Purl org dc elements 1.1

‘How Well Do GSK Balance Demands For Shareholder Value With The Need For Corporate Social Responsibility?’

The digital divide has serious consequences in the information society. If ‘information is power’ why is creativity one of the key focuses concentration areas in the UKs Digital Economy Act?

Main points to focus on when reading for this topic:

The digital divide – all reading in regards to this point

Information society – Castells work in regards to this point

UK Digital Economy Act – Read the act and find out more about concentration areas, spefically, Creativity.

TOPIC POINT – Internet access plays a vital part in a modern society

Networks (Castells)

His hypothesis: the historical superiority of vertical/hierarchical organizations. That non centred networked form of social organization had material limits to overcome. Fundamentally linked to available technologies.

Networks have strength in their flexibility, adaptability and capacity to self configure

Global Networks

· Digital networks are global, as they have the capacity to reconfigure themselves, as directed by their programmers, transcending territorial and institutional boundaries through telecommunicated computer networks (pp 24)

· The global society is a networked society and exclusion from these networks is ‘tantamount to structural marginalisation in the global network society’ (Castells, 2009: 25)

Limitations of materials. Benefits from global networks: access to bigger markets and a variety of producers. Breaking down the value chain.

States – the network state

· State have sovereignty in specific territories; has ultimate legislative powers; the power of force (police/army); and have citizens. They are the ones who have an existent power relationships. They are very powerful: control the material form of power (guns, armies, war, police, army) and they have power over the citizens.

· With globalisation and networks these powers affect the sovereignty of the state which has to alter/transform to adapt to these dynamic situations

A. They associate together – ASEAN; EU; NATO; etc. – G20 at the ‘top of the pecking order’

B. Dense networks of international organisations to deal with international issues (UN; WTO; IMF; World Bank etc.)

C. Nation states devolve powers to regional bodies and sometimes NGOs to overcome a crisis of political legitimacy.

The material we discussed in last weeks lecture details the role of the State in the UK

Organisations – the network organization

· Castells points to the rise of the network enterprise as a response to the needs to increased flexibility and autonomy.

· Large organisations are divided internally into networks; small ones are parts of larger networks.

· These networks are dynamic and not stable and may (re)form around specific projects as alliances and partnerships.

· The unit of production is the business project not the firm though it is still the ‘legal unit of capital accumulation.’

· Financial valuation remains key and global financial markets are key in a network economy.

He also talks about the rise of the network enterprise: these have emerges because they have to respond to increased flexibility and the autonomy of being abe the create in a globalized manner.

Its information now, its not material based. The firms that understand this have to go through an organizational change. Businesses need to understand their business process can be informationaized.

A new capitalism?

The new economy is of a new brand:

· It depends on innovation as the source of productivity

· On computer networked global financial markets

· The networking of production and management

Information society

· Posits that we are witnessing the emergence of a new type of society based on changes in information, knowledge and technology

· It can be a rationalisation of society and the importance of codified knowledge (Bell 1993)

· Organised knowledge can lead to greater economic productivity.

· Does it suggest that power relations have shifted from capital owners to knowledge producers? (Garnham 2000)

· And a change to a different type of economy?

· Is it an epochal change, for example, Castells refers to an ‘information age’?

Digital divide

The ability to use and manipulate digital technology is very important. Which is why it is ideal for everyone to have a share of technology. The digital divide describes the problem we are faced with.

Strover “the digital divide has been a symbolic banner of politicians and corporate largesse insofar as it substituted for more direct action against inequalities of income, education, and race.”

Technology isn’t the best option to tackle some issues. But coupled with some of the other solutions. Strover suggests that all this is just a blanket and its not really addressing the situation (being these deep social issues)

Mercedes Divide - it seems the status and prestige. The more immersed and the more we engage, the divide has this social political layer, level of status associated with the more we engage, seen as more knowledge and the people who are falling behind will feel inadiquite and excluded.

“An uneven distribution between those individuals who are able to access computers and the internet and those who cannot. (Harris, 2004 pp8)

Definitions:

The digital divide represents the unequal access of information and communication technologies (ICTs) between different groups of society, and the knowledge of skills required to use technology.

An uneven distribution between those individuals who are able to access computers (and other ICTs) and the internet and those who cannot. Tends to divide everyone in haves and have nots.

Social inclusion – Not only a matter of an adequate share of resources but also of ‘participation in the determination of both individual and collective life chances’.

Overlapping with the concept of socioeconomic equality but not equivalent to it. Does not ignore class and even the wealthy can face discrimination.

People who are most affected by this are:

Low socio-economic areas

Developing countries

Rural women

Children

The reasons for this divide varies and there are multiple issues. Some examples include:

Access to internet (different speeds: dialup, broadband, superfast broadband, mobile 3G, 4G)

Access to computer skills

Control of access

Content

The idea of a digital divide isn’t necessarily a new concept. As characteristics could be seen in earlier forms such as social inclusion/exclusion.

Social Inclusion and Exclusion

Refers to the extent that individuals, families, and communities are able to fully participate in society and control their own destinies, taking into account a variety of factors related to technological resources, economic resources, employment, health, education, housing, recreation, culture and civic engagement (Warcheuer, 2003)

Definitions

Warschauer 2003 – influence policy

Effective use of ICTs to access, adapt, and create knowledge – Physical resources, digital resources, human resources, social resources. These are all the factors that needs to be focused on to improve across the board.

For businesses – IT jobs are growing. Small-medium size companies are having a lot of trouble: “those that are more old and stuck in their ways then its difficult for them to progress.

Social Inclusion – act of making all groups of people within a society feel valued and important

Social Exclusion – the process in which individuals or groups are systematically blocked or denied full access to various rights, oppurtunities, and resources that are normally available to memebrs of a different group, and which are fundamental to social intergration and observance of human rights within that particular group (society). Anyone who appears to deviate in any way from perceived norms of a population may thereby become subject to coarse or subtle forms of social exclusion.

“many governments around the world are stressing the importance of ICT for social inclusion.” The shift from a focus on a digital divide to social inclusion rests on three main premises:

1. A new information economy and network society have emerged

2. ICT plays a critical role in all aspects of this new economy and society

3. Access to ICT, broadly defined, can help determine the difference between marginalization and inclusion in this new socioeconomic era.

Harris A Multi-dimensional issue

It should be clearly understood that alleviating the digital divide requires more than the provision of access to technologies.

The digital divide is a multi-dimensional issue with significant societal concerns relating to education and capacity building, social equity including gender in equity and the appropriateness of technology and information within its socio-technical context. (Harris, 2004 11)

Factors/ dimensions to consider in policy development

At the beginning of the 21st Century, concerns about digital exclusion centred on the observation that access to these technologies was not distributed equally (creating a divide) and that thus, certain groups were missing out on the opportunities that ICTs offered. Divide between groups reflected inequalities observed in societies in general.

A solution to a disengaged public is not just to provide more access to ICTs, nor is it enough to increase their digital skills or shed a positive light on what ICTs can do for people. The latest findings imply that the best digital inclusion policy is likely to be a social inclusion policy.

Second Digital Divide Research

This work (in parallel with access research) looks at how users engage with technologies; the skills they use; and the outcomes.

· Operational internet skills. These are derived from concepts that indicate a set of basic skills in using internet technology.

· Formal internet skills. These relate to the hypermedia structure of the internet which requires the skills of navigation and orientation.

· Information internet skills. These are derived from studies that adopt a staged approach in explaining the actions via which users try to fulfil their information needs.

· Strategic internet skills. These are the capacity to use the internet as a means of reaching particular goals and for the general goal of improving one’s position in society. The emphasis lies on the procedure through which decision-makers can reach an optimal solution as efficiently as possible.

(van Duersen and van Dijk 2011)

Reassessing social inclusion and digital divides – Al-Jaghoub, S. and Westrup, C.

In their paper, they wish to develop the often under-theorised notion of social inclusion and exclusion to clarify political, social and cultural issues that are useful in understanding how policies to address a digital divide operate within specific nation states.

Data in regards to consequences of digital divide in the information society – introduction of the information society (castells):

Power relationships are the foundation of social organization in all societies and throughout history, communication information, it has been fundamental sources of power and counter power of domination and social change. This is because, ultimately the fundamental battle is the battle over the minds of the people, i.e. the way we think (to a large extent) determines the way we act. Therefore, the way people think ultimately determines the fate of the values, norms and institutions on which socieities are founded.

Castells defines power as the relational capacity that enables a social actor to influence asymmetrically, the decisions of other social actors in ways that favor the empowered actor’s will, interests, and values. Power is exercised by means of coercion (practice of persuading someone to do something by using force or threats) or the possibility of it, and/or by the construction of meaning on the basis of the discourse through which social actors guide their action. Power relationships are framed by domination, which is the power that is embedded in the institutions of society. The relational capacity of power is conditioned, but not determined, by the structural capacity of domination. Institutions may engage in power relationships that rely on the domination they exercise over their subjects.

Castells asserts that where there is power, there is counter power, because wherever there is domination, there’s resistance to domination and therefore all societies are constructed on power relationships which are always conflictive and that are always in competition. While corrosion and fear are critical sources of imposing the will of the dominance over the will of the dominated, few institutional systems can last long if they are solely based on sheer repression. Torturing the bodies is less effective than shaping the minds. Ultimately, the capacity to shape the mind is the fundamental foundation of power. With saying that, if the shaping of the production of meaning is a fundamental source of power, the key source of the production of meaning is the process of communication. Castells defines communication as the process of sharing meaning on the basis of information transfer. Therefore, the battle over the human mind (which conditions the battles of power) is largely played out in the process of communication. This is particularly so in the network society, the social structure of the Information Age that he tries to analyze. The social structure that characterizes the network society is a characterized by the pervasiveness of communication networks in a multi-modal hypertext. The ongoing transformation of communication technology in the digital age, extends the reach of communication media to all domains of social life in a network that at the same time global and local, generic and customized in an ever-changing pattern and as a result, the overt synthesis is that power relationships are increasingly shaped and decided in the communication field. And so are the counter power relationships, these dynamics between power and counter power are fundamentally played out in the communication field.

The most important communication transformation in recent years have been the shift of Mass Communication to Mass self-communication being the process of interactive communication that can potentially reach a mass audience, but in which the production of the message is self-generated, the retrieval of messages is self-directed, and the reception and remixing of content from electronic communication networks is self-selected.

Castells tries to analyze the specificity of the relationship between communication and power in the network society in our current social structure.

State and Power in the Global Age

He starts with recalling some the key interactions between communication and politics in the most traditional way (the relationship between mass communication and media politics). Power making, been based on socialzed communication (capcity to influence peoples minds), the main channel of communication between the political system and the political processes and the citizens is the mass media system. Firstly, television – The most credible medium because people believe what they see. In our society, we can actually sustain that politics is primarily but not only, media politics. The materials of the political system therefore are state for the media, so as to obtain the support or at least the lesser hostility of citizens who have become fundamentally consumers in the political market. However, this does not mean that power is in the hands of the media and this is for several reasons. Firstly, media are plural (containing several diverse elements), there are internal controls in terms of their capacity to influence the audience, and that media are fundamentally businesses or political media but in both cases it is the same, they need to attract the audience. Media do not have the power, but they have something much more important which is the space of power; power is played out in the media and therefore, whoever wants to exist in the political game has to go through the media which give the media extraordinary capacity to shape the debate, to influence the debate but for a plurality of power sources and that capacity is what keeps them in business. In recent times, we’ve seen the rise of militant journalism. The main issue is not the shaping of the minds by explicit messages in the media but the general shaping of the mind by all messages in the media. The most important thing is the absence of a given content in the media; the system works in a binary system, if you do not exist in the media, you do not exist.

The language of media has its rules, its largely built around images, not necessarily visuals, but the kind of information that impacts our brain processes as images in a neuroscientific sense. The simplest message in politics is a human face and therefore, media politics leads necessarily to personalization of politics. The product you sell is the person.

A difficulty in addressing the Digital Divide is its multiplicity and expansion within the Digital Society. Please explore the skills difficulties faced by either a UK industry (for example inadequate numbers, changing technical requirements or a continuing growth in areas such as the automotive, entertainment, finance etc. industries) or by UK citizens.

Structure

Introduction:

Brief discussion about the digital divide

· What its meant by a digital divide (providing Theory and background), listing the multiplicity and its expansion in the digital society. Make a connection between the divide and social inclusion

· List the digital divide that I will be explaining in this essay and introduce the skills difficulties faced by the UK industry (Food industry) (1. Many small businesses are not able to go online 2. Lack of personal touch due to digitization 3. Lack on infrastructure and skills)

· This could be changing consumer base, advancements in business operations, impact of social media, importance of data,

Body:

Digital Society

· Highlight the characteristics of the digital society

· Explain how the world is moving towards becoming more connected (ICTs instrumental part of globalization) thus everyone needs to be connected to be included in this new society

· Even on an industry level there are challenges of addressing the digital divide

· Present an overview of the specific industry and how technology has contributed to its growth and development

· Illustrate the differences between skilled and low skilled workers and the impact of the changes of this new era

· Limitations of the digital society

· What if people don’t know how to use the internet (skills)

The information revolution is often identified as the most profound driver of change in our world today. Enabling an ongoing disruptive transformation in the deep structure to our industrial age social institutions, as we move further into the 21st century. Information technology is unleashing the most radical force of our time, hyperconnectivity, which is reshaping all areas of our technology, economy and social institutions according to a new set of rules. Those of access, network structure, information and knowledge. Within such a context many people believe that we are on the cusp of a fundamental transformation in our political-economy, in how we choose to organize society in respect to industry, organizations, and communities. This new form of society that is believed to be emerging is variously called the information or the network society.

The concept of a networked society is used to describe a certain evolution in the development of social organization. In this respect, societies are social groups that are seen to differ according to subsistence strategies. Societies depend upon their economies and available technology, although they may not be determined by them, widespread and sustained social transformation can only really happen when new economic and technological means make it possible. The idea that social evolution is not determined by technology but enabled by it. Society shapes technology according to the needs, values and interests of people who use the technology, but at the same time, technology sets the parameters for what is physically possible.

Communication is the essence of social organization, in that all organisations involve the coordination between members and coordination can only be realized through communications of some form. Social institutions being the interaction between people will only ever scale to the level and complexity that interaction scales to through communications. Since prehistory, significant changes in communication technologies have evolved in tandem with shifts in political and economic systems of organization as they have come to form new specific, combined overall structures or paradigms of socio-economic organization.

With the rise of the digital format, microprocessor and global telecommunication network of the internet, has come a new communications revolution, what is different about today’s communication medium is the capacity for information exchange from many to many over long distances at very low costs and it is precisely this capacity that forms the foundations to a new form of networked organization, the network society in this respect can be understood as this stage in the evolution of our communications medium, and the new forms of more complex social institutions that are enabled by this nonlinear pervasive exchange of information. The power of digital connectivity makes social interaction all pervasive, anytime, anyplace, anywhere and to anyone. Access to connectivity is not hierarchical in the traditional sense, but flows horizontally and is linked to access technology.

With organizations and individuals then becoming based around and defined by connectivity and access to these networks. As the volume and exchange along channels and the number of channels of exchange a node has have increased, it becomes increasingly defined by that exchange as opposed to any of its inherent features or boundary. This is the most fundamental thing we can say about the concept of the network society, that it represents a move from social systems defined by their components to one’s defined by connections; as connectivity increases, the emphasis shifts from ownership by closed organizations within a context defined by physical constraints to access through open organizations within a context defined by one location within a network of connections. Such a fundamental change in the deep structure to social organization, then feed through to major disruption and transformation within existing social institutions.

On the one hand networks are the most adaptable and flexible organizational forms, working well in situations of informal organization, on the other hand, in the past that could not coordinate the resources needed to accomplish large tasks, thus historically, networks have been the domain of the private world and informal organization, while the world of production, power and war was occupied by large vertical organizations such as states, churches, armies and corporations, that could marshal vast pools of resources around the purpose defined by a central authority. However, today digital networking technologies now enable networks to overcome these historical limits. Digital networks can at the same time be flexible and adaptive thanks to their capacity to decentralize performance along a network of autonomous components, while at the same time, through automated algorithms running on platforms, they are now able to coordinate all this decentralized activity toward a shared purpose.

Connectivity both destroys and creates. It brings down borders, walls and boundaries and the structures that they support but as it does so, it also creates the grounds for new structures to emerge. In a networked world, traditional structures that are predicated on the flow of information in a linear fashion, and a monopoly over the means of production and organization, are rendered less and less effective with every new horizontal connection that is made.

The network society is also an information society. While advances in telecommunication creates networked organizations, the rise of computation and the move from an industrial economy to an information economy, makes information and ideas the primary source of value-added in the economy and the key differentiator. Socio-economic organization becomes based around networks where individuals and organizations process information and knowledge. As such, we can say that the networked organization is an evolution of our social structures, that is designed to optimize the processing of information and ideas within society and economy, as opposed to social structures based upon the processing of physical resources. In the same way that the bureaucratic hierarchical and well bounded organization of the Industrial Age was optimized for the technologies and economic processes that were taking place within that society. The network as a socio-economic structure, that is aligned with the underlying physical flow of information is one that is optimized for the processing of information and ideas that take place within post-industrial economies as a primary activity of value generation.

The new structures that emerge in an information society are based on the processing of information and knowledge and out of this a new organization principle emerges, that is no longer based around space and the processing of physical resources but one that is based upon the relationship between information and knowledge processing; what is called the information hierarchy. The information pyramid defines a purported functional relationship between information and knowledge where lower levels comprise the material or building blocks for the higher levels. Data is the oil of the information economy and value is in processing it into higher levels of organization, information, knowledge and actionable insight. The value of one’s role in these networks is in how one processes information and ideas. While information technology reduces physical limitations and the structures built around them, new one form based around the inherent constraints in processing information and increasingly, knowledge. As information technology becomes connected up to a high-tech economic base, mass automation commoditizes physical activity and means that ideas can be realized and materialzed at an ever-faster pace. Innovation moves to the forefront of economic activity and the constraining factor becomes the creation of new innovations and ideas.

Divides within an information network society – divides based upon one’s value to the network and one’s capacity to process information and knowledge.

Despite the disintergration of traditional divides around the physical means of production between capitalists and the proletariat, differentiation remains based upon access and processing capabilities. However, the resources have now changed. While networks breakdown traditional physical borders around closed organizations, they create a new logic of inclusion and exclusion based on functionality instead of physicality; People’s functionality within information processing networks.

In research by Manuel Castells, he analyzes the new hierarchy and divides. he sees labour as fundamentally divided into two types: network labour – which serve the goals of the network, and switched off labour – which has nothing to offer the network and in the context of the network economy, is non labour.

Power in a networked society becomes based on inclusion or exclusion from access to networks, hence, resistance to the rise of networks comes from communities oriented physical space and production. Those dislocated or excluded by the networked society such as the no longer needed industrial labour, naturally gravitate to identities of communal resistance creating a divide between local and global, between networks and traditional insitutions such as the nation state. While the divides created by the industrial age become eroded, new divides form and become accentuated through fast-paced transformation.

As we transit into a new form of Global Services and information economy, the traditional organizational model that provided the mass of people within advanced economy with structure and support during the industrial age are disintergrating. Whether we are talking about stable jobs, a sense of potential progress for the middle class or sense of national community and identity, a strong bifurcation forms between those who are able to avail of the new opportunities offered by these networks and those who cant. The transition is expressed in a loss of legitimacy in traditional institutions of the industrial age, such as the state and civil society, that can no longer deliver what is required.

New and old political organizations will inevitably use this to their advatange, presenting simple solutions to complex challenges, by reatreating to traditionally protected spaces with strong boerders and identity. While at the same time new IT enabled networks scale rapidly to create global organiztions. This transitition, as it unfolds at such a rapid pace leaves individuals and societies deeply divided in their response.

The evolution of our socio-economic systems of orgnazations into a network society is an ongoing process of creative destruction. A massive transformation that is happening at an extraordinary pace and will affect all areas of social and economic organization.