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Who will decide?
PEST Analysis | SWOT Analysis
Control | Policies
Problems are meant to be solved. Issues are meant to be debated. As we move into the 21st century, what will happen? What should happen?
What are packet-switched distributed networks, aka the Internet, doing to organizations? They are transforming (1999 | 2000 | 2001) them.
From Wired News: All companies must become Internet companies or die, Intel chairman Andy Grove told an Irish business audience three years ago.
Is it a revolution? Or just the same old power trips, except with computers?
As a manager, what are the principles and rules upon which you base your actions? For an organization, what principles and rules -- what policies -- guide decisions?
In the larger society, these principles and rules are called public policy. If politics is the art of making the trade-offs and compromises that turn public policy into law, then the public policy debate is the seemingly never-ending public discussion of these issues. You need to be aware of current public policy issues and to keep up with some of them in detail.
MBA
Programs Are Going Back to School
by Jennifer Merritt
Business Week, May 7, 2001
A new crop of deans faces pressure to improve the way B-schools prepare grads for a complex workplace. ... Another missing ingredient: subjects such as ethics, the environment, and public policy. B-schools mostly have relegated those topics to unpopular electives or a few words in a case-study discussion, something corporate recruiters have begun to grumble about.
A Whole New
B-School
by Des Dearlove and Stuart Crainer
Industry Standard, April 16, 2001
The economy is down. Applications are up. But the tech
revolution has changed the MBA forever. ... The courses at top MBA schools have
been overhauled to reflect the changed business landscape. New-economy case
studies are now de rigueur, and the number of specialized classes in high tech,
e-business and telecom is growing. ...
"Everyone in corporate America has an Internet strategy," says Phil
Anderson, associate professor at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.
"MBAs have to learn how to operate in a connected world." ...
The old curriculum was geared to the slower rhythms of the old economy, and
content gathered dust as it was recycled year after year. Today's MBA students
don't want to pay for ancient history lessons.
When Will
We Start Taking Business Seriously?
Slouching Toward a Theory of Post-Businessism
by Christopher Locke
Monday, April 16, 2001
Business is beleaguered today from all sides. The
corporation is not only expected to financially reward the faith placed in it by
investors, it must also value diversity among its employees, be sensitive to
environmental concerns, and play a positive role in the development of the
community, whether municipality or nation. In short, business is expected to
behave in a socially responsible manner. Which expectation, as we know, is often
honored in the breach. Some business leaders argue that this is no surprise,
given that social responsibility is only an expectation, not an intrinsic
part of the corporate charter, which is: to maximize shareholder profit.
But such argumentative retorts tend to be few, or are delivered only sotto
voce. “The public be damned” has not been a popular stance since the
days of J.P. Morgan. Not that it was all that popular then. Instead, we get
press releases full of earnest genuflections to diversity, environment,
community. Anything else would be tantamount to dissing Mom’s apple pie.
The emerging digital world will have always-on everywhere embedded networked computers, trillions of them. Humanity's brain. Is it just like the offline world, only parallel? Customs? We know that the emerging digital world has different customs, accompanied by a different vocabulary. Email etiquette is not the same as typed-and-snailmailed letter etiquette.
But what about laws? Does the emerging digital world need laws and regulations and policies different from those in the old analog world? Regardless of whether you answer yes or no, who will decide?
Will it be a current government? Which one?
Will it be a corporation? Which one?
Will it be a group of well-meaning, disinterested experts? If you could find any, who would appoint or elect them?
After the decisions are made, will it make any difference? If the decisions can't be enforced in computer code, that is, to the extent that we're talking about human behavior, who will monitor and enforce that behavior?
Online, who's in control?
Learn more about the importance of net neutrality and its proponent Lawrence Lessig.
What's on the Shoreline web?
Using the traditional PEST environmental scan, Shoreline focuses on perennial significant issues in the emerging Digital World.
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PEST |
Lessig's Means of Control |
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political / legal |
laws |
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economic |
markets |
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sociocultural |
norms |
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technological |
architecture |
copyright and property rights
Information wants to be free. Not free in the sense of money. Free in the sense of unfettered. What are the ethics of stealing when my taking it doesn't deprive you of it? What are the ethics of charity when my giving it doesn't deprive me of it?
What should be government's role? At what level, every neighborhood block club? Every city council, every state legislature, every country's parliament or congress, every multi-national alliance such as the European Union? What about this one: every website.
To whom? For what? Why?
Bits vs atoms. When the costs of reproduction and distribution are trivial, how can you add value? Make money? What business model can compete with free?
the market model
(coming soon)
Until now, economists have been able to build their theories and equations around an assumption of scarce resources. While always-on worldwide digital networks fundamentally change parts of that assumption by giving immediate access to an over-abundance of goods and services, the old assumptions still hold true for much of our economic activity. The theories and equation explaining supply, demand, outputs, inputs, and equilibrium are still worth learning.
competition and externalities (coming soon)
globalization (coming soon)
As the Internet has made the walls between organizations more porous, it's having the same effect on the walls between countries. So let's look at the courts. Which one has jurisdiction over behavior?
DMCA, Skylarov? virtual state? whose job? barriers to entry?
It's always instructive to see how issues such as globalization fared in the past. For example, what's a religion? Matteo Ricci adapted Christianity to Chinese reality. It took a couple of centuries for the Church to figure out whether his converts were really Christians.
On the Web, no one knows you're a dog. For some people, privacy is a euphemism for invisibility. They wouldn't go into a mall store with a bag over their heads, yet they expect to go online that way. Whose information is it?
Would you trust your credit card info online? You'd like it to be secure from everyone, including the government. What about an al Qaeda member's credit card info? You'd like it to be immediately discovered by the U.S. government. Unfortunately, you can't have security and privacy. Or can you?
Shared technical standards make it all possible. Who sets them? Who decides who sets them?
Code is law.
-- Lawrence Lessig
How does an organization become successful, that is, continuously profitable?
Don't
Overlook The Obvious
by Carlton Vogt
InfoWorld.com, December 21, 2001
Corporations, until the middle of the 19th century, were
formed only for very specific purposes and had a limited life span and scope.
Even the profit they were allowed to make was severely constrained. They gained
their current status in a series of Supreme Court decisions that sprang from
intense lobbying by corporate managers and owners.
There was no broad social consensus. In fact, most people were afraid of
corporations gaining too much power. The people were afraid the corporations
would become very wealthy, control the economy, buy up the independent
newspapers, corrupt the political process with money, and unduly influence the
courts. Those 19th century fears now seem well-founded.
Using Porter's Five Forces as a framework, what do corporations do to defend themselves? Using the pop music industry as an example, what are the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) of the incumbents' position?
What trends are now affecting these issues?
Personally, I listen for the C-word, control. Whenever I read and especially whenever I hear it, I listen for how it is being used. Who is controlling whom? By what means? With whose permission? How come?
All of the issues addressed here at the Shoreline section are gray areas. We aren't sure how it's going to turn out but we know that there are very important differences in what could happen. You can look at all of these issues through the lens of control. Copyright: who controls information? Privacy: who controls your personal information? Security: who controls important information?
In the organization still structured around functional silos, the issues are often framed as opposites:
management: oral knowledge vs written knowledge
human resources: teacher-centered vs learner-centered
IT development: proprietary vs open
source
IT service: The Geek Line: us vs
them
How to decide? Do you go for what's best, what's most popular? Don't make a choice and do it all?
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PEST |
Lessig's Means of Control |
Corporate |
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political / legal |
laws |
policy |
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economic |
markets |
market cap / ROI |
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sociocultural |
norms |
culture |
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technological |
architecture |
computer code |
After the issues are all discussed, individuals and organizations have to do something. When it's not debatable any longer, when the decision has been made for everyone, the legal eagles have vetted it, and there's no gray area any more, then it's policy. If, in addition, it is written down and HR has it, it's a official policy. However, many policies are unwritten parts of the corporate culture. "That's just the way we do it around here."
Remember that policy and police come from the same word. Too many policies, written and unwritten, turn employees into cops or mindless bureaucrats. Fewer policies force or allow employees to treat thorny situations uniquely and creatively.
Will the recording industry drive music lovers (aka "thieves") underground? Even links have been successfully challenged in court. If the recording industry loses in court, it owes it to its shareholders to fight on the technology front. Will sales rise or fall as a result?
Can popular laws that everyone supports be enforced online? Who's going to enforce them? With each pedophile arrest, Wired says that their activities are becoming more "mainstream." Does enforcement of such laws threaten all our liberties? New technology that can find file signatures anywhere on the Net was not written against pedophiles, but against music sharers. What's going on here?
What else do you think is important? I hope others, especially students, will track the debates over their special interests. What's at stake? What are the opposing viewpoints?
How will society be organized online?
Will the current governmental structures be adequate or appropriate or relevant? By government structures, I mean city hall, the courts, elected representatives, laws, codes, etc.
The folks at the California Institute for Smart Communities are ready to reinvent all that.
Ten Steps to Becoming a Smart Community
"There is nothing magical about the ten
steps," said John Eger, President of the California Institute for Smart
Communities, a research program of SDSU’s International Center for
Communications, "but they help a community organize themselves and
importantly underscore the importance of seeing this revolution not so much
about technology, but as about reinventing the concept of community and
developing a governing mechanism to do so."
A "Smart Community" is a community that has made a conscious effort to
use information technology to transform life and work within its region in
significant and fundamental, rather than incremental ways.
The ten steps represent an easy-to-follow program based upon ten years of
research of what the best communities are doing or need to do to best position
themselves for the emerging knowledge-based economy and society.
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