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
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