- Section 1.5: Work and Sustainable
Development
Accommodating the New Economy: The SANE
Space Environment Model
A. Harrison
The Case for Immaterialisation
S. Simmons, D. Leevers
TERRA Project Integration Using IFs
B.B. Hughes
eBusiness and Sustainable Development
T. Schauer
Internet-Based Labour Markets: Status
Quo and Potential
K. Gareis, A. Mentrup
Interventions for Sustainable Employment
in the Information Society for Disadvantaged Groups
S. O'Donnell, C. Duggan
- New
IST-Based Work Methods and the Family: The FAMILIES Project
K. Cullen
The Impact of the Digital Economy on
Leadership in Organisations
M. van Leeuwen
Accommodating
the New Economy: The SANE Space Environment Model
Andrew HARRISON
DEGW, Porters North, 8 Crinan St, London, N1 9SQ, United Kingdom
Sustainable Accommodation for
the New Economy (SANE) is a two year EC-funded research programme
considering the combined impact of the new economy on people,
process, place and technology to identify new ways of accommodating
work. Its focus is on the creation of sustainable, collaborative
workplaces for knowledge workers across Europe, encompassing
both virtual and physical spaces. The key operational goal of
the project is to develop a unified framework for the design
of sustainable work places in Europe. This multi-disciplinary
framework will generate designs that will allow distributed organisations
to take full advantage of coming advances in location independent
computing and ubiquitous networking. SANE will broaden the range
of workplace design parameters to include consideration of degrees
of privacy and relations between physical and virtual spaces.
By embracing considerations of public and private space the workspace
environment model developed will locate the office environment
in the wider context of the sustainable urban development and
the regeneration of European cities. This paper describes the
work currently being undertaken by the SANE project's Space Environment
Modelling work package which is led by DEGW. This work package
focuses on the architectural aspects of the human environment
in organisational settings. Other key theoretical packages are
Human Environment Modelling which examines communications and
interaction in physical and virtual environments and Processes
and Tools which will examine current and likely future technology
tools and processes to support the distributed workplace.
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The
Case for Immaterialisation
Stephen Simmons(1)
and David Leevers(2)
(1) Addico Cornix Ltd, Cornwall
(2) Vers Associates, 37 Beacon Way, Rickmansworth, Herts WD3
7PF, United Kingdom
The ASSIST study in the I.S.T.
programme sets out to explain one of the most fruitful ways in
which I.S.T. may contribute to Sustainable Development, namely
immaterialisation. In this paper, immaterialisation is placed
in the context of the well-established Total Environmental Stress
approach to ecologically-defined sustainable development. In
this approach, dematerialisation is associated with production
and supply; whereas immaterialisation is associated with consumption
and demand. These distinctions are expanded and the different
development trajectories and wider significance of the two classes
of reduction in material consumption use are detailed. Aspects
of a proposed taxonomy for immaterialisation are discussed. From
this taxonomic stance, the proposition is made that immaterial
substitution for material consumption is likely to be extremely
indirect. This proposition is examined by the use of a specific
example, illustrating the use of the ASSIST taxonomy. The methodology
proposed for the further development of the taxonomy is described,
and thus the means by which guidance will be extracted on the
future RTD agenda in this area, and also on the design of the
IST applications which will be required in order to gain maximum
advantage from immaterialisation.
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TERRA
Project Integration Using IFs
Barry B. Hughes
RAND Europe and the University of Denver
Denver, Colorado 80208, USA
The TERRA project intends to
provide a sound base for European policy deliberations around
the emergence of the New Economy and the unfolding of its consequences
for society and sustainable development. The project will produce
a rich library of scenarios, a set of tools for forecasting and
analysis, and a social discourse. One important tool of the project
will be a scenario analysis and computer modelling system, called
SIFT (Scenario Investigation for TERRA), built on the base of
the existing International Futures (IFs) modelling platform.
The SIFT model will represent the interaction of global and regional
demographic, economic, energy, agricultural, socio-political,
and environmental systems. This paper will describe the foundational
structure of IFS, outline the transformations that are underway
for SIFT, and prepare to demonstrate the emergent capabilities
of SIFT.
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eBusiness
and Sustainable Development
Thomas SCHAUER
Research Institute for Applied Knowledge Processing, PO Box 2060,
89010 Ulm, Germany
By IST we are starting to create
a fascinating globalised world of eBusiness which will have implications
for the social and environmental dimension of sustainability.
The challenge of the new century will be the integration of eBusiness
in a sustainable development pathway by supporting changes of
consciousness, by integration of external effects into the price
system on a European level and by development of environmentally
friendly technologies.
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Internet-Based
Labour Markets: Status Quo and Potential
Karsten GAREIS and
Alexander MENTRUP
empirica GmbH, Oxfordstr. 2, 53111 Bonn, Germany
Growing use of the Internet
may lead to an increase in the efficiency of the matching process
on labour markets, as can be shown using a rational, economic
logic based on transaction cost and job search theory. Together
with business process re-engineering and other organisational
trends, this might lead to what has been called the "dawn
of the e-lance economy" in which freelancers get in touch
with clients via the Internet, work as teleworkers, and transfer
work results via ICTs. What are the factors that support electronic
freelancing and what reasons speak against a wide-scale implementation
of this work form? In this paper, we look specifically at one
segment of the labour market that has been shown to be in the
vanguard of ICT usage as well as flexible work organisation,
i.e. multimedia specialists. We found that the Internet has clearly
influenced the behaviour of labour market participants in this
field, but its effect on freelancing and the development of virtual
organisations is likely to be limited by a number of factors,
e.g. by the need of personal promotion using traditional means
that often rely on face-to-face interaction and well-established
trust relationships.
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Interventions
for Sustainable Employment in the Information Society for Disadvantaged
Groups
Susan O'DONNELL(1)
and Cannel DUGGAN(2)
(1) Models Research, Dublin, Ireland
(2) WRC Social and Economic Consultants, Dublin, Ireland
It is clear that key social
challenges - such as long-term unemployment and educational disadvantage
- are restricting the movement of women and men experiencing
disadvantage into sustainable employment in the information society.
At the same time, many individuals have been supported in their
transition to sustainable IS employment through innovative EMPLOYMENT
Initiative projects across Europe that addressed these socio-economic
challenges. This article will first discuss the findings from
evaluations of two interventions in Ireland; both took place
in the same disadvantaged urban community but had different target
groups, interventions methodologies, and outcomes. The article
will conclude with a description of a new IST research project,
KISEIS, that will build on initial lessons by studying key interventions
across Europe for sustainable employment in the information society
for disadvantaged groups.
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New
IST-Based Work Methods and the Family: The FAMILIES Project
Kevin CULLEN
Work Research Centre, 1 Greenlea Drive, Dublin 6W, Ireland
FAMILIES is an IST programme
socio-economic research project focusing on the implications
of new methods of IST-based work (eWork) for work-family balance
in Europe. This paper outlines the importance of the topic for
key areas of European policy and presents some initial results
from the project. The results to date include an analytic model
of the impacts of eWork at the work-family interface and some
initial findings on socio-economic aspects, and on technology
at the work-family interface, from an in-depth study of 100 families
in four countries. The final results are expected to provide
guidance for policy consideration, for technology research and
development, and for larger-scale socio-economic research on
the topic.
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The
Impact of the Digital Economy on Leadership in Organisations
Manon VAN LEEUWEN
Foundation for the Development of Science and Technology in Extremadura
Manuel Fdez. Mejias s/n, 2a planta
06002 Badajoz, Spain
The world economy is in transition.
It is moving from the industrial age to a new set of rules -
that of the "Information Society" or "digital
economy, this will change everybody's work, affecting the flow
of new ideas into enterprises, their management, organisation
and procedures. These changes have major impact on the skills
and attributes necessary for successful and effective leadership,
and although some of these based on traditional values, there
are others that need to be added for the Digital Economy. Leadership
is an improvisational art, the game keeps changing, competition
keeps changing, therefore leaders need to change and to keep
reinventing themselves, they have to be ready to adapt, to move,
to forget yesterday, to forgive, and to structure new roles and
new relationships for themselves, their teams, and their ever-shifting
portfolio of partners, and they need to have the capacity to
employ more than one style of leadership.
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