Preliminary considerations for the emergence of new organizational forms and new work processes
Marc Jacquinet – Un. Aberta
November 2014
[Project developed as part of the 2014-2015 sabbatical year]
If change and new social behaviors are recurring themes in the different branches of the study of organizations and the sociology of work and, in this context, there are two central factors that I will highlight: the productive transformation with the emergence of new players and technological innovation, in the broad sense. Both processes change organizations and work in the short and long term, even within the framework of “life” or corporate ecology.
Research Note
If change and new social behaviors are recurring themes in the different branches of the study of organizations and the sociology of work and, in this context, there are two central factors that I will highlight: the productive transformation with the emergence of new players and technological innovation, in the broad sense. Both processes change organizations and work in the short and long term, even within the framework of “life” or corporate ecology.
Regarding the first factor, I stress here the crucial element in the transformation of the economy and society: the emergence of entrepreneurs and businesses. Georg Simmel (1895, 1898a, 1898b, 1898c, 1961) had already emphasized for almost a century the role of the renewal of generations and of the entry and exit of individuals from society as factors of social transformation. Here we have the same process, but with organizations, whether they are companies or not; a point underlined by the approach of the ecology of organizations (Hannan and Freeman 1977, 1984, 1989).
Regarding the second factor, technological innovation, I will limit myself to two themes, on the one hand, e-learning in the context of information and communication technologies (ICT) and the transformation of training to the dawn of the twentieth century and, on the other hand, organizational innovation, as defined by Schumpeter, neo-Schumpeterians and other authors (Nelson 2001, Nelson and Winter 1982, Sanidas 2005, Schumpeter 191 1, Schumpeter 1934).
In this article I will deal with the two factors that I have to include in the theoretical and empirical literature of the last twenty years, at least in the case of entrepreneurship or organizational innovation and, in the case of e-learning, only the last ten or even five years.
In the first part, I will qualify the meaning of each of the concepts that I will use. In the second and third parts, I will analyze the implications of these two factors for work and organizations in Europe respectively.
I will end the article, in Part IV, with three research findings and their possible implications for policies in education, vocational (or lifelong) training, employment, support for industry or SMEs and business creation with different types of job creation and destruction. In this last part, I will underline the role of foresight in the articulation of research results and public policies and even organizational strategies.
Children working in Morocco 2013 01 14 –
References
Hannan, Michael T. et John Freeman (1977): «L’écologie de la population des organisations», American Journal of Sociology, 82 (5), mars, pp. 929-64.
Hannan, Michael T. and John Freeman (1984): « Structural Inertia and Organizational Change, » American Sociological Review, 49 (2), Apr., pp. 149-64.
Hannan, Michael T. and John Freeman (1989): Organizational ecology. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press
Nelson, Richard (2001): « The Coevolution of Technology and Institutions as the Driver of Economic Growth, » in Frontiers of Evolutionary Economics, ed. by J. Foster and J. S. Metcalfe. Aldershot: Edward Elgar.
Nelson, Richard and Sidney Winter (1982): An Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press
Sanidas, Elias (2005): Organizational Innovations and Economic Growth: Organosis and Growth of Firms, Sectors, and Countries. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar
Schumpeter, Joseph A. (1934): The Theory of Economic Development. New York: Galaxy Book-Oxford University Press
Schumpeter, Joseph A. (191 1): Theorie der wirtschaftlichen Entwicklung. Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot
Simmel, G. (1895): « Über eine Beziehung der Selectionslehre zur Erkenntnistheorie, » Archivfür systematische Philosophie, I (l), pp. 34—45.
Simmel, Georg (1898a): « The Persistence of Social Groups, » American Journal of Sociology, 3 (5), Mar., pp. 662-98.
Simmel, Georg (1898b): « The Persistence of Social Groups. II, » American Journal of Soci0100′, 3 (6), May, pp. 829-36.
Simmel, Georg (1898c): « The Persistence of Social Groups. III, » American Journal of Sociology, 4 (l ), Jul., pp. 35-50.
Simmel, Georg and O. Rammstedt (1961): Soziologie. Frankfut-am-Mainz: Suhrkamp