Reaping the Advantages of Information and Modern Technology: Moving from Bureaucracy to Hyperarchy and Netcentricity
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Authors
Thompson, Fred
Jones, L.R.
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2008
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Abstract
This article focuses on the inherent contradiction between the basic building block of
most non-market productive relationships – hierarchy – and the vision inspired by the
architecture of modern information technology, especially the World Wide Web, of a
more egalitarian culture in public organizations. Evans and Wurster (1997) have
argued that, in the future, all knowledge-based productive relationships will be
designed around fluid, team-based collaborative communities, either within
organizations (deconstructed value chains), or collaborative alliances like the
“amorphous and permeable corporate boundaries characteristic of companies in the
Silicon Valley” (deconstructed supply chains). They assert that, in these relationships
everyone will communicate richly with everyone else on the basis of shared standards
and that, like the Internet itself, these relationships will eliminate the need to channel
information, thereby eliminating the tradeoff between information bandwidth and
connectivity. “The possibility (or the threat) of random access and information
symmetry,” they conclude, “will destroy all hierarchies, whether of logic or power.”
We believe that we ignore the views such visionaries as Evans and Wurster at our peril.
The World Wide Web, together with the canon that two heads are better than one, has
created something immensely interesting and potentially transformative. The genius of
the World Wide Web is, as Evans and Wurster explain, that it is (a) distributed (so that
anyone can contribute to it), and (b) standardized (so that everyone else can
comprehend the contributions). Random access and information symmetry jeopardize
the power of gatekeepers of all sorts: political leaders, managers, functional staff
specialists, and even experts to determine what information counts as evidence and what beliefs are sufficiently warranted to count as knowledge. In other words, they
threaten nearly everyone with a vested interest in existing institutional arrangements.
One does not expect folks to surrender position or power without a struggle.
Furthermore, homo sapiens’ need for leaders is evidently instinctive, deeply rooted in
our simian brains. The need for hierarchy buttresses the status quo, even where the
powerful are neither wise nor unselfish.
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Article
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Graduate School of Business & Public Policy (GSBPP)
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International Public Management Review, Volume 9, Issue 1, pp. 148-193 2008.
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This publication is a work of the U.S. Government as defined in Title 17, United States Code, Section 101. Copyright protection is not available for this work in the United States.