Impact of Reintermediation on organizational behavior

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Impact of Reintermediation on organizational
behavior

• Bangkok University
• Organizational Behavior
• Second Semester, 2002
• Reintermediation on OB
• imichelet_at_prasena.com

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February 2, 2002

• Structure of todays lecture
• What is the status of your case study?
• What was last week all about?
• Guest speaker K. Sudarat (Content Mgr at
  Prasena)
• What is Reintermediation?
• How does it impact your life?
• How does it impact an employees life?
• How does it impact a managers work?
• What should you look at in your case study?

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What is Reintermediation?
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Definition

• This characteristic of the Cybernetic Revolution
  qualifies the tendency of any entity/activity/tech
  nology to function in direct relation with its
  partners, unless the introduction of an
  intermediary proves beneficial
• New intermediaries have the paradoxical ability
  to enable direct relationships

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Impact on Individuals
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Effects of Mobile Phones on Individual
LifeReport from Sadie Plant 2001

• Approximeeting
• Using mobile phone calls as a universal social
  excuse for being late, missing meetings, or
  getting away from boring dinner-table
  conversations
• Foxes
• Dedicated users with chaotic lives for whom
  mobile phones are an indispensable tool. Amid the
  instabilities of foxes lives, the mobile is an
  unusually stable object, a constant to which they
  can cling
• Bi-Psyche
• The ability to navigate city streets, ride a
  bicycle, or manage any other nonverbal activity
  while talking on a mobile phone
• Gooseberry Calls
• Making calls to friends out on dates to get
  progress reports from them
• Hedgehogs
• People who use mobile phones as a means of
  managing privacy by carefully selecting incoming
  calls
• Wan Ko Girl
• One-call girl. A Japanese expression describing
  a woman so keen not to miss any incoming calls
  that she compulsively answers her mobile phone
  after only one ring.

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Effects of Mobile Phones on Individual
LifeReport from Sadie Plant 2001

• Innies
• People who use their mobiles unobstrusively. When
  calls are made or received, it is usual for
  members of these groups to leave the table or, at
  least, to nod an apology and turn away from the
  others
• Outies
• People who integrate their mobiles into group
  interaction. Outies who are usually men like
  to put their mobiles on display, placing them on
  a table or bar to clear a little patch of
  territory
• Light Touch
• Holding the mobile with the fingers instead of
  the hand, in a deft or dainty pose reminiscent of
  holding a cigarette. These users often have their
  index fingers aligned with the aerials on top of
  their phones as well.
• Oya Yubi Sedai
• The Thumb Generation. A Japanese expression
  describing mobile-hone text message addicts who
  have used their thumbs so much for entering
  messages on their keypads that they also use them
  for pointing at things and ringing door-bells.
• Phone-Shield
• A mobile-phone conversation used to fend off
  unwanted attention, or to look busy while waiting
  for friends.

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Effects of Mobile Phones on Individual
LifeReport from Sadie Plant 2001

• Shagbile
• A second mobile phone used exclusively for
  talking to someone with whom the user is having
  an affair.
• Spacemakers
• Introverts who create a feeling of safety or
  withdrawal while talking on their mobiles by
  inclining their bodies toward their phones, or
  using one hand to shield the mobile and mouth
  from public view.
• Speakeasies
• Extroverts who talk on their mobiles with heads
  thrown back and necks upright, giving out an air
  of self-assurance and single-minded refusal to be
  distracted by the outside world.
• Firm Grip
• Clasping the mobile phone as if it is about to
  fly away. Mobile users who employ the firm grip
  tend to be more introverted, as if they are
  carving out a private arena.
• Stage-phoning
• Using a mobile phone conversation to broadcast
  information to a captive audience, to inform the
  audience that this is a person with a life.

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Riel Miller says

• Using the Net it may once again be possible to
  know the cow that produces the milk you drink
  (but this time without getting your boots
  dirty).
• (Blueprint to the Digital Economy)

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Straight to the Stars!
Have you seen these weird gentlemen?
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DaftCLUB
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Stephen J. Kobrin says

• The emergence of a digitally networked world
  economy may eventually disintermediate geography
  or territorial sovereignty. Once again, it is
  important to understand that the issue here is
  not simply the increased permeability of borders
  or the increased mobility of capital, technology
  and information in an electronic age it is that
  e-cash, e-commerce, and electronic markets may
  render territory and with it, sovereignty
  itself irrelevant.
• (Blueprint to the Digital Economy)

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Are you Ready?

• What do you think of this comment from Kjell
  Nordstrom in Funky Business The Web enables
  total transparency. People with access to
  relevant information are beginning to challenge
  any type of authority. The stupid, humble and
  loyal customer, employee, patient or citizen is
  dead?
• a. I don't need bosses
• b. I love my boss
• c. Yes, shout goodbye to command and control, say
  goodbye to hierarchy!
• d. I don't follow bosses, I follow leaders

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Impact on Employees
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John Roth says

• Mass electronic communication is profoundly
  liberating, empowering, and democratizing. This
  has tremendous implications for how our companies
  are organized and structured, as well as for
  society.
• (Blueprint to the Digital Economy)

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Leonard Leow example
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Starhub
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David Morris-Johnson says

• Practitioners should be encouraged to report on
  their own activities rather than relying on
  intermediaries. This is more likely to develop
  working relationships that lead to knowledge
  exchange than indirect reporting by a centralized
  communications unit. It also demonstrates that it
  is people who make the organization work, rather
  than policies or committees.
• (Virtual Business, Sep. 2001)

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Organizations are Reintermediated when

• The top management designs a flat network
  organization and rethinks the value of all
  intermediary professions/services, whether
  internal or external, to the extent that it may
  close or relocate some of the organization's
  establishments.
• All people involved (and not only top and middle
  management) share planning and financial
  activities, which are transparent to the added
  value agents.
• All processes and communications are as direct as
  possible, while some new intermediary systems
  such as databases are introduced to enable
  sort/filter/search facilities on the basis of
  central information warehouses.
• Most traditional internal and external
  intermediaries have disappeared, to be replaced
  (or not) by new types of intermediaries. As a
  result, the organization is flatter,
  communications are more direct, and new
  intermediaries usually exist to screen
  information over-flows.
• Direct relations with internal and external
  business partners are favored and intermediaries,
  if any, are selected because they add a
  distinctive value. In any case, end-users expect
  to be able to contact directly whomever they want
  in the organization.

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Examples of Questions to Ask
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Impact on Managers
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Dennis H. Jones says

• Collapsing the supply chain has been a function
  not only of speeding up the cycle between the
  different links but also, in some cases, of
  eliminating links the non-value-added
  distribution links between the manufacturer and
  the marketing company, and between the marketing
  company and the retailer
• (Blueprint to the Digital Economy)

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John A. Macdonald says

• New value-added intermediaries are arising. Key
  influencers such as product reviewers, online
  value-added resellers, solutions or content
  aggregators, and community-of-interest organizers
  are becoming powerful players.
• (Blueprint to the Digital Economy)

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Paul Saffo says

• The future belongs to neither the conduit or
  content players, but those who control the
  filtering, searching and sense-making tools we
  will rely on to navigate through the expanses of
  cyberspace.
• (Wired Magazine, March 1994)

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John A. Macdonald says

• Perhaps the most serious implication of
  disintermediation is the possible devaluation of
  brand identity as consumers turn to their
  technological tools, instead of to a trusted
  brand name, to find assurance of quality and
  satisfaction.
• (Blueprint to the Digital Economy)

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Impact on HR Management
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Tip!
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James Thurber says

• It is better to know some of the questions than
  all of the answers

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Steve Jobs says

• Expose yourself to the best things humans have
  done, and then try to bring those things into
  what you're doing.

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Case Study
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Study1

• Organization Structure
• a- Vertical, function-based
• b- Vertical, business line-based
• c- Matrix
• d- Satellite Support functions are cost centers
• e- Satellite Support functions are profit
  centers
• f- Network
• Reporting
• Maximum number of reporting levels in the
  organization
• Support of Information Flow
• a-Little information flow is carried by the
  infostructure
• b-The infostructure does not support information
  search, but the processing of information
  received by the users
• c-The infostructure does not support information
  search unless the user has a special access
  authorization
• d-The infostructure supports the contact to
  internal virtual specialized centers that will
  answer queries
• e-The infostructure supports the finding,
  selection and analysis of information within
  guidelines and boundaries
• f-The infostructure supports the exploration and
  the query of the entire world, as well as the
  filtering, identification, selection and analysis
  of the information considered useful

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Study2

• Internet Capabilities
• a- Most (if not all) Infostructure components are
  Internet-enabled
• b- Some Infostructure components are
  Internet-enabled, others are not
• c- Few (if any) Infostructure components are
  Internet-enabled
• Relations with end-Customers
• a- None End-customers are not in contact with
  the organization
• b- Minimal End-customers must go through
  intermediaries to get or give information
• c- Moderate End-customers can communicate with
  the organization through traditional sales /
  service portals
• d- Optimal End-customers have direct access to
  the organization through virtual communication
  platforms, call centers, etc.
• Office Structure
• a- Office is adapted to direct internal relations
• b- Office is not adapted to direct internal
  relations

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Study3

• Processes
• a- The organization does not go through any
  process more directly than three years ago
• b- The organization can now go through some
  processes directly, whereas they needed
  steps/intermediaries three years ago
• c- The organization can now go through some
  processes directly, whereas they required manual
  interventions three years ago
• d- The organization now goes through some
  processes directly, whereas they could not have
  even existed three years ago
• Possibilities of Direct Internal Contacts
• a- Employees can contact freely and directly
  anybody else in the organization
• b- Employees can contact anybody else in the
  organization in principle, although technical
  problems and/or outdated directories may be a
  problem
• c- Employees can contact people in the
  organization, but they are still expected to
  follow appropriate communication channels
• d- Employees can not contact freely and directly
  everybody else in the organization.
• Possibilities of Direct Access to Information
• a- Employees have free, direct access to
  information, documents, data available in the
  organization
• b- Employees should have free, direct access to
  information available in the organization, but
  not much of it is available on common
  communication platforms yet
• c- Employees do not have free, direct access to
  information other than their own

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Study 4

• Select an answer for each of above questions, and
  justify this answer with examples and concrete
  observations
• Review the above presentation, try to apply to
  the case study and explain findings
• Review the textbook, find the topics that are
  affected by reintermediation, and explain using
  the case study as concrete example
• Provide conclusions and recommendations what
  should your case study do to improve its
  reintermediation level?