Fall 97
Winter 98

by Sonja Greckol

Most organizations begin to work online in order to move information more efficiently. Sending and receiving large quantities of information quickly at a minimum cost is generally the primary goal. Once online, staff and managers eager for change quickly begin to work together. In my work as an equity consultant, I have seen four dimensions of power that shift as organizations carry out more work online. Each of these shifts supports the establishment of more equitable practices.

Staff and managers build alliances around shared goals quickly and effectively

Managers and staff who lead change efforts can test ideas, elicit feedback and build support. The ease of email consultations relative to the formality and effort required to organize meetings and formal consultations builds its own momentum. A wider range of people becomes readily accessible.

As online work provides more access to information and decision-making across an organization, staff come to know and be known in different ways. In a relatively short period, perhaps 3–6 months, information flow can be fundamentally altered as the network of knowers expands quickly. This expansion permits groups who have been excluded to gain more influence. During a time when equitable hiring practices have an impact, new knowers are likely to include people of Colour, Francophones, people with disabilities, Aboriginal people and women.

Online work subverts the managerialist and the expert view of the world

When everybody in an organization gets to make comments and connect over a large geography simultaneously, information flow is democractized. By design or accident, issues may be raised for comment across an entire far-flung organization.

If it is an equity issue that takes flight, it can reveal the complex set of relations that comprise an organization. Relations of power and privilege based on organizational location and on social location including education, race, sexual identity, gender, and language become visible. That organizational practices look and feel -different when viewed from different locations can become subject matter for an organizational discussion.

Online work elicits skills, decentres expertise and builds ownership

Working groups go through a typical series of stages that reflect a larger organization’s stages of online work. Initially, the administrative tasks are absorbed onto email; meetings are arranged and documents are distributed online. Later, a group may solicit and share feedback online. Finally, when a group can plan, write and edit online, it uses face-to-face meetings or teleconferencing to sort out more far-reaching and difficult issues. At each of these stages, the group needs a leadhand or facilitator with enough skills to nurture the online process.

When a working group can collaborate with reasonable ease, they can take on more complex tasks without overwhelming the project’s resources. For example, a group preparing a research report may need to decide how to report statistical results to an audience with disparate skills. Group members with different kinds of expertise, e.g. research, service delivery and managerial, bring different understandings of rigour to report writing. If a document is informed by each of these, then each group member can see a reflection of their expertise and feels a sense of ownership. The research product takes on a different life in an organization.

Projectiles and waves in online talk

In my experience, online talk tends to two forms that are highly gendered. Both are familiar from group work and problem solving but they take a sharpened character in online work because it relies fully on words. One form could be drawn as a series of missiles or projectiles, the other as a series of waves. "Go down this road. Taking any other road is dumb, we will fail," or "Going down this road makes sense, is there another that will work as well?"

Online, folks are silenced by projectile talk. Projectile talk attracts other projectile talkers and more projectile talk follows. Wave talk, on the other hand, laps at our edges and invites us to engage, it carries the content in a linguistic medium that is open, respectful and leaves entry points. Wave talk often appears to be less focused and may move in a variety of directions. It acknowledges that something came before and will come after; it also acknowledges meaning in silence. Wave talk becomes more highly valued as groups shift from exchanging information to working collaboratively.

Shifting power

Staff and managers with the strongest consensus-building skills and strategies are likely to be most successful. By their very nature, as online venues become more fully integrated into an organization’s work, authority and decision-making take different forms. The greatest resistance to these changes generally arises among those who were most privileged in the previous modes of communication. The corollary is that those who have been disadvantaged may be able to use the opportunities that open as power shifts.

When I reflect on how online work has shaped my work as an equity consultant, I realize that working in email, on lists and in conference spaces, requires extensions of the collaborative skills and processes learned in women’s groups. Call it techno-fit; it feels, finally, like an electronic innovation that facilitates a familiar and comfortable way of connecting and working in groups across great distances — checking in with everyone, nurturing side initiatives among people who share specific interests, helping large groups of people engage with complex issues.

Sonja Greckol has done research, training and consulting in employment, pay and service equity for fifteen years. While the current Conservative government has had the greatest impact on equity practices in Ontario, before that her work was profoundly changed by the online venues in organizations. Please forward comments to
sgreckol@idirect

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