New deals, no wheels: social exclusion, tele-options and electronic ontology.

Chris Carter, Lecturer in Human Resource Management, The Business School, University of North London Organisational knowledge

and

Margaret Grieco, Professor of Organisation and Development Management, The Business School, University of North London The Change Page

Abstract:

Attention has largely fallen on the grand providers and users of new information communication technologies, such as government and municipal authorities with their needs to reduce public expenditure bills, but there are new dimensions to social existence opened up by these technologies at the community and individual level which have been repeatedly ignored. This article explores, from a radical organisational perspective, the extent to which new tele-technologies provide new social options for the previously marginalised and disadvantaged: tele-options can greatly assist in the delivery of the New Deal whilst simultaneously reducing the negative quality of the current urban transport environment. The new electronic communication technologies have the potential to radically alter power structures and equalise power between clients and experts, communities and politicians and students and teachers. The power/knowledge discourse is all set to take a new form: a form which fits with Habermas conception of the ideal communication situation. In this context, this article explores the ontology/epistemology relationship which new technology brings into play.

KEY WORDS: electronic ontology; alternative social policy; tele-options; 'sink' estates; power/knowledge discourse; new deal; social capital

1. Intelligent government, intelligent response: the case for developing Information Communication Technology on a neighbourhood basis.

'Intelligent' government has began to happen quietly within the United Kingdom (Grieco: http://www.oocities.org/margaret_grieco/intellig/lecture.html . Brent Council (http://www.brent.gov.uk ) and the UK government (http://www.democracy.org.uk) already collect public views through electronic technology. 'Intelligent' public administration is already at work: prisoners wear electronic bracelets and experiments have taken place on utilising electronic solutions in the social services area as well as in transport organisation.. Both Prime Minister, Blair, and the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, Mandelson, have been publicly promoting electronic options as solutions to a range of governmental, administrative and community difficulties. Electronic solutions for 'sink estates' are clearly on the horizon.

Attention has largely fallen on the grand providers and users of new information communication technologies, with their needs to reduce public expenditure bills, but there are new dimensions to social existence opened up by these technologies at the community and individual level which have been repeatedly ignored. In an unprecedented fashion, new information technologies can 'return' time lost under conventional arrangements to single mothers (Grieco, 1995): currently, women, most particularly women with young children, fail to keep health appointments for themselves at hospitals. The complications experienced by single mothers in changing hospital appointments and in meeting hospital appointments could be altered by electronic access to the hospital appointments system. Using electronic brokerage on client and system availabilities would radically empower single mothers in meeting their survival needs at the same time as reducing the costs of providing services to the health system. The same technologies which are now used to enable business professionals to book and pay for air travel could be used to transform the whole arena of social accounting and service provision with major benefits to the marginalised. This article thus explores the extent to which new tele-technologies provide new social options for the previously marginalised and disadvantaged: tele-options can greatly assist in the delivery of the New Deal whilst simultaneously reducing the negative quality of the current urban transport environment.

The article suggests that there needs to be an explicit focus on the routine conditions of low income communities (in other terms, the 'ontology' (Clegg, 1975) or 'circumstances of being' of low income communities) and within this focus an exploration of the ways in which new tele-technologies can remove some of the information 'epistemology') and scheduling constraints of these conditions. Currently, the combination of the need to physically search for information, with all the timing constraints this implies, coupled with the uncertainty as to where such information is to be found contributes substantially to marginalised identity and definition both of individuals and communities. The successful management of any identity and accompanying set of resources must be related to information access: without access to information, there is no access to resource (Grieco, 1996; Holmes and Grieco, 1991; Pettigrew, 1973).

Ontology and epistemology are interwoven. The new electronic information age opens up the possibility of at home access to both wide ranging and highly relevant information. It creates the opportunity to reshape definitions of identity, social value and meaning (Clegg, 1975, 1989: Hosking and Morley, 1991). Those most isolated in the community with the installation of very low cost equipment - networked terminals or intranet facilities such as those used by the Microsoft 'Smart Street' experiment in Islington - can gain ready access to sociability. The use of the technology itself generates a shift in skills and identity definitions - as the political development of 'grey power' based upon home information technologies in the United States has already proven (http://www.aarp.org). Smart homes in Scandinavia are already prolonging active definitions of older persons who in the past would have had to endure the social definition of dependence. The rest of this article will discuss the ways in which client/expert relations can be redefined through community web sites (see UK communities on line ) and other associated technologies and better developed to service the needs and orientations of local marginalised communities and groups. New deals, no wheels: social exclusion, tele-options and electronic ontology, these are our themes.

2. In the air and on the ground: tele-technologies and bridging the gap between client and expert.

New information technologies place traditional organisation under pressure: the physical and informational boundaries which used to exist between those inside and outside any bureaucratic or organisational structure are rapidly being eroded (Wells and Grieco, 1993). This is already evident in the world of business where the volume of daily inter-organisational communication traffic (e-traffic) has reached levels of iteration and synchronisation which were not possible on any physicalist base. Recent research in the ASEAN context revealed the extent to which managers in global companies in a range of sectors were already coordinating their activities through Intranet and Internet arrangements (Loveridge, Personal Communication, 1998). Whilst focus has fallen upon the use of these new social communication technologies in the world of business and government, the ontological and epistemological consequences of these forms of social communication in the wider environment has been neglected. It is a matter on which the major organisational journals are silent.

Similarly, the question of what now constitutes knowledge and ownership of knowledge has yet to be addressed. Historically, the drawing of strong physical, cultural and access boundaries to the centres of knowledge induced definitions of expert and other (Foucault, 1973). Obligations of social purity which excluded the outer world from the centre of the knowledge, such as the monastery or in turn the university, hermetically sealed the knowledge process into an abstract and esoteric mode. The new information technology and information age in contrast is operating on a universal access base - it is a radical reversal of a previously exclusive social process.

It is clear that there is a rupture of the old social forms which now affects the relative positionings of expert and client (Carter and Crowther, 1998; Carter, Crowther and Cooper, 1998) and other similar dichotomies of paired social actors (Crowther and Carter, 1998). The development of satellite based social technologies such as the Internet and email make the on the ground reality permeable from both physical and social distance (see Living links annex). The boundaries have moved. The transparency of these new social communication technologies generates the potential for reduction in the power distance between expert and client and for power equalisation in a form never before known (Clark, 1972): the traditional requirements around exacting boundaries (Carter and Crowther, 1998) such as expert/non-expert is altered by the action set in play within this new technical frame (Pettigrew, 1973). On-line discourse arrangements open up new possibilities around the balancing of reliability and authenticity (Menou, 1998)- the two key competing dimensions in any process of appropriate policy intervention - in the development of technical knowledge for the social policy process. For example, African female farmers or Hackney's single mothers can, inside of a genuinely participative policy consultation practice, feed in their 'expert' knowledge as inhabitants of the reality under revision and can view their collective responses with transparency through a suitable technical information communication architecture (http://www.communities.org.uk). Not only can low income clients feed in knowledge about their circumstances and needs but they can feed back upon the policy responses of experts and decision makers and furthermore evaluate the relevance of these measures to their own circumstances. The social technology of participation coupled with the technical technology of e-communication opens up a dynamic, flexible and reflexive contribution to the identity, to the circumstances of being (ontology) and to the knowledge base (epistemology) of those historically viewed as simple receivers of policy action.

The technology exists to make the low income world equally expert stakeholders in the decision making process. The interpretative repertoires (Potter and Wetherell, 1987) of even the most disadvantaged can be substantially enhanced by the new communication technologies. The technology, for example, now allows for use by non literate individuals and communities - voice recognition technologies enable low cost distance communication to take place between low income illiterate people over distance (see Living links annex). Within the new technologies, there is a substantial use of icons rather than words to signal commands and action. The combination of icons with visual materials such as videos and photo galleries permit the development of social communication technologies based on oculacy (sight not semantic based knowledge) - extending communication development on the basis of oculacy rather than literacy would greatly extend the use of technologies to the benefit of many of the presently socially excluded.

Developments in the air certainly seem to have real consequences for social provision on the ground: our argument is that in order to reduce and remove social exclusion there is a need for a clear articulation of alternative possible realities realisable on the basis of a simple extension of existing social communication technologies. The policy imperative must be to provide clients - the socially excluded - with a matching set of repertoires (Potter and Wetherell, 1987) comparable to those possessed by their political leaders so that they can negotiate a healthier location in the power/knowledge discourse (Foucault, 1980).

3. Constructing social capital: virtual exchange, transparent reliability and community web sites.

Much of the current social policy discussion in Britain has centred on the negative social capital present in 'sink' estates: the description is increasingly in terms of an underclass (Hutton, 1995). Most tellingly, recent policy discussion has taken the form of exploring the option of obliterating current 'problem' or 'sink' estates and removing the population to new developments elsewhere. Surprisingly, the social advisors to Government have not given the appropriate consideration to the relational nature of any social reality and its associated behavioural patterns: dismantling housing stock will not result in the dismantling of the existing set of relationships (Whipp and Grieco, 1991). These negative relationships, if that is the way we understand the problem, will simply be transported to the new social location and redevelop all the social properties of their previous form.

A more informed approach would consider the ways in which the existing positive social capital on 'sink' estates can be built upon and the ways in which new technology can be harnessed to achieve this in situ. An example of a reversal in negative social dynamics on 'sink' estates is to be found, for example, within the Housing Action Trusts of Liverpool, funded in part with European monies. The Liverpool developments which have concentrated upon involving the community in the management of the housing stock could be further enhanced by the creation of community web sites which permit members of the community to join together more readily in common action. For example, within the Liverpool schemes there are arrangements for travel companions to enable the less mobile to achieve mobility through the provision of an escort. Currently, these arrangements are made under old communication constraints: with an electronic brokerage system, anybody on an estate could find an immediate companion without the necessary involvement of any third party. Less jobs for the professionals who typically perform the knowledge broker function but an arrangement which more readily and immediately services the community.

As with escort arrangements, there are a whole set of routine household scheduling requirements experienced in low income households (Grieco, 1995) where the resources do not exist to pay outsiders for the performance of household services (child care, handyman, home delivered catering etc) which could benefit from the electronic community brokerage function. Real time, on-line delivery of bus service routings, costs and availabilities would permit those community members with highly constrained time budgets to meet their obligations without experiencing transport stress. Similarly, community web sites could be used to simulate journey paths for youths seeking work: simulated journey paths could contain landmarks that a youngster would see on the real routing to a place of employment. These web sites could provide user friendly mappings of both physical and symbolic route (think of stylised overall city bus routings similar to the map of the London Underground - the first of its kind in the world)and could provide a match with other youngsters making the same journey to the same set of interviews on the same day. And there are a variety of other functions that could be added on to this particular structure.

One of the biggest problems in youth employment search is lack of acquaintance with the overall transport structure of the urban location in which employment is located (Grieco, 1995): there may be jobs available two neighbourhoods over but youngsters do not necessarily know how to get there. Within the New Deal, the problems of youngsters negotiating their journeys to potential employers has already emerged as an issue: the problem at present is that the New Deal distributes youngsters amongst many work places with the consequence that consolidated transport arrangements to service the cohorts are impracticable. Developing community based responses which permit the electronic matching of youngsters who do not have private transport with older persons who do could make a major contribution to the success of the New Deal initiative.

Already from this set of examples we can see that the current dichotomy between 'respectable'and 'sink' estates does not need to remain in its current state of analytical formaldehyde (Hardy and Clegg, 1996): it is time for the 'cycle of no hope' approach to disappear. We can see that there are collective processes of social capital formation which will be greatly enhanced by moving the information economy down from its global level into a daily tool for local scheduling and economic activity. The availability of relational resources within communities under stress has been greatly ignored: the necessity is of releasing these relational resources by removing the currents sources of friction in and constraints to their operation. The technology contains the important ability to transfer information between local parties and other authorities on social problems without the source of the message being immediately visible to the 'bullying' or 'anti-social' elements which are seen as the scourge of the 'sink' estates- community policing could be much assisted by a 'silent message' system which is both transparent at the collective level and provides cover for the individual at the micro-level. As messages do not bear the signature of an initiator, the source of complaint can not be punished by the offender: this permits the development of local social capital structures on an iterative base which are not amenable to the immediate threat and intimidation behaviours recorded for 'sink' estates. Through new technology, group confidence can be developed to take on enforcement issues within own locality (Grieco, 1996).

The enforced localism of large scale unemployment coupled with the removal of public sector institutions from residential localities as a consequence of the centralisation of retailing, health, education and policing has played its part in the construction of 'sink' estates. Through new technology there is an opportunity for the iteration of positive social capital messages within a sink community and the development of new morale: no actor needs to make a major contribution to bring this about. Through new technology the many small actions of a large number of actors can be collected together as community capital and community resource: the information reliability provided through web sites can open up paths of action within, across and out of the community on a safe and secure social base. The dichotomy between 'sink' and 'respectable' can disappear if the relevant knowledge/discourse dynamic is facilitated and encouraged to develop. Empowerment and the weakening of enforced localism are inherently related: building new estates does not guarantee a change unless the connectivity between community and the wider society is ensured through employment and knowledge links.

The conceptions of low income space are overly fixed in the minds of the policy makers and the texts of social scientists which, despite the insights of structuration theory (Giddens 1984), view the situation as irretrievable: the low income space can be fed both by its own activity and by enrichment from global sources. There is no good reason why an amateur potter in any 'sink' estate should not be enriched by access to the images and techniques of the Peruvians or by the icons and designs of the Ashantes. The classic work on Marienthal by Jahoda and colleagues (1972) tells us that the long term unemployed are disorientated by the loss of routine which occurs as a consequence of the loss of work. The current ontology of unemployment results in long term problems of knowledge retention and disorientation: disorientation in its turn destroys any social base for challenge of the existing mal-allocation of resources. The ontology of unemployment, with new technology to hand, need not look the same: routine can be given through interaction with virtual communities, skills and resources. Interaction in the virtual domain creates marketable skills: it also engenders creativity and knowledge production and development. Knowledge thus develops in a domain from which challenge to the existing mal-allocation of resources becomes a strong possibility. Ontology and epistemology are interwoven - it is simply the dominance of the existing 'owners' of resources which disguises the relationship from us. Different knowledge from different states of being: the competing accounts that organisation studies has struggled so long to capture and now we have a technology which can present each account intact, integrated or interwoven depending upon which mode we choose as user to operate at any point in time. The user now has the pinnacle of the knowledge hierarchy firmly underneath their person; s/he can now choose the view (Hardy and Clegg, 1996).

The issue given this alternative vision of low income reality is how to develop the social options necessary for positive social capital formation in a knowledge economy. In the developing world, these issues are already on the table. The President of the World Bank, James D. Wolfensohn, has already declared the job of the World Bank is now to be a knowledge bank which is both transparent and easily accessible to clients: the focus is on creating connectivity for the low income world and full participation which embraces gender in the use of that connectivity (see Living Link annex). Tele-health, tele-education and tele-finance are already present as operational forms in the developing world albeit on pilot bases: satellite development by agencies such as Worldspace in respect of Africa is likely to generate a major expansion in this activity within less than a decade. The next section considers the development of social options for social capital formation in low income communities which are rapidly becoming available and should be further enhanced and promoted.

4. Meeting the market: social options in a knowledge economy.

Organisation studies in the United Kingdom has more than once concerned itself with exploring the cordon sanitaire which exists around knowledge, status and social definition in our society. Historically, the classics were seen as a better training for social administration than detailed knowledge of the circumstances to be 'administered'. This legacy of the 'useful' being regarded as dirty and impure whilst the 'esoteric' is read as evidence of ability and skill has had consequences for the societal approach to the knowledge industry. As our preceding sections have shown, the days of the old academy are numbered.

The networks which determined the inclusion or exclusion of the individual as a scholar and knowledge bearer are greatly weakened. Instant access can be had to the knowledge base of individuals outside of formal structures who have set up own educational web sites that possess the same levels of functionality and detailed knowledge as the most esteemed educational institutions. Increasingly the test of knowledge is no longer found in the establishment warrant'(Holmes, 1998 ) or accepted authority but in the workability of the knowledge directly obtained: the user has direct access to the total structure of the market and can therefore compare and evaluate the different options available. For the first time in history, a spot market in education is evolving. On entering an electronic location, the user often has market information on the site immediately available both in terms of level of usage (fast counters) and in terms of screening by other agencies ( consumer association rankings, charity organisation assessments). The knowledge economy at the level of content (as compared with hardware and software developments) is an open economy: the cost to new entrance is relatively low and affordable at a collective level by even the poorest community (see http://www.conectando.org.sv for a Latin American example).

The student or user of new knowledge bases does not need to share either locality or temporality with the producer or manager of knowledge. The asynchronous qualities of the new technology have tremendous benefits for gender and cultural identity. In terms of gender, conventional educational arrangements tie women to particular time schedules which, they as a consequence of their multiple roles, find hard to meet. Educational materials mounted on the Internet have no requirement of time synchronisation but can still be interactive: virtual skilling can be used to enhance the marketability of women's skills whilst those women remain at home. Similarly, many developing countries do not have the requisite resources to develop the full range of technical knowledge bases but do have the resources to develop detailed information sets on their own environment - for example, information on the changing resistance of malaria to present medical treatment. Local users of malaria treatments have a very active stake in ensuring that knowledge in the medical community keeps pace with alterations in the epidemiology of the disease: Freire (1972) directed our attention to the importance of relevance for knowledge retention, he neglected the importance of relevance for local knowledge creation. The new technology allows knowledge to build very rapidly on the basis of many disparate small local inputs: the ability of new technology to provide very high levels of iteration, immediate information management and revised displays of that information on the touch of a button, transforms knowledge creation into a fundamentally and visibly collective action. The asynchronous quality of the Internet allows users in different time zones to interact on these knowledge bases entering and leaving developing countries: the space of flows to use Castell's (1989) term is gaining in interactive complexity at the same time as it is becoming increasingly transparent.

Educational institutions and increasingly education market providers have the option of redressing old knowledge/power discourse imbalances. Edward Said (1995) quite rightly draws our attention to the way in which Orientalism has been distorted by western portrayals and western experts on orientalism. His study clearly demonstrates the ability of a powerful group to define and thus control the social and cultural definition of distinctly other groups. Anthropology developed primarily as a tool of empire to understand and control the other: the conflict between understanding and control was a very real dilemma for many a colonial officer. Indeed, our language carries the register in the term 'Gone Native'. At issue in these personal and structural tensions was the relationship of membership and understanding as an inhabitant of a locality and ownership of the cultural identity of others as a member of an imperial race. The ownership of cultural identity thus becomes the property of the other from outwith the group: in gender terms, men define women's behaviour with the muting of female voices (patriarchy) in terms of culture English define Scots by centralising all policy discussion (a London Parliament). In parallel with these discussions is the middle class ownership of the 'sink' estate and the imposed irretrievability of the ontology: the epistemology directing the experience is coming from without.

The new educational form can move more elegantly and more equitably: its ability to handle the iteration that constitutes identity appears to be infinite. At the University of North London Business School as part of our organisational practice we have recently developed a set of related web sites which had as their aim the removal of those ontological boundaries that hold lower income persons and communities out of the prevailing educational structures, opportunities and epistemologies In these ways, ontologies become shared and epistemologies become mutually intelligible. The sites, the keystone of which was the UNL Global Learn site (http://www.ukglobal-learn.com), have been developed in conjunction with members of the immediate community, with academics sharing the same equal access orientation and with colleagues in Africa. On the site, the 'outsider' is provided with many 'paths' through the buildings, the purpose and the content of education at the University of North London. In exact counterpoint, the member of staff and the students at the University of North London are provided with a virtual entry to the existence of the educational and cultural contributions of those living elsewhere. The visitor to the University of North London is provided with an opportunity to enter its ontology virtually: the staff and students of the University of North London are provided with the opportunity to enter the ontology of those living elsewhere through this virtual mode.

It is early days but what we can already see is that by the use of hypertext and creating a high relational density within the information content of the site, the outsider can rapidly become familiar with an interior they have never physically entered. What consequence ? The would-be student coming for an interview, just like the would-be New Deal job candidate making use of a simulated journey in the search for employment, is already familiar with the context: stress is reduced and performance enhanced. It is appropriate here to give some understanding of what we mean by relational density: the relational density would be given by the number of internal links within a site. There are many paths inside the site towards the same piece of information or visual image: the user of the site is determining which of these paths s/he will take. Increased use of the site by the user builds up an image of the locality in much the same way that physical presence would produce familiarity with an environment. The use of images of people results not surprisingly in a site which is peopled, the linking of image to text results in a site which is voiced and through virtual means interactive - there are chatrooms and bulletin boards. The object of the activity is to begin to obtain an interaction with the community, both the low income neighbourhoods of Hackney and Islington and the global neighbourhood of the disadvantaged, which permits a better customisation of educational provision to real and felt societal need. Similarly, creating the interaction which enables communities and groups to place their content on the educational agenda as teachers of that content is critical.

Our expectation is that over time we will be involved in a symbiotic relationship with the community that involves the development of community based business and community governance on an electronic plain. Similarly we might expect that the boundaries between educational client and educational expert will blur over the next decade. The social options for the use of the new technology are many fold: the role of the educator increasingly will be that of enabler rather than evaluator or apprentice-master. 'Education', from its Latin base, denotes 'the leading out', the expanding of the intellect of the other. Our monastic tradition resulted in a diametrically opposed pattern of outcomes - we were prematurely sealed in and everybody else sealed out. The rupture of the new technology with its iterative powers is set to change all that.

5. Hard drive for democracy: transparency, electronic advocacy and the power/knowledge discourse.

The radical organisational theory presented in this article suggests that there has been a fundamental change and reconfiguration of social and professional identities, most particularly in the field of education but also across the range of professional identities (Carter and Crowther 1998). This process of loss of professional identity is comparable with the earlier experiences of working class communities that lost their industrial base. It could be argued that the same processes which generated the loss of working class community identity and social capital have now impacted upon the professional groups - the old order has gone. The reskilling that was so casually imposed upon pit communities and mill communities has now reached the professionals: the bankers of the City have just experienced the threat to both knowledge base and circumstance of being that was previously assumed to be a social characteristic of poor managers of resources, the low income community.

For professionals and for old industrial communities alike, their is a new element in the equation which is progressive. The new electronic technologies provide collective tools for the reshaping of identity (Carter, Crowther and Cooper, 1998) and the development of new social capital. The speed of iteration within the new technology is such that it permits the rapid exchange of services between individuals and thus the development of the patterns of dyadic and triadic linkage necessary to the creation of social capital. Levi Strauss (1964) and the other classical anthropologists introduced us to the centrality of social exchange processes in community creation, maintenance and enforcement. In the times of classical authorities, the physical base of support was the key stone - with new technology that physical base is greatly expanded. Without wishing to argue that the volume of social capital is thus larger, we would argue that the speed of the development of social capital will be directly related to the number of reciprocity events (exchanges), their repeatedness (repeated exchange) and the transparency within the system which generates the potential for collective enforcement.

Structuration theory as a relational theory must move beyond its old constraints with time and space: structuration theory and the social capital debate must now engage with the advent of electronic advocacy, electronic enforcement, electronic knowledge and electronic ontology.

Policy makers must meet their own imperatives of functional effectiveness (as measured by cost, range and reach, and to meet the increasingly apparent global cultural imperative of participation) investigate the electronic mode as a means of social capital development. Our essay provides a starting ground not an end point: our web sites provide a pilot approach not a solution. There is a new means for achieving and maintaining social capital on 'sink' estates: as theorists we are bound to record it, not least because electronic brokerage permits the management of a greater number of links by any individual than was ever previously possible. The technology extends the grooming possibilities of the naked ape beyond the established one hundred and fifty. As organisational practitioners we are bound to advocate the ready embrace of this mode: the options for moving towards Habermas (1980) ideal communication situation are for the first time in history present. Foucault's (1984) critique may hold for the moment but the stage is set for it to collapse. Social capital and identity are part of a power/knowledge discourse - identity and collective definition of identity take on a new form in an electronic age.

In this article, we have demonstrated that new information communication technologies create opportunities for clients to access the knowledge worlds and behaviours of experts and create opportunities for clients to evaluate that expert behaviour and to transform themselves into the experts of their own domain. On line knowledge finally permits the balance of reliability and authenticity: actor's own voice can now be routinely present on the touch of a button in the most technical of domains. The morphology of social reachability has just transformed.

Living links - Universal Resource Locators (URLs) for the Web

Web resources on new communication technology:

E-Journal of ICT Activities and Applications - (http://www.iicd.org/ejournal/documentation.ap )

RuralTeleCon `98: 2nd Annual National Rural Telecommunications Conference- (http://www.ruraltelecon.org)

If you Have a Lemon, Make Lemonade: A Guide to the Start-up of the African Multipurpose Community Telecentre Pilot Projects (http://www.idrc.ca/acacia/outputs/lemonade/lemon.html)

Wireless Communication Technologies for Africa - IDRC Report (http://www.idrc.ca/acacia/studies/ir-jens.htm)

Wireless Communication Technologies - IDRC Internet Resources (http://www.idrc.ca/acacia/studies/ir-jensc.htm)

ICT Stories from Developing Countries (http://www.iicd.org/stories/read.ap)

African Cellular Telephones Info (http://www.cellular.co.za/africa-cellsystems.html)

Rural Connectivity & Telecentres (http://www.itu.int/ITU-D-Rural)

Building Information Communities in Africa conference (http://www.bica98.org)

World Bank Forum on Rural Communications in Africa - (http://www.worldbank.org/devforum/current-connectivity.html)

Policy processes on the Web:;

American Association of Retired Persons - (http://www.aarp.org)

Brent Council web site - (http://www.brent.gov.uk)

Connecting El Salvador to the Future - (http://www.conectando.org.sv)

Intelligent development - a University of North London presentation (http://www.oocities.org/intellig/lecture.html)

UK communities on line - (http://www.communities.org.uk)

UK democracy on line - (http://www.democracy.org.uk)

UNL Global Learn web site - (http://www.ukglobal-learn.com

References:

BALL, K. and CARTER, C. Leadership: the charismatic gaze. Journal of Applied Behavioural Science(forthcoming)

CARTER, C. Keepers of the knowledge capital: legislating for the new millennium. Organisational Knowledge Working Paper (http://legacy.unl.ac.uk/~carterc), The Business School, University of North London.

CARTER, C. and CROWTHER, D. Unravelling a profession: the case of British engineers in a regional electricity company. Critical Perspectives on Accounting. (in press for 1999)

CARTER, C., CROWTHER, D. & COOPER, S. Organizational Consumerism: the appropriation of packaged managerial knowledge. Organisational Knowledge Working Paper (http://legacy.unl.ac.uk/~carterc), The Business School, University of North London.

CASTELLS, M. The informational city. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989.

CLARK, P. Action research and organizational change. London: Harper and Row, 1972.

CLEGG, S. Power, rule and domination : a critical and empirical understanding of power. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1975.

CLEGG, S. Frameworks of power. London: Sage, 1989.

CLEGG, S. Rhythm of the Saints Electronic Journal of Radical Organizational theory , Volume I, Number 1 , November 1995. http://www.mngt.waikato.ac.nz/ejrot/commissi/rhythm.htm

CROWTHER, D. and CARTER, C. Copernican Metonymy and Management Accounting. Aston Business School. Refereed Working Paper. 1998.

FOUCAULT, M. The birth of the clinic : an archaeology of medical perception. London: Tavistock Publications, 1973. FOUCAULT, M. Power/Knowledge. Brighton: Harvester. 1980.

FOUCAULT, M. The Foucault Reader. An Introduction to Foucault's Thought. (Ed) by Rabinow, P. London: Penguin. 1984.

FREIRE, P. Pedagogy of the oppressed. translated (from the Portuguese) by Myra Bergman. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

GIDDENS, A. The Constitution of Society. Polity Press: Cambridge, 1984

GRIECO, M.S. 'Intelligent' Development: Technical Organisation and Social Policy in the New Millennium. Inaugural Professorial Lecture, University of North London , March, 1998

GRIECO, M.S. Worker's dilemmas: recruitment, reliability and repeated exchange. London: Routledge, 1996.

GRIECO, M.S. and DENNING, S. 'New technology, new horizons: the prospect of more client focused development banking' in Maintaining the momentum of Beijing: the contribution of African gender NGOs. Ed. N. A. APT, AGYEMANG-MENSAH, N. and GRIECO, M. Aldershot: Ashgate. 1998

GRIECO, M.S. 'Time pressures and low income families: the implications for 'social' transport policy in Europe." Community Development Journal, 1995

HABERMAS, J. Knowledge and Human Interests. Translated by J. Shapiro. Boston: Beacon Press. 1971.

HABERMAS, J.. Legitimation Crisis. Translated by T. McCarthy. Boston: Beacon Press. 1973.

HABERMAS, J. The theory of communicative action.- Vol.2 : Lifeworld and system. Cambridge : Polity, 1987.

HABERMAS, J. Communication and the Evolution of Society.. Boston: Beacon Press. 1980.

HARDY, C. and CLEGG, S. Relativity Without Relativism: Reflexivity in Post-Paradigm, Organization Studies. Paper delivered to the British Academy of Management Annual Conference, Aston University, September 1996.

HOSKING, D. and MORLEY, I. A Social Psychology of Organising: Persons, Processes and Context. London. Harvester-Wheatsheaf. 1991.

HOLMES, L. Competence and capability: from 'confidence trick' to the construction of the graduate identity in Developing the capable practitioner: professional capability through higher education. Eds. O. REILLY, D., CUNNINGHAM, L., and LESTER, S. London: Kogan Page 1998

HOLMES, L. and GRIECO, M. Overt funding, buried goals and moral turnover: the organisational transformation of radical experiments. Human Relations Vol. 44, No.7, pp643-664,July, 1991

HUTTON, W. The state we're in. London: Cape, 1995.

JAHODA, M.., LAZARSFELD, P., and ZEISAL, H. Marienthal: The Sociography of an Unemployed Community. London: Tavistock (1972).

LEVI-STRAUSS, C. Totemism. London: Merlin, 1964.

LOVERIDGE, R. Personal communication and material presented at the University of North London Organisational Knowledge seminar series, 1998

MENOU, M., Personal communication and material presented at the University of North London Virtual tools for popular planning workshop, 1998

PETTIGREW, A. The politics of organizational decision-making. London: Tavistock Publications, 1973.

POTTER, J. and WETHERELL, M. Discourse and social psychology : beyond attitudes and behaviour. London: Sage, 1987.

SAID, E. Orientalism. Western Conceptions of the Orient. London: Penguin 1995. WELLS, C. and GRIECO, M. Spinning a web: networking European technical convergence. Organisation Studies, December, 1993.

WHIPP, R. and GRIECO, M.S. Dismantling logics of action: Dilemmas in change. International Studies in Management and Organisation, Winter, 1991'.

Biographical Notes:

CHRIS CARTER is Lecturer in Human Resource Management at the University of North London Business School. Prior to this he was a Doctoral candidate at the University of Aston. Chris is currently completing an in depth investigation of organisational change. This work has a particular focus on the dynamic of power/knowledge discourses within organisational settings.

MARGARET GRIECO is Professor in Organisation and Development Management at the University of North London Business School. She has held a number of academic and policy making positions, in recent years these have included working as a social scientist at the World Bank and as a sociologist with the Transport Studies Unit at the University of Oxford. Margaret has published widely across a range of disciplines: recent books include `Maintaining the momentum of Beijing: the contribution of African gender NGOs. (Co-edited: Ashgate, 1998) and `Worker's dilemmas: recruitment, reliability and repeated exchange (Routledge, 1996). Her current research is within the radical organisational frame and concentrates on exploring the possibilities that tele-technologies provide for tackling social exclusion at an individual and community level in both the U.K. and the developing world.