Isabella Mader – Global Peter Drucker Forum BLOG https://www.druckerforum.org/blog Fri, 31 Jul 2020 11:05:20 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.4.4 Cities As Social Ecologies by Thomas Madreiter & Isabella Mader https://www.druckerforum.org/blog/cities-as-social-ecologies-by-thomas-madreiter-isabella-mader/ https://www.druckerforum.org/blog/cities-as-social-ecologies-by-thomas-madreiter-isabella-mader/#respond Thu, 27 Feb 2020 09:48:29 +0000 https://www.druckerforum.org/blog/?p=2622 […]]]>

The cities of the future we imagined in the 1970ies were about flying cars and beautiful skyscrapers.

Where are we now? At micromobility with e-scooters? Where did it all begin? If the Renaissance began in Florence, Smart City began in Silicon Valley. While we know San Francisco as an ideal place to test the latest Smart City tech gadgets their City Government took an interesting decision recently: you now have to demonstrate which public value your technology will bring to the city.

Drucker Forum 2019

What value does your tech bring to the city

Cecile Maisonneuve, President of the think tank Fabrique de la Cité, kicked off the Session on “Cities as Social Ecologies” at the 11th Global Peter Drucker Forum with this revealing development of urban policy. She goes on to explain: Cities are wonderful laboratories, but citizens are not guinea pigs. It seems we are currently living at a turning point in the way we are considering the future of cities. We seem to be coming back to the right questions. What is the purpose? What is the vision? Future cities have to overcome three main and intertwined problems, she argues:

1. Climate Change:
As worldwide two thirds of people are living in cities, urban policies will play a major role in this challenge. The discussion with the audience was quite controversial. Too drastic measures will lead to failure due to public resistance. Policies need to be ambitious and balanced at the same time, which is not a trivial task to pursue. Thomas Madreiter adds to the discussion that providing alternatives that work well contribute best to wider adoption of those alternatives.

2. Affordable housing:
Social and economic accessibility remains crucial to successful urban and economic development. The City of Vienna manages to tackle the issue of affordable housing in a way that no other metropoly has been able to. The social crisis upcoming around the world – illustrated by France‘s yellow jacket movement – is about the fact that cities increasingly exclude people who built them, says Cecile Maisonneuve.

3. Mobility
Mobility in a city is not about technology, e-scooters or public transport. Mobility is about people, about how you fulfill your program of activities every day: working, movies, shopping, taking the kids to school …

Cecile Maisonneuve proposes a new urban social contract. The classical social contract in cities was about taxation: paying taxes bought you services and representatives. The future model can be that we give data. What do we get in return? Mobility, social security, affordable housing, innovation …?

Cities as a contributor to climate change

Thomas Madreiter, Vienna‘s Director of Planning, sees the contribution of cities as critical in the context of climate change. Vienna initiated climate budgeting in June 2019 to address this as one of many initiatives. Another policy cornerstone in Vienna is affordable housing: Vienna started 100 years ago with its social housing program to tackle social inclusion and social peace. The so-called Red Vienna housing program is still one of the decisive factors that secure Vienna’s position as one of the world’s most livable cities.

Urban planning’s daily business is to deal with conflicting goals. Understanding the city as a social ecosystem in a modern way means urban policy must find compromises. In other words, the city has conflicting interests and that can’t be avoided. Thomas Madreiter concludes that embracing conflict and finding solutions in a collaborative process is part of the solution. No single technical solution can solve this problem. Solutions will need to involve people and city policies will be about conversations and finding solutions to mediate interests.

Public policy breakthrough in London

Martin Ferguson, Director of Policy & Research at SOCITM, contributed examples from the UK, citing Charles Booth, a social ecologist, who mapped poverty in London which resulted in a breakthrough in terms of public policy. Breakthroughs in this sense eliminated the blind spot that poverty existed in London. This enabled reformers to influence government to introduce a variety of social reforms that enabled the city to progress. Today the UK looks back on an extraordinary period of austerity in terms of public expenditure. The idea of centralist top-down hierarchical silo-based thinking has stifled innovation in the communities and brought about an inability to do anything to improve the human condition. This is why cities would need to focus on a local level and would need to leave the debate on a national level aside.

Deficits, according to Martin Ferguson, are less about budgets and more about visible shortcomings in other fields like poor air quality, unemployment, homelessness and other social problems typically migrating from the countryside to the cities. Manchester City Council and other municipalities like Barking & Dagenham demonstrated a new way forward based on a collaborative approach solving citizens‘ needs. Barking & Dagenham developed a data driven Social Progress Index to look at the causation of problems surrounding poverty and well-being in particular.

The crucial success of urban public policy seems to be whether the real problems that people are facing are being solved and communities are being included in the process. The development of city policy should focus on how to bring humanity back into managing cities. A shift from the Taylorist centrist view to a point that Charles Handy made as a conclusion of this conference two years ago: shifting to a more organic, social, evolving approach to improve the human condition, orchestrating the interactions – and going beyond harvesting just the low hanging fruit.

This article is one in the Drucker Forum “shape the debate” series relating to the 11th Global Peter Drucker Forum, under the theme “The Power of Ecosystems”, taking place on November 21-22, 2019 in Vienna, Austria #GPDF19 #ecosystems

#GPDFrapporteur

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Sparking small fires at the Drucker Forum Barcamp by Isabella Mader https://www.druckerforum.org/blog/sparking-small-fires-at-the-drucker-forum-barcamp-by-isabella-mader/ https://www.druckerforum.org/blog/sparking-small-fires-at-the-drucker-forum-barcamp-by-isabella-mader/#respond Mon, 24 Feb 2020 12:34:20 +0000 https://www.druckerforum.org/blog/?p=2545 […] ]]>

Not a classic panel, nor the speakers you’d expect at a conference like the Global Peter Drucker Forum. The motto: growth happens where there is access to opportunity. The format is targeted at younger-generation participants from two camps: the winners and finalists of the Peter Drucker Challenge, an essay contest for students and young entrepreneurs, and participants in the Talent Award program for corporate career talents nominated by their employers.

The shortened ‘Barcamp’ format used within the Global Peter Drucker Forum sees pitches by participants, followed by an audience vote to select the most popular topics that will then be presented in a short talk. Ample discussion time is provided thereafter.

To start off the Barcamp, moderator Isabella Mader cited Charles Handy’s closing keynote at the 2017 Drucker Forum: ‘To change the world let us start small fires in the darkness until the whole world is alight.’ The idea behind this session is to be one of those small fires and to spark further ones from the talks given and the ideas discussed with the audience in the session .

The voting brought seven young leaders to the stage with the following topics:

Ecosystems need eco-leaders, by Drenusha Shehu (Talent Award Participant, Raiffeisen Bank International): Industrial-age leadership was a lot about ego and lone decision making. Today, leaders need to be closer to the team, brainstorm ideas with their staff, and capture their input.

Words are losing their meaning, by Anika Marie Kennaugh (Drucker Challenge Finalist, Students): Peter Drucker knew about the magic, necessity and beauty of words. After all, words are what binds the world together or pulls it apart. Contracts, love letters, pitches, inaugural speeches … all rely on the magic of words. Even the success of scientific papers depends not only on the quality of the research, but also on the ability to convey ideas. But our “arsenal” is getting dull: students need someone to demonstrate how to polish their armour and brandish their language in order to become successful commanders-in-chief of their destiny.

Drucker Forum 2019

We need neurodiversity to encourage diversity, by Karolien Koolhof (Drucker Challenge Finalist, Students): When asked, ‘Who thinks diversity and innovation go hand in hand?’, a vast majority of participants raised their hands. Extroverts and introverts bring complementary talents to the table – fast action and introspection, boldness and calm. Recounting her personal story as an introvert, Koolhof explained how she came to build a platform to encourage introverts to embrace their natural strengths and extroverts to understand what introverts can contribute.

 We might note here that the first three speakers with the best voted pitches were young women – a first at the Drucker Forum Barcamp.

Why become more data-driven? by Christian Renz (Talent Award participant, Raiffeisen Bank International): Corporate survival is not enough, argued Christian Renz. If companies are to excel, a data-driven approach is a crucial strategic ingredient for success. Basing decisions on data and information rather than taking a chance or relying on gut feel will improve the quality of decisions in two important areas: business development – finding opportunity and spotting patterns of consumer need – and generating efficiency.

What should the agenda be for AI today? by Babajide Muritala (Drucker Challenge Winner, Students): We all know AI is the ‘boss’ these days. In endless panels and chat shows, academics and pundits discuss control and the prospect of robotics and AI replacing human labor. But maybe this fear is misdirected. There is another AI apocalypse dawning that’s not talked about enough, which is algorithmic bias. Stories like a man getting 20 times more credit than his wife although she has a better credit rating illustrate the idea. What do cases like this predict for the surveillance of citizens, the militarization of AI, and so on? Let’s talk about discrimination by AI – and let’s not have AI take relevant decisions until this is fixed.

AI as the “third factor”, by Sorin Suciu, (Talent Award participant, Raiffeisen Bank International): The exponential development of business ecosystems has been largely supported by the development of artificial intelligence. In practice, the increasing application of digital technology has led to the emergence of a third factor in the business ecosystem: AI. The question to be addressed in this context: which is to be the dominant factor, AI or humans? Only responsible management of business ecosystems can ensure that the economy and society won’t be reduced to profit-making machines. Responsible management of AI will need to address the question of a life worth living.

Specialization kills management, by Shubhadeep Basak (Drucker Challenge Finalist, entrepreneurs category): In projects dominated by functional arguments about who is in charge of what and where silo thinking and blame culture govern behavior, lengthy discussions will delay completion and increase cost. Projects go astray. Managers capable of taking a holistic and inclusive view of both project and people are a crucial element in project leadership.

Questions discussed with the audience revolved much around inclusion and collaboration and the human condition, bound together by an improved ability to communicate with each other. As Financial Times management editor Andrew Hill pointed out, appropriately enough all the talks seemed to be linked by a sense of connectedness and collaboration. He proposed to take the ‘eco’ out of ecosystems and pursue systems thinking instead (a thought continued in a post Forum FT article), supporting the idea that problems are more easily solved by diverse groups. AI in this context should not alienate but facilitate collaborators to work together across continents and diverse groups.

About the Author:

Isabella Mader is CEO of the Excellence Institute, Executive Advisor for the Global Peter Drucker Forum and lecturer at universities in the fields of information and knowledge management, IT- strategy and collaboration.

This article is one in the Drucker Forum “shape the debate” series relating to the 11th Global Peter Drucker Forum, under the theme “The Power of Ecosystems”, taking place on November 21-22, 2019 in Vienna, Austria #GPDF19 #ecosystems

#GPDFrapporteur

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How did we get here? And how will inclusive policies pave the way to growth? by Isabella Mader & Wolfgang Müller https://www.druckerforum.org/blog/how-did-we-get-here-and-how-will-inclusive-policies-pave-the-way-to-growth-by-isabella-mader-wolfgang-muller/ https://www.druckerforum.org/blog/how-did-we-get-here-and-how-will-inclusive-policies-pave-the-way-to-growth-by-isabella-mader-wolfgang-muller/#respond Tue, 22 Aug 2017 22:01:17 +0000 https://www.druckerforum.org/blog/?p=1553 Hate speech to the extent we see it today has surfaced recently. Populist and right-wing protest voters could have voted as they did of late 10 or 20 years ago. They didn’t. How could such destructive resentment build up? Opinion polls may not prove overly helpful in diagnosing the underlying reasons as they are typically influenced by narratives circulated by real or fake news sites, but hardly any substantiated reasoning. A recent study set out to shed some light on causation and help answer the pressing question: How did we get here?

Self-inflicted misery: Death by fiscal policy

The first indication that the recent growth in populist votes may have something to do with the economic outlook of voters reveals itself via the geographical distribution of voting results. GDP per capita shows that on average wealth is growing. If we were to look at what arrives on average employee’s pockets instead the time series of real wages show a different picture: In the US the bottom 50 percent of the working population have had no real wage increase since at least 1979.

In the UK, real wages overall were 7 percent lower in 2015 than in 2000 (compared to +7 percent for Canada over that period). Simply demanding employers to increase gross wages might not solve the problem, as tax policy heavily influences the net. In some countries, gross wages went up while net real salaries dropped. The connection between real wages and votes as indicated in our long-term study seems to explain why – in contrast to many long-established governments – President Erdogan sees endured support: Turkey’s real wages are up 40 percent in the past 10 years. Simply put, voters’ preference for economic betterment outweighs reasons to change established norms.

First results of these analyses, published in early 2016, showed a strong link between weakened real wages and anti-government votes. The strong link between real wages and election results quickly dawned on policy makers: a quiet turn of fiscal policy, away from austerity and with an ease on lower incomes, was announced by September 2016.

Recommendation: Governments seem to be voted in or out not by their ideology but by their ability to deliver better living standards. Regressive taxation tends to increase inequality and seems to lead to prolonged periods of stagnation by causing risk-taking and engagement to reduce as effort does not pay off anymore. The result is what nobody wants: low growth for everyone and social unrest building. Inclusive policies, on the other hand, balance fiscal burdens well between high and low incomes and prevent tax leakage. As such, they create opportunity for individuals and on businesses to grow through effort, which spurs engagement and in turn creates sustained growth and social peace (as demonstrated in Why Nations Fail). Countries can engage in fruitless confrontation over inequality or choose to invest the same time and energy into generating wealth for everyone. In other words: legislation can create wealth and equality – or reduce it. Growth, prosperity, equality and inclusivity versus stagnation and inequality: that is the choice.

 

Are we looking at the right indicators?

The late Hans Rosling never tired of explaining that fewer people than ever live in poverty and that the world sees a permanent increase in GDP per capita. Max Roser, a researcher at the University of Oxford is on a similar mission with OurWorldinData.org – promoting data-based understanding and knowledge. However, several recent election results and the Brexit referendum suggest that many seem to disagree that we’re all better off.

The one undisputed perception is that GDP does not serve well as an indicator of growth and prosperity. More telling could be the long-term development of real wages, broken down in percentiles, which helps judge better the distribution of incomes.

 

Communication must change

An increasingly hatefilled public discourse reveals an alarming account of disintegration of society. Stigmatizing Leave voters in the UK or Trump voters in the US (and similarly in other countries) as dumb, uneducated, too old, or simply as “globalization losers,” and using a vocabulary of disgust against populism and hate speech must be counterproductive. Resentment will only increase. On the other hand: Communication alone, even if undertaken with great care, without fixing root causes of inequality, remains ineffective in the long run.

 

More proof from the inclusive policy “toolset”: Participation and Collaboration

Studies show that policies are endorsed better by those who participated in their creation or implementation than by those who were not involved. If governments want endorsement and trust then participation seems to be the way forward.

 

The CEO of Wikifolio has explained that members on his platform publish their trading strategies and that the portfolios quickly outperformed his country’s Stock Exchange in trading volumes. He was asked: “Why do people do this?” Here the research of Alexander Pentland (MIT) comes in: Lone Traders generate the lowest returns, the ones with publicly discussed trading strategies see the highest yield. Pentland looked at a number of other fields, with the same result. Also, he estimated the gross urban product of cities with little deviation based on indicators drawn from these findings. It can be summarized as: the more collaboration, interdisciplinarity, openness and mingling, the more wealth.

 

Towards Growth and Inclusive Prosperity

Policy and public discourse require a set of new values, indicators and vocabulary. The authors of Why Nations Fail collected evidence on what makes nations successful: Inclusive, pluralistic societies, where social advancement can be achieved through engagement and risk-taking. Extractive systems, on the other hand, withdraw resources from society and deliver benefits for a small upper class only. Consequently, engagement dies and converts into bitterness once individuals cannot achieve adequate income through work.

Conclusion: Extractive systems degenerate, inclusive systems prosper. If growth is what we are after then inclusive concepts are the way forward.

 

Concepts from the authors new book, Government of Hope, to be published in 2018

Isabella Mader is CEO of the Excellence Institute lectures at several universities. Her background is in Information Science and Business Administration and in. 2013 she was “Top CIO of the Year”. Her current research focusses on Network Economy and Collaboration.

Wolfgang Müller is Deputy Chief Executive Director and Chief Operations Officer of the Vienna City Administration. He holds a Masters degree in Law and a Master in Business Administration.

The opinions and views expressed in this article are those of the authors, and do not necessarily reflect those of the institutions to which they are affiliated.

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Managing the Transition to an Entrepreneurial Society by Isabella Mader and Wolfgang Müller https://www.druckerforum.org/blog/managing-the-transition-to-an-entrepreneurial-society-by-isabella-mader-and-wolfgang-muller/ https://www.druckerforum.org/blog/managing-the-transition-to-an-entrepreneurial-society-by-isabella-mader-and-wolfgang-muller/#respond Tue, 24 May 2016 22:01:36 +0000 http://www.druckerforum.org/blog/?p=1228 Entrepreneurial Society seems to evolve in such a way that a society of employees slowly morphs into a society of entrepreneurs. The tendency of a decrease in employment and the rise of freelancing materialized in a record of 40 percent of US workers in insecure contingent jobs in 2015 [1]. The future of work seems to be that employment is dying altogether, but work seems to be re-inventing itself through the rise of freelancing: while corporations are laying of millions of staff they appear to be sourcing work back in from freelancers. On the one hand, the network economy can be the chance for millions to create work for themselves in a self-responsible manner; on the other hand, there is stiff competition from low wage countries on freelance platforms. Angus Deaton [2] argued that the latter enables developing countries to better participate in international growth. Such a profound re-composition of society, currently generating dystopian forecasts of mass unemployment and weak economies, needs to be addressed in public policies to ensure a smooth transition to this new era in order to enable economic growth while maintaining social stability.

The following thoughts may serve as a contribution to the discussion about the policy frameworks that may be needed for economies to thrive in an Entrepreneurial Society:

  1. Downscale rules and regulations

Rules and regulations have been introduced over time to ensure quality, safety and consumer protection. However, bureaucratic red tape slows down businesses dramatically. The Sharing Economy demonstrates that a lot less regulation would suffice. A middle ground between laissez-faire and the current status seems advisable for public policy along with the creation of a level playing field for all market participants. If businesses and the economy are to thrive, bureaucratic red tape needs to be dramatically curtailed – the red tape created by legislation as well as self-inflicted red tape caused by information and controlling overload within companies. There is an essential need to move from a society of control to a society of trust – not just in management, but overall.

 

  1. Rethinking taxation and social insurance for low income groups

For many the only option to find work will be to become freelancers. Economies that wish to maintain a living standard that will enable growth will need to rethink their taxation and social systems. Many countries still tax people on earnings below the poverty line or even push them below the poverty line through taxation.

Rather, small incomes would need to remain untouched and taxation would need to start at higher income levels. For societies this would present a far less expensive option and would ensure that people create jobs for themselves and continue working, earning their own dues without the need for government welfare programs. While insecure contingent jobs will increase further, a new social contract will be needed because existential fear will not enable economies to grow.

 

  1. Don’t allow credit crunch to derail growth

Often SME owners and freelancers find it difficult to raise funds for their businesses or to purchase a residence: banks rate their income as too insecure. SMEs and startups may turn to crowdfunding. A recent study of crowdfunding platforms showed that their fees and conditions are costly (currently up to 14 percent for the funds received in addition to yearly dividends). Lawyers and auditing services add to these costs. Even for high risk investments this seems too expensive. If we pin our hopes on startups and SMEs to induce investment and growth, then public policies will need to address these issues.

2016-05-17_mader_mueller

  1. Prevent tax leakage

Many countries have closed their doors to platforms like Uber and Airbnb because their  current legal framework is geared toward the stabilization of pricing or securing minimum standards in quality, security and income. Companies in the Sharing Economy charge an average of a 15 to 30% commission on the earnings that people make on their platform, which extracts value from the countries where the services are rendered. Should platform companies commit to setting up local branches so they can be taxed on their local profits and provide quality assurance to consumers locally? This would ensure all market participants and users of an infrastructure in a country contribute to the upkeep of those services.

 

  1. Education and skills gap: We need to teach the adults!

The willingness to retrain and upskill will be necessary for future employability. Linear predictions of masses of unemployed people imply that people will resist learning how to do new jobs. Historic evidence demonstrates otherwise: Throughout the industrial era, people sought education whatever their role.

Graduate-level education for adults should be of similar significance as educating children, as well as be affordable if we seek to qualify an existing workforce and to make knowledge operational quickly.

 

  1. The age of individual uncertainty: risk-taking and effort should be rewarded

For societies to prosper, conditions need to be rewarding for many, not just for a handful of people. In extractive societies the societal layers are impermeable; therefore, effort isn’t rewarding and so stops. Inclusive societies that reward risk-taking and hard work have enabled economies to thrive because people were able to move upward socially [3]. For engagement and entrepreneurship to be sustained in an economy, prospects need to be provided.

 

  1. Disrupt Yourself – become a network, be part of networks

In today’s highly complex and fragmented world the network is the most successful organizational form. Therefore, governments and businesses are well advised to work with and in networks. In networks, changes can be created collaboratively and will be endorsed instead of imposed. “Cooperation creates prosperity, closed systems deteriorate” is the distilled analysis of Alexander Pentland [4]. In a networked economy it is no longer only about “competition is good for business”. Today, “cooperation is good for business“.

 

About the authors:

Isabella Mader is Director of the Excellence Institute and university lecturer at several universities mainly in the fields of Knowledge Management, Information Science and IT Strategy. 2013 she was awarded “Top CIO of the Year”. Her current research focus lies with Network Economy and Collaboration.

Wolfgang Müller is Deputy Chief Executive Director and Chief Operations Officer of the Vienna City Administration. He has a Masters degree in Law and a Master in Business Administration.

The opinions and views expressed in this article are those of the authors, and do not necessarily reflect those of the institutions to which they are affiliated.

 

[1] Pofelt, Elaine; Shocker: 40% of Workers Now Have ‘Contingent’ Jobs, Says U.S. Government. Forbes, 25 May 2015. [Online]: http://www.forbes.com/sites/elainepofeldt/2015/05/25/shocker-40-of-workers-now-have-contingent-jobs-says-u-s-government/

[2] Deaton, Angus; The Great Escape: Health, Wealth and the Origins of Inequality. Princeton University Press, 2015

[3] Acemoglu, Daron; Robinson, James A.; Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty. Crown Publishers, New York, 2012.

[4] Pentland, Alexander; Social Physics. How Good Ideas Spread – The Lessons From A New Science. The Penguin Press, New York, 2014.

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A Moment Of Truth by Isabella Mader https://www.druckerforum.org/blog/a-moment-of-truth-by-isabella-mader/ https://www.druckerforum.org/blog/a-moment-of-truth-by-isabella-mader/#comments Sun, 22 Nov 2015 23:01:54 +0000 http://www.druckerforum.org/blog/?p=1097 The On-Demand Economy provides a preview of where society is going: now and more so in the future typically employed work will be sourced from platforms: graphics design, secretarial services, programming … 01_2015_isabella_maderLogical consequence will be a strong increase of freelance work. In 2015, in the US more than 40 percent of the workforce were in insecure contingent jobs [1]. Employment is slowly going to erode and companies will shrink to a strategic core of managers who source most work from platforms.

 

In addition, such commoditized labour experiences a globalization of competition (unless it’s bound to a site like taxi driving). Crowdworkers (freelancers on platforms) will also not have a work contract, but sign standard terms of service instead. Pay is determined by auction, not by minimum wage and work may be allocated by an algorithm, i.e. the boss is a computer.

 

Hence we have work ‘above the algorithm’, creating the platforms, and work ‘below the algorithm’ receiving their tasks from platforms [2]. Work above the algorithm tends to program its ideology into the code. The ideology found in a number of on-demand platforms is wage dumping. In Turkers’ (casual for freelancers on Amazon Mechanical Turk) descriptive lingo: “Wage theft is a feature, not a bug“.

 

We have seen this before: As one era ends and another begins, change occurs at a pace and scale that disrupts all aspects of society. 02_2015_isabella_maderWe are now leaving the industrial era and enter the network society. When, over centuries, ancient civilization morphed into the industrial era, traditional craftsmen were disrupted by early industrialists. Even government was disrupted: monarchies were replaced by republics and democracy. The early industrialists, the ‘Robber Barons’, could amass great wealth in that they owned machinery and factories, giving them the power to dictate work conditions and wages. Then unions formed and re-established balance.

 

Today, people, driven out of regular jobs or not making enough as freelancers compete for tasks that are paid a tiny fraction of any possible minimum wage – several hundred thousands of them on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk platform alone. Just like the last era change, but with one difference: the new ‘Digital Robber Barons’ own data and infrastructure as intermediaries, but not the physical assets needed to deliver the actual service sold. Uber as the largest taxi company in the world doesn’t own one taxi, Airbnb doesn’t own a single apartment and Facebook as the largest media concern doesn’t produce content. The physical assets required to do the job are paid for by the workers.

 

Business models and the way we work, even government, are ready for disruption again, and maybe this is a chance for millions of people to create work for themselves in a self-responsible manner. Following the thoughts of Angus Deaton this could even enable developing countries to better participate in growth. Mankind has come a long way negotiating and fighting for social standards evolving from the tribal and feudal system and early ‘Robber Barons’. As such, business models are up for disruption, but social achievements have to be safeguarded and even developed further to suit network society. In fact it’s less about humans against robots: the question is more about how humans treat humans.

 

It may not be too realistic to expect the economy to regulate itself in creating fair working conditions. There is no such evidence in history. Without some kind of unions and a suitable legal framework crowdworkers alone may not be able wrest sustainable conditions for themselves (no such earlier evidence either). The responsibility for a smooth transition of society, preventing upheaval and unrest due to poverty or mass unemployment lies with governments, along with setting the rules for a networked society – and co-creating a vision of how such a future should look like.

03_2015_isabella_mader

Governments could be disrupted by corporations that already operate like platforms and networks – later maybe starting to form corporate states similar to the seasteads (floating cities of likeminded people recognized as a sovereign state) as proposed by Peter Thiel of Paypal. Who knows? Government is under attack at its core: MIT’s John Clippinger is quoted saying “Who needs government?” Currently, governments are confronted with a very powerful private sector and face eroding trust by the population. How to regain this trust and re-enter the arena as a balancing factor vis-a-vis the private sector protecting citizens against eroding social standards? Short: How will government disrupt itself?

 

Across the historical divide the organisation charts of companies and governments of every era took the shape that society showed as a whole. Currently organisation charts are developing into a networked structure. Therefore, government, too, must interact with networks. This way contact with citizens can be re-established and mutual (!) trust may be regained. Change wouldn’t need to be imposed – it could be co-created. Such results may see better endorsement, too – something that current policies often lack.

 

Finally, when it comes to co-creating a vision and common understanding of how our future should look like, a book by Jonathan Lear comes to mind: In ‘Radical Hope’ [3] he tells the story of the Crow Indians who were confronted with the extinction of the buffalo – their almost sole source of work and food. They were faced with cultural devastation: The way they used to live for centuries would end. Realizing the desperation and depression of his people, Chief Plenty Coups realised that his nation had to develop a new vision of how they should live and eat in the future. He called this concept ‘Radical Hope’. The economist Lawrence Summers warned that the world currently lacked that kind of political leaders – similar to the ones who helped shape the public policy during the industrial era [4].

 

The Crow Nation survived. Today it is our generations’ common responsibility to build a future that is inspiring and worth while – not just for a few, but for society as a whole. A strong public sector needs to re-enter the playing field to help build shared prosperity in addition to shared economy.

 

 

About the author:

Isabella Mader is Director of the Excellence Institute and university lecturer in the fields of Knowledge Management, Information Science and IT Strategy. 2013 she was awarded “Top CIO of the Year”. Her current research focuses on Network Economy, Communities and the Sharing Economy.

 

 

[1] Pofelt, Elaine; Shocker: 40% of Workers Now Have ‘Contingent’ Jobs, Says U.S. Government. Forbes, 25 May 2015. [Online]: http://www.forbes.com/sites/elainepofeldt/2015/05/25/shocker-40-of-workers-now-have-contingent-jobs-says-u-s-government/

[2] Compare: Wing Kosner, Anthony: Google Cabs And Uber Bots Will Challenge Jobs ‘Below The API’. Forbes, 4 February 2015 [Online]: http://www.forbes.com/sites/anthonykosner/2015/02/04/google-cabs-and-uber-bots-will-challenge-jobs-below-the-api/
[3] Lear, Jonathan; Radical Hope – Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation. Harvard University Press, 2008.
[4] Hill, Andrew; Divisions emerge over effect of digital disruption. Financial Times, 24 January 2014- [Online]: http://app.ft.com/cms/s/3a7190a2-84df-11e3-8968-00144feab7de.html

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