the innovation process (e.g. tools used in the actual product design), but these are outside the scope of knowledge management.

Conclusion

In conclusion, knowledge creation depends upon the mechanisms described in the subsection on knowledge sharing, combined with the ability to put knowledge into practice in an environment which supports interaction and experimentation. The creative process is a delicate one, and it is easily ruined by strict adherence to rules and regulations, or by bureaucracy. Similarly IT systems must be implemented with care (as discussed above), and not attempt to replace processes vital to knowledge creation.