Jul
23
(2007)
On the changing role of the Organization
Filed under: Uncategorized. Tags: decentralism, organizations, thoughts.
I’ve been wrestling with this concept for some time now. As a member of a University, I am affiliated with a number of organizations. Each of these were set up years ago, as part of various efforts to help connect and support individuals and groups in their work at any number of distributed institutions of higher education. Many are communities of practice, at least in name, and all attempt to offer services and resources to their members.
They all mean well. But they’re largely ineffective, and mostly obsolete. On top of that, they are expensive. Maybe not extraordinarily expensive, but these organizations cost money to run. Money which is better allocated to support local efforts, rather than supporting an infrastructure that is no longer needed.
As an example, we recently let our membership in an organization lapse. We couldn’t justify the cost involved with maintaining a membership, especially in light of recurring budget cuts on campus. Sure, it’s nice to say you’re a member of an organization. It’s also nice to throw some coins into a hat to keep an organization afloat. But when faced with touch choices - do we maintain a membership, or let more people go, it’s an easy decision to make.
Ironically, after our membership lapsed, we heard from a faculty member who was using some of the organization’s resources. They were upset that the membership was no longer active, and started listing reasons why the membership was important to them. Except that every one of these reasons had been simply copied and pasted from the organization’s marketing info. The only valid complaint was the sudden removal of people from the organization’s listserv. Which is hosted not by the organization, but by a large, high profile institution in the States.
We talked about the issues related to membership in the organization for some time. Each time we discussed it, we came back to a single conclusion - we don’t need an organization to provide infrastructure to allow us to connect with others anymore. We are fully able to make these connections on our own, as we have been doing anyway. The informal, direct connections made between individuals are much more valuable than organizationally-fostered ones, at least in my experience.
I really don’t think we need many of these organizations any more. It would be better to allocate the resources locally, while using these great “web 2.0″ tools and social networks to build connections. Maybe an occasional conference, more akin to Northern Voice than to these giant organizational conferences, in order to provide a venue for face-to-face interaction.
In an era of decentralization and individually generated and managed content, the role of the central organization should be changing. To what? I’m not sure. But it’s no longer necessary as a broker to connect individuals and groups.
Further, these same changes are pending for the Institution as well - what is the changing role of a University when individuals are empowered to the level that they don’t need many of the traditional services of such an Institution?
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3 Responses to “On the changing role of the Organization”
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This is an excellent example of the larger shifts that are already shaping how we will move forward (or if we will?). I think your idea of the centralized institution as neither the most efficient not effective way to connect people and ideas is a really important observation that will frame part of the identity crisis for larger institutions in the coming decades. what role do they play? How do they galvanize and foster these relationship? Can they?
One of the most important elements of an academic institution is the community of scholars who have spent most of their lives thinking through the most prominent issues in their respective disciplines, and committing their life to teaching, publishing, and conversing on these topics. I don’t necessarily think this framework should change that dramatically, however the general accessibility to what the world’s thinkers teach, publish, and converse should change dramatically. I also think the way we currently imagine and implement credentials might be up for certain amount of re-consideration, as should the way in which we approach peer-review. So, yeah, I guess nothing short of a major overhaul, but all which keep the fundamental ideas of an education in tact -a space for focused thought, rigorous challenges, continual feedback, and the expectation to participate in the process of discussing and sharing one’s ideas. I think so much of the technology we already have can pretty easily enable and manage these relationships, but we still need to concentrate on the means of framing these spaces as meaningfully open, accessible and on-going. That is the challenge, and institutions still do this better than the distributed networks currently because they currently house and fund so many of the world’s most important thinkers and teachers. Bringing this back to an interesting and necessary discussion of economics, intellectual property, state-funded resources, public access, etc.
Great stuff, D’Arcy!
Jim, I agree - the critical role of the Institution as an incubator for thinking and communication is irreplaceable. But, many Institutions are more focussed on training youth for the job market, rather than fostering or promoting anything meaningful like discourse, research, debate, etc…
Also, I should clarify a bit. When I said “we” in the post, I should have said “the Teaching and Learning Centre” so as not to sound like the entire University made the decision. The TLC was paying the membership fee for that organization, so the decision to renew was ours. Someone else in the University may still decide to renew it, but we won’t be doing it ourselves.
[...] it. Here is what was on D’Arcy’s mind about membership in professional organizations: On the changing role of the Organization - D’Arcy Norman dot net We talked about the issues related to membership in the organization for some time. Each time we [...]