Of course I like it (your comment) a lot because i covers similar ground to a few pieces I have written at some point in the past three or four years, but I also like it because you articulate the issue so clearly and correctly, in my view, and note that some of the central and REALLY large changes to work and the workplace have these deep sociological ‘currents” driving them.

Thanks, Wilson, for the fresh air. And I agree .. the moniker Enterprise 2.0 has probably, on balance, led to more resistance than acceptance or “oooh, what’s that new thing, I’ll have some” (but I have no data on that, it’s just a sense I have decided to have

Consider how much more humane the enterprise is now than 50 or certainly 100 years ago. And then consider how it came about (as well as how long it took). Yes, organized labor and automation played their roles; but underlying these roles was the self-interest of those running business to increase the efficiency of the industrial worker. And, while it took a horribly long time, business leadership realized, at first intellectually only and later as an ingrained value, that the best output of an industrial worker could be achieved by a balanced approach which included, along with carrots and sticks, a need to ensure the worker was not physically degraded too much over his/her lifetime and that the worker felt some level of interest, even minimally, in their job. And more than just those, but I’ll leave it there for sake of demonstration.

Only in the last 20 years, arguably, has business leadership even *begun* to focus on the issue of how to best exploit worker knowledge production. We heard 15 years ago “can’t give them the Internet, they’ll just waste time!” and now we hear “can’t give them Facebook, they’ll just waste time!” All the while ignoring that knowledge workers often “waste” time whether on a smoke break or at the water cooler as a means of job stress and thinking relief, and all the while ignoring the fundamental question, “why do workers waste time and what will cause them to waste more or less in a day?” And of course, there is validity to the point that many tools can create a waste of time, and at the end of the day we do all this to achieve greater productivity and/or greater profits (if we’re thinking healthy, setting aside unhealthy business habits of accumulating simple larger turnover at the expense of profitability).

Just as with the industrial age, it will take a long time to determine how to best shape the enterprise from the view not only at the top but in mid-management and even among those movers and shakers who are sub-mid-management. And cultural change, which e2.0 is related to, will of course also have massive impact, which I gave unfair short shrift to above but also plays out over generations and influenced greatly how enterprises have become more humane over the last 50 years.

At the end of the day, I would caution anyone against belief that the corporate world or the greater world will change in a few years. Certainly, seeking the opportunities makes sense and must be pursued. But it’s self-defeating and leads to many mistaken tactics to believe that somehow we will change well-established and, ultimately, highly functional (whether rightly or wrongly functional) institutions overnight.

At the end of the day, those elements of e2.0 which make a corporation more successful will be adopted over time. Those elements which do not will perish (even if those elements are more humanizing). Short of a more-dramatic change in the profit motive and linkage of corporate gain to personal interest, that’s the way it must be. If one is working to change those very fundamentals, I’d suggest that working in the e2.0 field is not the best avenue, rather working in more direct corporate sociological work and possibly (depending your ideology) via other institutions (government, education, religion, etc.) one can more directly have that sort of fundamental impact. Or at least divorce yourself from the technology aspect of e2.0 and pursue doggedly the non-technology aspects – and let’s remember, corporations *can* achieve more democratic and collaborative ways of working even without the tools.

I am reminded of a quote I have often used by Stan Davis, a business theorist / futurist:

“Electronic information systems enable parts of the whole organization (here, we can read organization in the large sense, as a nation or society as well IMO) to communicate directly with each other, where the hierarchy wouldn’t otherwise permit it.

Networks will not replace or supplement hierarchies; rather the two will be encompassed within a broader conception that embraces both. We are still a long way from figuring out the appropriate and encompassing organization models for the economy we are now in.”

He too believed it would take a minimum of 30 years and probably more like 50 years to arrive at a broad understanding of the inclusive capabilities of networks. The current notions and protocols of management “science” are too deeply embedded, in general, to be unlearned effectively. They (and we) will have to outgrow them

Another thing we might need to look at is that what would emerge would, probably, be somewhere between the way we know things today, and the way we think Enterprise 2.0 would emerge. Some form of merging of these two paradigms is what we could look at.

Another thing is that the debate ignores a large part of the world. As i have written at http://atulrai1.blogspot.com/2008/09/generalizations.html probably we need to look at how web 2.0 and the technologies that we are talking about can bring a change with the people of India and China.