The Distributed Organization: What Happens When an Irresistible Force Meets an Unmovable Object?/ J. Colannino

Prologue
When irresistible forces meet unmovable objects, the result is contradiction, confusion, and calamity: contradiction, because the irresistible and the unmovable cannot both be so; confusion, because it is unknown whether the irresistible or the unmovable is the misnomer; and calamity, as those on the wrong side realign or resign. Just as the industrial revolution displaced the agrarian economy, just as collective democracy displaced monarchy, so shall the distributed organization displace the conventional brick-and-mortar corporation. Workplace and living space will merge like Eden of old.

Background
Following Pearcy, before the industrial revolution men and women worked alongside one another in a home-workspace. It may have been the baker who lived upstairs and worked downstairs or the blacksmith who lived up front and worked out back – whatever the arrangement, a man, his wife, and his children worked together. According to historical records, businesses survived the death of the husband indicating that a widow and her children were fully capable to carry on the family enterprise. Men, being in the home, were the primary target of parenting manuals and cookbooks.

All that changed with the advent of the industrial revolution, which tore work from home and men from their families. Men were being conformed to soulless cogs of an industrial machine; in reaction, they birthed employee unions, socialism, and communism. The domain of women and children plummeted in stature as a result of the divided family. Women reacted by demanding suffrage and equal access to the workplace. One can argue that that all such movements were overreactions; notwithstanding, a driving force seems to have been the struggle for dignity and worth, a basic human need of Biblical pedigree.

In whatever its current form, capitalism has proven to be an irresistible force, at least because of the great wealth and power it has inured to the nations that practice it.

The Distributed Organization
Imagine an organization with the following seemingly contradictory characteristics.

• is leviathan in size yet agile in action
• dispatches people across the globe yet incurs no travel expenses
• pays its people least even as they make most
• uses factories worldwide yet owns no capital equipment

Now consider a typical medium to large U.S. Corporation having staff serving legal, accounting, production, engineering, marketing, sales, etc. – let’s call it Joe’s Widget Works (JWW). Except instead of being located in New York or Los Angeles or Houston or Grand Forks, JWW people live in their respective hometowns. In fact, its 500 employees live in 50 cities from New York to L.A., from Houston to Grand Forks whose telepathy allows them to function as if they were in the same room. Of course, we have now left the realm of reality – or have we? Allow me to restate: in fact, its 500 employees live in 50 cities from New York to L.A., from Houston to Grand Forks whose telephony (actually internet, telephone, webcam, fax, etc.) allows them to function as if they were in the same room. When a customer has a problem, there is no need to purchase a plane ticket, one of their service engineers lives nearby – he or she can be there within the hour. People are clamoring to work there because they can live where they choose without the need to leave family and friends. JWW pays no relocation benefits and attracts the best and brightest talent across the nation. Family expenses are minimized because daycare is a snap – both parents work for JWW out of their home, and they can easily coordinate their schedules. They do not commute to work; they can go directly from the breakfast table to their work desk in seconds. So they keep more of their time and money – an equivalent salary results in far greater disposable income. JWW fabricates widgets close to their final destination via electronic drawing files to one of many local fabrication shops they routinely use. Since shipping and production costs are minimized, the company outperforms its competitors in profit, response, and product quality.

The Future is Here
This is not so far fetched. Compare a company like Amazon.com to a brick-and-mortar bookseller. Virtually all of my book purchases in the last year (a dozen or so) came from the former rather than the latter. However, in my opening comments I was careful to say that the distributed organization will displace (not replace) the conventional organization. This is because some kinds of facilities must have “whereness.” For example, production facilities must have “whereness” while knowledge does not. Indeed, information is a tertium quid, neither mass nor energy. It is this property that makes information distributable. Ultimately, even widgets are information applied to material. The information age has arrived and business structure is bound to follow.