Digital Disruption (and how it affects multi-stakeholder organisations)
In this our first post in a series about multi-stakeholder organisations we look at how digital disruption affects such organisations.
Digital disruption is all around us. Social media break down the relationships between individuals and firms, Blippar will change how we look and interact with the world and Uber might yet change our view on getting between meetings. But what does this mean for organisations that are complex, have multiple stakeholder groups and have embedded cultures that are the sum of those individuals?
LinkedIn has changed how we recruit. Here at Panlogic we no longer use recruitment companies. Our recent hires have either found us through our digital presence or we have sought out specialists using LinkedIn. Digital disruption for recruitment companies has meant a greater effort on service, more personal contact with their clients and less of the ‘spray and pray’ approach to their cold calling. That’s all to the good.
Inside an organisation rules and best practice around social media usage have needed to be developed. Does the CEO of a multi-national run their own ‘rogue’ Twitter account (“views expressed are purely my own...”) or is this run by the comms team? Do employees have open access to Facebook from their work computers and if so, how does this impact on their working day?
But beyond the more consumer end of digital disruption the way in which we work with digital media is disrupting our normal work patterns and norms. The 1990’s transformation from an Information Systems department to IT (Information Technology) has now been replaced by a similar migration of power and influence to digital comms. This macro departmental change signifies the move from fixed hardware to mobile and cloud systems, greater penetration of Google Docs, Dropbox, MailChimp and Salesforce.com.
The loss of hierarchical control has been noted by many but in its place has come greater individual responsibility and autonomy. This in turn has impacts on how we mentor and train our employees to ensure they feel comfortable making decisions which will impact on the reputation and visibility of our organisations. The increase in individual responsibility also connects to what Hofstede[1] called the ‘power distance index’. Hofstede studied how power was distributed across organisational units be that a family or workplace and looked at this by countries and cultures. Perhaps it is not surprising that the internet has had most transformational impact on those countries where the power index is low (UK, USA, Israel) which present power relations that are more consultative or democratic.
In our next article we will look at how such multi-stakeholder organisations promote themselves externally using their web presence and the challenge this medium presents.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hofstede%27s_cultural_dimensions_theory