The following brief essay is put forward here as a sort of trial run or null hypothesis. It sets out some of the points that are made at much greater length in the two editions of the "thinking exercise" Rethinking Work: New Ways to Work in an Information Society that is available elsewhere on this site. We think that this is an important set of points and are aware of the fact that they could be better and more convincingly stated. For that reason, we invite your comments and suggestions on the draft that follows.

It is somehow surprising, given the exceeding importance of the issues and the enormous resources that our society commands, that the actual debate is so thin and that the new work models that are so badly needed are so very slow in coming on line. That is not to say that there is not a certain amount of activity going on in various parts of Europe and elsewhere in the world, for indeed there is; it is rather that the most important points do not seem to be getting through. So the situation of relative paralysis continues in our troubled world of work.

One possible response to this claim is that, indeed, no such rethinking or radical adjustment is called for -- and that all that is needed is for a combination of market forces and higher growth levels, to be freed from onerous government and bureaucratic restrictions and unwanted tinkering with the business of business. Often in defense of this position, the latest rounds of carefully selected jobs statistics from the United States or Britain are cited as evidence of the success of such unfettered free market approaches. The same sources rarely mention however the downside of the work-related situation in these countries, where substantial and growing portions of the citizenry are being left out of the prosperity created all this economic growth. The answer, so that argument goes, is for government to "get out of the way" and in the process to get rid of anything that might limit labor mobility, provide too comfortable a living environment for the unemployed, prevent employers from firing at will, etc. In a phrase: to stop coddling the workers and the unemployed. We go into a bit of detail on this here at the outset, because we regard this as the most serious of the obstacles to the rethinking and redoing effort that we now believe to be among the highest priorities of government, business and the citizenry today. (See Differences of Opinion for more on this.)

So, here we are today in a world and at a time in history when there should be a veritable Renaissance of new work ideas and practices being generated, discussed, aided to improve, and tried out in practice -- but relative to that great need all we have a rather dry stream indeed. Instead of far-reaching dialog, active exchanges and cooperation, and powerful cooperative demonstrations of new approaches... what we have instead is a pattern whereby a number of congregations, each preaching its own particular brand of god and religion, and with close to no real contact or exchange between them, steadily and insistently promulgate to their faithful their unexamined dogmatic views. So instead of interaction, exchange, synthesis, and much needed change, we see ever more hardened positions and isolation.

Here briefly are some of the forces that we believe are holding back these needed changes:

The Business Community

• The mainstream proponents of the international business and financial communities - the most powerful voices around, now that one thinks about it - tend to be contemptuous about any form of society-led experimentation in the world of work, which does little to open up the debate and the playing field.
• One of the dominant modes of "dialog" which we can see coming from these quarters is the so-called "point, shoot, and run school" of article or speech, which in the main argues that government and anyone else who may have some other ideas about the organization of work in post industrial society should in fact just get out of the way and let them get on with their business - which will, it is understood and usually said with great conviction, will then generate the activity and with it the jobs to put an end to all the difficulties.
• This is a huge irony for at least two sets of reasons: First, that these same groups and interests by dint of their position in society, the resources they command, and their activities are central parts of the solution.
• Furthermore, they are themselves for the most part hotbeds of innovation in the world of work - though the problem is that their innovations are for a number of reasons not being actively integrated into the matrix of information and knowledge that is needed if we are ever to deal with these problems at the scale that is required.
• The bottom line here is that these problems can only be addressed via the active and whole hearted participation of the international business and financial communities. The problem remains, however, how do we incorporate their energy and resources into the needed solution set. And this is a problem which we are a long way of resolving here in the closing months of this century.

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Government

• Government on the other hand finds itself faced with several debilitating sets of attitudes and shortcomings when it comes time to play a more aggressive and useful role in the puzzling world of work.
• First, there is the problem that there is as yet no clear model for government innovation and action along these lines.
• Second, there is the matter of risk and uncertainty. When it comes to experimentation with new kinds of work arrangements, not only is there no guarantee of success but there is, in fact, an absolutely certain guarantee of a continuing flow of problems and setbacks. This is not a comfortable environment for bureaucrats or politicians who feel that they need to be publicly associated with success.
• Third, there is the matter of the time dimensions of the new world of work. In this world which is in good part mediated by new technologies, and the extremely abbreviated windows of opportunity and action that they necessarily entail, the traditional mechanisms of government bureaucracy no longer are able, not only to deal with the issues but even to engage the debate.
• Fourth, most of the individuals who make policy in this area are themselves, by reason of their career and work situation, all but entirely isolated from the anguishes, pressures and the day to day realities of those who are suffering the harsh consequences of today's uncertain and ever changing world of work. And as we know, it is hard for anyone to take another person's pain quite as seriously as something that we may risk to feel ourselves.
• Faced with these realities, the main thrust of government policy in most places ranges from the occasional rhetorical calls for action (usually in the face of some recently announced indicator that represents bad news), and right behind that a certain (rather thin, it must be said) flow of funds for research and conferences that inevitably bring the same people and groups around the table once again, most of which in turn call of more research and more conferences.
• Which sets at least part off the problem from this important perspective.

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The Media

• The media for the most part is thus far not an active partner in the search for new ideas and telling examples, but rather, as is perhaps appropriate, are on the lookout for a "good story".
• One problem is that experimentation is rarely characterized by phoenix-like success. Any new project or idea that manages somehow to get started is going to be characterized not by its instant successes, but rather by all the many problems and shortcomings that need to be worked out to turn the idea into if not an outright winner, at least a survivor.
• Likewise, the God of work is in the details - and these details while critical are often quite small, sometime quite technical, more than occasionally ambiguous, and all in all hardly the stuff of a headline that will sell papers.
• Social-technical innovation off the beaten path tends to take time as well as continuing effort, so for the main line media the trail goes cold and their interest quite naturally wanes.
• Also we need to bear in mind that the media are basically business operations, and for the most part with very conservative ownership who are thereby viscerally suspicious of any major departure from accepted business practices.
• There are exceptions to this, situations in which the media has played a useful role in exposing new ideas and, as important, the very human problems that underlie the need for radical changes in the world of work. This is as yet, however, still a minute minority position.
• From a more positive perspective, though, we can also bear in mind that the media is one of the areas of work that is being the most rapidly transformed by new technology and the new practices that go along with them (though this has, it must be said, not always been a very agreeable process for those directly involved).
• The point here is, though, that as leading practitioners of at least some parts of the new work environment, the media is well equipped to take an even more active and expanded role.
• Beyond this, if we expand our focus here to include the new media, which by definition are interactive and thus permit the sorts of two- or multi-way exchanges of information and views that are needed to understand and build support for these new views, then we can see that their role in the future can be even more critical.

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Others

• The above are not the only actors on the stage capable of making a difference, but the kinds of problems that are holding them back as successful participants in the move to a new, more just and more sustainable world of work are also limiting the contributions of others as well.
• Both local government and local business have a real role to play, but until now it is by no means clear how this might best be done.
• Neither the organized labor movement nor the universities and research community appear on the whole to have made the needed transition to new attitudes and roles that the conversion process would appear to call for.
• As to the Internet and the Web, while there are Discussion Lists (email groups) that attempt to deal with these issues, by and large and at least as where present practices appear to stand, these turn out to be rather inefficient as fora of discussions and exchange.
• But in fact may interesting things are going on in this area across Europe, North America and the OECD region more generally, including at the level of creating new jobs and new work environments. But the fact is that by their very nature (i.e., they are usually of interest primarily to only to those directly concerned and perhaps their immediate locality, being local may be hard to understand by outsides as a result of the details of the local environment and perhaps even language barriers

The Bottom Line

• If you read the above, you may get the impression that we think there is nothing that is going on and perhaps even that we are proposing to fill this vacuum ourselves single handedly with Rethinking Work on the Web. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
• There is indeed a lot of good stuff going on out there, by researchers, employers, local government, labor groups, community organizations and the like, and it is exactly this activity which we are hoping to approach and serve with the batch of technologies and communications techniques which are being pulled together under this heading.
• But this work and these accomplishments are neither sufficiently well known or sufficiently well understood for the word to get out.

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An Example - Trente-Cinq Heures

Let's take a single recent new work event as an example: the French "Trente-Cinq Heures" (35 hour work week) proposal and program.

• This in our view is one of the most important attempts of creating a new work environment that has occurred until now.
• Here we have a major movement that is already underway, that has as its goal to create a major and massive overhaul of the work environment, and whether you like it or not, the fact is that it exists, is being implemented and steadily expanded, and is already altering the world of work in France.
• The stated logic behind it is certainly suspect in many ways (i.e., shorten the work week by legal measures and in the process create a corresponding number of new jobs), but that, it turns out, is not the point.
• The main contribution is that it is forcing innovation along a new path, and in the process slowing the bulldozer of unfettered technology as a "labor saving" tactic.
• Moreover, for better of worse it is just about for sure that this is going to provide a model for other countries and other places.
• But check out the international or even the national dialog that is taking place on this subject. Most of it is based on the rhetorical defense of a priori positions on one side or the other, and almost none to trying to understand what is really going on, what can be learned from the processes that are being engaged as a result of this disruption, and how might these lessons be applied not only to other places but to other aspects of our work environment.

These are the sorts of issues which we now hope will be taken up and addressed in @Work on the Web. What we are hoping to achieve by the use of these group work technologies is

• To create a collective information sharing and idea-vetting process, that brings to the fore a far wider range of views, backgrounds and even preferences than are normally encountered.
• To make use of this independent forum to encourage much greater diversity of views and interpretations as a necessary step in the process of synthesis and knowledge and consensus building.
• To make use of low-cost state of the arts electronics to remove the barriers of space which separate many of the people and units who are working on these issues in various diverse places around the world and who can benefit from a higher degree of international exposure and exchange
• To provide a framework for information sharing and active discussion in which attention can be held for the many weeks, months or even years that are needed to permit new ideas and alliances to be founded.