Global Production and Global Consumption:
Designing Organisations and Networks for the Next Century
Stephen Little
Reference: Little S.E. (1999) “Global Production and Global Consumption: Designing Organisations and Networks for the Next Century” Innovation and Creativity Management Vol. 8 no.1, March 1999, pp.8-19.
Globalisation has increased the significance of intellectual capital leveraged by the information and communication technologies on which it depends. Ultimately global production, distribution and consumption forces a shift in focus towards the end of the production chain where product differentiation and customer support can be used to maintain demand for goods and services. However, development is not uniform, specific markets and specific technologies are at different points in the cycle of growth, maturity and decline, rapid growth at favoured locations also creates regional imbalances within regions and nation states. The organisations and alliances which comprise the global production system must deliver continuous innovation at the cutting edge while ensuring effective diffusion of more mature technologies. Often available infrastructure and skills cannot support full integration into the global economy. While such problems may be most marked within the rapidly development in countries such as China, they exist to some extent in all economies.
The stresses inherent in this emerging global system of have been highlighted by the current difficulties of the East Asian economies. The tight coupling of the system propagates the diverse problems of these individual nation states across the globe. This paper argues that globalisation undermines the separation of manufacturing and service activities and the distinction between products and services and examines the emergence of strategies and alliances across regional and organisational boundaries with a model derived from design management.
Global and Local Capabilities
In the post-Cold War era, global economic integration grew rapidly, and disparate national and regional cultures became increasingly interlinked within networked and globalised organisations. Information technologies facilitated these changes through the reduction of transaction costs and the alteration of the relative advantages and economies of size. However, this has led to a complex layering of labour markets, both internal and external to the developed economies driving the process.
The imperatives of the emerging global market have led developed economies to shift their focus towards the end of the production chain where product differentiation and customer support can maintain demand for goods and services. At the same time specific markets and specific technologies are at different points in the cycle of growth, maturity and decline. Segregation and exclusion are producing an unevenness of development within and between economies. Whether socially or geographically based, this threatens the prospects of achieving the goals of sustainability as defined by writers such as Welford (1995) who emphasises the shift from the notion of growth to that of sustainability in development by citing the Bruntland criterion developed by the EU of meeting present needs without compromising future generations.
Globalisation of the world economy has increased the significance of intellectual capital leveraged by information and communication technology. To understand how this has undermined the separation of manufacturing and service activities and the distinction between products and services we must examine new forms of locational and functional differentiation across a globalised network of invention, innovation and implementation. This situation presents the organisations and alliances which comprise the global production system with the challenge of delivering continuous innovation at the cutting edge while ensuring effective diffusion of more mature technologies. Unlike the "appropriate technology" promoted during the 1970’s, this implies a control of diffusion from the technological core. The degree to which the key participants are themselves truly international or transnational is open to debate. Consequently this paper seeks to relate aspects of the late twentieth century world economy and corresponding emergent organisational forms to both their developing technical infrastructure, and the historical and cultural particularities that ensure diversity and friction throughout an emerging global system that is often presented as a seamless technological artefact. The current East Asian economic crisis, which gives urgency to this task, is rooted in a diverse range of economies reflecting equally diverse policies and strategies. Design as an activity unifying product, process and organisation across geographical and cultural boundaries can play a critical role in placing these strategies in a global context.
Global Production/Global Consumption ?
The complexity of our world has become better appreciated following the removal of what Ohmae (1995) terms the "bi-polar discipline" of the Cold War. This obscured differences within and between members of the Eastern and Western blocs and consigned the remainder of humanity to the disparagingly termed "Third World". Some triumphalist writers in the West have accorded information and communication technologies a key role in the erosion of monolithic state control in the former Eastern bloc. However, their accompanying assertions that a technically driven globalised economy can solve the remaining problems facing us are being increasingly challenged with evidence of the exclusion of economically marginal performers from decision making and by the onset of simultaneous crises across the varieties of capitalism deployed by the developmental states of East Asia.
Europe, North America and East Asia all contain the most advanced levels of economic development alongside developing economies. Each region faces the challenge of supporting balanced growth in peripheral areas where available infrastructure and skills cannot support full integration into the global economy. There seems some degree of consensus that in the post-cold war era difference and diversity are resources. Delamaide (1994) explores the synergies flowing from the re-assertion of historical cultural and economic linkages, while Ohmae (1995) argues for "zebra strategies" which play to the relative strength of the most developed components of national economies in order to create regional synergies. Both are discussed below.
Although linkages between the advanced areas of developing economies are creating new regions irrespective of national boundaries, few national governments are prepared to relinquish responsibility for the development of the state as a whole. While the assertion that national or even international regional government no longer has a significant role in development is now increasingly challenged, differential development entrenched through dependence upon a global infrastructure driven by the priorities of the dominant developed economies threatens the legitimacy of the nation state. The development of cooperative economic mechanisms such as NAFTA and ASEAN suggest that there are means of achieving development which retain a role for national governments. However, the emergence of economic groupings as large as APEC, with the imminent addition of Russia, Vietnam and Peru, or the proposals for further expansion of the European Union threaten the original coherence and logic of these associations.
Chains, Networks and Webs
Dicken (1998) enumerates the repertoire of trans-national corporations which accommodates direct foreign investment, joint ventures with local companies and alliances, both permanent, as with the recent merger of Mercedes-Benz and Chrysler, and temporally and geographically limited partnerships such as that between Siemens, IBM and Toshiba in relation to the European market (see Castells; 1996; p.194). Such arrangements involve significant cross-cultural accommodation, as with the acceptance of German workforce representation at board level by the U.S. side of the automotive merger. Dicken’s use of a generic production chain to understand the consequences of the accompanying strategy shifts for firms, governments and workers is discussed below.
The geographical separation of a periphery providing raw resources and a basic market from a core containing transformation processes and sophisticated markets can be identified in European and earlier forms of colonialism. However, the emergence of a global market has led to the progressive relocation of basic manufacturing processes to the periphery and a consequent a shift in focus in developed economies towards the end of the production chain where product differentiation and customer support can maintain demand for goods and services. The integration of this emergent system can be overstated since specific markets and specific technologies are at different points in the cycle of growth, maturity and decline at any time. Consequently, the organisations and alliances which comprise the global production system are presented with the challenge of delivering continuous innovation at the cutting edge while ensuring effective diffusion and exploitation of more mature technologies.
Modelling the Web
Such layering of interests and resources requires some form of representation akin to the logos used by Mintzberg (1979) to illustrate the influence of context on his organisational typology. A basic production chain is used by Dicken to map a geographical hierarchy involving resources, manufacturers and consumers (Dicken; 1998, Figure 1.1). This metaphor is being superseded by the idea of global production networks. Research and development, routine manufacturing, final assembly and after-market support may all be present in the same location, yet each may be contributing to different product chains and sectors. The re-distribution of these activities during the product life cycle further undermines the traditional concepts of centre and periphery. The orderly transfer of these functions from core to periphery across the product lifecycle described by Hirsch (1967) is replaced by an interpenetration of core and periphery in which market and raw materials source, production and consumption are increasingly co-located.
Dicken (1998) demonstrates that information and communication technologies underpin the global system, offering opportunities for participation in the "information economy" to peripheral areas. Information and communication technologies have enabled the disaggregation of the production chain into a network by locating each activity specifically at it point of greatest comparative advantage. The ability to disaggregate the intellectual capital produced by the divergent stage of the design process from the convergent, focused discipline of the production process (see below for discussion of Jones; 1980) has been enhanced by the ability to control production lines from across national boundaries. In some instances complementary manufacturing takes place at both ends of such relationships, however, Lipietz (1992) argues that the ability to separate production from consumption signals the end of the "Fordist compromise" which underpinned the Keynsian social-democratic paradigm. Production workers remote from the destination market no longer need to be paid sufficiently well to consume the products of their own labour.
Castell’s (1989) view of the creative milieu captures the complex web of relationships necessary to support genuine innovation. Despite this, and despite the better understanding of the value of diversity, a simplistic isomorphism re-appears in models of the adoption process which still reflects Rogers’ (1983) model of diffusion from centre to periphery. The general dissemination of "lean production", and of models of science cities and science parks derived from specifically U.S. synergies between university and commercial research are evidence of the persistence of a "one-way" approach. Both Route 128 and Silicon valley have been imitated globally, with varying success: Castells and Hall (1994) show that attempts to engineer such creative situations have produced very mixed results, both within their original cultures and beyond.
In contrast Castells (1996) describes a form of network organisation which is composed of components of larger corporations, collaborating in specific spatial and temporal circumstances, while the main companies are still pursuing global strategies of direct competition. The framework of the network organisation appears to offer an opportunity for smaller players to access resources from and to compete within global networks. Inoue (1998) describes a "virtual village" in which small enterprises are able to form and reform alliances in order to provide high technology services to larger companies. However, the additional accessibility and flexibility of advantage offered to smaller players is accompanied by the capability of larger firms to restructure in such a way that they can enter niche markets yet still draw on their wider resource base. Potential advantages are offset by the ability of some larger firms to de-couple key business units better to target customers and markets traditionally served by much smaller firms.
Cores, Peripheries and Rims
The divisions within the emerging "global economic system" create two additional problems which undermine the broader sustainability of development. The newly industrialising countries that are in the process of catching up are engaged in a process in which development and growth are synonymous. They are understandably sceptical of advice which suggests that they should adhere to higher standards than those applying at the equivalent stage in the development of the dominant established economies. Additionally, significant parts of the globe are excluded from this process of catch-up. Their difficulty lies in maintaining even relatively modest economic objectives. Exclusion from policy making processes or from influence over the emerging global production system reduces their ability to negotiate over the sustainable exploitation of the primary resources they have traditionally contributed to the global system. The issues reflect an emergent "information apartheid" within the global economy and the spatial strategies facilitated through information and communication technologies threaten any prospect of integrated development by allowing a "cherry-picking" approach to both the human and physical resources of developing regions driven by external criteria.
The foundations of a "Pacific Century" and a possible Pacific focus for the global economy were laid during the nineteenth century by the successful acquisition, adoption and subsequent re-export of externally developed technology by Japan (Morris-Suzuki; 1994). David and Wheelwright (1989) argue that many such regional shifts can only be understood in the context of waves of capitalist development operating on a world-wide scale. The current level of internationalised trade itself is no novelty. Hirst and Thompson (1996) demonstrate that on many significant measures the world economy was at least as internationalised in the period prior to the First World War. However, they refuse to attribute any qualitative change to the technologies which have emerged since then, identifying the electric telegraph and steam navigation as the key facilitators of integrated world trade. Nevertheless there must be some qualitative shifts associated with the near-instantaneous transfer of almost unlimited amounts of information between almost any two points on the surface of the planet. The application of information and communication technologies (ICTs) to globalised of financial markets has contributed to the internationalisation of economic decision-making and transformed the volume and flow of resources from waves to tsunami.
Regions: Transnational, National and Sub-national
The emerging global system is not a uniform network, it presents different challenges for the new century for each member of the dominant economic "triad" of Europe, North America and East Asia identified by Ohmae (1985). The success of Japan and other Asian economies in transferring, transforming and re-exporting socio-technical systems inevitably provoked a response which resulted in the rapid diffusion of innovations in all directions. This depends on the widespread use of ICTs but the emerging global system of production, distribution and consumption is not uniform. The rapid pace of growth in favoured areas also creates regional imbalances within regions and nation states where available infrastructure and skills cannot support full integration into the global economy. While these may be most marked within the most rapidly developing economies such as China, they exist to some extent in all economies.
Dicken (1998) and Dunning (1993) show that the majority of direct foreign investment is within and between members of this triad. For example, the European Union is particularly keen to encourage European investment into Asia’s developing economies, with initiatives such as "Asia Invest" aimed at smaller and medium sized companies which may benefit from resource sharing between European development and Asian manufacture. While this initiative is focussed on the actual and potential resources of the less developed Asian economies, the E.C./UNCTAD report on European Union direct investment is aimed at both developing and developed regions of Asia (EC/UNCTAD; 1996).
Localities within each region of the ‘triad’ are restructuring rapidly in an attempt to obtain or ensure a continued prosperous place within the global system. Both proponents of globalisation such as Ohmae and more critical reviewers such as Dicken (1998) recognise that differences within individual national states in both developed and developing regions may be at least as significant that those between them. Using 1991 statistics, Ohmae (1995) shows that China’s national average per capita GDP of US$317 masks regional variations in GDP ranging from US$164 and 197 in Guizhou and Guangxi to US$1,218 and 1,527 in Beijing and Shanghai. While continuing rapid economic development has raised all of these measures since 1991, the differentials remain.
The logic of this current wave of technology-driven globalisation has impacted on significant sectors of the developed economies themselves. Both Japan and Britain are finding that only specific geographical areas or economic sectors are benefitting fully from integration into the global economy. As with other forms of technology transfer premised on foreign direct investment, smaller local organisations and enterprises may gain little, finding instead that key resources are diverted to the support of incoming capital, hampering their own development. Inward investors may "cherry-pick" demographically, establishing greenfield developments remote from existing competing companies. Such tactics allow investors both the inducements offered by local authorities and a workforce whose age structure represents a significant cost advantage in itself. The resulting regional "beauty contests" may result in supporting technologies, in particular the information and telecommunications infrastructure, optimised for these externally-driven actors.
Differences between centre and periphery and between large and small scale economic activity become central to an understanding of the impact of globalisation and its supporting technologies. Ohmae’s "zebra strategies" combine the most developed components of several national economies in order to create regional synergies. However, the resulting patterns of development, dependent upon a global infrastructure driven by the priorities of the dominant developed economies can only entrench inequitable development within national economies.
Both Ohmae (1995) and Delamaide (1994) mount arguments for the acknowledgment of complementary regional associations in contrast to national boundaries. However, implicit and explicit in Ohmae’s zebra strategy is the view that national or even international regional government no longer has a significant role in development. While this is increasingly challenged, there are differences of opinion over which level of government: regional, national or transnational, is best equipped to deal with particular negotiations over a location’s relationship to the wider economy.
Organisations, whether commercial, regulatory or voluntary, are increasingly confronted with the need to operate across a multiplicity of boundaries, whether geographical, political or cultural, in order to function within the emerging global system. Delamaide offers a perspective on pre-existing historical and cultural linkages which predate both the recent cold war divisions, and the emergence of current nation states. In many areas such as the Baltic, these older linkages can be seen re-emerging in the pan-European context. Elsewhere, he draws attention to the pivotal role of Turkey as a link between Europe and the Turkic republics of the former Soviet Union. Such cultural synergies offer a means of retaining regional coherence in the face of continuing expansion of entities such as the European Union. Kirlidog (1997) demonstrates the implications for technical support through an examination of the impact of Turkish business practices on the implicit assumptions of imported executive information systems. Cultural inter-operability is likely to become as significant as technical inter-operability in the global economy (see Kaye & Little; 1996)
Crisis, which Crisis ?
Recent events in the East Asian economies have undermined the idea of a rapid and unproblematic process of globalisation, driven by "miracle economies". Some acknowledgment of Krugman’s (1996) views on the uncritical acceptance of high growth rates over relatively short periods from very low base levels is welcome. Unfortunately the immediate impact in the West has been to reject out of hand the development strategies which delivered past growth even though the very different forms of crisis across the affected economies and the different responses at national level reflect the diversity of approaches within the region. In some respects it is the success of these strategies which has brought the growing economies to the point at which a paradigm shift from catch-up to sustained production of new technologies is required. At least part of the current crisis in East Asia is a reflection of the difference between the problems of technological leadership and those of catching-up with leading economies.
Orru, Biggart and Hamilton (1991) reveal strikingly different forms of intrasocietal isomorphism among the relatively new industries of Japan, Taiwan and South Korea, despite their relatively close historical associations. Subsequently a better understanding of the dynamics of the strategies employed in East Asia has come through Kim’s examination of the historical connection but significant difference between the chaebol, zaibatsu and keiretsu company networks (Kim; 1996); Redding (1996) and Wong (1996) have provided a better understanding of Chinese business practice to the West. The recent economic turbulence on the western Pacific rim demonstrates the diversity of problems facing the participants in this network.
Economies such as Korea which have been highly successful during the catching up phase of development show that different socio-technical paradigms are needed to sustain growth in the conditions of lower absolute growth encountered in relatively mature markets. Participation in the development of the intellectual resources necessary for the next stage of development requires even more direct integration into the emerging world system and a greater institutional alignment within and between regions. Japan’s earlier lead means that debate there over new economic strategies has intensified further since the collapse of the bubble economy, but consensus has not been achieved over exactly what changes should be made to the institutional structures which supported post war development. Institutional arrangements, such as the readily available long-term finance sourced from within the Japanese keiretsu, until recently the envy of western companies, are increasingly recognised as a liability not an asset both within and beyond Japan itself. The resulting accumulated bad debt is a major component of the current economic and political impassse.
China, as East Asia’s largest economy has the advantage of size and continuing scope for the established high growth paradigm. However, this size also increases the problems of regional differentials in development. The successful business networks of Hong Kong can only be developed so far into the wider hinterland before cultural and linguistic differences impede their further extension.
European and North American companies have sought to emulate aspects of Asian strategies for some time and comparative advantage has been eroded as Asian methods, building on the western industrial model have been re-exported to the original industrial core of Europe and North America. Nuki (1998) shows that this in turn has engendered a response based on accelerating the product life cycle through the application of ICTs at all stages of development and production.
Repositioning across the Web
Mature economies seeking to remain at the cutting edge of technology in a maturing global market are shifting focus towards the end of the production chain where product differentiation and customer support can maintain demand for goods and services seems essential. As a consequence, the distinction between products and services becomes less obvious. This end of the chain requires closer adjustment to cultural variation among the users and customers. James and Howell (1998) examine the use that Asian companies are making of the R & D facilities they are establishing or acquiring within the United Kingdom. Evidence suggests that access to both knowledge for market adjustments and broader intellectual capital are the objectives. both the British government and the European commission are encouraging companies to seek alliances and opportunities in the opposite direction, both as a means of accessing the market potential of Asian growing economies and as a means of improving offshore manufacturing resources in relation to both home and export markets.
Evidence of an increasing focus on the end of the chain where product differentiation and service provision allow competitive advantage to be developed can be seen at ICL in its post-Fujitsu incarnation. It has moved further from it original manufacturing hardware base to position itself as an information services provider that can support the specificities of a European business environment. This end of the chain is more culturally variable and success reflects specific local or regional knowledge. Evidence of a "value chain" approach (Porter 1990) can be seen in a very different industry. Both ICI and Unilever have been engaged in moving along the production chain, to the are of higher added value, with Unilever passing its specialist chemical division to ICI in order to concentrate on the delivery of differentiated brands based on these feedstocks. Meanwhile ICI has off-loaded it bulk chemical business to firms content to compete primarily on price at the commodity end of this chain.
Dicken’s (1998) use of the production chain to analyse the dynamics of the global economy is revealing. In common with Porter’s representation of the value chain (Porter; 1990, Figures 2.3 & 2.4), a range of critical support activities is modelled at each stage of this generic model. By linking primary production with quaternary post-delivery support of goods and services, a variety of service activities wrap around the core thread of the production chain. Dicken demonstrates the traditional view of the service sector as evidence of a "post-industrial or advanced economy. A quaternary sector is seen as the logical development of a preponderance of intellectual capital over physical capital. The dynamic growth of deregulated financial services and the broadly perceived shift from manufacturing to service industries supports such a view. The fact that as prestigious a company as General Electric is making more money from its financial services than its engineering efforts might seem to confirm services as a successor to primary, secondary and tertiary activities.
Design Paradigms and Paradigm Shifts
A broad level of analysis is needed both to accommodate global links and to examine regional economic activities in the context of the paradigm shift from catch-up based on rapid growth rates to technological leadership. A shift in the view of innovation and product-life cycle to that of process life-cycles, akin to double loop learning is part of the required change. The repositioning of effort across the production network may be better understood from the perspective of the design philosophies and methods that have been applied to both product and processes during the last three decades. Galbraith (1977) staked the claim that information systems design was in effect organisation design. Information systems designer have in turn drawn heavily and effectively on a wide body of more general design research and theory.
In parallel to the development of organisation theory through and beyond the framework of systems theory, design methodologies have reflected a changing understanding of the processes and the role of the participants and wider stakeholders in them. Scott (1992) argued that organisation theory could be seen as developing from a closed rational systems view of classic management theory to an open natural systems view able to accommodate influences from the institutional and technical environments (see Little; 1990 for a view of this shift from a design decision-making perspective).
Jones (1980) presents design methods extant in the sixties and seventies, and relates them to generic models of the design process. This model consists of three stages:
A. Divergent Search
B. Transformation
C. Convergence
In the divergent searching of the possible solution space for a design problem, the objectives are unstable and tentative, the problem boundary is unstable and undefined and evaluation is deferred. The sponsors brief is a starting point, subject to revision and the aim is to increase uncertainty and widen the range of possibilities.
The transformation process is, in effect the imposition on to results of Divergent Search of a pattern which will allow convergence to a single solution. At this stage objectives, briefs and boundaries are fixed, critical variables and constraints are recognised and the problem is divided into sub-problems for parallel or serial treatment. The freedom to change sub-goals, and rapid evaluation of alternative choices are needed and the personal capabilities and orientation of the team are critical at this stage.
The convergent activities have as their objective the reduction of uncertainty. This stage requires a very different orientation. Persistence and rigidity of mind become a virtue. Unforseen sub-problems may prove critical at this stage, and cause recycling to earlier stages. The models used to represent remaining alternatives become more detailed and concrete.
This essentially linear model of design can be seen in the "waterfall" model of information systems design (e.g. Birrell & Ould; 1985). Here the need for re-cycling indicated by Jones is accommodated between successive stages of development and refinement. The waterfall model can also be reflected in Dicken’s chain, the global redistribution of the components of production can be seen to be dependent upon effective communication across the feedback loops linking each stage which is dependent, in turn on globally available ICTs.
In this context the relative success of the newly industrialising countries can be seen as a highly effective entry at the convergent stage, involving efficient production utilising mature technologies. The response of players to the emerging new web-oriented "techno-economic paradigm" (Perez, 1985) is instructive for both nation states and sub-national regions. Arguably Japan has developed accomplishments in the transformation stage with highly innovative products derived from newer technologies, but feels less proficient at the divergent stage which can be likened to the development of basic research strategies and fundamental innovation tracks. Taiwan’s relatively effective response reflects a range of cultural and economic linkages.
Taiwan has followed a classic route of state sponsored development, particularly in the area of information technology (Tsai; 1993). Companies such as Tatung reflect the same Japanese colonial influence which produced the sprawling portfolios of the Korean chaebols. However, the chaebols closely mimic the rigidities of the pre-war Japanese zaibatsu. In addition, the nature of state patronage through credit rationing in Korea (Zeile; 1996) has encouraged companies to second-guess areas of potential state support by moving into business sectors in anticipation of future support. This has created even greater diversity within the company groupings that that inherent in the Japanese model.
In Taiwan the mix of traditional Chinese business networks described by Numazaki; (1996) with a state provided or sponsored infrastructure has produced a different outcome from both Korea and from Hong Kong. In the latter, the key British colonial legacy was as much the legal as the technical infrastructure. Hong Kong has turned away from the pursuit of a higher technology trajectory within the production chain, seeking to maximise current advantage within its P.R.C. hinterland. The relatively narrowly targeted strategies of Taiwanese firms, have delivered world class performance in key areas of information technology. Dominance has been achieved in motherboard design and fabrication. The manufacturing capability in the "silicon forge" service provided to overseas designers requiring prototype chips has allowed participation at key points in the production network. Foreign companies such as Texas Instruments operating in Taiwan do so in order to produce high-value products, not to pursue outright cost advantage. From this level of performance, companies such as Acer have developed a more integrated presence as full-range manufacturers.
The reassertion of Greater China in regions of former European and Japanese colonisation has been of particular benefit to Taiwan, with some 35,000 enterprises now established on the mainland (China Intercontinental Press; 1997). Taiwan’s connection to the Japanese economy means that Taiwanese inward investment to the P.R. China represents a layering of regional cross influences and a transfer of a range of capabilities and traditions. The relative independence of Taiwanese financial institutions has allowed positive features of the Japanese development strategy to be emulated while avoiding some of the negative consequences. Malaysia, a country with comparable population base, may still be stuck with the essentially convergent tasks of global production despite efforts to shift to transformative and divergent activities via the Multimedia Super Corridor and related initiatives, emphasising the difficulty of achieving an effective policy mix (Wilkinson et al; 1998).
Just as the view of organisational relationships have moved towards network or web paradigm, so have models of the design process shifted to accommodate less linear and more situational views of design. The implications of a shift from a hierarchical to a network or web view of organisations is foreshadowed by Thompson (1967) in terms of coalition formation across the organisation, and by Mintzberg (1979) in the form of work constellations. Within design the acknowledgment of design participation of users (Cross; 1972) also shifted models of the design process into less hierarchical and more situated paradigms. In the discipline of information systems, Avison et al (1998) describe the evolution of Multiview-2, a design methodology intended both to encompass soft systems methods and to accommodate a view of organisations as networks of related but varying interests and priorities. It replaces the linearity of its predecessor with a related set of tools any of which might be applied to a specific situation
Design can be regarded as the unifying activity or process throughout the production chain and across the production network. Design determines the output, whether artifact or service, it also determines the configuration of processes and deployment of resources across the network.
Geography is History is Geography
Delamaide (1994) mounts a case for the re-emergence of historical geographical and economic synergies across Europe since the end of arbitrary Cold War division. The political geography underlying these connections goes back to the Hanseatic League or the Holy Roman Empire. Delamaide’s attribution the patterns of potential development across an enlarging European Community to a range of geo-historical connections suggests that the globalising IT slogan Geography is History employed recently by British Telecom should be reversed. Enduring cultural links, whether established through trade, migration or colonisation can be identified throughout the emergent global system. Nobes and Parker (1981) present a range of taxonomies of variation in accounting practice across the globe, which relate zones of influence both to the initial development of modern accounting in Scotland and England, its subsequent spread though other Anglophone cultures and the effect of alternative models on the emergence of spheres of influence. In India the legacy of English as a lingua franca, particularly in the southern states where it is most significant, has been of some benefit in the establishment of an export oriented software industry. Dhillon, Hackney and Ranchod (1998) argue that the benefits of essentially off-shore participation in the global economy are limited for the economy as a whole. Significantly, English may have served primarily as a stepping stone for this industry. There is already evidence that further expansion into Asian markets is driving the acquisition of East Asian languages by Indian workers. For East Asia itself variations in economic robustness attributed to historically derived cultural resources have been discussed above.
Windows of opportunity
Marvin (1988) describes the social learning curve associated with the introduction of new electrically-based technologies at the turn of the last century. Given the time taken for a general understanding of the appropriate use of the telephone to emerge, it is not surprising that a global consensus on the more recent generation of information and communication technologies underpinning the current wave of globalisation is still to emerge. What is clear is that the necessary paradigm will not emerge on its own. Would-be participants need some window of opportunity through which to gain influence and access.
Kalpinsky and Posthuma (1992) demonstrate the transferability of organisational technology in the form of Japanese manufacturing practice without high levels of capitalisation. Marginal players, in this case East African manufacturing companies, can make significant improvements in their performance without substantial capital investment. The adoption of the organisational approaches utilised in Japan can transform efficiency and effectiveness in companies in developing economies without the supporting technology usually associated with it. The opportunity exploited here was the gains from relatively cost-free reorganisation. These were achieved through the use of intellectual resources which needed some consonance with the cultural assumptions embedded within the imported techniques. However, to compete directly with developed economies a similar level of capital resources is required. Ultimately access to state of the art technology is necessary for full participation in the global economy. However, access to such technology is no guarantee of its appropriate use. The use of technology, rather than the technology itself is the key to appropriateness, and to sustainability but the organisational and cultural segmentation of potential users requires an adequate fit to varying needs and the capacity for adjustment over time. This implies a cultural wrapping for the technical standards The technology also must be available in a mature and robust form capable of adaptation to specific situations (Kaye & Little; 1996).
Sproull and Kiesler (1991) demonstrate that a process of organisational learning is needed to move beyond the technical effects of direct substitution of information technology for manual processes. The gains reported by Kaplinsky and Posthuma were achieved through the use of intellectual resources which needed some cultural consonance with the cultural assumptions embedded within the imported techniques. The transformative gains in effectiveness represented by Zuboff's (1988), "informated organisation" will come about in the globalised arena only through an understanding of the meaning of cultural interoperability at both pre-competitive and competitive stages of development (Kaye & Little; 1996).
Standards are the vehicle used to achieve interoperability and the notion can be applied to each level of interaction within and between organisations. Standards themselves cannot solve the problems confronting actors in the global economy. While there is a cultural dimension to the established practice and expectations within organisations which imparts its own dynamic to the diffusion and adoption of socio-technical systems across cultural settings, simply to ascribe differences in outcomes to "cultural difference" between adopters offers little guidance for either potential adopters or for policy-makers. O’Hara-Devereaux and Johansen (1994) argue a distinction between work cultures, both professional and corporate and the primary culture in which an organisation is embedded. For them the synergy between levels is a potential resource, but the tendency towards a convergence determined by the primary culture is seen as an obstacle to cross-cultural working. Culture needs to be de-composed into issues related to the historical, geographical and institutional setting in which organisation and individual must operate. The business recipes and frameworks grounded in these differences offer a view of "culture" of more direct value to actors (see for example Marceau; 1992).
Exclusion and Inclusion
East Asia faces an additional challenge in the development and diffusion of appropriate standards. The emergence of English as a global language emphasises the existence of both cultural and linguistic barriers within East Asia and between East Asia and the rest of the world economy (Crystal; 1997). Key innovations in information technology have succeeded where they were mapped on to existing cultural frameworks. Thus the spreadsheet could readily mimic the twenty column analysis paper already in use in western economies. In East Asia a number of economies have been relatively late adopters of many facets of office automation because of a range of cultural differences, not least their use of non-Roman characters. Shepard (1993), writing from direct experience, sets out the technical complexities of networking in an environment that must move beyond the ASCII standard. Technologies that do not incorporate the requirement of a specific alphabet have been adopted, and Castells and Hall (1994) attribute the refinement and promotion of fax technologies by Japanese companies as evidence of their need to support logographic text. Rather than attempting to overcome cultural barriers, such users have applied available technologies to more directly relevant areas of advantage. However, in an era of bit-mapped graphics and machine translation, the unifying basis of the Chinese script provides a clear advantage through its independence from regional variations in spoken language.
Castells (1997) cites the Zapitista movement in Mexico as an example of an oppositionist response to the exclusion from the benefits of the global economy of those paying its greatest social and economic costs. Significantly it utilises the very information and communication technologies that facilitates the system under criticism. The image of the laptop and satellite phone in the rain forest is a potent one, however, in regions of less stark contrast between those included and those excluded, similar forms of resistance and opposition can be found. Castells points out that fundamentalist appeals are not confined to the Muslim world, as evidenced by the rise of the U.S. Militia movements which draw on specific historical precedence, and make an equally significant commitment to the Internet. The phenomenon of the One Nation party in Australia reflects the desperation of those most impacted by successive governments’ policies towards global markets. The recent waterfront dispute in Australia saw farming organisations from this hinterland pitched against organised labour. Again, as with the earlier British dock dispute there was a globalised response from the threatened workforce, but pace, Hirst and Thompson, despite the web-sites, this was a reflection of long traditions of collaboration through the earliest international network (excluding the Silk Road). The difference in outcome of the two disputes reflects local differences in mainstream political support for organised labour as much as use of technology.
The rapidity of technical development, particularly in ICTs is constantly reducing entry costs, and rendering obsolete extant technical infrastructures. Such a situation favours later entrants, and permits them some chance of catching up. Older colonially oriented communication infrastructures are already obsolete. It is now widely acknowledged that the characteristics of the Internet designed to enable its ARPANet predecessor to operate under nuclear attack also ensure its global accessibility. Currently the proposals for direct satellite mobile communications via systems based on large numbers of low earth orbit satellites offer unintended advantages to currently marginal groups. The network coverage will of necessity be equally dense and universal across the majority of the planet’s surface beneath the hundreds of orbiting satellites. Whether this opportunity further to reintegrate or redefine core and periphery is used successfully will reflect the extent to which cultural and historical resources are mobilised in conjunction with the technology itself.
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