Rebuilding Corporations Online

1. Rebuilding Corporations Online Haejin Yun

2. Corporate Discipline • Discipline: “A network of strategies employed by a person or group to maintain a specific set of power relations”; the mechanism of control • the Internet as a disciplinary tool: resistance as well as discipline

3. Corporate Discipline • Panopticon • Jeremy Bentham (1791): Designed to be an effective and humane penitentiary; Unidirectional surveillance • Foucault (1979): Prisoner as an object of information rather than a subject in communication

4. Panopticon The Virtual Panopticon

5. Corporate Discipline • Electronic Panopticon AMA (American Management Association, 2000) • Monitoring Internet connection: 54.1% • Storage and review of computer files: 30.8% • Storage and review of e-mail messages: 38.1% • Botan (1996): less privacy, uncertainty about their role, lower self-esteem, communication reduction, isolation --> Virtual cells of an electronic panopticon • Mciroserfs: Bill Gates’ formless and faceless presence

6. Corporate Discipline • Anticipatory Conformity • A practice in which an employee adopts a docile and disciplined relationship to authority b/c of the potential rather than the practice of domination • Why electronic surveillance? - Cyberslacking (Naughton, 1999): Using corporate information technology for personal ends

7. Consumers Online • Cookies • Files that place themselves on the visitor’s hard drive • Voluntary data submission • Data Mining • eg. ProfitMax and ProfitMax Bankruptcy

8. Ethical Issues • Marx (1998) • Unfair advantage • Restricted social participation • Unwarranted public embarrassment • Betrayal of confidence • Intrusion into solitude • Individualized propagandistic appeals • Waste of communication resources

9. Diffusion of Innovations • Diffusion of Innovations: Communication about new ideas through certain channels over time among members of a social system. • Communicating new ideas • New technology and New idea attached to each other • Automobile together with Highway and an ideology of limitless horizons

10. Diffusion of Innovations • Communicating through channels • Channels provide necessary context to any analysis of the new idea • Communicating over time • Time provides a dimension to study the unfolding of events in various contexts • Communicating in a social system • Social systems set norms or rules by which an innovation (new idea) is perceived, therefore, accepted or rejected.

11. Xerox PARC • Developed a set of important microcomputer technologies • The world’s first personal computer • The mouse • Icons and pull-down menu • Laser printing • Ethernet technology • None of these, except for laser printing, were commercialized into products by the Xerox Corp., but by Apple Computer, Inc.

12. Xerox PARC • Why failed? • Inflexible corporate identity • Rapid development by PARC which the management couldn’t follow • Physical distance among PARC, the headquarter, the manufacturing center,

13. Innovativeness • Innovativeness: “The degree to which an individual or organization is relatively earlier in adopting new ideas than other members of a social system”; Adopter category • More social participation, more personal networks, more oriented toward outside a social system • Papa (1990): Interaction and Diversity rather than previous experience with the technology • “The more diverse an employee’s network was, the more coworkers he or she talked to about the new technology, and the more productive that employee was likely to be using the new system” (Diffusion of Innovations) • Can this technology serve as a tool for the corporate discipline?

14. Corporate Convergence • Convergence: A process in which industries, formerly considered to offer distinct services, merge their products and distribution networks. • AT&T and TCI  AT&T and Comsat • AT&T – the then nation's largest long distance company - and TCI - the then nation’s second largest cable TV company - in 1999 • The merger of the nation's largest cable company -- AT&T Broadband -- with the third largest – Comcast • Microsoft invested $5 billion in AT&T in 1999 and $1 billion in Comcast in 1997. • AOL and Time Warner • In March 1999 AOL and Time Warner were both among the 11 companies controlling 50 percent of all user minutes - ranked number one and 11, respectively. Today, AOL Time Warner, the product of their merger, is ranked number one.

15. Corporate Convergence • AOL Time Warner, 32.0%; Microsoft, 7.5%; Yahoo, 7.2; Napster Digital 3.6%

16. Corporate Convergence • Portal Merger • @Home and Excite in 1999 • Microsoft is an investor in AT&T, which is a major shareholder of Excite@Home. • Yahoo and GeoCities in 1999 • Doorways to the WWW

17. Internet Cluster Analysis • A.T. Kearney • 1st Internet Cluster Analysis in 1999 • Five factors:Talent, Pillar companies, Universities, Capital, and Support services • 2nd Internet Cluster Analysis in 2000 • Government, Overseas location (59 % percent in Europe, 43 % in Asia, 19 % in Latin American and 7 % in Africa), Relocation considered, Less influence of the talent factor on location (86% in 1999 to 58% in 2000), M&A surge, Overseas investment

18. What Works? (1999)

19. Internet Cluster Regions