Organising in the Information Age: Distributed Technology, Distributed Leadership, Distributed Identity, Distributed Discourse (Voices in Development Management)

Networked technologies have become widespread: in workplaces, at home, and in transport, connecting providers of products and services with consumers, and linking government with the governed. The distributed nature of such technologies, their non-hierarchical structure and widespread availability, affords modes of access to information, for its creation and transmission as well as reception and consumption. The spatial and temporal constraints on patterns of communication exchange that have hitherto applied are dissolved by the availability of distributed and asynchronous modes of communication. This volume explores key facets of the consequences of the emergence of this distributed technology for organizational life. It argues that these developments have taken place at such a pace that organizational theory has not kept up to analyse and explain adequately the current applications or to explore possible future applications. The book contributes to the necessary development of organizational theory, by providing analysis and empirical studies of existing applications. The themes of distributed technology, distributed leadership, distributed identity and distributed discourse provide key elements for new modes of analysis, and potentially new vistas for the future shape of globalisation.