Book: Monkeys with Typewriters: Myths and realities of social media at work’ by Jemima Gibbons. Triarchy Press, 2009

Interesting book on how social media affects management practice, based on 50 interviews.

Here is a general presentation, followed by an excerpt from the fourth chapter on Openness.

“The internet is a creative destroyer which, positively or negatively, has had a significant impact in every sector of industry – shrinking value chains, removing barriers to entry, disrupting business models, slashing transaction costs…

So what are the implications for management?

Monkeys With Typewriters thoroughly debunks the idea that social media are an amateurish distraction for today’s organisations. It addresses their true impact on the workplace, asking:

* What new concepts and values are being introduced?

* How is executive power being eroded?

* What are the risks and benefits of increasingly open systems?

* What can managers do to ensure a smooth transition to a more innovative, collaborative working environment?

The book is distilled from interviews with more than 50 thought leaders in the social web: executives at Google, Yahoo and Salesforce; developers at MySpace and Microsoft; and web pioneers like Tim O’Reilly and Craig Newmark. It is packed with insights from CEOs of small, savvy start-ups, as well as lessons from senior staff from multinationals like British Telecom, Ford, IBM and Shell.

Monkeys with Typewriters identifies key behaviours in social media and relates these to current business practice. These behaviours are proposed as a practical framework, which can be actively applied to create happier, more productive organisations. The glossary will be especially useful for newcomers to social media and also provides valuable reference material for the more experienced.”

Excerpts on Openness, by Jemima Gibbons:

“Managing the transition

As home-working and flexi-working become more common, and work seems to blend more readily into other parts of our lives, a hard and fast division of work/social personas seems less relevant. At the same time, our ways of working are becoming, generally, more meritocratic: presentation and status are often less important than content and commitment: it’s not so much the way you do something, it’s what you contribute that’s important.

In his research around defining the exact nature of ‘public’ service for Channel 4 (for 4IP – a public service programming initiative launched in 2008) Channel 4 commissioning editor Matt Locke argued that there’s no such thing as ‘private’ any more, only appropriate behaviours. He proposed some initial thoughts around six ‘spaces’ of social media: these formed a segmented continuum that included secret, group, publishing, performing, participating and watching.

‘I’m sure there are many, many variants of this kind of analysis around the web,’ wrote Locke on his blog. ‘But I’ve found it really useful as a way of helping people think of the ‘register’ [their] project is operating within, to design from the point of view of the user, and to make sure we don’t cross implicit boundaries that will offend [those users] or discourage participation.’

So, the implication for management would be that while one type of language and behaviour could be used in a ‘secret’ space –via locked updates on Twitter to a privileged group of friends, for example – quite another voice would be appropriate in a ‘publishing’ space – such as a corporate announcement on YouTube. Your ‘identity’ can remain the same across all platforms. Locke’s breakdown is helpful because it suggests that the online world is much the same as the offline: most of us know instinctively whether or not a joke we share in the pub with friends is suitable for telling on stage at a conference. Online, it might be harder to distinguish the different environments, because we simply don’t, yet, have enough relevant experience – but this is something that will change over time.

Like Locke, web designer and blogger Priya Prakash has observed that we are only just at the beginning of this new space (or spaces), so, therefore, it’s no surprise that we find it difficult to learn the appropriate stance to take: ‘We’re in a transitional phase; that’s why it’s so stressful. The tea ceremony [in Japan] has a tradition, an etiquette, of hundreds of years.

In twenty years time we won’t be worrying about how to behave on MySpace or Facebook. It’s like road traffic safety – 150 years ago, noone knew which side of the road to drive on!’

Genuine social responsibility

While personal indiscretions or embarrassing activities may be increasingly forgiven or, at least, consciously ignored, people are far less tolerant when it comes to business behaviour. Social, demographic and economic factors are conspiring to force a change in the way businesses present themselves to the world. A new generation of customers and employees demands more openness – and companies must adapt if they hope to sustain a competitive edge.

While businesses such as Cadbury’s and Rowntrees (influenced by the Quaker beliefs of their founders), and the Co-op (with its policy of ethical investment) practiced genuine corporate social responsibility as far back as the mid 19th Century, corporate codes of ethics only became commonplace in the late 1980s, following a wave of business scandals like the Union Carbide gas leak in Bhopal, India (1984) and the Alaskan Exxon Valdez oil spill (1989).

But it wasn’t until the early years of this century, with the revelation of unethical decision-making in world-renowned companies like Andersen, Enron and WorldCom, that the public perception of business was altered drastically. The release of films such as The Corporation, Super Size Me, Black Gold and Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price – all questioning the legitimacy of business practices in corporate America – have done little to reassure the public. More recently, the near-collapse of the global economy triggered by the behaviour of leading banks has caused people to question the efficacy of a bonus culture. Consumers now expect a far higher standard of ethical conduct from business. Companies are being closely watched to ensure that they don’t ‘trip up’. And in the blogosphere, any mishap is likely to be magnified a hundredfold.

In a paper for The Journal of Business Ethics, South African academics Gedeon J. Rossouw and Leon J. van Vuuren identified an ‘ethical growth process’ or ‘spectrum’ of corporate behaviours with regard to ethics. These behaviors include an immoral mode, a reactive mode, a compliance mode, an integrity mode, and a totally aligned organisation mode.

In immoral mode, a company focuses entirely on maximising profits, to the point of excluding its stakeholders. When stakeholders press for change, the company moves into reactive mode. Once the importance of a good reputation is realised – and desired – the company enters compliance mode. As the company becomes proactive in ethical behaviour, and its relationship with stakeholders is marked by genuine engagement, integrity mode is achieved. Finally, a totally aligned organisation is one in which the transformation is complete: the company lives and breathes through communication and understanding with its stakeholders.

Rossouw and van Vuuren’s spectrum is simplistic: the transition from ‘bad’ to ‘good’ sounds idealistic and improbably smooth; the underlying assumption is that all stakeholders have the same interests and that these are aligned with increasing ‘morality’ on the part of a company (when, of course, an investor in a company who is interested only in maximising ROI has very different interests from an environmentally aware consumer of a company’s products). Nonetheless, this model is useful in that, at all levels, we can see how social technologies might help: both in enabling engagement with stakeholders and in disseminating information about ethical corporate behaviour. If a company genuinely wishes to move up through this spectrum, social tools can play a key role.”