Unintended consequences of ICT

Dilemma for Managers:A dialectic between optimism

and pessimism

Provocations What possible consequences can be

extreme along the ICT potential for goods?

Can the ICT impacts steer toward positive outcomes?

What range do ICT managers work beyond ICT projects themselves?

What scenarios can be pursued in light of potential negative consequences?

Utopia vs. dystopia

「烏」托邦 vs. 「敵」托邦 A plausible description of an alternati

ve or future society A less satisfactory descriptive world

Utopian context How much work needed is generated

presumably by a supply/demand forecasting module, and then job hours of work are determined by the entire worker pool bidding for what they want.

ICT in general supports our better instincts for how we want to live. However, at issue is who decides what is better or worse.

Dystopian context

George Orwell’s 1984 describes how modern technology can be used to mold the individual so that our essential striving for humanness is nearly eradicated.

In usual, A constrained optimization approach has to be adopted.

Examining the ICT utopia

For the society The problem of information terrorism The have-not issue—prerequisites &

incommensurable institutions For the organization

Strangulation by the best practice—slaved in the dominant design

The machine model of organization triumphant For the individual

Personal privacy Over-connectedness

The rose-colored world

Inherent optimism about technology and the future

Bad news is not welcome Belief in technological determinism as a f

orce for good Technology as religion—techno-morphiz

ed culture

Taking off the rose-colored world

A legislative approach A public order supplemented to the private

order A search for systemic instabilities

Watch out the non-linear-like dissemination of bad news searching the possible out-of-control feedback loop leading to disastrous catastrophes

A search for critical technological uncertainties Negative consequences

Examples of unintended consequences

ICT’s ability to create, collect, analyze and retrieve vast amounts of information -totalitarian control, information overload, context/c

ontent confusion ICT’s ability to facilitate and coordinate the int

erconnection of people, organizations, markets and societies -cultural homogenization, loss of human contact, job

obsolescence, devaluation of real estate markets

Examples of unintended consequences (cont.)

ICT’s ability to accelerate the pace of business and daily life -little distinction between business and home e

nvironment, dangerous stress levels in daily life ICT’s ability to informate the organization

-weakening of social contact within the organization, too lean to possess a special managerial experience

Examples of unintended consequences (cont.)

ICT’s ability to appropriate mental assets -critical expert system and rules fail to mach reality an

d distract from concentration, an imbalance in favor of relational as opposed to contextual thinking, core process expertise as rigidity because of lacking maintenance

ICT’s ability to present us with a very large variety of mental models Over-immersion in addictive models (living on the scre

en?) lacking of the criteria for evaluating models, Choice overload

Utopian/dystopian scenarios

Rising escalation Global anti-information terrorism

defense Trapdoor

To be a prudential person before being an economic one

A road to navigation Orientation to problem solving beyond causal f

indings Coping with the interconnectedness by the systems

thinking under an sociotechnical ecosystem The philosophy of design school beyond the ob

jective observation of bystander Searching the implementable mechanism/governan

ce through continuous feedback and adaptation for the ultimate effectiveness

Research on the action context Learning from the practitioners

Extending readings Benjamin, Robert and Eliot Levinson (199

3), “A Framework for Managing IT-enabled Change,” Sloan Management Review, 34(4), pp.23-33.

Mintzberg, Henry (1994), The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning, Free Press, New York, NY.

Simon, Herbert A. (1996), The Sciences of Artificial, 3rd ed., MIT Press, Cambridge, MA