Will e-harmony.co kill the Conservative Party?
The day started with a seminar hosted by the RSA-based 2020 Public Services Trust focussing on social media and the ‘post bureaucratic age’. The ‘PBA’ is often talked about as the Conservatives’ big idea: the future lies in strengthening the capacity of individuals and communities to meet their own needs rather than relying on an ever clumsier and more overbearing central state.
Our speakers, one from ‘The Economist’, the other working for the Conservatives, told a compelling story about the strengths of the PBA idea. They then explained why the internet and social media facilitate collective action and invite the state to move from a paternalistic to an enabling way of working.
I chipped in with a question about the relationship between online and real world sociability. Given that online networking has eventually to be supplemented by face to face interaction to lead to sustained social action, how does it overcome the hard problems of voluntary organisation?
For example, if community groups start to take on responsibility for providing public services they will find it hard to maintain their spontaneity and responsiveness in the face of stifling rules of public accountability.
Then there is the simple but grim fact that the bad is more powerful than the good. I mean by this that difficult, aggressive, dull activists drive away creative people quickly and permanently (bright people have lots of alternative ways of spending their time), yet it can take huge amounts of time and energy for a dynamic group to deal with someone who wants only to moan or disrupt. I call this powerful and depressing truth ‘the tragedy of the organisational commons’. Of course, the internet too is full of anti-social people but there it is much, much easier to ignore them.
The problem – I went on (and on) – is that we assume individual and collective empowerment go together when often they don’t. The television and the car have both provided people with huge opportunities and freedoms but their effect on civic life has probably been less benign. There may have been growth recently of people going to concerts, art galleries and lectures but this is ‘being alone in a crowd’. It is completely different to the hard labour and politics of working in groups, making decisions, dealing with differences.
As the internet makes it easier for people to get what they want from each other and the state, they may find there is even less reason to waste their time in the messy business of collective action.
The clever chap from the Conservative Party thought I was being far too gloomy. ‘The internet doesn’t just empower, it changes social norms’ he said. Look at internet dating. The technology is so clever and subtle that people have got over their hang-ups and are more than willing to admit they use the internet to find the perfect mate.
At which point I remembered something I have often heard from Tories: the main reason young people join the Conservative Association in affluent towns and suburbs is to find a future spouse.
So perhaps the rise of internet dating and the continued decline in Tory party membership (despite its greater success at the polls) are linked. By giving them the ability to find exactly the right person, dating sites enable the young and single to dispense with the clumsy sociability of the Conservative Association spring ball.
I was gratified that the most distinguished attendee at the seminar, Stephen Dorrell, concurred. The problem, he said, is that as the state becomes in many ways more powerful (partly as a result of the network effects of digital information), and as more people adopt a purely individualistic and transactional approach to meeting their needs, the collective institutions needed to hold decision makers to account atrophy.
Suddenly, the brave new world of the PBA was looking a little bit less bright and shiny.
Comments
6 Comments on Will e-harmony.co kill the Conservative Party?
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Steve on
Tue, 9th Mar 2010 5:21 pm
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David Wilcox on
Tue, 9th Mar 2010 8:39 pm
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Elizabeth on
Tue, 9th Mar 2010 8:46 pm
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BrianSJ on
Wed, 10th Mar 2010 6:59 am
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Matthew Kalman on
Wed, 10th Mar 2010 10:13 pm
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Tessy Britton on
Thu, 11th Mar 2010 10:38 am
Everyone who is enamored by the possibilities of the internet as a tool of collaboration and social change really needs to temper their enthusiasm by browsing youtube and news article comments.
Unfortunately as with so many things, the potential of the internet doesn’t mesh entirely with the reality.
Matthew – I admire your dedication in reporting events, which means that others of us present can relax into commenting, not blogging. Thanks.
I agree that making things happen in these (and most other) circumstances requires quite a bit of face-to-face, procedure, structure. Even the digitally-enabled find organising without organisations only possible in some situations.
Add to that the fact that traditional community organisations are not usually social media-savvy, and the media-savvy may not be very community-savvy, means it is all still going to be a bit of a slog.
I liked your comment (if I recall rightly) that defining a programme as Post-Bureaucratic – anti-state – is not very helpful: we should rather think about the society we aim for, and the systems to underpin that … and through that how we enable individuals to be the people they wish to be.
Similarly it is not helpful to focus on “social media in the …”. Social media is just part of the mix of communications we may need to socialise, learn, create. Some methods are better in some circumstances, and different people have their own preferences. We will always need a blend.
Having said that, the adoption of social media does enable people to do things they couldn’t before, and does shift the balance of influence. It’s a good touchstone for discussion, as today’s event showed. But not bureaucracy-disolving magic.
The problems you describe relating to how voluntary organisations can cope with delivering state services can be adequately demonstrated with the example of housing associations.
Often arising from the squatting movement and certainly from a desire to see more communal provision of housing, they have been constrained by the requirements of the state as they have increasingly been encouraged to provide housing on a large scale alongside, and now often instead of, councils.
There have been serious problems with mismanagement of several of them and many smaller ones have ceased to exist because of the demands placed on them. Many of those that are left no longer resemble the housing association movement of 30-40 years ago. The idealists left many years ago I think and have been replaced by the same layers of management as in any corporate body.
And in several cases the tenants on council estates actively want to keep the council as landlord and have voted against transfer to an Arms Length Management Organisation.
PS I’m not using this as a cry of regret for old-style housing associations in particular – it’s just an apt example I feel.
you wish.
In his recent book ‘Enterprise 2.0′ – about how Web 2.0 is transforming organisations – Andrew McAfee concluded that what is actually most interesting about Web 2.0 in organisations is that it can help shift them from the defensive/unilateral control pattern to the more productive mutual learning organisational model. (Most orgs are mired in various defensive routines).
Unfortunately the internet alone will not shift organisations from ‘Model I’ to ‘Model II’ (to use the original labels Chris Argyris used) – “sustained interventions are required”, McAfee explains.
Very few Web 2.0 fans seem to get this – or ever say anything much about these sustained interventions.
The ‘Post Bureaucratic Age’ folks probably don’t get this either – but there will be no Post Bureaucratic Age if most organisations are still stuck in ‘Model I’ (whilst, of course, believing themselves to be Model II).
I noticed that more that one of the Amazon reviewers of the book said that this was actually the key point in the book – and should have been the major focus, rather than talking about Facebook, or whatever…
I guess we’re still waiting for the book on this topic.
Unfortunately some of the great ‘Learning Organisation’ gurus of the past – eg Arie de Geus – haven’t really caught up with Web 2.0… (No-one seems sure about Peter Senge).
Charlene Li’s following up her Web 2.0 book ‘Groundswell’ with a book on the new ‘Open Leadership’ – which will at least put some of this onto the agenda more…
Matt
@Matthew Kalman
What you describe is very interesting, particularly “Andrew McAfee concluded that what is actually most interesting about Web 2.0 in organisations is that it can help shift them from the defensive/unilateral control pattern to the more productive mutual learning organisational model.”
and
“The ‘Post Bureaucratic Age’ folks probably don’t get this either – but there will be no Post Bureaucratic Age if most organisations are still stuck in ‘Model I’ (whilst, of course, believing themselves to be Model II).”
Having been closely involved with the RSA’s initiatives to use Web. 2. capacities over the last few years I would say that the RSA is one of the organisations which has been prepared to take risks with this, but there is good evidence that some of this openness and willing to experiment is clearly moving towards the ‘mutual learning organisational model’ you describe. The work that is being developed through the RSA Fellowship Council for example is, without exception, being done collaboratively to great effect.
What some of these observations suggest is that for this dynamic to work then there needs to be shifts in thinking on both sides. If organisations need to shift from ‘defensive/unilateral control pattern’, then customers/members need also to make adjustments to how they behave, moving perhaps away from the ‘control through demand’ pattern, which the internet has often encouraged and enabled.
And it isn’t just about attitudes… it is also about navigation. An example is that I posted a discussion on the working Fellowship ning earlier in the week which I tracked back to 2 websites (including Matthew’s blog), 4 blog posts, 62 blog comments, one face-to-face meeting, RSA staff members, RSA Fellows and supporters. I thought this was impressive! But it also highlighted that for ideas/thinking to progress they need directing from many people, and we are going to be using all the spaces and tools that are necessary – both on and offline.
If organisations work as hard to create the openness and stimulation that the RSA has done, then real opportunities are created for mutuality and knowledge creation and sharing to emerge.
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