Digital technologies have and will continue to change the ways we work. What constitutes attractive modes of organizing for the future workforce and new forms of leadership for a more inclusive, effective, and human-centered digital economy?
What is the right amount of togetherness when you talk about working in a digital environment? Or what is the right amount of co-operation? And what is the right degree of communication?
Corporate labour is becoming more open, more platform-oriented and more demanding in term of communication. Platforms may, by design, consist of crowds, or of communities. This will depend on facilitation of interaction. The platforms we are seeing today tend to be platforms to provider or platforms to user. But it's often an unidirectional way of organizing work. It would be better to facilitate interaction between users, to create mutual learning, create emotional affiliation, etc. There will be benefits of making platforms more social.
How may we design modes of communication to create an optimal degree of togetherness?
Independency is a good thing. We can choose when, how and where to work. But it also comes with a challenge. It can be harder to connect ourselves to others.
Professor Sut I Wong talk in this lecture video about two studies to illustrate why we need to find the ultimate togetherness in this digital area.
In their studies they found there can be some simple solutions to foster togetherness. The wright amount of communication is important, and it has to be a strategy in how to optimize the interaction tools within the organization. For different tasks you also often need different types of media.
For more details from this research project, see lecture video with Sut I Wong and Christian Fielser below.
References:
Wong, Sut I and Fieseler, Christian, Making the digital transformation work.
Book chapter in Sasson (Amir (editor): At Forefront, Looking Ahead, Universitetsforlaget. Scientific anthology published on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the BI Norwegian Business School.
Published 20. November 2018