Vol. II: Shaping Information and Communication ... - IMA,ZLW & IfU

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Virtual Enterprise will be the normal case. Thus, transport problems will be significantly
reduced. Lifelong learning will fully be organised as an integrated part of professional
activities, or it will take place at home based on the link to the World-Wide Web (WWW).
In some countries these concepts are already taking shape. As examples, several regions are
described in these two books on EU-India Cross-Cultural Innovations. These reports put the
emphasis of regional development on networking of small and medium-sized enterprises. In
many of these experiences, the information technology support has been instrumental already
today for the survival and recovery of the regions through economic improvements.
These experiences, however, raise the question of power and hierarchies within these
enterprise networks and clusters which increasingly operate internationally and world-wide.
This question will be discussed in the following paragraph.
1.4 The Level of Networking: Information Mobility
Networking on a global scale is already today leading both to strong economic co-operation
and to mutual dependencies of large enterprises and even countries. Survival and profit of the
networked enterprise fully depend on their optimum use of information mobility. Even wellestablished
and conventional enterprises have been drawn into opening their Intranets to the
outside world or to make immediate use of software which has become available on the web,
free of charge (e.g. LINUX). These changes are very dynamic, completely decentralised, selforganising
and anti-monopolistic. They yield surprising experiences for managers of
traditional enterprises: obviously even enterprises today are sometimes too slow to cope with
these changes - let alone governments.
With such massive global changes, the political and social foundations of our countries are
affected. Some experts suggest that new democratic parties and new patterns of political
influence may soon develop based on the new means of information, organisation,
understanding and decisions of all citizens. We may obtain the option to elect our political
representatives directly through the network rather than through voting for a party or other
intermediators - since we all as citizens have the offer of getting all information needed for a
well-based decision (Koenig, 1999). Such emerging views of democracy within international
networks may counteract the dangers that the new technologies open new avenues for waging
software-based wars or disastrous acts of sabotage. These views also refer to the mis-use of