About questions and contexts...

When asking myself the question of how HR is going to change (or be changed!) in the information age, a journey began that lasted the good part of 10 years. The journey is not over, in fact I think it only has started and it is turning out to be a real adventure!

The information age in itself is a very interesting topic and I was introduced to the work of Manuel Castells's in this regard by the good and forward-thinking people of the Department of Information Science / Centre for Knowledge Dynamics and Decision-Making at the Stellenbosch University.
[http://www.sun.ac.za/InfoScience].

Castells published his empirical study on the information age in three volumes, titled "The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture". Read his bio by following this link:
[http://ascweb.usc.edu/Faculty/Communication%20and%20Journalism/CastellsM.aspx]

Castells' work gave much needed clarity and perspectives on the mega-trends of the information age. From a HR point of view, our work is to become aware and understand these mega-trends as they form the contexts in which we work and will work. For example, if we understand the fundamentals of the global economy, we will see how this will change the organisation, if we understand these new organisational contexts, we have more insight into how HR will change, and so on.

Look at the picture below that illustrates this better:

 

We can see that one dimension forms the context for the next dimension. Castells talks about the "network society", a new type of society that is emerging as a result of the information age. He talks about the "network enterprise" the new organisational form in the new global economy. As the network enterprise operates in this global economy, so enterprise strategy cannot be designed without taking into account how organisations have changed in reaction to the geometry of the global, informational economy.

As HR Practitioners we need to understand the dynamics of the network enterprise in order to understand how work and the meaning of work has changed and subsequently how HR should transform itself to support people in these new contexts.

So the work for HR Practitioners is to ask a set of new questions:

• What is the information age and how is it changing society and culture?
• How does society operate in the new global economy?
• What will be the organisational dynamics inherent to this new economy?
• How will it impact on employment practices, management and leadership?
• Given these major changes what will be the new HR mandate(s)?
• How will we change or transform the HR domain to meet this new mandate(s)?

Gerhard