The Hindu Business Line : Go slow on the `send'

Using technologies such as text messaging, e-mail and cell-phone at the workspot calls for care. Here's more insight into organisational communication.

What is our mission? What are our goals? What is it that we value? What are the principles that should guide our behaviour vis-à-vis the different stakeholders?

These are some of the currently asked questions in companies, says Steve May in Case Studies in Organizational Communication, from Sage (www.sagepublications.com) .

He says that the renewed interest in ethics is a recent shift, "partly in response to recent scandals but also in response to the desire to rethink the role of organisations in our lives."

There used to be a time when `business ethics' was considered a contradiction in terms. Now, "questions of ethics are being taken seriously by many organisations around the world."

Also, top management and executives have realised the value of ethics in enhancing both individual and organisational performance. "Rather than being viewed as merely a compliance or crisis issue, ethics is now seen as part of the bottom line."

The book has more than a score case studies grouped in sections named alignment, dialogic communication, participation, transparency, accountability, and courage.

Case study 3 is on `working at home and playing at work', by Alf Steinar Sætre and Jan-Oddvar Sørnes.

The case discusses "the emerging role of new communication technologies, such as text messaging, e-mail, and cell-phones." The questions that the case tackles are: "whether such technologies enable or constrain employees and whether it is necessary for employees to align their job-related tasks and their social activities at work."

So, let's go to Dossier Solutions, `a young Norwegian high-tech company', which provides large corporations with `knowledge management software'. Its chief product is a people-centric software tool `for developing and managing human competencies'. Using the software, employees can `document and visualise their professional competencies', so that they can be easily matched to the right position.

Meet Kristian Mjøen, who co-founded Dossier, as a 26-year-old civil engineering student in theoretical physics. He is of the view that all employees should have "a tool for continually documenting their own competencies in a life-long learning perspective and have the opportunity to actively develop their own career." He'd argue that employees have a big incentive to update their information "because it is clearly in their self-interest to do so."

As a company started by students with little managerial experience, Dossier used many survival tactics - such as expanding access to its employees' abilities. So, the company gave each employee a high-end cell-phone. But that blurred `any boundary between the public and private domains'. By accepting the gift of the phone, "employees had also implicitly accepted a contract of availability, thus extending work life into their private life."

To help, however, the company's policy was `stunningly simple, seductive, and absolute', in the words of the case's protagonist Kristian. How so? "You can call your friends on the company cell-phone, but as long as your cell-phone is on, you are available to us." The payoff for the company was positive. It was easier and efficient to reach its staff for solutions to problematic code, instead of "having a new programmer sit down and look through the massive amount of code in search of an error."

Ironically, technology was also impeding work. Kristian found that when people were sitting and programming `relatively complex code', they were being interrupted `every 15 minutes by an incoming e-mail or SMS.' He discovered that `incredible amount of hours' were wasted every week, in two ways: "First, when such `intrusive' and `interruptive' communication is basically social (i.e. for keeping up with friends), then the communication is unproductive, at least as far as Dossier is concerned. Second, even if such communication is job-related - which frequently it isn't at Dossier - it interrupts the flow of work and therefore further reduces productivity."

A new policy at the company is in place, states the case. The policy "asks people to close e-mail applications for periods of the day, instead of having a `pling' every time an e-mail comes in." Kristian reasons that e-mail is asynchronous, and so it is not necessary to answer messages throughout the day, at the cost of work. "If you fall for the temptation of responding to all your e-mails as you receive them, then you are down to relatively short periods of effective work." Is that an intrusion into people's privacy? How to enforce the policy...

Insightful cases.

The magic behind Möbius

The ubiquitous symbol for recycling is the Möbius band, points out Clifford A. Pickover in The Möbius Strip, from Thunder's Mouth Press (www.pickover.com) . The one-sided surfaces that August Ferdinand Möbius (1790-1868) discovered in the nineteenth century, when he was almost 70, has fascinated both mathematicians and laypeople, writes Pickover.

"Today it is an integral part of mathematics, magic, science, art, engineering, literature, and music. It has become a metaphor for change, strangeness, looping, and rejuvenation." The book begins with Möbius magicians and moves on to knots. Through simple diagrams, the book shows how you can twist the Möbius strip, and divide it lengthwise to form the trefoil knot.

"No general, practical algorithm exists to determine if a tangled curve is a knot or if two given knots are interlocked," says the author. He informs about a 130-page article by Wolfgang Haken (1961), in the journal Acta Mathematica, describing "an algorithm to tell if a known projection on a plane is actually an unknot."

That was a complicated procedure, never implemented, adds Pickover. He postulates that someone with Asperger's syndrome (high functioning autism) may be able to see the solution in his or her mind. "Children with autism are sometimes fascinated with items that are not typical toys, such as pieces of string, complex balls of yarn, or rubber bands. Some continually tie knots in strings."

Do you know that entire conferences are devoted to knots? "Scientists study knots in fields such as molecular genetics - to help us understand how to unravel a loop of DNA - and particle physics to represent the fundamental nature of elementary particles."

The author writes about a 2004 finding by UCLA chemists: `a breathtaking Borromean beauty'. What was that? "A molecular rendition of interlocked Borromean rings. Each molecule of the molecular Borromean ring compound was 2.5 nanometres across and contained an inner chamber that was 0.25 cubic nanometres in volume and lined by twelve oxygen atoms." Researchers are trying to apply the finding "in such diverse fields as spintronics (an emergent technology that exploits electron spin and charge) or in a biological context such as medical imaging."

Another chapter on technology states that several patents have been granted for Möbius strips "used in conveyor belts designed to wear equally on both sides, in toys, and in electronic devices." Pickover makes a mention of a 2002 research in Hokkaido University, which describes "a Möbius loop formed by crystals of a compound of niobium and selenium". It seems scanning electron microscopic images revealed "Möbius crystals typically around 50 micrometres in diametre and less than 1 micrometre in width."

Scientists are of the view that the Möbius crystals "offer a new route to exploring topological effects in quantum mechanics as well as to the construction of new devices." Another snatch in the book is about how in December 2003 "German scientists reported the actual synthesis of the world's first Möbius aromatic hydrocarbon molecule."

Enchanting read.

Tailpiece

"My first encounter with Möbius strip was... "

"The roller coaster?"

"No, the tax law!"

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