In a physical sense, an electronic
business is one which is “connected” in
an electronic way with email, intranets and software applications.
But that is a little like saying that owning a saxophone makes
you a jazz musician. It’s not what you have, it’s how
you use it.
In an e.Business, there is a change in the organizational pattern
that defines how we manage our company, how we view and value our
employees, and most importantly how we solve problems. The paradigm
shift is not CAUSED by the connectivity and knowledge sharing;
connectivity and technology simply permit the resulting behaviour
change to take place more easily.
Let us look at the key differences between a knowledge-based e.business,
and a traditional corporation.
ATTITUDE
In the classic industrial organization power is wielded by hoarding
information.
In the e.business culture value is placed on sharing information.
Managers who have built their careers by carefully controlling,
and restricting, the flow of information find it difficult to grasp
the value of shared knowledge and look for both reasons and technologies
to restrict and control the flow. An organization whose culture
values employees for their ability to follow routines rather than
for their knowledge and experience, and that does not trust employees
to natively act in the company’s interest, should not consider
implementing an e.business strategy.
MANAGEMENT
In the classic industrial organization decisions are made centrally,
and filtered down a pyramid of managers, who are trusted to convey,
properly interpret and oversee the implementation. An e.business
is inherently distributed, where implementation and management
decisions are made locally. Distributed decision-making forms the
basis of the organic, self-adapting organization. A fundamental
requirement of an e.Business is connectivity, and the capability
to coordinate the output of a distributed organization to support
goal directed activities.
FOCUS
In the classic industrial organization, management focuses on
optimizing individual processes. Because of its distributed nature,
management in an e.business focuses on collecting and communicating
key information. Distributed decision making leads to modular organizations,
which means focusing less on the process and more on output (or
throughput). Success is judged on achieving business goals, not
the volume of hours spent attempting to achieve those goals.
COORDINATION
In the classic industrial organization coordination is accomplished
through rather rigid organizational structures, progress meetings
and backward-looking quarterly reports. In the distributed decision-making
environment of an e.Business, coordination is accomplished by sharing
key information that is collected automatically from the users
directly involved in the process (such as a barcode reader on a
production line) and organized as needed, on demand. Because coordination
is based on live information rather than fixed reporting structures,
an instant response to problems is possible.
COMMUNICATION
Our current information culture is structured around a publisher-push
model. The user, already overloaded with information, is sent data
just-in-case it might be needed. Work is often only started reactively
when paper is put into an in-tray. The e.business is inherently
a user-pull model, where users proactively fetch information based
on their current requirements. This is perhaps the most significant
aspect of the paradigm shift requiring behavioral changes in both
publishers and users of information.
An e.Business encourages distributed decision-making, modular
organizations, open communication, and application of employee
knowledge. These are platitudes that most management today openly
espouse. Be aware that actually implementing these platitudes,
even with the help of experts, will likely raise some difficult
management challenges that will test your commitment at many steps
along the way.
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