Virtual Collaboration

Professor Stewart Clegg
University of Technology, Sydney

Tuesday 16 April at 11am

Abstract

In the past, organizations operated mainly through modalities of control, which were appropriate when most of the people involved were organizationally incorporated.  Increasingly, however, organizations have to collaborate to survive and since collaborators cannot easily exercise control over each other, technology becomes an important tool to mediate their relationships. 

 By adopting e-technologies, organizations can reduce transaction costs, whilst enabling 'arms length' monitoring of relationships. In order to generate real value, however, stripping out costs is insufficient - any organization capable of buying and using technology can achieve the same results. In order to benefit from technology-based relationships it is important that organizations build effective collaborations, since use of technology tends to add little that is unique. Technology might appear to add value to organizations through its capacity to re-engineer relationships, but, in fact, the underlying tendency is to destroy it. If organizations are to extract value from e-collaborations, they must turn transactions into quality relationships.

Short resume

Professor of Management at the University of Technology, Sydney, a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Social Sciences, and a Distinguished Fellow of the Australian and New Zealand Academy of Management, Stewart Clegg's research interests focus on power, collaborations between organizations, and the practical application of postmodern theories. He is widely published as well as being active in a large number of external organizations, including the Ministerial Council for Cooperatives for NSW, the International Sociological Association and the American Academy of Management, from whom he received the George R. Terry Award for 'outstanding contributions to management knowledge'.

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