Essay on "Information Systems and Digital Workplace"

Essay 7 pages (2814 words) Sources: 15

[EXCERPT] . . . .

The foundation of their digital workspaces are predicated on collaborative planning and forecasting created through multilateral relationships. Toyota's supply chain is globally-based yet galvanized around a relative simple set of metrics that motivate suppliers to cooperate, not compete, with one another (Dyer, Nobeoka, 2000). Over decades of implementation experience, Toyota has created formalized policies that are engrained into the culture, communication, collaboration and today, even the cost factors of how they run their business. Toyota has galvanized all of these elements together and call it the Toyota Production System (TPS) (Dyer, Nobeoka, 2000). The Dyer & Nobeoka (2005) study shows the potential for digital workplaces that have a well-defined methodologies to turn product quality into a greater competitive advantage than cost. The researchers discovered while visiting Toyota production centers that the greater the level of communication and collaboration between suppliers, irrespective of geographic location, the more likely quality over cost would dominate as a competitive advantage (Dyer, Nobeoka, 2000). Figure 2 compares the initiation and mature phases of the Toyota Production System, profiling the differences in network structure, type of knowledge and member motivation.

Figure 2: Maturation Phases of the Toyota Production System

Source: (Dyer, Nobeoka, 2000)

Where Google's most important catalysts of growth are the insights, intelligence and creativity of its engineers and programmers, Toyotas' is the network of suppliers it relies on for every vehicle produced, every day. The Japanese cultural norms and values of high conformity and the need for information and knowledge-sharing-based egalitarianism dominate the approach that Toyota has taken in creating the digital workspaces of the TPS. There are very definite guidelines provided with regard to collaboration, communication and cooperation, in addition to a free year of consulting to new suppliers by Toyota's supplier relations department (Dyer, Nobeoka, 2000). Toyota orchestrates all of these elements together so that when technology is deployed to electronically enable supplier relationships, the transparency and trust between suppliers already exist. The technical aspects of creating the online network are a mere formality at that point, as the Toyota Professional Services teams on average s invests one year in onboarding new suppliers to the TPS and making sure they know how to work with existing suppliers as well (Dyer, Nobeoka, 2000). The digitization of the global Toyota workspace encompassed by the TPS framework is the last phase of the onboarding process as Toyota believes its suppliers need to know how to collaborate with each other before automating the many processes that unify them. The formal or policy and social aspects of assimilation into the TPS framework are critical for the success of their global supply chain. By focusing on these aspects first, Toyota is also compressing or consolidating the semiotics ladder, giving its suppliers an expert-level education in human activity systems first, followed by information systems and finally the highly technical aspects of integration after trust has been created (Dyer, Nobeoka, 2000). Like Google, Toyota sees technology not as a panacea but as merely a means to accelerate communication, collaboration and greater trust that accelerates the core business processes it relies on for profitable operation and growth. Both Google and Toyota have defined specific approaches to accelerating the most critical process areas of their respective business models such that the semiotics of human activity to information systems and data are consolidated and in many instances, compressed to save time and ensure greater accuracy and acuity of meaning. In studying both of these companies and their unique approaches to defining digital workspace formal, policy and social perspective and contexts, it's clear to see how technology is secondary to trust and clarity of roles (Kolb, 2008).

Managing the Interplay of New Digital Media and Employee Practices & Behavior

Employees in the 2 qrst century are expected to deliver greater levels of insight, intelligence and expertise than ever before, driven by the catalysts of more accessible information, the proliferation of analytics applications and tools, and the rising quality of professional training. All of these factors are in turn accelerated by the freedom employees have to create networks and communicate using social networks and mobile devices. Enterprises including Google and Toyota are cognizant of just how rapidly changing the nature of these dynamics are, and continually work to create a culture predicated on communication, collaboration and trust. The reliance on smart phones, tablets and mobility platforms is completely redefining the nature of work and its expectations, along with the cultures of organizations quickly (Mazmanian, Orlikowski, Yates, 2013). Forward-thinking organizations are relying on the lessons learned from Enterprise 2.0-based research and results (McAfee, 2006) and breaking down organizational and information silos that have long created conflict and division in their companies (Platt, 2010). Digitization of the workplace has more to do with creating a solid social network that can flex and say agile to changing business needs first, and then align technology in a nuanced manner to ensure consistency and clarity of communication.

Conclusion

One of the many delineating factors of successful companies is their ability to compress and consolidate the semiotics ladder while engraining its most valuable aspects into their cultures. This is clearly the case with Google and Toyota, as both continue to concentrate on creating the underlying systemic structural frameworks before ever layering in technology. Both companies also have created cultures that thrive in uncertainty and seek to create greater communication and collaboration across, in many cases, vast geographical distances within the same digital workgroups. Google's follow-the-sun development strategy (Google Investor Relations, 2013) and Toyota's TPS are two cases in point (Dyer, Nobeoka, 2000). Social networks and digital media have the potential to completely redefine the concepts of communications and collaboration within organizations. Insightful organizations today are concentrating their efforts on engraining the most valuable aspects of shared authenticity, transparency and trust first layering in technology to further accelerate these critical aspects of their performance.

Bibliography

Bernoff, J. & Li, C. 2008, "Harnessing the Power of the Oh-So-Social Web," MIT Sloan Management Review, vol. 49, no. 3, pp. 36-42.

Clarke, K. & Preece, D. 2005, "Constructing and using a company Intranet: 'it's a very cultural thing'," New Technology, Work, and Employment, vol. 20, no. 2, pp. 150-165.

Dyer, J.H. & Nobeoka, K. 2000, "Creating and managing a high-performance knowledge-sharing network: The Toyota case," Strategic Management Journal, vol. 21, no. 3, pp. 345-367.

Google Investor Relations (2013). Investor Relations. Retrieved December 31, 2013, from Google Investor Relations and Filings with the SEC Web site:

http://investor.google.com/

Huy, Q. & Shipilov, A. 2012, "The Key to Social Media Success Within Organizations," MIT Sloan Management Review, vol. 54, no. 1, pp. 73-81.

Iyer, B. & Davenport, T.H. 2008, Reverse Engineering Google's Innovation Machine, Harvard Business Review, Boston.

Kolb, D.G. 2008, "Exploring the Metaphor of Connectivity: Attributes, Dimensions and Duality," Organization Studies, vol. 29, no. 1, pp. 127.

Lai, V.S. 2001, "Intraorganizational communication with intranets," Association for Computing Machinery.Communications of the ACM, vol. 44, no. 7, pp. 95-100.

Lai, V.S. & Mahapatra, R.K. 1998, "Evaluation of intranets in a distributed environment," Decision Support Systems, vol. 23, no. 4, pp. 347-357.

Levy, M. 2009, "WEB 2.0 implications on knowledge management," Journal of Knowledge Management, vol. 13, no. 1, pp. 120-134.

Mantri, R. & Feng, J. 2010, "Using the Notion of 'Information Flow' to Investigate Why a Signal May Stand Differently for Individuals," I - Business, vol. 2, no. 4, pp. 317-325.

Mazmanian, M., Orlikowski, W.J. & Yates, J. 2013, "The Autonomy Paradox: The Implications of Mobile Email Devices for Knowledge Professionals," Organization Science, vol. 24, no. 5, pp. 1337-1357.

McAfee, A.P. 2006, "Enterprise 2.0: The Dawn of Emergent Collaboration," MIT Sloan Management Review, vol. 47, no. 3, pp. 21-28.

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O'Reilly, T. 2006, "Web 2.0: Stuck on a Name or Hooked on Value?," Dr. Dobb's Journal, vol. 31, no. 7, pp. 10.

Orlikowski, W.J. 2007, "Sociomaterial Practices; Exploring… READ MORE

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