Dr Carsten SørensenThe London School of Economics and Political Science

November 2004

© 2004 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Microsoft and the Microsoft logo are either registered trademarks or trademarks of the Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. Registered Office: MicrosoftCampus, Thames Valley Park, Reading. RG6 1WG. Registered in England no 1624297 VAT no GB 7245946 15. The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein maybe the trademarks of their respective owners.

The Future Role of Trust in Work –The Key Success Factor for Mobile Productivity

Optimising the knowledge supply-chain

MIC289 frontbackcover_v5 23/11/04 4:04 pm Page 1

Tomorrow's WorkTomorrow’s Work (TW) is a long-term project and comprehensive study, initiated by Microsoft, to explore how UK citizens

will behave, work and succeed in their professional environments in the information age. It is designed to identify and

highlight the need to build IT infrastructures that will support changes in business and working practices, and in which the

new features and functionality delivered by technology innovation can add value.

MIC289 frontbackcover_v5 23/11/04 4:04 pm Page 3

1

Contents

FOREWORD P2

By Alistair Baker, Managing Director Microsoft Ltd and Vice President Microsoft EMEA.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY P4

The Future Role of Trust in Work – The Key Success Factor for MobileProductivity P7

Optimising the Knowledge Supply Chain

DISTANCE AND MOBILITY P7

Distance is dead, long live going places! Technological development and market pressure takes us out of our offices.

THE FUTURE OF WORK P8

Our traditional idea of a normal job is in dire need of a shake-up. Work is information intensive, distributed andplummeting prices of communicating reshape hierarchies into networks.

THE MOBILE ORGANISATION P13

Modern work is virtual work. This means that we can choose the context that best serves our purpose. Tightlycoupled work is more difficult to mobilise than loosely coupled, and changing from collocated to mobile workextends the reach of the organisation.

ORGANISATIONAL INFORMATION SERVICES P20

Encounters are quick and effective. Relationships are ongoing, serve more complex needs and foster trust.Networking services such as email and mobile phone interaction offer encounters. Collaborative services offerrelationships. Each is essential for the mobile organisation, one is not enough.

TRUST IN MOBILE WORKING P23

Trust is an essential bridge between individualised technologies and the organisational aim to effectivise theknowledge supply chain. Representing and supporting work in networking and collaborative services requiresnegotiation and trust to ensure essential sharing of knowledge.

RESHAPING ESTABLISHED INSTITUTIONS P30

The strategic reach of the mobile organisation requires essential redefinitions of major institutions such as privacy,trust and performance measures.

REFERENCES P33

2

FOREWORD – Alistair Baker, Managing Director Microsoft Ltd and Vice PresidentMicrosoft EMEA

Microsoft launched its project, Tomorrow’s Work, in 2003 because we wanted to challenge and inform our ownviews on the future of work. In particular, we wanted to participate in an active discussion with other experts aboutthe issues this raises for British business.

In addition to our own work in this field through initiatives such as the Information Worker Productivity Council1, wewanted to work with other experts to understand better how our software innovation coupled with breakthroughsfrom hardware, telecommunication and service partners could enable UK businesses to lead this transformation ofwork; improve business productivity and gain vital competitive advantage in world markets.

To support the Tomorrow’s Work project, two research papers have been commissioned by Microsoft. The first fromCarsten Sørensen at the London School of Economics (LSE), explores what British business needs to do from astructural and management perspective to see significant productivity gains from technology adoption. He haslooked in detail specifically at the effect of communication and collaboration technologies - a subject high on thebusiness and government agenda.

The second research paper from Henley Management College is to be released in early 2005 and will look into themanagement practices critical for success in an increasingly mobile and flexible workplace.

It is clear to us that Tomorrow’s Work and workplace will not conform to traditional definitions. Technology hasalready radically changed the face of British business, and in many ways we have only seen the tip of the iceberg.We believe that the first ten years of this new century will see more technological innovation than we saw in the lastfifty years. Many of these advancements will be felt first and most acutely in business.

For many years though there have been frustrations about the productivity gains achieved by British business whencompared with other leading economies when you consider the relatively high levels of IT investment. This reportfrom the LSE shows that the IT industry and British business must work together to overcome this if productivitygains are to be experienced.

Technology companies like Microsoft must continue to invest in innovation and commit to continued improvementin the tools we create for business. We need to combine listening to the needs of business with our annualinvestment of over $6.8 billion in R&D to ensure our innovation is rooted in the needs of business and reflects thesocial changes we see in the future. We must combine this with thinking deeply about the context in which thesetechnologies operate to ensure British businesses full potential can be realised.

The last few years alone have seen an incredible rise in the availability and use of core technologies in business.Mobile telephony and data, the Internet, mobile computing, broadband and wireless are changing the face of

1 The Information Work Productivity Institute (IWPI) and its governing body, the Information Work Productivity Council, is an independent group ofcompanies and academics that have joined together to study the issue of information work productivity and profitability. The goal of the Institute isto build a model that measures productivity in the information centric business environment of the 21st century. Productivity gains in this decadeand beyond will come from understanding organisational capital encompassing people, processes, infrastructures and the enablers of technologyand services. Sponsors of the Information Work Productivity Institute and Information Work Productivity Council include Accenture, Capital One,Cisco Systems, Hewlett Packard, Intel, Microsoft and Xerox. For more information visit: http://www.iwproductivity.org/

3

businesses of all sizes. Most importantly they are making it possible for our workforces to leave the ivory tower oftheir office and improve their service and responsiveness by getting closer to customers and partners.

Microsoft has a strong reputation in personal productivity. But the growth of these communication andcollaboration technologies has meant we are now focused on putting the needs of the individual informationworker into the broader context of both team and organisational productivity - combining these effectively is criticalfor business success.

We believe Microsoft® Office is a good example of how this has influenced our approach. Microsoft Office startedas a suite of standalone applications for the individual authoring of documents. With the growth of collaborationand communication technologies it evolved to be an integrated personal productivity suite and today it enablesindividuals, teams and organisations to collaborate and communicate effortlessly across operational, geographicaland corporate boundaries.

Concurrently with this innovation in technology, business must look closely at how it is changing its workingpractices and management principles in response to these innovations. In particular (as Carsten points out), wemust breakdown the historical command and control management ethos that is present in many British businesses.Without this fundamental change, no amount of IT investment, however innovative will deliver the desiredproductivity gains we must see to keep Britain competitive.

British business and technology companies are in the productivity challenge together.

4

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

THE CHANGING WORLD OF WORKWe are now in the midst of dramatic change to ourworking lives. Previously we worked in thehierarchical organisation - optimised for massproduction of standardised goods. Now networks ofrelationships are optimised for delivering highlycustomised innovative goods and services - in ahighly complex and uncertain business environment.This has profound consequences for the worldof work.

As production and consumption come closertogether, employees need to be closer to theconsumer. Customer service is therefore growingin importance and as it emerges spontaneously ina dialogue with the customer it cannotsimply be conducted in a pre-programmed andcentralised fashion.

The overall value of email, fixed-line telephones, faxesand mobile phones has been to creatively destructrigid organisational structures, making employeesmore responsive to market needs. But in our attemptsto destroy the hierarchical organisation, the challengewill be what we replace it with.

THE CHALLENGE OF THE SUPPLY CHAINIn the last quarter of the 20th century, supply chainmanagement has brought benefits for all. Lowerprices, new business opportunities and new productsare among the results of the industrial revolution’ssupply chain innovations. We are now reaching asituation where the management and creation ofknowledge represents the next natural place to seekproductivity improvements. The knowledge supplychain ties together interdependent knowledge orinformation workers just as the manufacturing supplychain links together parts and sub-assemblies into thefinal product – it’s just as vital to get this right forbusiness success today.

Optimising the knowledge supply chain is aboutallowing people to work together and exchangeknowledge no matter when and where they need to.For example, two people can optimise their work inthe knowledge supply chain by emailing documentsto each other and working collaboratively on thedocuments, using tracked changes to see what theother person has done.

We can no longer rely on a fixed definition of theworkplace as a place with clear boundaries. Mostimportantly, the workplace revolution challenges theidea that the only way work can be managed isthrough direct supervision and control. If a person ishired to innovate jointly with colleagues, then for amanager to tell them how to do this defies the wholepurpose of their job. If a person is hired to deliverservices to customers then the work may only bedirectly controlled to the extent that the services canbe codified and standardised - which in most caseswill be limited.

Armed with state-of-the-art technologies and locatedexactly where they either need to or want to be,knowledge supply chain participants can make thenecessary decisions simply by contacting theappropriate customers, colleagues or organisationalresources. It is at the front-line of the supply chain thedecisions emerge; they cannot be decided in detailbeforehand. It is, therefore unreasonable to imaginethat the management of the knowledge supply chaincan be based on old management dictums ofcommand and control.

Despite working much less hours, the rest of Europe ismore productive than the UK because these countriesgenerally employ better skilled labour, are better atorganising work and at using information technologyto promote efficiency. To continue to compete inthis evolving world, UK businesses must investmore in their workforces, improve flexibility andmost importantly, redefine the traditionalhierarchical order of command and control inorder to become more productive.

INFORMATION OVERLOADThere are substantial technical challenges involved inoptimising manufacturing supply chains. However,optimising the knowledge supply chain is afar greater challenge as it involves monitoringand managing people, not components andsub-assemblies.

One of the key advancements in supply chainmanagement is that technology makes it possible tomonitor the progress of each element in the chain.Similarly, mobile and ubiquitous technologies willincreasingly make it possible to monitor the workgoing into the knowledge supply chain. This is adouble-edged sword. On the one side, managers willsee an advantage in obtaining insight in theperformance of key information workers. At the sametime these information workers, since they will seek to

5

coordinate their highly distributed activities, will needprecise information from and about co-workers.

Effective management will rely on this insight ortransparency into the work performed. Effectivecoordination of work between colleagues will requirethe ability to effectively coordinate what exactly isgoing on at each stage in the process. Together thesechallenges are a compelling argument for increasedmonitoring of the knowledge supply chain.

However, to maximise the efficiency of theknowledge supply chain we need to enableemployees to make decisions they feel are the rightones and extend the reach of the organisation towherever the information workers are – withoutexcessive monitoring or micromanagement. Theorganisation must extend its reach to manage mobileinformation workers, but more importantly also beable to offer the full strength of the organisation atthe point of contact for the customer, and this callsfor a different kind of employee and a differentmanagement ethos.

The old organisational hierarchies proved not only ahindrance to increased responsiveness andproductivity, they also protected us againstunnecessary communication. Flat organisationsprotect no one. While individual emails, texts, faxes,instant messages all have value, the sheer volume ofcommunication is an increasing problem. We are allfacing information overload. Information overloadmeans we are aware of everything but can donothing – as we are constantly reacting to multiplecommunication channels.

THE DEMANDS OF THE MOBILEORGANISATIONThe service economy demands innovative creativesolutions and clever resourceful people. Self-starterswill be more in demand than ever before. Companieswill need to have employees that work without theneed for close monitoring and have their own supplyof motivation.

In this situation, where and when we work can nolonger easily be managed by someone else but willmuch more be up to ourselves and will emerge innegotiations with the people we critically dependupon to accomplish our tasks. In the 21st Century,what for most people constitutes a normal job will bequite difficult to define.

To tackle information overload people should beallowed to reduce the amount of communication

they engage in. However, this presents another issuein an increasingly mobile economy – that of trust.When workers were located in offices it was easy tosee if they were working. If people aren’t in the officeand aren’t responding instantly on email or InstantMessenger, their phones going through to voicemail,how do you know they are working?

This shift implies that managers can no longerexclusively rely on direct command and control ofsubordinates, and instead calls for the cultivation ofcoordination practices in an environment of trust. Weneed technologies that support us in effectivelymaking decisions together. Email, mobile phones, andInstant Messaging are all very easy to use. However,they often represent additional work, sorting outunnecessary details.

Workflow management technologies or similar typesof systems however substantially help us do work - asopposed to talking about it. They stipulate whoshould do what, and offer more than merely an opencommunication channel. However, too much relianceon these may run the risk of imposing too tight rulesand regulations on how distributed activities arecarried out, and they are generally much moredifficult to make work.

Optimising the knowledge supply chain must be acarefully negotiated balance between providing theflexibility and ease of use of networking services suchas mobile phone conversations, SMS, and email, withmore substantial collaborative services that directlyhelp us coordinate distributed work activities.

The future requires technology to facilitatecollaboration and replicate some of the face-to-facecontacts and social interaction that were common inthe hierarchical office based organisation. Butcollaborative services are much more problematic toassimilate into the daily practices precisely becausethey attempt something potentially very difficult -technically replicating, representing or modellingsocial behaviour or even more challengingly,attempting to modify it.

The initial hurdles to implementing collaborativeservices are higher than those for communicationservices. This is one of the reasons for mobile phonesand email gaining an immense success with little orno organisational push whereas workflowmanagement technologies needs constant push andattention to succeed. But, once successfullyimplemented in the organisation, collaborativeservices can form the infrastructure of an efficientorganisation and significantly help in optimising theknowledge supply chain.

6

Introduced correctly it will be seen as beneficial forboth sides and trust is key to this. Within work, ifindividuals are managed by outcomes withcollaborative technologies supporting them and trustthat the information collected will not be abused withmonitoring systems looking only at outcomes, thenincreased monitoring will be accepted.

THE CRUCIAL ROLE OF TRUSTLack of mutual trust can lead to severe consequencesfor all parties in the knowledge supply chain. Ifemployees perceive that they are being watched tooclosely or that the information being collected is notbeing used appropriately, they will find ways roundmonitoring. As one of Murphy’s Laws states, “Nothingis foolproof because fools are so ingenious.” If themonitoring isn’t trusted and is subverted, thencompany metrics could become unreliable and theintegrity of the whole knowledge supply chain suffers.As the validity of the information in any supply chainmanagement system is key to its value, this couldlead to very unfortunate business consequences.

The issue of trust cuts both ways. Management mustrelinquish some of the control of direct observationand management through face-to-face socialising.Instead they will be forced to trust informationworkers as they can create more value byleaving offices and cubicles and venturing intothe marketplace where they can provide theirservices much more effectively, defining their ownwork context.

A lack of trust can easily result in efficiency gainsbeing lost as mobile information workers engage inbureaucratic activities to demonstrate their efficiencyand cover their own back in a system they do nottrust. A lack of mutual trust could force informationworkers into a permanent state of exposure,engaging in endless communication with the solepurpose of demonstrating that they are working. Asone of the essential aspects of knowledge work is thatit desperately needs time for reflection andexperimentation with the risk of failure withoutconsequences, this could have unfortunate outcomesfor British businesses.

Unfortunately, there are no easy ways of shortcuttingthe process of cultivating mutual trust inorganisations. It is all about ensuring that informationworkers and managers apply appropriate ethics andreward mechanisms when re-defining the way work isdone. Trust is at the best of times highly fragile inyears of good faith and can be broken relatively

easily. Therefore retaining it will be the key businesschallenge of the 21st century.

Global markets demand flexible mobile working -supporting the needed flexibility to offer enterpriseservices where and when they are needed. At thesame time employees are requesting flexible workingarrangements because they are more suitable tomodern living. This circle can only be squared if theorganisation mobilises and effectivises information-and knowledge work as it also improves and reinventsthe ways work is managed.

This can for example be accomplished throughallowing information workers to define their ownmore appropriate conditions for creating and sharingknowledge in self-organising networks ofinterdependent colleagues. While at the same timeensuring there is sufficient management of workperformance through the use of information andcommunication technology. All of this can onlyhappen if knowledge is created and shared in anenvironment of trust and fairness.

Ultimately the consequences for British business aresevere if trust continues to be eroded. What appearsto be merely an ethical goal is, as we’ve seen one withprofound implications for the future of the UKeconomy. The lower productivity of Britain comparedto continental Europe already demonstrates the risk.If we continue to introduce communicationtechnology without the supporting collaborationtools and management practices, we are likely to endup less productive than ever - drowning under thesheer weight of communication. Only by having thevision and foresight to realise that morecommunication and control does not equate togreater efficiency can we grapple with the newchallenges of the global economy.

UK business must learn to trust their employees todefine their own working contexts and in turn theycan request the employees to trust thatmeasurements and mechanisms of performanceevaluation and effective co-ordination will be appliedin a fair and ethical manner. This leads allstakeholders into the unknown where there iseverywhere to go and nowhere to hide.

7

OPTIMISING INFORMATIONWORKThe application of information and communicationtechnologies has traditionally been associated withthe automation of manual labour - theirreengineering and streamlining represent a strongforce where fierce competition forces manufacturingcompanies to lower costs - through optimising themanufacturing supply chain. Organising complexmanufacturing requires planning and control and thishas traditionally been conducted in a hierarchicalsystem. Recent years have seen significant changeswhere the organisational arrangements of themanufacturing supply chain have been embeddedinto various forms of technology-based systems, suchas ERP, Just-In-Time and MRP II.

However, as manufacturing increasingly relies oncontinuous innovation - at the cost of employment inmanufacturing and primary industries - andconversely, the percentage of people producing anddelivering services increases, the emphasis onproductivity is shifting from the manufacturing supplychain to the knowledge supply chain. What mattersis how we can organise our collaboration, interms of meetings, communication and work sowe together can innovate or deliver services.

We conduct more and more of our work throughvirtual means such as the telephone, the Internet etc.This virtualisation of work in turn with recenttechnological developments has led to a mobilerevolution putting a mobile phone in the hand and anotebook on the lap of information andcommunication workers and thereby enablingextensive support for mobile working. It is thereforeessential for modern information and communicationworkers to be able to move to where they are neededto engage in intense collaboration with projectpartners, to negotiate contractual arrangements or todeliver services to clients and customers.

This report raises essential questions regarding thefuture of information and communication work suchas the challenges of mobile and remote workingsupported by advanced information andcommunication technologies. When work is outwhere the collaborators and the clients are, and notinside the familiar office, how do we then manageeach other? How do we enable distributed sharing ofknowledge? What issues will we need totackle in order to gain further productivity gains ininformation work?

DISTANCE AND MOBILITYIn 1997 Cairncross pronounced the death of distancein that the cost of electronic communicationdecreasingly depends on the distance [5]. However, asargued by Olson and Olson, “distance matters“ [42].We simply can not naïvely assume that interactingand working together can be done as easily at adistance as when we are located in the same room orbuilding. Conducting business in an increasinglycomplex and uncertain world, however, requireshighly complex patterns of collaboration andinteraction across small and large distances. Theadvent of communication technologies was followedby predictions that business travel would reduce sincework could be conducted at a distance. However,business travelling kept soaring and the world isexperiencing flexible and mobile working like neverbefore, for example with more than 300,000 people inflight above USA at any time [57; 58]. Furthermore,work is becoming increasingly dependent uponpeople and not only the information moving. Wecan therefore proclaim that distance is dead, longlive going places!

Our management of information, interaction,knowledge and personal relations is increasinglysupported by advanced technologies, making theseattributes available to us wherever we are. The pastthirty years has therefore brought our informationprocessing from the tightly controlled and impersonal

The Future Role of Trust in Work -

The Key Success Factor for Mobile Productivity

Optimising the Knowledge Supply chain

Dr Carsten Sørensen

The London School of Economics and Political Science

November 2004

8

mainframe bunkers, through to individual PCs ondesks, laptops and a variety of small hand-helddevices. Looking at this long view, it appears thatquite radical change has occurred smoothly.However, some of the issues that were relevantalready in the 1960s debate on surveillance of citizensare still relevant today, and perhaps more so now.Furthermore, there are a range of emerging issuesindicating that when we move from organisationallyembedded to socially embedded information andcommunication technologies, then we also meetnew challenges in the relationship between humansand technology.

Let us for the sake of argument look at a specific andvery popular technology - the telephone. Thetelephone has served many purposes through its longhistory, as a means for communicating short businessmessages, which was Edison’s original idea, or as anessential psychological life-line between relatives andfriends separated by great distances. Cutting the wireand replacing the ordinary telephone with a mobileone can naïvely be seen as a minor change, andcertainly one that will only bring benefits to the usersin general. If however, we consider that one of thekey properties of the stationary phone is that eachperson using it would know where the other personis, then the mobile phone raises a whole range of newissues. If a person does not answer a fixed-line phonewe can assume that they are not at home or that theymay be away from the phone temporarily. The mobilephone brings with it the promise that the person wecall will carry the phone and therefore automaticallywill reply. If a person does not pick up a mobilephone call they would probably later on need tojustify this. In their private lives, people would beassumed to make their own informed choices as towhether or not they reply to a mobile phone call.

However, in the context of contractual arrangementssuch as those we engage in when we work for anorganisation or for clients, there is a socialexpectation for us to answer calls. The opportunity forpeople to call us on our mobile phone automaticallyraises the question of where we are and what we aredoing both when we answer and when we do not.Although mediated interaction has been around sincethe telegraph and the fixed-line telephone, we arehere used to the long-established conventions offace-to-face interaction that we at least know wherethe other person is situated if we call.

THE FUTURE OF WORK

WHAT IS A NORMAL JOB?We are in the midst of radical changes to the way weconduct and organise most work. In particular, moreand more work is information work, and most of usgenerally use computers on a daily basis as anintegral part of our work [9; 38]. Our notion of whatconstitutes a so-called “normal job” is rapidly goingout of fashion. Farmers shook their heads in disbeliefwhen they saw the young men and women head forthe brand new factories in the cities of the industrialrevolution “why are you going there? How are yougoing to find food to eat?” Work was thenintrinsically linked to farming the land and all otherjobs, apart from the priest and the schoolteacherseemed rather suspicious occupations. Work infactories rapidly took over in defining whatconstituted “normal work”. Manufacturing replacedfarming as the primary occupation, then since WorldWar II it was replaced by the services industry. In the21st Century, what for most people constitutes anormal job can be quite difficult to define. In asurvey of the Californian workforce in 1999, only 33%of the sample fitted the description of having one,single day-shift, year round, permanent employmentpaid for by the firm for which the work is done andnot working from home [Study cited from p. 95ff, 10].Adding the additional criteria of three or more yearsof tenure within the same firm reduced the matchingsample to 22%. There is no doubt about the fact thatthe world of work structurally has changeddramatically over the past fifty years, and it iscontinuing to do so. People do not expect to do thesame job for many years, within the sameorganisation, at a fixed workstation and between 9and 5.

MANAGING THE DISTRIBUTEDORGANISATIONSo, what is happening here? How can we characterisethese radical changes and what challenges do theyimpose on the conduct, organisation andtechnological support of work?

Firstly, it is important to recognise that the radicalchange is an interactive process. The demands onpeople and organisations drive changes in theorganisation of work, but are themselves changed bytechnological developments. As argued by JoAnneYates discussing the birth of modern scientificmanagement in North American large businesses

9

between 1850 and 1920, several of the technologiescritical to this development of the fundamentals inmodern management were already around longbefore but their utility was simply not recognised asthere was no pressure to adopt them. One of thedriving factors of technological innovation was theshift from small and medium-sized factories wherethe owners directly could supervise operations, tolarge-scale distributed firms where it simply wasimpossible for the owners or shareholders to keep aneye on the day-to-day operations. The most notableexamples are the railway and oil companies. One ofthe attempts by the railway tycoons to keep an eyeon the state of affairs was of course to spend asignificant proportion of their time in luxuriouslydecorated train cars. In the long run this strategyproved impossible. Systems and informationtechnologies were put into place that basicallyensured a smoother running and management of theorganisations through systematic collection ofoperations data from the field as well as through top-down systems ensuring that everybody in theorganisation was generally informed and receivedappropriate instructions. Systematic use ofinformation systems ensured the centralisedorganisation of work could be conducted acrossgreat distances. Systematic use of centralisedsystems ensured the smooth running ofhierarchical organisations. The challenge is nowto devise decentralised technologies fordecentralised technologies.

INFORMATION INTENSITY IN WORKCompanies could only grow from small to largethrough centralising their decision-making. Thiscentralisation subsequently became a hindrance foreffective decision-making when faced with theuncertainties of modern world demands. Informationand communication technologies play an essentialrole in ensuring that large organisations can organisetheir knowledge supply chain in a de-centralisedmanner. The technologies primarily do so by ensuringcheap means for coordinating activities. However,even if big does not necessarily mean centralised, westill need to work out how to conduct and managede-centralised work. The centralised organisation ofwork responds quite well to Mintzberg’s [36] machinebureaucracy where decision-making is conducted in abureaucratic and centralised manner throughprogrammed processing [34]. Since there wasrelatively little uncertainty and complexity, it madesense to centralise decision-making and to establishfairly stable systems dictating appropriate action.

Organisations respond to environmental uncertaintiesusing networking services such as email, mobilephones, faxes and instant messaging.

Zooming forward to the 21st Century, we are nowexperiencing a world where work is not onlygeographically distributed; it is also conducted in acomplex and uncertain environment. When the focusis on the production and consumption of services weare no longer in the safe haven of predictableproduction to a warehouse according to plans set outfor two or five years at a time. Services cannot bestored in warehouses ready for shipment. Theyemerge real time with the customer. Service workcan not be conducted in a pre-programmed andcentralised fashion, but must rely on an “adhocracy” where decisions are made in adistributed and emergent manner. The answerscannot be decided and written down beforehand, butmust be negotiated in the situation by those whohave the freshest information. This has led to a re-orientation of the way we understand businessstrategy where the top-down view of strategy hasbeen supplemented by a much more bottom-orientated view lending more importance to localinnovation and adjustment and relatively less todecisions made exclusively in the boardrooms [11; 13;30]. Corporate strategies for change increasinglyinvolve bottom-up processes supporting localisedinnovation [30].

WEIGHTLESS VALUEAll these developments have led to information as astrategic entity. As Coyle and Quah [15] argue, theeconomy is becoming weightless in the sense thatvalue is less and less directly related to the physicalmass. Value is more and more related to intangiblessuch as innovation, creativity, intelligence etc. Theinformation or service society still relies critically onmanufactured goods, but the value of these goodsare as much related to ephemeral aspects such asbrand, innovativeness, informational aspects, andassociated services. We can add value to the good-old toaster by sticking a computer inside it allowingcustomers to toast frozen bread or to connect it to acomputer in order to select a range of popularcartoon images to be toasted onto the bread. Muchof the technological development of the pastdecades relates to the increasing informationintensity of innovation at work. It has beenestimated that the yearly combined amount of newinformation produced in the world stored onmagnetic media represent an average of 800 MB of

10

information for each of the 6.3 billion inhabitants[27]. Along with intensification of the amount ofinformation used in most aspects of working life, thenature of the information and the ways in which weprocess and present the information is also changing.From structured information centrally compiled intoreports towards much more decentralised collection,interpretation and compilation of data relevant forparticular stakeholders to make sense of their work.The spreadsheet perhaps represents the best examplethrough its generic canvas for defining simulationsand small databases. Perhaps more interestingly,there is a dramatic increase in information flowsthrough electronic channels such as telephone, radio,TV and the Internet. Around 98% of the informationtransmitted electronically is on landline and mobilephone calls. Instant messaging has been estimated togenerate five billion messages or 750GB each dayglobally during 2003 and e-mail is thought togenerate around 400,000 terabytes of newinformation each year [27].

THE PRICE OF COMMUNICATINGWhen our forefathers and mothers moved from therural areas and into the modern world of factories,they were forced to accept radical changes to theways they would live and work in the villages and onthe farms. Strict functional divisions of labour anddirect supervision and control of work becameintegral parts of the new life in the industrial cities.Everyday life became directly governed by timecarefully measured and managed. Geographically,work was through division of labour often restrictedto workstations and generally situated within thephysical boundaries of the factory. Out of thisemerged the scientific management of work andthe importance of middle-management bridgingthe shop-floor operations and the executiveoffice strategies.

We are now in the midst of another dramatic changeto our working lives when we move from thehierarchical organisation optimised for mass-production of standardised goods, to networks ofrelationships optimised for delivering highlycustomised innovation-based products and services ina highly complex and uncertain business environment[32]. In this new world the boundaries of work aremuch more difficult to define. Narrowly defined rolesand work places do not match the ever-shifting worldin which we work. Where and when we do work canno longer easily be managed by someone else butwill much more be up to ourselves and will emerge in

negotiations with the people we critically dependupon to accomplish our tasks. This new industrialrevolution challenges a range of our most basicassumptions about work. The nature of work ischallenged through the emphasis on ephemeral valueof services as opposed to the tangible goods of theindustrial society. We can no longer rely on a fixeddefinition of the workplace as a clearly marked outoffice or work station. Most importantly, the newrevolution challenges the idea that the only waywork can be managed is through directsupervision and control. If a person is hired tojointly with colleagues innovate, then a managertelling him or her what to do would defy the wholepurpose of the job. If a person is hired to deliverservices to customers then work may be directlycontrolled to the extent that the services can becodified and standardised. However, services willoften be delivered and consumed where thecustomers are and will often need to be definedthrough customer-provider interaction. Services thatcan easily be codified and standardised areencounters and these can only accommodaterelatively simple needs, whereas complex serviceneeds call for engaging in service relationshipsfostering trust [19].

Malone argues that the main reason we now canengage in much more flexible ways of working isthe dramatic decline in the price ofcommunicating and co-ordinating [32]. Maloneargues that the centralised system of organising workas seen in the large corporations of the 20th Centuryrepresented the only feasible solution since themeans of communication were relatively slow andexpensive. Malone further argues that the radicallydecreasing communication costs now enableorganisations to form decentralised networks asreplacements for the centralised organisationalarrangements of command-and-control, where workwas carried out and hence could be managed withinthe narrow confines of the a factory site or office.

The telephone and the modern postal system havethe past decade been supplemented with the Internetwith hosting email and web-based technologiesdriving the cost of communication almost to zero.The mobile phone has become a ubiquitous businesstool offering a flexible means of communicating andaccessing data. Emerging technologies such as Voiceover IP (VoIP) is poised to make the step further byreducing voice-costs.

11

OPTIMISING MANUFACTURING SUPPLYCHAINSThe heart of manufacturing operations is the supplychain, which orchestrates the movement of parts andsub-assemblies. One of the main innovationscontributing to increased productivity inmanufacturing is technology support for coordinatinghighly distributed supply chains. ManufacturingResource Planning (MRP II), Just-in-time (JIT), andlean manufacturing are just some of the essentialconcepts that characterise these efforts to make themanufacture, assembly and distribution of goodscheaper, faster and deliver higher quality. Optimisingthe manufacturing supply chain involves the coreelement of representing the supply chain ininformation and communication technologies such asEnterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems in orderto ensure streamlined operations acrossorganisational boundaries. What characterises themanufacturing supply chain is exactly that itincreasingly ties together mutually interdependentparts across geographical distances and across simpleorganisational units defined by ownership [50]. It hasbeen a major challenge to represent the physicalmovement of parts and sub-assemblies insideinformation systems and to optimise this processaccording to forecasts or actual orders pulling theparts and the ability of the supply chain to push theproducts along. It has critically relied on complexinfrastructure technologies enabling smoothtransition of data across organisational anddepartmental boundaries and the Internet has playedan important role as setting a basic standard forcommunication. As a result of this effort,manufacturing organisations has managed throughtechnology investments to optimise themanufacturing supply chain enabling speedy deliveryof cheap high-quality goods.

OPTIMISING THE KNOWLEDGE SUPPLYCHAINIn this paper I coin the term the “knowledge supplychain” a shorthand to explain that the primarychallenge for organisations now is to support andeffectivise information work. Innovation processes aswell as the delivery of services critically depends onthe proper management of organisational knowledge[40], and for most organisations the arrangement andsupport of information or information workers is aprimary concern. Looking at the management ofknowledge in terms of optimising a knowledgesupply chain provides us with a strong metaphor for

what we are attempting to obtain . It also potentiallycan mislead us to believe that the effortis identical to the one successfully accomplishedin manufacturing.

Let us begin with the positive aspects of consideringthe strategic task of rendering information work moreeffective through perceiving the project as optimisingthe knowledge supply chain. The knowledge supplychain shifts the focus from thinking aboutinformation work in terms of people sitting in thesame office within the same building owned bythe same organisation. When people provideservices they need to engage in networkingactivities with a range of other personspotentially from all over the place. When theyinnovate together in projects then they will worktogether with people holding crucial expertise. Theknowledge supply chain signals that organisationsneed to support people in negotiating their mutualinterdependencies and exchanging knowledge acrossorganisational boundaries - not just with people inthe same office. This is similar to the organisation ofthe manufacturing supply chain with a number ofindependent suppliers forming an integral part of thesupply chain. The knowledge supply chain tiestogether interdependent information workerssimilarly to the manufacturing supply chainlinking together parts and sub-assemblies intothe final product.

The contemporary focus on communities of practiceillustrates the move in organisations from consideringknowledge as a commodity to be codified and storedin databases, to being results of ongoing socialprocesses between people who possess theknowledge [14; 39]. Whereas much of the informationneeded to optimise the manufacturing can be fixedwhen actual orders come in or when forecasts havebeen made, knowledge critical for innovation or forthe provision of services is emergent, which meansthat it appears as a result of the process [20]. Theknowledge supply chain will always be governedby an element of uncertainty making thegeneration of new information essential [34].

Optimising the knowledge supply chain thereforeimplies using information and communicationtechnologies to allow people to work togetherand exchange knowledge no matter when andwhere they need to. Technologies such as email,web-servers, mobile phones, PC applications etc.already provide such support. Two people forming asmall link in a larger knowledge supply chain canoptimise their work together by emailing

12

documents to each other and collaborativelywork on the documents. Through trackedchanges they can see what the other person hasdone.

The essential feature of optimising the knowledgesupply chain is precisely to represent, support, modeland optimise the negotiation of interdependenciesand the collaborative production of documents, ideasetc. There are two essential organisational elements inthis exchange of knowledge, namely the extent ofeconomic exchange and the extent of social control.

If the exchange of knowledge in one element of thesupply chain is governed by a high degree of socialexchange and a low degree of economic exchange,then the supply chain critically relies on hiring expertsand retaining them within the organisation – they areso strategically important for the organisation thatthey become prisoners in a hierarchy where theknowledge supply chain faci l i tates thecommunication of knowledge through sedimentation[49]. A good example of this is the traditional way oforganising information work with the traditionalhierarchical organisations offering jobs for life.

Figure 1: Scarbrough's [49] model characterising types of knowledgecommunication based on dimensions of social control and economicexchange

If the supply chain critically relies on the expertise butnot necessarily for an extended length of time, forexample if key-expertise is brought in to innovate theorganisation, the exchange of knowledge is onegoverned partly by economic exchange and partly bysocial control. The information worker is here ahostage that through established professionalismexchanges knowledge in networks. Extensive use ofmanagement and technology consultants, and theextensive use of freelance information workers both

demonstrate the hostage strategy in inter- and intra-organisational networks.

If elements of the knowledge supply chain can besubjected to objectification, which means that thenecessary knowledge to be exchanged andcommunicated can be codified and embedded fullyin technology, then the knowledge can becommunicated through a high degree of economicexchange and a low degree of social control. Thisblack-boxing strategy enables knowledge to becommunicated in a market. The extensive use ofstandard application packages or commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) technology has been a highlysuccessful way of ensuring the effective exchange ofknowledge through black-boxing.

CHALLENGES WHEN OPTIMISINGKNOWLEDGE SUPPLY CHAINSManaging the knowledge supply chain in networks ofrelationships mediated through information andcommunication technologies challenges bothmanagerial wisdoms of control and operationalassumptions of privacy and control directly linked toobservation [31; 65]. Armed with state-of-the-arttechnologies and located exactly where they eitherneed to or want to be, knowledge supply chainparticipants can make the necessary decisions simplyby contacting the appropriate customers, colleaguesor organisational resources. It is at the front-line ofthe supply chain that decisions emerge - theycannot be decided in detail beforehand. It is,therefore unreasonable to imagine that themanagement of the knowledge supply chain canbe based on old dictums of command andcontrol. Management implies supporting theappropriate coordination of geographicallydistributed activities and the cultivation of theorganisation to function as an effective unit [31]. Thisshift implies that managers can no longer rely ondirect command and control of subordinates.Conversely, it also implies that members of theorganisation no longer can rely on the same levels ofindividual privacy at work since the effectivecoordination of remote and mobile work activitiescritically rely on others knowing what exactly is goingon. The changes, therefore critically rely on all partiesadapting to work becoming mobile and de-centralised. Changing expectations of managementfrom constant pro-active decision-making tofacilitation of a tightly coordinated knowledge supplychain and cultivation of the appropriate environmentmarks a significant challenge. Similarly, challenging

13

the expectations of organisational members towillingly share details regarding their daily activitiesand whereabouts challenges the expectations of theright to privacy at work and to organise workactivities according to the perceived need. However,as the management relinquishes some of its directsupervision and control when work becomes mobile,the need for efficient coordination and governancerequires both colleagues and management to gaininsight in detailed information previously consideredprivate. Changing one without the other will result ina mismatch jeopardising the whole effort. Unilaterallyrelinquishing control can lead to lack of propermanagement and control. Unilaterally relinquishinginformation worker privacy will foster a surveillanceculture where detailed information about activitiesand whereabouts is used for detailed managerialdecisions.

In order for us to re-invent information work and tomaximise the efficiency of the knowledge supplychain we need to both enable organisation membersto make decisions they feel are the right ones as wellas to extend the strategic reach of the organisation towherever the information workers are. Theorganisation must extend its reach both to be able tomanage mobile information workers, but moreimportantly also to be able to offer the full strengthof the organisation at the point of contact for thecustomer.

One of the main challenges for businesses shiftingfrom a centralised way of operating to engaging inshifting networks of relationships is optimising theknowledge supply chain. It is, however, not possibleto treat the management of knowledge amonginformation workers as a strict supply chain similar tothe ones managing the material flows in and acrossfactories. The most obvious difference between thetwo supply chains is that modelling and optimisingthe flow of parts and sub-assemblies can beconducted without these parts and sub-assembliesminding in the least. The car-seats for a BMW will notcomplain that it now suddenly need to spend lesstime in a warehouse waiting with 2000 other seats tobe shipped to the assembly factory. Optimising theknowledge supply chain, however, is not only amatter of organising knowledge that already hasbeen objectified through a black-boxing strategy [49].It is the much more critical matter of optimisingprocesses critically depending on social control. Thisimplies that optimising the knowledge supply chaincan only be conducted through some form ofrepresenting, modelling, supporting and optimisinginformation worker activities. However, contrary to

the BMW car seats, people do care very much abouthow they are represented in systems. The recordingof detailed information about their activities andoutcomes of their work can be made subject ofassessments regarding their performance.

Now, obviously this issue has previously beenmanaged through organising the knowledge supplychain more or less within the same building wherework can be managed and supervised through directinspection and potential conflicts can be resolvedthrough people socialising. However, currentdevelopments where information work becomesmobile and distributed in virtual teams fundamentallychallenges the viability of direct supervision as ameans of managing information work. The pressureto create mobile ways of working can then result ineither less efficient management of work ortechnology-supported management of work.Obviously, this intensifies the whole issue of ensuringthat recruitment and retention processes within firmsare able to secure information workers who are highlymotivated and who will not require intensive directmanagement and control. However, it is not likelythat human resource practices alone can address thisproblem.

Managing the “invisible” information worker andproviding substantial support for them tocollaborate effectively is at the core of optimisingthe knowledge supply chain. This can onlybe accomplished through the use of informationand communication technologies that representaspects of the knowledge supply chain intechnological systems.

THE MOBILE ORGANISATION

PHONE EXAMPLEImagine two engineers walking towards each otheralong a hallway in a Swedish mobile phoneorganisation. They know each other quite well ascolleagues through a few years. They are eachspeaking on the phone and as they pass each other inthe narrow hallway they smile and nod and one ofthem makes a funny remark on the fact that they areindeed speaking to each other on the phone but stilldecide to continue walking as they both are expectedat meetings in the building. This image is quite tellingfor much contemporary work. Office work that is notconducted in offices and work that is not conductedin silence but indeed talking is an essential element ofmuch work. Manufacturing goods requires careful

14

engineering and inwards attention. Providing servicesto customers requires reaching out and listening.

VIRTUALISATIONOne of the most essential and often neglectedfundamental changes is the virtualisation of work.Our activities are for a variety of reasons carried outthrough technology instead of exclusively face-to-face. We interact directly through the phone, email,SMS, and voicemail, and we interact indirectlythrough meeting scheduling systems, workflowmanagement systems and through up/downloadingdocuments from shared file-servers. One of thecharacteristics of this virtualisation of work is that it isnot exclusively a phenomenon found in high-techknowledge-intensive organisations – it transcendssectors, organisations of all types and different roleswithin organisations.

Mobile phones are used by building sitecontractors, plumbers, council street-cleaners,management consultants, engineers, marketingexecutives and shopkeepers. The laptop is aubiquitous part of a range of jobs and whereinformation workers cannot find a stable resting-place for a laptop, they use hand-held devices ortablets. However, virtualisation goes far beyondimmediate interaction between people. Theestablishment of standardised systems supporting themanagement of work also led to virtualisation ofwork for example when we do not meet people wework with but only observe their contribution tofilling in forms in a distributed work-flow.

It is obvious that the virtualisation of work has led toeffective working. The independent contractor doesnot need an office with a receptionist, but canthrough a mobile phone conduct basic schedulingand coordination tasks whilst working on a site. Manyorganisations seek to virtualise customer contact,most commonly through telephone access throughcall-centres. These illustrate the attempts to meetcustomer demands for extensive services whilstreducing costs. However, paradoxically the drive forbetter access to firms and better service, for examplethrough 24-7 call-centres, also leads to the call formore personalised services [66]. It is not realistic tobelieve that the consumer and client of tomorrow iswilling to accept an increasing automation andstandardisation of services unless there arecompelling economic arguments. They will demandsome level of personalisation. Furthermore, withorganisations increasingly focusing on sales, serviceand marketing, the direct personal interaction with

key people can both ensure that they experience ahigh service-level as well as help the informationworker better understand the real needs of the client.Our study in a multi-national bank in the Middle Eastclearly demonstrates the importance of bankersvisiting key clients on a regular basis in order tosocialise and to engage in critical negotiations [2].Zuboff and Maxmin argue that the provisionof proper personalised service represents a significantstrategic challenge for the 21st Centurybusiness organisation [66].

If the virtualisation of work is viewed primarily as ameans of rendering the operational aspects ofconnecting the organisation to its customers, then itcan lead to the customers feeling that they are theones paying the price. Virtualising work betweencolleagues, although implying a softening ofgeographical barriers for where work is conducted,also imposes the risk of alienating social relationships.

Both on a very practical level but also fundamentallyin terms of how we experience the world there is animmense difference between talking to someone on amobile phone and standing in front of the person.This virtualisation is fundamentally different fromwhat we could call “real-world” interaction in that wemainly use one or two of our human senses - whenwe are on the phone or emailing we become a bigear or a big eye [24; 43]. When we engage whilstphysically present, there is a very strong relationshipbetween the content of our interaction and thecontext in which it takes place. We can see if thepeople we interact with are tired and weunconsciously can not help guessing what they thinkabout us, and at the same time we, alsounconsciously, present ourselves in the way we wouldlike others to see us [17]. When we engage invirtualised interaction with colleagues or customersthe link between the content of interaction and itscontext has been weakened in favour of a precisesymbol system [23]. Although we of course can writewhat we wish in an SMS or email message, there is awell-defined symbol system and the separationbetween content and context can easily be identifiedwhen we engage in mobile phone conversations andtry to re-connect our contexts by negotiating wherewe each are and what we are doing.

CONTEXT IS KING!Information and communication workers are moreand more busy interacting through a range ofcommunication technologies; there is an increasingbattle for their attention. The services society is a

15

“talk” society where services are rendered throughintense interaction across geographical and temporaldistances. People’s attention and time is the limitingfactor and they must dispense it wisely in order to beproductive. This can be accomplished by virtualisingthe interaction for example through mobile phones,email and other communication means. It can also bedone through partly automating the provision ofservices and through shifting some of the effort fromthe service provider to the client, as has beenattempted in internet-banking. However, as we willargue later on, the careful management of where youare and whom you interact with will increasingly formthe essential strategic choices for information andcommunication workers. Socialising is the hard capitalof the mobile organisation. Context is king. Trust,experiences, service, emotions are all essential aspectsof modern business.

CHOICES OF CONTEXTAn extensive study of mobile professionals in Tokyoclearly demonstrated how the use of laptops andmobile phones allowed the flexible design ofsocialising and working. A CEO of a small mobileservices software house enjoyed gaining inspirationfrom nomadic treks around Tokyo and was inconstant touch with his back-office. Similarly, anindependent town-planner would make a policy ofspending considerable time with client-municipalities,something he regarded a major source of competitiveedge over his large competitors [21]. We have seenbankers from a global bank nurturing their mostimportant clients through extensive travelling, wheremobile access to client engagement data throughwireless Pocket PCs both enabled the bankers toprovide better information when meeting the clients,but also to provide accurate data strengthening theirposition in negotiations with the clients [2; 3].

21ST CENTURY FACTORIESWhen work is supported by and organised within acomplex hierarchical organisation clearly demarcatingthe individual’s place and time of work as well as thespecific tasks to be carried out, then there is relativelylittle need for individual management of interaction.For example when considering software developerswe have studied who, based on relatively stablespecifications, must produce parts of a technicalsystem, then the main managerial challenge is toensure that they are undisturbed and at the sametime have sufficient access to negotiate mutualinterdependencies amongst each other. This implies

that the organisation will place the softwaredevelopers in large open-space or cubicle areas withonly very few stationary telephones and a ban on theuse of mobile phones. Silent interaction throughinstant messaging or email ensures access tocolleagues without disturbing others working, andmeeting rooms provide the needed context for groupdiscussions. In this respect, the software developers’environment constitutes the factory of the 21st

Century manufacturing modern “machines”consisting of computer code.

ORGANISATIONAL HIERARCHIESPROTECT INDIVIDUALSThe organisational hierarchy protects the individual interms of setting up rules, procedures and norms forwhom they are allowed and expected to interact with.The hierarchy is a mechanism supporting thecoordination of work. The value of email, fixed-line telephones, faxes and mobile phones hasexactly been that it supported members oforganisations to creatively destruct [53] rigidorganisational structures, thereby allowing theorganisation to be more responsive to marketneeds through setting its members free.

The future of work is flexible arrangements of workmoving from centralised hierarchies to networks [9;32]. The ease of communication allows flexiblearrangements of work processes and the use ofmobile technologies support an active choice of thephysical context of interaction. This means thatinformation and communication workers can decideto interact with colleagues and clients without havingto be physically present - one of the commonly usedreasons to adopt mobile information andcommunication technologies. However, if we placegreat importance on delivering personal services andif project-working is becoming more and morecomplex and critically dependent on the creation ofnew ideas in cross-functional teams, then the activechoice of being in a particular place with a selectgroup of people is a primary element of work of thefuture. This has of course always been an option sincethe advent of modern means of transportation, buthas previously always come with the price ofdisengaging from all other contexts while being outand about. The traditional image shows us the jet-setting top executive who with the strategic outlookwould not need to engage in day-to-day operationalactivities in the office, but instead was required inday-to-day circling the globe in order to understandand proactively influence the strategic order to

16

things. One of the main developments has been theaddition of large groups of mobile professionals, whoin the name of knowledge intensity and innovationmust travel to actively offer their operationalknowledge where it is needed.

CHOOSING CONTEXT OF INTERACTIONOur study of Arabian banking executives revealed adivision of work making extensive travelling anecessity for a large group of banking professionalsbeyond the traditional top-executives. In themanufacture of goods or the provision of services,knowledge supply chains are increasingly distributedthrough international networks of innovation,collaboration or as a direct result of outsourcing. Theknowledge supply chain consists of fragile andcomplex elements that need intense humaninteraction to interconnect. Knowledge supplychains only connected by procedures and codifiedknowledge will easily break when the codification inthe model escapes the modelling. Knowledge is allabout keeping constantly in touch, sharing andcontesting views. It is a fresh commodity and notsimply something that can be stored indefinitelyfor later consumption.

NETWORKS CREATE NEED FORINTERACTION MANAGEMENTWhen the organisational hierarchy is replaced by leannetworking practices it allows people to create theirown organisation. This is defined not throughhierarchical wall-charts and job-titles, but through theknowledge supply chain as it unfolds when peoplemeet to innovate and deliver services. Therefore itrequires that people leave the safe haven of theorganisational hierarchy and suddenly are all on theirown armed with technologies connecting them toeach other and to customers. When the maincharacteristic of work is interaction, collaboration,external contact and constant processing ofinformation rather than working in relative isolation,and if this takes place outside the protection of theorganisation, the information workers will need tosolve the problems themselves.

This implies that one of the primary tasks of themodern mobile information worker is to manage hisor her interaction. For people who are much soughtafter, this will represent such a big problem that theywill need a personal assistant to shield them from therequests. Whereas the classic organisation enabledpeople to interact through telegraph, telephone,

letters, and more recently through fax, the modernnetworked knowledge supply chain provides a widerange of interaction media to choose from. One ofthe characteristics of communication technologies isthat they generally assume human interaction to besymmetrical. If we both have the samecommunication medium then we also equally wish touse it. However, just because two people have amobile phone and each other’s numbers does notautomatically mean that they equally desire to speakto each other at any given point in time [22; 26]. Oneperson may be in a meeting while the other attemptsto engage in a conversation. What for one person isthe right time to call is for the other quite disturbing.Each day we make a number of these choices. Whento answer an email. Whether or not to answer at all.Should all phone calls be picked up or should somego directly to voicemail? Once during an interviewwith a personal assistant I asked if she ever chose notto pick up the phone. She answered, as most peoplewould tend to do, that she generally always picked upthe phone when at work – it’s you duty etc. However,during the interview, which was conducted whilst shewas working, the phone rang and she commented,“Oh, I am going to talk to her soon anyway, so I won’tpick it up.” We have probably all tried the game of“voice-mail-tennis” where we leave a message, whichresults in a message on our voicemail. This can go onfor a while until there is a lucky break and we manageto speak to each other.

INDIVIDUAL STYLES IN MANAGINGINTERACTIONWhereas interaction management to a large extentpreviously has been governed by organisational rulesand policies, it now suddenly becomes the directresponsibility of the individual. The personalisation oftechnologies making them available wherever theinformation worker is located, also makes the choicesof who to talk to when and how subject to highlyindividual preferences. Studies show that peoplehandle large amounts of interaction differently, forexample that some people simply must categoriseand carefully deal with all emails whereas others arehappy to pragmatically adjust the time they spend oneach email to the amount of emails they get andtherefore avoid getting overloaded [28; 29; 52]. Ourstudies clearly show that people experience both theadvantages of being able to flexibly arrange theirwork and a great deal of frustration caused by theneed to constantly juggle their availability andinteraction with others. Although the foreignexchange traders at one of the largest Arabian banks

17

saw it as an advantage to engage in out of officetrading, they also paid a high price in terms of alwaysbeing available for disruptions when importantfinancial events called them to work whereverthey were.

INTERACTION IS ASSYMETRICALWhat we found in our studies was also the constantvalue judgements of when face-to-face interactionwas needed in order to resolve problems, ensurecontact and socialise, and when mediated interactionwould better suit the situation. People wereconstantly designing their context and means ofinteraction. Solicitors provide a good example of theasymmetry of human interaction where theyconstantly seek to minimise the time they spend oninteracting in order to effectivise the handling ofclient contact at the same time as they must ensure todocument all important decisions. Solicitors willfavour different means of interaction for contactingclients compared with the ones preferred for clientsto get in touch with them. Writing letters and emailsworks well for both since the solicitor will employ anassistant for writing letters based on taped memos orface-to-face sessions. Voice-mails from clients aregenerally conceived as time-consuming althoughthey can represent an important means for resolvinguncertainties with clients.

MR 1000 EMAILS A DAYA study of City of London professionals’ use ofinformation and communication technologies [54]showed investment experts preferring to keep intouch with their clients through instant messagingsince it was a sufficiently lean and effective way ofensuring instant access without greatly cutting outother clients or indeed disturbing the natural flow ofwork. We also saw the example of one investmentbanker that processed around 1000 emails each day.Most of these were automatically generated based onpositions monitored and were considered an effectiveway to filter vast amounts of information [55] [54].

EXTENDING THE REACH OF THEORGANISATIONThe access to corporate databases and to vitalcolleagues through mobile and wireless technologiesnot only represents a practical solution to a problem.The use of mobile technologies extends the reach ofthe organisation into remote contexts. The bestillustration of this is the use of a variety of mobile

information and communication technologies withinthe police. Only a minority of UK police officers arearmed and their ability to manage the incidents theyare thrown into is largely due to the ways in whichthe uniform, the car and the extensive informationand communication technologies relate back to thepolice institution [33; 56]. The police radio signals thatyou may get away from this officer, but not from theten other officers he or she will call. Similarly,commercial organisations can leverage their positionthrough demonstrating that they are able to extendthe reach of their knowledge supply chain to anycontext and not only from the reception and inwards.

LEARN FROM THE POLICE WHEN TODISCONNECTPerhaps the most extreme case of individualjudgments of managing interaction we found was inthe study of operational policing [56]. Their context ofwork often chooses them through calls from thepublic. Operational police officers are in the businessof converting uncertainty into risk. They have a keeninterest in knowing as much as possible about thescene of incident they are attending to be able toaccess the risks they may face. For them uncertaintycan result in dangers both for them and for thepeople involved in the incident. They thereforenaturally use a wide range of mobile information andcommunication technologies ensuring the bestpossible connection between the central controlroom, other police units and themselves. All of thishappens in a hectic and noisy process of driving tothe incident at high speed with blue lights and loudmotor noise. Once at the incident officers will oftenrather hesitate slightly and ensure they have a goodunderstanding of the situation before entering thescene. They use mobile phones extensively; even theirown private phones, and they of course also relyheavily on their personal radio. However, one thing isquite clear - that once the officer chooses to enter thescene of the incident reported, they are extremelyselective about the means of virtualised interactionthey use. They may issue sparse statements on theradio attached to their jacket, but quite often theywill fully immerse themselves in the situation. As oneofficer argued: “When faced with a person, whopotentially can hurt you badly, you want to look thatperson in the eyes and not stand there and stare into ascreen”.

18

BE HERE NOW!We can learn something from this in the waysinformation workers can view their interaction withtechnology and the day-to-day judgements made asto how interaction is conducted. Just because aninformation worker is in no direct physical danger bystaring into a screen does not imply that it is a badidea explicitly, considering when clients are moreimportant than whoever may decide to call on themobile phone. Information workers are still graspingwith the idea of instant contact and when not onlyvoice but also email and other data connections aregenerally available we will have even greaterproblems discerning when we are on or offline. If weallow the continual sliding of behaviour, we will allalways be immersed in the virtualised interaction andactually never immersed in reality. This may implythat we are good colleagues who answer our emailspromptly, but it could also leave us poor professionalsif we cannot be present in the situations that reallymatter. The future information worker must be ableto actively manage their interaction and not onlyjuggle a wealth of complex technologies. The future isjust as much a challenge of being able to deliverpresence in the situation where face-to-faceinteraction has been chosen because it really matters.Here the information worker must demonstrate theability to extend the reach of the strategicorganisational capabilities through the use of mobileinformation and communication technologies at thesame time as they deliver the full presence requiredof the situation. We know how to manufacture stuffand we also know quite well how to sell. What weneed in the service economy is to nurture clients andcolleagues, give them experiences and generally seekto meet their essential needs [66].

DARE TO DISCONNECTInformation workers will be facing a more ruthlessfuture where they simply cannot deliver equal serviceto all. Information workers are for example, alreadyspending a significant proportion of their working lifereading and replying to emails. If no value-judgements are made, this will slide into levels ofunacceptable proportions. For organisations this willrepresent the challenge of striking the right balancebetween setting information workers free to roam theworld, and establishing organisational rules, norms,etiquettes, and procedures to identify creative spacesof seclusion and peace for reflection and innovation.This balance is still largely unchartered territory formany organisations and their members.

WE CAN ALL HAVE 15 MINUTES OF FAMEWith no or very few barriers to each other’s attention,we may not be ready to handle suddenly becomingthe “talk of the organisation” when our skills oropinions are needed – for good or less good reasons.If we are to succeed in delivering quality presence wemust be present at least occasionally. If we are, andwe understand how to use all the interaction mediato our advantage we can achieve great things andnot only drown in hundreds of unimportant emailseach day. The sliding phenomenon of interactionmanagement represents a daily challenge for moderninformation workers. A member of one of theorganisations we studied seriously suggested a two-hour time-lag on all internal emails ensuring thatpeople only used the medium for interaction of amore substantial nature than issues that should besorted out with a brief chat or an instant messaginginteraction. Books have even been written on the newphenomenon of interaction management, teachingemail etiquette or how to disconnect from thetechnologies as a means of getting an improvedquality of life [18].

LOOSE OR TIGHT COUPLING OF LOCALAND REMOTE ACTIVITIESOne of the determining characteristics of work thatwe must consider is to what extent co-workers areloosely or tightly coupled in their activities. Looselycoupled activities are ones that can be conductedindependently by a person or unit, whereas tightlycoupled activities are those where interdependentworkers must co-ordinate and negotiate theiractivities in order to produce the required result. Weare all to some extent dependent upon others in ourwork and even the lonely taxi driver who owns his orher own London black cab depends critically on thegarage for petrol and servicing of the cab, as well ason other firms. However, the work of a cabbie ismuch more independent than that of a member of aproject team that is engaged in innovation.

We can, furthermore, distinguish between collocated,remote and mobile work activities. Collocated work isconducted within the same office or building andgenerally allows the participants to engage in face-to-face interaction on a frequent basis wheneverneeded. Remote working denotes permanentlyseparated individuals or groups for example peopletele-working from home or distributed branches ofthe same firm.

19

Combining the distinction of loosely and tightlycoupled activities with collocated, remote and mobile

modes of working, we see, as illustrated in the figurea great variety in configurations of work.

REMOTENESS

Co-located Remote

Coordinateand

cultivate

Locale working

Medical professionals doingrounds

Mobile working

Repair engineers

Mob

ility

Commandand

control

Office working

Call-centre worker.

Remote worker

Virtual team / teleworker

Figure 2: Distinguishing remote and mobile working.

Co-located looselycoupled workers

Co-located stronglycoupled workers

Loosely coupled virtual orremote teams

Strongly coupled virtualor remote teams

Loosely coupled mobileworkers

Tightly coupled mobileworkers

CO-LOCATED

REMOTE

MOBILE

20

ORGANISATIONALINFORMATION SERVICES

ENCOUNTERS AND RELATIONSHIPSHow can we explain the technologies supportingmobile information and communication workers intheir daily activities? Let us look at them in terms ofthe kinds of services they provide. There are twofundamentally different types of services in general,namely those that provide encounters and those thatfosters relationships [19]. An encounter is astraightforward service that spans a short period oftime and has a predefined context. We engage in anencounter when we enter a shop and buy anewspaper and a chocolate bar. Encounters ensureefficiency, speed, and uniformity of services. Opposedto the encounter, we find the relationshipcharacterized by context and duration and aimed atmore complex service needs. Relationships serve thepurpose of creating bonds of trust in evolvinginteractions between service providers and consumersor between people working together. Most peoplehave a relationship with their doctor or theirsolicitor. Some people also have a relationship withthe hairdresser, while others use encounters forthat purpose.

NETWORKING AND COLLABORATIVESERVICESIf we characterise the technologies according to whatservices they support then we can distinguishbetween information and communicationtechnologies that support encounters and thosesupporting relationships. Networking services providesupport for encounters through infrastructuretechnology standardising connections [34]. These are,for example, the telephone, email, SMS, and instantmessaging. Collaborative services supportrelationships through workspace technologystandardising the shared material. This can manifestitself as a combination of three types of technologies,namely 1) shared workspaces allowing collaboratorsto store and retrieve documents or other work-objects, 2) co-ordination mechanisms supportingdistributed co-ordination of who is doing what andwhen, and 3) awareness support providing co-workers with partial information about theircolleagues’ activities. Instant messaging provides ashared space for writing messages as well as partialinformation about the participants. As such it can beviewed as providing a collaborative service, although

one that only supports ‘discussion-work’, whereas acollaborative service typically supports distributedworkflow management, the joint development ofblue-prints, system specifications, reports orMicrosoft® PowerPoint® presentations.

MODELLING WORK IN TECHNICALSYSTEMSEngaging in virtualised interaction, that is workingtogether or engaging with clients in a virtual settingand while not collocated, of course critically relies oninformation and communication technologies. Onedefining characteristic of these are that they supportour interaction through providing connections andthrough modelling aspects of the social world insidethe technology [51]. Optimising the knowledgesupply chain relies on utilising the modelling of socialrelations in technological systems in much the sameway as physical supply chains have gained efficiencyfrom much more detailed and explicitly modelling thephysical parts and their associated processes in JIT orMRP II systems. Networking and collaborative servicesboth model aspects of the work in technical systems.The mobile phone contains names and phonenumbers of people we may want to call and theinfrastructure generally provides standardisedconnections through representing names, addressesand phone numbers. Collaborative services providemore fundamental models of the work context, thepeople engaging in collaborative activities, as well asthe activities themselves. A workflow managementsystem will typically model a standardised workprocess to be followed.

WORKFLOWS VERSUS CONNECTIONSThe strength of networking services is that theyprovide unobtrusive, generic and flexible means forinteraction. The weakness is that they do not directlysupport or automate the knowledge supply chain butrather leave the main work to the participants.Collaborative services embed and can partiallyautomate the knowledge supply chain preciselybecause they contain explicit models of the worksystem beyond simply listing names andphone numbers.

This implies that collaborative services in a muchmore radical manner address the issue of productivityin information and knowledge work. This is one of thereasons for the emergence of workflow managementsystems, scheduling systems and shared workspace

21

technologies such as Microsoft® SharePoint® Server.They allow us to set up collaboration across time andspace and therefore support the organisation ofcollaboration in virtual teams or of highly mobileworkers. However, collaborative services are alsomuch more problematic to assimilate into dailypractices precisely because they attempt

something potentially very difficult, namely intechnical systems to represent and model socialbehaviour and even further to feedback from thesystem and stipulate human action.

NETWORKING SERVICES COLLABORATIVE SERVICES

Low degree of modelling work activities,context or participants

High degree of modelling work activities,context or participants

Standardising connections Standardising the shared work material

Provide support for one-shot encountersaimed at efficient transactions

Provide support for ongoing relationshipsaimed at nurturing trust

Easy to implement. The consequences areonly noticed with intense use (interactionoverload)

Difficult to implement as they model socialrelations and stipulate the conduct of workand collaborative patterns

Can foster support when used over time toreinforce social patterns

Efficient exactly because they stipulate thedistributed conduct of work tasks

Technology agreements only essential if datacollected from the use of networking servicesare to be used in order to effectivise work

Technology agreements essential

Coupling and de-coupling technologies(present-to-hand, ready-at-hand, in-the-pocket)

Not so much coupling and de-coupling oftechnologies but rather the effects ofembedding social relations in technologicalartefacts

Does not provide and stipulate structures butinstead flexible networking possibilities.Structures and rules are exclusively sociallydefined outside the technology and thereforemore flexible

Provides artificial structures and hence also asense of stability if accepted and appropriate,but also a constant source of discontent ifinappropriate

One of the major socio-technical challenges facingorganisations seeking to change knowledge supplychains is to deliver support that balances distributedand mobile work with collaborative services andnetworking services that allow people to flexiblynegotiate, connect and socialise. As networking has alow entry barrier - we can immediately see somebenefit of using a mobile phone or email - they areeasy to diffuse in the organisation. However, the realcosts associated with networking services show upwhen they are most successful. The ease ofconnecting can lead to particular popular informationand communication workers being swamped ininteraction. Furthermore, as the services only providea standardisation of the connection, they actually donot do anything in themselves in terms of supporting

work. People themselves still need to make all thenotes, write, store and share documents etc. Usingemail to emulate a shared document server will easilyend in tears when confusion as to what version of thedocument is the newest, and where it is on the messyhard drive. So as the price of communicationdrops through advanced networking services, theorganisational cost may increase as informationworkers spend their valuable time reading yetanother semi-important email.

Collaborative services on the other hand are oftenquite complex to implement in organisations.Standardising the knowledge supply chain may bringproductivity gains but it may also impose too tightrules and regulations on how the distributed activitiesare carried out. Delivering services or innovating

22

together in projects is an uncertain business. Peoplewill frequently need to reassess the way things aredone in order to deliver better results faster, and atoo rigid system determining the conditions underwhich work is conducted and co-ordinated will feellike a straightjacket to the participants. This meansthat the initial hurdle for implementing collaborativeservices is much higher than those for networkingservices. This is one of the reasons for mobile phonesand email gaining immense success with little or noorganisational push, whereas workflow managementtechnologies need constant push and attention tosucceed [12]. However, once successfullyimplemented in the organisation, collaborativeservices can form the infrastructure of an efficientorganisation and significantly help in optimising theknowledge supply chain. The ability to implementbottom-up de-central changes to workflows isessential for successful use.

BUREAUCRACY BY EMAILAs the price of communication declines, so does theprice of maintaining unnecessary bureaucratic rulesand regulations through communicationtechnologies. The easier it is to send off an email, theeasier it is to communicate bureaucratic rules andregulation, and to over-burden colleagues withmessages, management surveys, etc.

The danger of too extensive use of networkingservices is that organisations may get the worst ofboth worlds, that is, all the cumbersome bureaucraticmanagement rules of the centralised hierarchies, butwithout being provided with the safe haven forinteraction these organisational arrangementstraditionally offer.

Although work increasingly consists of talk, emails,interaction, presentations and such, this does notnecessarily imply that all interaction creates value forthe organisation - far from it. Although studies haveshown the resilience of information workers inabsorbing information overload [52], it should bethe explicit aim of organisations to actively reflectupon their interaction culture.

From the point of view of the information worker, thelow barrier makes it very easy to be available and todemonstrate activity through ensuring on high levelof interaction and responsiveness. However, as eachact of interaction, however small a cost to produce,also can be viewed as taking up someone’s attention,organisations must seek to establish cultures where

the need to demonstrate activities for the sake of itis minimised.

It is characteristic that the organisational innovationthat happened because of communicationtechnologies (e.g. email, mobiles and instantmessaging) happened in a mostly uncontrolled andad hoc manner. The innovation will typically be aresult of strong organisational pull as opposed tomany collaborative services that are subject ofsignificant technological push or pressure on themembers to adopt the technologies. Networkingservices are suddenly there as a part of theinfrastructure and information workers find ways ofutilising the technologies to their advantage. It is notuntil much later on, when they have proven highlysuccessful through extensive adoption and use thatthe organisation realises the value of free interaction.Whereas we have found instant messaging to be anexcellent tool in the right situation, it is by nomeans certain that it is an advantage for allinformation workers.

However, contrary to traditional systems, it is verydifficult to predict exactly who will benefit (and inwhat circumstance) from using a new communicationtechnology. The use of these must be cultivated inspecific circumstances and the use will grow out ofconcerted individual and organisational reflection.

FLEXIBLE COLLABORATIVE SERVICESIt is a major technical challenge to providecollaborative services that both significantly modeland support distributed and mobile working at thesame time, as they are flexible enough toaccommodate emerging needs to change the waywork is done. In addition, establishing flexibleworkflow management systems is a significanttechnical and organisational challenge [51]. However,exclusively relying on networking services simplyimplies leaving the entire burden of optimising thecreation and sharing of knowledge to the individuals.Lessons from research clearly demonstrate that thedifficulties of implementing collaborative servicesdepend on the need for the actors to collaborateremotely. A case of a high-tech innovation company[47] showed that the mostly self-managed expertswithin the company would reject systems restrainingtheir ability to work flexibly when project participantswere situated within the company. However, whenprojects relied crucially on close collaboration withexperts abroad, the adoption of sophisticatedcollaborative services went smoothly. It was simply anecessity and therefore it happened.

23

TRUST IN MOBILE WORKING

EFFICIENCY AND EMOTIONSTechnological developments place more and morepowerful information and communicationtechnologies directly in the hands of informationworkers. Organisations deploy these technologies inorder to mobilise organisational capabilities throughenabling access to corporate infrastructures,colleagues as well as to clients and customers. Theaim is to incentivise work and a mixture ofnetworking and collaborative services accomplishesthis. One defining characteristic of many of these newtechnologies is the fact that they are not only linkedto an individual user, but often also follow that userthroughout their working day, and in some cases offwork as well. The stationary PC will engender useremotions as more and more of their working time isspent working on it. Technologies that follow the userwherever they are will even more so be associatedwith deep individual emotions. If the technology isone that plays an important role in quantifying work,then it may raise even more emotions. As uttered bya home appliances repair engineer when his mobilephone rang, “it’s only ten past nine in the morning onmy first day at work after two weeks of holiday andthis phone has already rung ten times!” People easilyend up with a highly ambivalent relationship to theuse of personal technologies. They become anindispensable help in doing a good job at the sametime as they may represent the ability of colleaguesand managers to control and monitor work. Nuts andbolts do not care much for what is written and saidabout them in JIT and MRP II systems and thephysical supply chains they are an integral part of cantherefore be optimised radically. The knowledgesupply chain is, however, made up of people whodo care considerably about what is written andsaid about them in systems and how their workis managed.

TRUST AS THE BRIDGE BETWEENINDIVIDUALISED TECHNOLOGIES ANDORGANISATIONAL EFFICIENCYWe are dealing here with a serious issue of combiningthe need for organisational efficiency with the needfor individuals to feel that they are not unnecessarilymonitored and controlled. Trust is the key conceptbridging the emotional disposition of the individualand the organisational aims for efficiency. The use ofadvanced networking and collaborative services

in an environment of trust and clear objectiveswill enable the utilisation highly sophisticatedfunctionality, whilst an environment ofuncertainty and lack of trust can make even thesimplest personal technology fail. We will in thefollowing examples, but let us first look at theessentials for the successful use of the technologies.

Information and communication technologies canweaken or strengthen knowledge supply chainoptimisation. Equipping an information worker with amobile phone and a list of numbers for potentialcollaborators does not really intervene significantlyand will allow the information worker to flexiblyarrange and participate in the exchange ofknowledge. Other networking services such as emailand instant messaging function pretty much the sameway. However, even with these relatively simpletechnologies, the absence of trust can lead to misuse.For example, if the information worker does not fullytrust the organisation and expects to have theirdecision questioned regarding the way work is done,then they may decide to carefully document alldecisions to cover their back. They may decide tomake certain decisions on the phone out of fear ofsubsequently being held accountable for discussionson email. If, however, there is a great element of trust,mutual understanding and benefit from optimisinginformation work though technology support, thentheir may not mind the organisation using detailedinformation about the their interaction networks inorder to optimise the knowledge supply chain.

Let us then consider collaborative services, which asopposed to networking services much moresubstantially model and represent the knowledgesupply chain, for example through direct support forcoordination of activities in workflow managementsystems. Here, the supply chain tying informationworkers together will directly be represented and atleast partially stipulated through the technology. Atrain timetable leaves very little choice for either thetrain driver or the passengers and a workflowdocument landing on your table will have a built-inrequest for you to deal with it. We here see thatcollaborative services in a much more substantialmanner represent and model the knowledge supplychain and as such embed the social relations insidetechnical systems.

MAKING INFORMATION WORK VISIBLEAs the timetable greatly aided railway transport [63],so has, and increasingly will, collaborative servicessuch as groupware support the knowledge supply

24

chain. However, in even more dramatic ways thanwith networking services, the use of workflows, andother collaborative services critically relies on theparticipants trusting their concerns being taken intoconsideration. Once the supply chain is representedthrough systems, for example through sharedworkspaces or thorough distributed workflows, theinformation work is made explicit and externallyobservable. The example of a product developmentgroup in a European country using a collaborativesystem to document their design process offers goodinsight into this [12]. They were happily going abouttheir work until one day the CEO of the corporation,based in London, posted a message congratulatingthe effort and applauding the progress. As none ofthe participants had considered the possibility thatthey were observed from above, they were quitenervous about the prospects of having all theirdetailed internal discussions observed externallythrough the groupware system. Consequently theyimmediately stopped using the system and could onlybe persuaded when the organisation ensured that theaccess to the system replicated the organisationalarrangements where only people who were anintegral and trusted part of the knowledge supplychain had access to view the detailed data inthe system.

80,000 STRANDED TRAVELLERSIf we trust the ones representing us in systems or ifwe have a natural interest in being represented in thesystem then it is generally relatively unproblematic. Ifthe trust is broken or if it is uncertain what exactly theconsequences of the representation will be, thenpeople will resist fiercely as British Airways discoveredthis when 80,000 travellers were left stranded ascheck-in staff at Heathrow went on strike in protestagainst a swipe-card system they felt would be used

as a tool for micro-managing shifts and whichcollected detailed data on check-in staff movementsin a way that had not been negotiated andagreed [4].

SECURITY GUARDS AND RFIDIn a study of security guards piloting a system withthe relatively simple technology of RFID tags placedon the security route and read with handheld devices,the uncertainty about the use of the data for thedetailed management of work resulted in significantdiscussions of the feasibility of the system, althoughwith less dramatic consequences than 80,000stranded passengers at Heathrow. The technologywas, in terms of data transmission, a simple one, withthe work relatively independent, but the fact thatthere was tight links between the security guard andthe recording technology allowed the closesupervision of individuals.

OPERATIONAL POLICINGOur study of mobile technologies used within the UKPolice clearly demonstrated the opposite situation.Police officers use a variety of mobile services thatgive them access to national databases on personsand vehicles, detailed information about incidents[46; 56]. There is a long tradition of advanced use ofmobile technologies within police forces [1; 33].Police officers are keen on obtaining rich contextualinformation about an incident, the people reported tobe involved and other contextual information in orderto understand the risk imposed by the situations. Wesaw advanced use of collaborative services such asthe Mobile Data Terminal whilst the police car wastravelling at great speed with one officer reading outand the other driving the car.

25

Figure 3: Basic roles for supply and consumption of organisational information services. It illustrates the possible synergies and mismatches betweena command-and-control perspective and a coordinate-and-cultivate approach.

Even in this hostile environment a complex mobiletechnology found its natural place since it offeredessential support for the job at hand. Operationalpolice officers also accepted fairly intense surveillanceof their activities as this provided them with anadditional sense of security both in the eventualitythat they needed backup from colleagues, or if thecause of events later on needed to be reported indetail to justify the officer’s actions.

TRUST AND KNOWLEDGE SHARINGThe issue of trust is generally quite difficult to pindown as it does not lend itself to easycharacterisations without either resorting to ourcommon sense understanding or submerging intolengthy philosophical deliberations. Trust has beendefined as: “a psychological state comprising theintention to accept vulnerability based on positiveexpectations of the intentions or behaviour of another,irrespective of the ability to monitor or control thatother party“ [48]. This always depends on the specificcontext within which it happens [64]. We tend to trustpeople of the same profession as us more than thosewith different professions, and those from our owncultural background more than those with a differentcultural background. Socialising and intenseinteraction over time has generally been seen as themain source of building trust as it allows us to formmore precise expectations about the intentions of our

colleagues. An important element of trust is alsoassessment of the risk and reward associated with ouracceptance of vulnerability. The higher the perceivedreward the higher risk we are willing to take.

If we are expected by the organisation to renderthe organisation more effective through sharingwhat we know with others in the organisationthen it of course requires that we trust others touse what we know in ways that will benefit theorganisation and in particular not in ways thatwill disadvantage us. Orlikowski’s [44] classical studyof the use of Lotus Notes in a global consultancy firmclearly demonstrates this. Here the use of thecollaborative service was required in order to supportthe sharing of knowledge across projects. However,the underlying structure of partners with the interestof capturing and sharing cross-project data and non-partners who internally competed to become partnersled to relatively poor use of the system. Non-partnersefforts to share knowledge could advantage one ofhis or her internal competitors and thereforepotentially disadvantage them. In any case, the effortwould advantage partners who did not take directpart in using the system.

FRONT STAGE AND BACK STAGE WORKGoffman [17] suggested in the 1950s, based onextensive studies of social behaviour that ourinteraction in everyday life can be characterised in

INFORMATION WORKER APPROACH TO WORK

Command and control Coordinate and cultivate

Coordinateand

cultivate

Management will extend great operationalfreedom to members and seek to cultivatethe organization. Risk of ineffectiveoperations as management goals andexpectations do not manage operationalexpectancies. Management requiresdetailed knowledge of operationalactivities and participant behaviour. Thisinformation not shared willingly due tosuspicion as to its use for direct commandand control.

New ways of working ensuring flexibleworking and the flexible delivery ofinnovative products and services.

Man

agem

ent

appr

oach

to in

form

atio

n w

ork

Commandand control

Traditional way of managing andconducting work. Operational aspects onlycontrolled to the extent they can bedirectly observed. A challenge to innovateproducts and services.

Members trust that management ofoperations is conducted according to theprinciples of coordination and cultivationand operational details are hence soughtshared. If management based oncommand and control the operationaldetails may be used in ways violating themembers’ expectation of privacy in work.

26

terms of the distinction between when we work frontstage and when we work back stage. This theatremetaphor characterises the differences between howwe wish others to see us and how we expect toengage in interaction with them.

A restaurant can provide us with a good example ofthis distinction. When waiters are located front stagethey display certain behaviours such as alwaysmaintaining a pleasant disposition and takingcustomer critique with a smile and subsequentapologies on behalf of the establishment. Whenopening the door to the kitchen, the waiter enters theback stage where intense discussions may seek todistribute blame or issue blunt opinions of thebehaviour of the guests. Once the restaurant isclosed, the floor and kitchen is being cleaned, and themoney is being counted, back stage behaviour mayresult in loud arguments over wages or quiet talksover a glass of wine with feet on the tables whereguests previously were enjoying their meals.

The same physical spaces can serve both as front andback stage depending on the situation. In the exactdefinition of a concrete situation of either front stageor back stage depends critically on the relationshipsbetween the participants and how each of themperceives the situation. In some organisations there isan informal culture encouraging people to let downtheir guards and slip into the back stage where thereis an atmosphere of mutual trust and issues can bediscussed more unrestricted.

Collocated information workers have been socialisedinto understanding the careful and fragilenegotiations of front and back stage situations. Ourgeneral social skills form an essential basis forassessing and acting in these situations. Socialisingtakes place in specific physical contexts where we ashuman beings can use all of our senses to help assessthe intentions of others and it is in these situations webuild the trust needed for us to relax back stage.Socialising back stage has been argued as a crucialelement in transferring essential knowledge betweencolleagues, even between mobile workers who wouldonly meet up to share a cup of coffee once each day[7; 45; 62].

When all or a significant part of work is conductedremotely, there may be much less or virtually noopportunities for information workers to establish thenecessary trust enabling them to interact and shareknowledge back stage. This can result in mismatcheswhere some information workers will perceive thesituation as a clear back stage activity whereas othersmay perceive the activity as a central aspect of their

front stage work where it is important to carefullyassess ones actions. They may not be ready to trusttheir colleagues to the extent needed for intensesharing of knowledge among peers [61]. Whittle [61]demonstrates how mobile workers used their virtualpresence as a means of conveying commitment andability. They used the mobile phone and email asmeans of informing their managers of work activitiesand the information workers would carefullyorchestrate this interaction in order to design theright impression. The study also showed that duringthe sparse face-to-face meetings, some participantsfelt part of a front stage activity aimed at criticallyassessing their abilities whereas others considered themeeting a back stage activity where knowledge couldbe shared in a relaxed atmosphere.

Organisations relying critically on information workersactively engaging in mobile working must supportthe fostering of trust through enabling back stageactivities where knowledge can be shared in a relaxedatmosphere. Although physical presence andsocialising is a key element in this, frequent andinstant contact between members clearly supportsthe process of cultivating a trusting environment.

Critically we saw in the study of UK police officershow frequent interaction among mobile unitsthrough a technology similar to instant messagingwas used along with mobile phones to ensure bothefficient coordination of activities as well as socialisingand sharing of knowledge. In this environment thetightly coupled work due to the safety and timecritical nature of operational policing also forcedthrough the need for mutual trust. Socialising was,however, critically supported by the essential dailyback stage activity of the briefing where officerswould go through the previous days incidents andplan the upcoming shift. Here, the mood was one ofhumorous commenting on the events of the previousday in an open and candid manner that facilitatedknowledge sharing and the cultivation of norms.

TRUST AND REMOTE WORKINGWhen people work in remote and mobile teams theissue of trust becomes even more thorny andproblematic to understand. Remote working requiresa high degree of virtualised interaction and ittherefore leads to significant difficulties inestablishing a clear picture of what the others aredoing or indeed what specific reasons there may havebeen if they do not deliver what we expect them to.In the traditional understanding of trust a colleague isperceived as trustworthy if he or she delivers on work

27

commitments. Studies of trust in remote and mobileworking indicates that here trust can be explained theother way around, namely that people who areperceived as trustworthy also are more likely to beperceived as delivering on work commitments [64]. Itis also indicated that in remote and mobile workingfirst impressions form an important part of a lastingassessment of a person’s trustworthiness. This cansimply be explained from the fact that mobile andremote working colleagues, depending critically oneach others efforts simply will not have the sameability to evaluate the detailed performance ofcolleagues and therefore will have to resort to makingdecisions on less experience.

If we wish to foster trust and open knowledge sharingin mobile working it is therefore essential that weallow for proper assessment of the performance of allinvolved. This can prove very difficult without the useof mobile technologies, as it then would require someelement of collocated working and socialising.Socialising can play an important role in transferringessential knowledge between colleagues, evenbetween mobile workers who would only meet up toshare a cup of coffee once each day [45; 62].

The possibility of more precisely monitoring andmeasuring work performance is an integral possibilityof the application of networking and in particularcollaborative services. This can both make detailedperformance visible and render it open fornegotiation. It can, furthermore, support the sharingof knowledge across mobile workers and teams. Forthis to take place it is essential that there is extensivetrust between the involved parties in the kinds of usesthe resulting data from the system will be put to. Thetraditional assumption is that detailed informationabout the work process in many professions is theprivate property of the information andcommunication worker. This also used to be the caseamongst factory workers who through the emergenceof Scientific Management saw their activitiesincreasingly being monitored and controlled.

Effectivising the knowledge supply chain criticallydepends on communities of practice sharingknowledge and in remote and mobile working thisrequires mutual awareness among participants as tothe state-of-affairs.

REPRESENTING THE SUPPLY CHAINIf we are to successfully optimise the knowledgesupply chain then it is not enough to just establishconnections between participants through

networking services. As the proper coordination ofcollocated activities critically rely on the participants’ability to assess and influence the status of theircolleagues’ activities and whereabouts.

As the optimisation of manufacturing supply chainhappens through representing, modelling andoptimising its systems, the optimisation of theknowledge supply chain relies critically on theawareness and understanding of the socialarrangements carrying out the activities needed.When the participants are all situated in the sameoffice, this is fairly straightforward in the sense thatthe participants have immediate access to inquireabout the state-of-affairs and of the whereabouts ofindividuals. This can foster communities of practicewhere participants share knowledge on best practice.

However, when work is mobile and distributed, forexample as in virtual teams, then it is associated witha significant interaction overhead to establish apicture of the state-of-affairs. We have evidence froma manufacturing innovation case study that theintense interaction needed in concurrent engineeringprojects went much smoother when the engineeringdesigners were situated right next to the productionplanners. When engineering designers were situatedacross the road from the factory and the productionplanners, the participants complained that theprocess of designing integrated easy-to-manufacturecomponents was much more troubled [8].

Establishing a picture of who is doing what,where they are and how it all fits in with mycurrent activities requires that mobile and remoteworking that information workers have access todata representing current activities andwhereabouts of colleagues. They are often nowrestricted to using mobile phone conversations asmeans of investigating what is going on and wherepeople are. The mobile phone in this sense isappropriated to simulate the functionality of alocation-based service through the frequentconversations concerning where people are and whatthey currently are doing. It can of course be seen as acase of misused technology, but as our ability toascertain the whereabouts and activities of colleaguesis essential, we will naturally wish to obtain this kindof information even when it is not immediatelyavailable to us.

28

ACCEPTING SURVEILLANCE WITH APURPOSEA good example of a successful implementation of asystem tracking the behaviour of individuals can befound in the study of GPS equipped long-distancelorries in Denmark. Here each lorry was equippedwith satellite tracking and a dedicated emailcommunication system. At the central dispatchstation the controller could observe the exact positionand movement or each of the fleet lorries. They couldcontact the driver through the satellite email system,and the driver could contact the controller. Thedrivers were all independent contractors paidaccording to the loads they shifted and they thereforehad a natural interest in being monitored. Since thelorries mostly drove fresh and salted fish fromNorway and Denmark to the south of Europe, thechallenge was to respond to available return loadsfrom or within France, Italy, Spain, Germany etc. toDenmark, Norway or Sweden. Any technology thatcould enable the controller to convey emergingdetails of a possible shipment allowing the lorrydriver to make more money through a transportcontract for parts of the whole return trip was seen asbeneficial and not a violation of the drivers privacy.The email system was also seen as a reliable means ofgetting help in case of errors in the paperwork, forexample as in the case of a shipping note carrying thewrong address. This was only noticed when the lorryreached the wrong address. After an email to thecontroller, the right address could immediately betransferred and the load could be delivered to thecorrect address.

NEW PERCEPTIONS OF PRIVACYRepresenting information workers’ behaviour andphysical location in technical systems and making thisinformation available in real-time or near-real-time tomembers of the organisation is potentially highlycontroversial. It will bring with it associations of BigBrother monitoring every move with the purpose ofcontrolling behaviour. There is, however, not a lot todo we can do about this problem other thanattacking it head on and dealing with the issues,which are complex and difficult but also essential forthe mobile organisation to more effectively organiseits knowledge supply chain.

As we see initial developments in the kind of systemsand services supporting coordination of mobile anddistributed activities, we also see the emerging needfor all involved to cultivate and negotiate newperceptions of privacy and surveillance. This is

essential to avoid endlessly repeating the Heathrowconflict. Mutual trust is not an added bonus of themobile organisation, it is an absolute coreproperty. Without mutual trust it is impossible toeffectively coordinate the distributed activities.Mistrust also results in the perceived need toengage in activities only serving the purpose ofdemonstrating ability internally and notgenerating business value. It has been reported thatmobile phone users frequently don’t divulge theirexact location, instead giving out the location thatwill best serve their purpose [25].

Representing the social arrangements and activities intechnical systems for example entails selective accessto people’s location, access to data representingaspects of their activities as well as reciprocallyproviding others similar access to information.Providing this information in an environment of trustcan greatly facilitate the coordination of work [8; 51].In the case of the police, there is from the officers akeen interest to be able to document theirwhereabouts as well as ensuring the ability tocoordinate back-up and support. They thereforewillingly allow colleagues to be aware of wherethey are.

Allowing others to know where they are will enablecolleagues to exercise informed judgement on howthey may wish to be contacted, how urgent an issuehas to be before they will prefer mobile phone calls, itreduces misplaced interaction and generally providesthe background for assembling and coordinatingwork-products.

In the interesting case of a bespoke instant messagingsystem reported by Nardi and Whittaker [37], thesystem would transmit to the buddy-list a measure ofthe typing speed of the user. Initially people wereoutraged and felt this was a tool to monitor theirproductivity. It, however, did not last long beforepeople trusted that the data was not misused andfound the facility highly usable as it meant thatpeople would not initiate discussions on the systemwith members of their buddy list who clearly weretyping frantically to meet a report deadline.Conversely, a very low typing-count would clearlyindicate absence from the workstation, making iteasier for people to assess the likelihood of reachingthe person they were seeking to interact with orperhaps be a sign of intense reading activities. A lowtyping count could indicate a person was willing toengage in instant message interaction without feelingdisturbed and thus facilitate impromptu socialisationthrough the technology.

29

MANAGEMENT AND THE KNOWLEDGESUPPLY CHAINIf creating an environment of mutual trust betweenall stakeholders in organisational life is essential for usto be able to work together using mobile and remoteworking practices, how can we then understand theessential aspects of fostering this trust? How good arewe in the UK at ensuring that we trust each otherwhen we work together?

If we assume at least partial correctness of the studiesshowing that UK productivity is significantly lowerthan that in the countries we normally compareourselves with, and also consider that the averageworking hours in the UK are higher than in the rest ofthe EU [35; 59], then it becomes clear that Britishorganisations are devoting time and effort to non-productive activities. One such type of activity is ofcourse tea-breaks, but they probably also have thoseon the continent. Another type of activity that doesnot directly produce value is management, and thatgenerally concerns activities that serve the purpose ofmanaging work activities. There is a differencebetween activities necessary for people to coordinatethe knowledge supply chain and generalmanagement of the supply chain. Managementactivities are typically seen as concerning the overallperformance of the knowledge supply chain and as amechanism for solving problems. Whereas theknowledge supply chain defines the operational level,the tactical and strategic levels are the concerns ofmanagement. Although management activities areessential, they can also be conducted unnecessarily. Inthe traditional functional hierarchy, the role ofmanagement was clearly defined as providingstrategic leadership through innovation. However, innetwork modes of organising activities whereknowledge supply chains cut across organisations inever-changing patterns, the role of management andstrategic leadership is less straightforward. Heredetailed operational knowledge is essential in orderto formulate the strategic potentials [13].

Since the British economy has remained strongdespite lower productivity and longer working hours,perhaps the productivity-gap can partly becharacterised in terms of the efforts spent onmanaging the knowledge supply chains in Britishorganisations? Comparing, for example Scandinaviancountries with the UK, then day-to-day knowledge oforganisations across the two cultures can clearlyconfirm that for example in Sweden with high taxeson employment, one frequently meet automats androbots where in the UK there are real people. People

are most often preferable to robots, but in Swedenone relatively rarely seems to encounter as muchmanagement. Here the rationale seems to be thatsince employment expenses are high, organisationscan ideally only afford employees who can largelymanage themselves. Therefore trust can be seen asthe result of economic necessity. Conversely there isperhaps in the UK with significantly loweremployment costs a tradition of employing oneperson to do the job and two to check the jobis done.

So, although there have been large restructuringefforts in British business to reduce layers of middlemanagement and introduce leaner and flatterstructures, the main issue is one of culture. Let us forthe sake of argument assume that Britishorganisational culture is still significantly shaped bythe norms of command and control. Then this willnaturally form a clash with attempts to foster trustin mobile and remote working when knowledgesupply chains become flexibly reconfigurable andhighly distributed.

FOSTERING NEW MANAGEMENTPRACTICESA command-and-control mentality where there ismore status in telling people what to do than todo it well oneself is not conducive to fosteringtrust at the operational level of the knowledgesupply chain. As we saw in the product developmentexample earlier, in such an environment having “BigBrother” watch work from above can havedevastating consequences and the only solution is toembed hierarchies in the technologies, which defiesthe whole purpose of the exercise, namely to ensureflexible and agile knowledge supply chains throughemancipated information workers.

The UK with its service economy is in many ways wellequipped to meet the challenges of the mobilesociety and of individuals increasingly requiringessential fulfilment of their needs [66]. However, thereare also pitfalls. Over emphasising the codification ofservices as a simple mechanism of ensuringstandardisation is not a viable strategy in the longrun. Codification of services is the approach ofmanagerially setting explicitly codified standards forservices and acceptable behaviour. For example,call-centre staff’s highly scripted interactionwith customers.

A very good example is provided in one of the Finnishmunicipalities where the provision of home care

30

services has been completely codified in the name ofservice efficiency [60]. Here the home care assistantcarries a laminated sheet with bar codes on the frontand on the back. Whenever the assistant provides aservice he or she scans the corresponding codificationof the service on the laminated sheet using a PDAwith a barcode reader. When the PDA is docked, thecentral database is updated with the information. Thisillustrates a system that is properly managed and veryclearly defines the space of possible services. It does,however, not leave much room for some of theactivities home care clients normally are most eagerto receive, namely un-codified socialising.

The systems itself can, however, work well internally ifthere is substantial trust between the home careassistants and their managers. The assistants specifyexactly what they do and the activities are recordedand can be subjected to negotiations of workloadand performance-related pay.

It is, however, clear that in most cases the provision ofservices or the work in distributed teams innovatingrequires activities that cannot be codified beforehandand the organisation must rely on informationworkers making crucial decisions wherever they are.As the services and collaboration are increasinglyconducted out of sight of any manager themanagement of this is increasingly virtualised. Themanagers can then choose to rely on technology-mediated command-and-control and for exampleseek to codify as much of the work as possible andthen directly monitor the supply chain when thetechnology records the categories activated. On theother hand, the manager can seek to cultivate propercoordination within the supply chain and fostermutual trust enabling the information workers toexercise a high degree of discretionary judgementand apply much more supportive managementtechniques where recording of actual behaviourprimarily is used to support the development ofbest practice.

RESHAPING ESTABLISHEDINSTITUTIONSThe use of new networking and collaborativeservices to foster more effective knowledgesharing across mobile and remote informationworkers challenges deeply rooted institutions.Mobilising the workforce to render the organisationmore effective is much more than merely makingminor adjustments. These changes are fundamentallychallenging core ‘institutions’ such as our

expectations that work is mostly being carried out inco-located settings and that our activities will not beconstantly scrutinised. It is potentially as radical amove as when people migrated from rural areas intothe cities of the industrial revolution and were hiredfor factory work and here subjected to radicalchanges in the way they perceived the temporal andsocial aspects of work. Moving from the farm to thefactory challenged the fusing of family and workinglife, creating a temporal and geographical split. Itchallenged the notion of time, replacing a sense oftime largely determined by the seasons to one beingdetermined by the pace of the machinery.

Now mobile and remote working in the serviceeconomy now challenges the institution of work as acollocated activity where through detailedobservation and socialising can generate trust.Working remotely challenges the individual’sperception of the performance of others and will alsochallenge the notion of organisational privacy andsurveillance as people engage in detailed monitoringof each other’s performance.

From the flipside, office work is now redefined as out-of-office work and workers give up working side byside with colleagues precisely because they areneeded in other contexts. In that sense we can explainsocialising as the capital of the mobile organisation.The mere institutional ability to extend the reach andfull might of the organisation to where the customerrepresents a primary strategic challenge.

VIRTUALISATION LEADS TOPOLARISATION?Trust is highly dependent on the specific situation.When people are all in the same room, doing similarkinds of work and are all from the same culturalbackground, it is likely that that they can build thecommon understanding necessary to trust each otherto deliver promised work and to generally behave in amanner according to shared expectations. When workmoves away from these simplistic assumptions aboutworking situations, it can become difficult to establishsufficient common understanding to ensure trustwithin a group of information workers. When groupsof people from different disciplines, national culturesor time zones all have to work together across workcontexts either because they form a virtual team orbecause several of the team-members are highlymobile, then the natural development of sharedunderstanding is challenged [64]. In these situations itcan be very difficult to ensure group trust based ondirect observation of and experience of performance.

31

This implies that team members may have to relyextensively on first impressions instead of pastexperiences in their evaluation of the likelihood of acolleague delivering the promised work result.Whereas collocated teams build trust based onexperiences with team member delivery of results,remote and mobile teams may reverse therelationship and use trust in a colleague deliveringas a measure of whether or not they actually dodeliver [64].

This shows us a scenario where the importance couldbe much less on the actual performance than onpeoples’ perception of the person; “He’s one of us, sohe’s OK! There clearly must be compelling reasons ifhe has not done what he promised, but I am sure hehas done the job”.

If it is the case that trust in virtual and mobile workingwill be much more based on initial assumptions andmuch less on actual experienced behaviour, then weare in for a difficult time. Subjected to increasedglobalisation, work transcends national, cultural,professional, religious and almost all other borders,and we are forced to reconsider some of our mostbasic assumptions concerning the family, the nationalstate and religion [16]. If we then revert to stereotypeand base trust on first impressions formed fromprejudice, then we will simply experience ineffectiveworking arrangements.

The long and hard process of political correctness canof course by the cynic be seen as a surface treatmentof the issue in order to avoid dealing with theessential issues. However, from a more constructivepoint of view, political correctness can be seen asplaying an important role in influencing the ways wemake first impressions and to ensure that we canfunction properly in a globalised society where wewill be expected to engage with and trust peoplefrom different backgrounds, religions, professions etc.If assessments of how trustworthy mobile and virtualcolleagues are can only be based on highlyparsimonious information and limited socialising,then people will naturally revert to stereotypesand this will not be conducive for a goodworking environment.

Organisations will naturally, as a counter-measure tothe virtualisation of work activities, seek to employnew measures in order to manage their mobile,remote, and generally invisible members. This can forexample be represented by a change of emphasis -from how work is done to instead a management ofoutcomes [6]. Creating increasing transparency inwork deliverables can contribute to increased trust

among distributed members. However, a radicallydifferent approach may be to seek the ability tomanage mobile workers through technologiesrecording detailed activities with the purpose ofconvincing managers and co-workers that a person isconducting the work expected. Such mechanisms caneffectively be set up but will only add to the problemsof lack of trust. If trust, as Rousseau [48] and othersargue, is the acceptance of rendering oneselfvulnerable because we expect positive intentions andbehaviour of those we trust without having the abilityto control this, then the ability to in detail observeand even influence work through mobile informationand communication technologies certainly will placegreat stress on the mutual trust between the onesobserving and the ones being observed.

Perhaps it is time to rethink the notion of control andinfluence in management? As suggested by Malone[32], we can consider balancing command andcontrol with proper support coordination amongmutually interdependent information workers whoneed to work together, and in addition cultivatethe working environment to become muchmore decentralised.

CONCLUSIONThis report has outlined some of the most importantissues in conducting and managing remote andmobile information work. It has argued thattechnological possibilities beckon and marketconditions force work to restructure and becomemobile, distributed, remote and virtual. Suchmobile work will enable the enterprise of the 21st

Century to deliver better, more targeted and cost-effective services.

Now we are in the midst of the next major era,namely that of quantifying the work of the mind– information work. When manufacturing hasbeen highly optimised and at least partlyautomated, and when what can be outsourced tolow-cost regions is outsourced, then the attentionnaturally focuses on the next obvious placeto improve.

Assuming that quantifying and monitoringinformation work is identical to that of manufacturingwork is a dangerous mistake. Whereas themanufacturing supply chain can be ever tightlycontrolled and optimised through its essentiallycommoditised knowledge exchange [49], theknowledge supply chain intrinsically consists ofpeople creating, communicating and refreshing

32

knowledge. Their ways of working can be subjectedto rationalisation efforts with impressive outcomes. Acentral element in this rationalisation effort is theincreasing virtualisation of work through virtualteams, remote and mobile working.

This challenges fundamentally our understanding ofthe conditions for working together and establishingenvironments of mutual trust as work reliesincreasingly on interpersonal interaction mediatedthrough technologies.

Failing to realise the seriousness of the challengesfacing modern organisations can have monumentalconsequences. The primary strategic challenge isbalancing the traditional hierarchical command-and-control environments with decentral isedenvironments, that have distributed coordination ofactivities and cultivation of mutual trust in distributedand virtual working. Getting it wrong on eitheraccount can be a serious mistake, but as Malone [32]argues, we are generally quite good at centralisingdecisions, so the important step is to focus on how tolearn de-centralised decision making.

Global markets and employees demand theenterprise offers flexible, mobile working as a meansof providing the needed flexibility to deliverenterprise services where and when they are needed.This trend is happening at the same time thatemployees are requesting flexible workingarrangements more suitable to modern living. Thiscircle can only be squared if the organisationmobilises and incentivises information work at thesame time as it improves and re-invents the wayswork is managed. This can for example beaccomplished through allowing information workersto define their own more appropriate conditions forcreating and sharing knowledge in self-organisingnetworks of interdependent colleagues at the sametime as there is sufficient management of workperformance through the use of information andcommunication technology.

However, all of this can only happen if knowledge iscreated and shared in an environment of trust andfairness. If one group unilaterally benefits fromanother group’s hard work, then it is highly likely thatthe system will be counter-productive [44]. The issueof trust turns both ways. Management will be forcedto trust information workers as they can create morevalue by leaving offices and cubicles and venture intothe marketplace where they can provide their servicesmuch more effectively through defining their owncontext of work. By doing so, management willrelinquish some of the control of direct observation

and management through face-to-face socialising.This implies that lack of trust between the partieseasily can result in the efficiency gains being lostmultiple times as mobile information workers engagein bureaucratic activities in order to demonstrateefficiency and in order to cover their own back in asystem they do not trust. In Goffman’s [17] concepts,the lack of mutual trust could force informationworkers into a permanent front stage and one of theessential aspects of knowledge work is that itdesperately needs backstage activities for open andfree reflection, for experimentation with the risk offailure but without consequences. When all activitiesare front stage then there is no spacefor experimentation.

There are very few or no easy ways to shortcut theprocess of cultivating mutual trust in organisations. Itis all about ensuring that information workers andmanagers apply appropriate ethics and rewardmechanisms when re-defining the way work is done.Trust is at the best of times highly fragile in that yearsof good faith and trust can be broken relatively easily.Recruiting and retaining the best quality staffhowever depends on it.

Despite working shorter hours, the rest of Europe ismore productive than the UK generally because thesecountries employ better skilled labour, and they arebetter at organising work and using informationtechnology to promote efficiency [59]. This impliesthat UK businesses must invest more in itsworkforce and must re-define the traditionalhierarchical order of command and control in orderto become more productive.

UK businesses must learn to trust its employeesto define their own working contexts and in turnthey can request that employees trust thatmeasurements and mechanisms of performanceand effective coordination will be applied in a fairand ethical manner.

This leads all stakeholders into the unknownwhere there is everywhere to go and nowhereto hide.

Dr Carsten Sørensen

c.sorensen@lse.ac.uk

http://mobility.is.lse.ac.uk/

33

REFERENCES[1] Agar, Jon (2003): Constant Touch: A Global

History of the Mobile Phone. Cambridge: IconBooks.

[2] Al-Taitoon, Adel and Carsten Sørensen (2003):ICT-Enabled Mobile Executives in GlobalBanking. In Information Systems ResearchSeminar in Scandinavia (IRIS'26), Haikko Manor,Finland, ed. Timo Saarinen, Virpi KristiinaTuunainen, and Matti Rossi. Helsinki School ofEconomics.

[3] Al-Taitoon, Adel and Carsten Sørensen (2004):Supporting Mobile Professionals in GlobalBanking: The Role of Global ICT-Support Call-Centres. In Thirty-Seventh Hawaii InternationalConference on System Sciences (HICSS-37), BigIsland Hawaii, ed. Ralph Sprague Jr. IEEE.

[4] BBC News (2003): The cause of the BA dispute.London:

[5] Cairncross, Frances (1997): The death of distance:How the communications revolution will changeour lives. Boston, MA.: Harvard Business SchoolPress.

[6] Carayol, René (2004): The New Work Order. InPeople and Productivity in the Information Age,ed. Jo Russell. London: Caspian Publishing &Microsoft Ltd, pp. 18-20.

[7] Carstensen, Peter (1996): Computer supportedcoordination. Ph.D. thesis, Roskilde University.

[8] Carstensen, Peter and Carsten Sørensen (1996):From the Social to the Systematic: MechanismsSupporting Coordination in Design. Journal ofComputer Supported Cooperative Work, vol. 5,no. 4, December, pp.387-413.

[9] Castells, M. (1996): The rise of the networksociety. Oxford: Blackwell.

[10] Castells, Manuel (2001): The Internet Galaxy:reflections on the Internet, Business, and Society.Oxford: Oxford University Press.

[11] Ciborra and Associates, Claudio U. (2000): FromControl to Drift. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

[12] Ciborra, Claudio, ed. (1996): Groupware andTeamwork. Chichester, United Kingdom: JohnWiley & Sons.

[13] Ciborra, Claudio (2002): The Labyrinths ofInformation: Challenging the Wisdom ofSystemsOxford University Press.

[14] Cook, Scott D. N. and John Seely Brown (1999):Bridging Epistemologies: The Generative DanceBetween Organizational Knowledge andOrganizational Knowing. Organization Science,vol. 10, no. 4, pp.381-400.

[15] Coyle, Diana and Danny Quah (2002): Getting theMeasure of the New Economy. iSociety, The WorkFoundation

[16] Giddens, Anthony (1999): Runaway World: howglobalisation is reshaping our lives. London:Profile Books.

[17] Goffman, E. (1959): The Presentation of Self inEveryday Life. New York, NY: Bantam.

[18] Gordon, Gil (2001): Turn IT Off. London: NicholasBrealey Publishing.

[19] Gutek, Barbara (1995): The Dynamics ofServiceJossey Bass Wiley.

[20] Kakihara, Masao and Carsten Sørensen (2002):Exploring Knowledge Emergence: From Chaos toOrganizational Knowledge. Journal of GlobalInformation Technology Management, vol. 5, no.3, pp.48-66.

[21] Kakihara, Masao and Carsten Sørensen (2004):Practicing Mobile Professional Work: Tales ofLocational, Operational, and InteractionalMobility. INFO: The Journal of Policy, Regulationand Strategy for Telecommunication, Informationand Media, vol. 6, no. 3.

[22] Kakihara, Masao, Carsten Sørensen, and MikaelWiberg (2004): Negotiating the fluidity of mobilework. In The Interaction Society: Practice,Theories, & Supportive Technologies, ed. MikaelWibergIdea Group Inc., pp. Chapter 7.

[23] Kallinikos, Janis (2001): The Age of Flexibility.Sweden: Academia Adapta.

[24] Kallinikos, Jannis (1996): Technology and Society.Munich: Accedo. Technology is sustained bysocial practices (agency) and institutions(structures or organized work patterns).

[25] Lasen, Amparo (2004): Giving away informationthrough mobile phone use in public places inLondon, Madrid and Paris. In The Life of MobileData: Technology, Mobility and Data Subjectivity,University of Surrey, ed. Nicola Green and SeanSmith.

[26] Ljungberg, Fredrik and Carsten Sørensen (2000):Overload: From transaction to interaction. InPlanet Internet, ed. Kristin Braa, CarstenSørensen, and Bo Dahlbom. Lund, Sweden:Studentlitteratur, pp. 113-136.

[27] Lyman, Peter, Hal R. Varian, and KirstenSwearingen (2003): How Much Information?2003. University of California at Berkley,

[28] Mackay, Wendy E. (1988): Diversity in the Use ofElectronic Mail: A Preliminary Inquiry. TOIS: ACMTransactions on Office Information Systems, vol.6, no. 4.

[29] Mackay, Wendy E. (2000): Responding tocognitive overload: Co-adaptation between users

34

and technology. Intellectica, vol. 30, no. 1,pp.177-193.

[30] Madan, Rajen, Carsten Sørensen, and Susan Scott(2003): Strategy Sort Of Died Around April LastYear For A Lot Of Us: CIO perceptions on ICTValue and Strategy in the UK Financial Sector. InECIS 2003, Naples, Italy.

[31] Malone, Michael S. (2004): Moore's Second Law:If we don't do something about increasingbattery life, we're toast. Wired, April 2004, pp.37-38.

[32] Malone, Thomas W. (2004): The Future of Work:How the New Order of Business Will Shape YourOrganization, Your Management Style, and YourLifeHarvard Business School Press.

[33] Manning, Peter K. (2003): Policing contingencies.Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Peter K.Manning.

24 cm.[34] Mathiassen, Lars and Carsten Sørensen (2002): A

Task-Based Theory of Information Services. InInformation Systems Research Seminar inScandinavia (IRIS'25), Denmark. CopenhagenBusiness School.

[35] McRae, Hamish (2004): Productivity andEnterprise. In People and Productivity in theInformation Age, ed. Jo Russell. London: CaspianPublishing & Microsoft Ltd, pp. 6-8.

[36] Mintzberg, Henry (1983): Structure in fives:designing effective organizations. EnglewoodCliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall.

[37] Nardi, Bonnie and Steve Whittaker (2000):Interaction and Outeraction. In Proceedings ofComputer Supported Cooperative Work,Philadelphia, USA, ed. Wendy Kellogg and SteveWhittaker, pp. 79-88.

[38] Nathan, Max, Gwendolyn Carpenter, and SimonRoberts (2003): Getting By, Not Getting On:Technology in UK Workplaces. iSociety, The WorkFoundation

[39] Newell, Allen (1982): The Knowledge Level.Artificial Intelligence, vol. 18, pp.87-127.

[40] Newell, Sue, Maxine Robertson, HarryScarbrough, and Jacky Swan (2002): ManagingKnowledge WorkPalgrave.

[41] Oard, Douglas W. (1997): The State of the Art inText Filtering. User Modeling and User-AdaptedInteraction: An International Journal, vol. 7, no. 3,pp.141-178.

[42] Olson, Gary M. and Judith S. Olson (2000):Distance Matters. Human-Computer Interaction,vol. 15, pp.139-178.

[43] Ong, Walter J. (1988): Orality and Literacy: TheTechnologizing of the Word. London, UnitedKingdom: Routledge.

[44] Orlikowski, W. J. (1993): Learning from Notes:organizational issues in groupwareimplementation. The information society, vol. 9.

[45] Orr, Julian E. (1996): Talking About Machines: AnEthnography of a Modern JobCornell UniversityPress.

[46] Pica, Daniele (Forthcoming): The Rhythms ofInteraction with Mobile Technologies: Tales fromthe Police. Unpublished PhD Thesis, LondonSchool of Economics.

[47] Robertson, Maxine, Carsten Sørensen, and JackySwan (2001): Survival of the Leanest: IntensiveKnowledge Work and Groupware Adaptation.Information Technology & People, vol. 14, no. 4,pp.334-353.

[48] Rousseau, D. M., S. B. Sitkin, R. S. Burt, and C.Camerer (1998): Not so different after all: Acrossdiscipline view of trust. Academy ofManagement Review, vol. 23, no. 3, pp.393–404.

[49] Scarbrough, Harry (1995): Blackboxes, Hostagesand Prisoners. Organization Studies, vol. 16, no.6, pp.991-1019.

[50] Schmidt, Kjeld (1994): The Organization ofCooperative Work — Beyond the ‘Leviathan’Conception of the Organization of CooperativeWork. In CSCW ’94. Proceedings of theConference on Computer-Supported CooperativeWork, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, October 24-26,1994, ed. Thomas Malone. New York, N.Y.: ACMPress, pp. 101–112.

[51] Schmidt, Kjeld and Carla Simone (1996):Coordination mechanisms: An approach toCSCW systems design. Computer SupportedCooperative Work: An International Journal, vol.5, no. 2-3, pp.155-200.

[52] Schultze, U. and B. Vandenbosch (1998):Information Overload in a GroupwareEnvironment: Now you see it, now you don't.Journal of Organizational Computing andElectronic Commerce, vol. 8, no. 2, pp.127-148.

[53] Schumpeter, Joseph A. (1975 (orig. pub. 1942)):Creative Destruction. In Capitalism, Socialism andDemocracy. New York: Harper, pp. 82-85.

[54] Sørensen, Carsten and David Gibson (2004):Ubiquitous Visions and Opaque Realities:Professionals Talking About MobileTechnologies. INFO: The Journal of Policy,Regulation and Strategy for Telecommunication,Information and Media, vol. 6, no. 3.

[55] Sørensen, Carsten, Daniel Macklin, and TonyBeaumont (2001): Navigating the World Wide

35

Web: Bookmark Maintenance Architectures.Interacting with Computers, vol. 13, no. 3,pp.375-400.

[56] Sørensen, Carsten and Daniele Pica(Forthcoming): Tales from the Police: MobileTechnologies and Contexts of Work.International Journal.

[57] Urry, John (2003): Global Complexity. Cambridge:Polity.

[58] Urry, John (2003): Mobility and Proximity.[59] van Reenen, John (2004): Working Better. Centre

Piece, Summer 2004, pp. 3-7.[60] Vuokko, Riikka (2004): Experiences from an

Implementation Project: Time management andControl in Home Care. In Thirty-Seventh HawaiiInternational Conference on System Sciences(HICSS-37), Big Island Hawaii, ed. Ralph SpragueJr. IEEE.

[61] Whittle, Andrea (2001): ‘Work Anywhere’ or ‘GoSomewhere’ ? The Career Dynamics of MobileWorking. In Mobilize, Digital World ResearchCentre, University of Surrey, ed. Kevin McSorley,Karenza Moore, Barry Fentiman, AlexanderTaylor, and Dionisia Tzavara.

[62] Wiberg, Mikael (2001): In between MobileMeetings: Exploring seamless ongoing interactionsupport for mobile CSCW. PhD DissertationDepartment for Informatics, Umeå University

[63] Yates, JoAnne (1989): Control throughCommunication: The Rise of System in AmericanManagement. Baltimore: The Johns HopkinsUniversity Press.

[64] Zolin, Roxanne, Pamela J. Hinds, Renate Fruchter,and Raymond E. Levitt (2004): Interpresonal trustin cross-functional, geographically distributedwork: A longitudinal study. Information andOrganization, vol. 14, pp.1-26.

[65] Zuboff, S. (1987): In the Age of the SmartMachine. New York: Basic Books.

[66] Zuboff, Shoshana and James Maxmin (2002): TheSupport Economy: Why Corporations are FailingIndividuals and the Next Episode of Capitalism.London: Penguin.

Tomorrow's WorkTomorrow’s Work (TW) is a long-term project and comprehensive study, initiated by Microsoft, to explore how UK citizens

will behave, work and succeed in their professional environments in the information age. It is designed to identify and

highlight the need to build IT infrastructures that will support changes in business and working practices, and in which the

new features and functionality delivered by technology innovation can add value.

MIC289 frontbackcover_v5 23/11/04 4:04 pm Page 3

Dr Carsten SørensenThe London School of Economics and Political Science

November 2004

© 2004 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Microsoft and the Microsoft logo are either registered trademarks or trademarks of the Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. Registered Office: MicrosoftCampus, Thames Valley Park, Reading. RG6 1WG. Registered in England no 1624297 VAT no GB 7245946 15. The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein maybe the trademarks of their respective owners.

The Future Role of Trust in Work –The Key Success Factor for Mobile Productivity

Optimising the knowledge supply-chain

MIC289 frontbackcover_v5 23/11/04 4:04 pm Page 1