Introduction

This report, 'Designing the Council of the Future' is a collection of challenging ideas and contemporary developments across UK Local Government. The report attempts to paint a vision for local authorities in the year 2020. It seeks to provoke you, to encourage a debate, but without ever assuming that any one individual has a true conception of what this future council might look like. The outlook is muddled and we rely on the views and opinions of many including several already participating in TALK.

This report, ultimately, rests strongly on the thoughts of 'you' and your colleagues. It is a report in the classic sense, but thinking never remains static and to make the process more engaging you are invited to contribute through the TALK (Transferring Across Local Knowledge) website.
The underlying paradigm, however, is change. Every industry is changing, some more radically than others, and so we must understand the challenges and opportunities that are borne out from societies demands and most importantly of changing organisational structures brought about by new technology. Consider for a moment the 'Entertainment and Media Industry'. Is there a future for large record companies, television broadcasters, and mainstream newspapers in the age of YouTube, MySpace, and blogging? Technology allows new structures to form; it always has. Society is asking more of itself, and large organisations have to respond, including Local Government. We can learn from other industries and take some of the most challenging ideas and opportunities into our designs but they too can learn from us.
Any future designs, however, must spring first from our current concerns, structures and forms. Firstly, we take contemporary thinking and developments, including Gershon, Choice, Electronic Government, New Localism, and Shared Services. We must project these themes forward and consider their implications in 2020. Secondly, we must recognise and utilise the abilities of people and technology. Designs are only as good as the paper they are written on. It takes energy and commitment to bring them about. The final key ingredient is perhaps creative thought. This is possibly the most challenging, but the most creative ideas will often emerge from groups.
This report attempts to include each of these ingredients. References are made to Gershon and the Choice agenda, but these are wrapped in stories of leadership from local government people at the coalface. New ideas and creative thinking is broken into five distinct themes. These include Leadership, Information Technology, Local Engagement, Efficiency, and Team Working. Each theme asks a set of distinct questions, sets out some potentially radical future scenarios, and then points to actual evidence within Local Government projects presented through TALK, including The Connected Cumbria Partnership, Leeds Digital Pen and Paper, and Oldham's 'In Control' pilot scheme. Evidence of activity from across the Local Government family is perhaps the strongest indication of how our authorities will look in the year 2020.

The Long Now

"When I was a child, people used to talk about what would happen by the year 2000. For the next thirty years they kept talking about what would happen by the year 2000, and now no one mentions a future date at all. The future has been shrinking by one year per year for my entire life. I think it is time for us to start a long-term project that gets people thinking past the mental barrier of an ever-shortening future." Danny Hills, Inventor of the Connection Machine (1).

Danny Hills presents a fascinating analysis of life and the concept of time within 21st Century behaviour. Time is becoming one of our most precious commodities, perhaps more so than money. There is never enough time; never enough time for work, projects, and even family. If we could buy more, we probably would. There are a number of reasons for this. There is simply more to do. We can travel with relative ease, and converse with friends and relatives through the Internet. Technology is making work more efficient, and indeed faster. We can do more in less time, but this motivates us to do even more. There is a sense that we are probably caught in a whirlwind of yesterday, today, and tomorrow. If we can win battles within those three days, the future will emerge without much further intervention.

Yet, think about the work you undertook yesterday? And the work you intend to do today? And how that influences your agenda tomorrow? There is a chance, according to Danny Hills, that we are caught in a confused state of fashion and commercial drivers (see figure 1). What might these be? Team problems, customer complaints, ICT failures, or even how to bring about the efficiency savings demanded by Gershon. These problems and opportunities are useful in themselves, they might still move us forward, but there are greater depths to time. This is something we possibly better understood in the build up to the millennium. However, the model suggests that we need to think beyond immediate fashions and consider what our infrastructure, governance, and culture may actually look like in the future.

Figure 1: The Long Now. For more information visit http://www.longnow.org

Thinking about the future is indeed tricky. Some might argue impossible. Danny Hills though has given us some clues. These clues do not necessarily relate to the future itself, but rather how to think towards it. He suggests thinking about clocks. There is probably one on your wrist, situated on your desk, or in the corner of your computer screen. A clock represents the fundamental essence of time. Now imagine designing a clock that will keep time for the next 10,000 years. A clock that will keep accurate time with minimal human intervention. 10,000 years is almost incomprehensible. It takes us far beyond the next decade, or 100 years. Presumably, such a clock would need to survive another ice age, perhaps, or a meteor shower. Decay would play a huge factor. Are there any materials that could last that length of time? And how would the clock source power?

The concept of a 10,000 clock is interesting, but mainly because of how it forces us to project forwards. The ideas that emerge from thinking in this way are far more important, and are likely go beyond anything that we might consider when caught in yesterday, today, and tomorrow. If this is true, perhaps we need to apply the same methods when designing the 'Council of the Future'. Perhaps we should start to design our councils for 2020 and beyond. How would this affect our thinking? What new considerations would arise? What new priorities would emerge? Perhaps there is no better time than now to go about this debate. Technology alone has had a substantial impact on fashion and commerce, but it looks set to have a more seismic effect over the long now. The effects are largely unknowable, but many people are talking and casting light on the future. Take Shimon Peres as an example. He began to articulate some of the implications at a recent Web 2.0 conference (2006). "This is perhaps the most exciting time to be around technology and innovation. We can imagine organisations unlike anything we have seen before. We are the midwives at the birth of a new age. The task of a human being is not to remember but create, imagine and discover. The Internet has liberated us from the great effort to remember things. Technology is breaking down borders and diminishing the role of governments. Governments are good for war and poor for peace. As technology and ideas become the source of wealth for individuals and for nations, governments are left with less influence. Today a man can create an economic state of his own. Google has a budget larger than any country, and the minute you become global, you become public and you have responsibilities." Shimon Peres is of course the Nobel Peace Prize winner and former prime minister of Israel.

We are "midwives at the birth of an emerging age."

A Design for 2020

When thinking about the future, incumbent private sector organisations will perceive any trends or movements in the marketplace as a potential threat to their very existence. They have to adapt and position themselves to overcome that threat. Ultimately, they want to be around in 20 years time. Is Local Government the same? Surely not, trends and developments are an opportunity. They are an opportunity to pursue social goals, to contribute to a healthier society in a more valuable way. Aren't they?

Perhaps, to unlock the potential of the future, to access the opportunities, we need to have a healthy attitude to technology. Maybe we need to see it as a potential friend, if we manage it correctly and bring it together with the really important things that matter; the goals and priorities that drive the organisation. 

Take this example from TALK article: The endgame is near for e-governemnt. How many agendas can you hit with just one initiative? 

"The key to all of this is to understand the magic of electronic information. The magic is that you can whiz it anywhere you like. And that it costs almost nothing to do so. This means that you can begin to unlock services from their traditional Town Hall settings and deliver them in new ways, in new configurations.

Take a simple example; a client's social work record. Most likely, in your authority these records sit in filing cabinets. The social workers, meanwhile, sit next to them. When a call comes in, or some work needs doing, doubtless, almost without thinking, the social worker reaches over to retrieve the file from the cabinet.

For how much longer?

With Electronic Social Care Records and other technologies like [Digital pen and Paper], you can pipe the information to anywhere you like. Perhaps your social workers don't work from the Town Hall anymore. Perhaps they work from home. Why not? Or, if you prefer, they might work from tiny neighbourhood offices, in amongst the houses where their clients live. They might occupy an office above the local charity shop on the High Street. They can enter or retrieve information from their cars, client's houses, youth centres and elderly care homes.

Remember, the magic is that you can whiz the information anywhere you like for almost no cost. So you might do something about New Localism by allowing your social workers to work in those tiny High Street offices that we mentioned. And you might do something about Gershon and Shared Services by, at the same time, allowing procurement functions to be more centralised, with greater economies of scale. So, when your social worker needs to book accommodation, let's say for an elderly resident, she or he is able to access an Expedia like account (or a nice, friendly call centre if you prefer), that tells the social worker what is available and where.

And you might be really, really radical and do something about Choice, by allowing your social workers to work for different agencies (charities? co-operatives? themselves?) or companies. There will doubtless be many pros and cons. The point is that the magic world of electronic information allows it to happen, if you want it to.

And what goes for social workers, of course, goes for other services too. Let's say you start piping information about housing repairs directly to the cab of your repairs truck (like the roadside rescue companies do). Your housing repairs service might get a lot more efficient and much more timely for its customers. And you might start wanting to do more radical things as well, like sending the information to the cab of a truck that belongs to a neighbouring authority, if it can offer a better response time to a particular call.

How many bases have we touched? New Localism? Choice? Gershon? Shared Services?"

Leadership

Questions 

Some questions to ask?

• What characteristics will a leader in the year 2020 possess?
• What strategies will that leader employ?
• What technologies will the leader utilise?
• Do we even need leaders in the year 2020?

Future Scenarios

Community and leadership are recurring themes. They are often explored when local issues arise. Faced with uncertainty, faced with a difficult future, people often call for 'leadership.' The rejoinder, 'We need good leadership, we need good leaders,' is applied as frequently as football fans talk about the need for 'good players', 'a good manager.' Isn't it all rather obvious? Who is going to advocate that football teams deploy 'bad players' or recruit 'a bad manager?' Similarly, in community leadership settings, do we really need reminding of the need for effective leadership?

The real questions arise when we look at the issue of leadership rather more deeply. What is a good leader? What properties does he or she possess? Are the skills that we want from a leader context specific? Do we want certain kinds of leaders in some contexts, and other kinds in other? And, come to think of it, don't we all have a responsibility to lead in some way? Is it acceptable that some of us sit back and wait to be 'led?'  Aren't the very processes of community action, of participation, more complex than that?

So who is a leader? Is it Sir Alex Ferguson throwing teacups? Is it Sir Alan Sugar pointing his finger and saying "You're Fired"? Is it a nurse who guides a family through the first few delicate steps of a bereavement process? Is a stooped and elderly person who picks litter off the street? Is it someone, an anonymous person who, after a road accident, calls the emergency services and utters a few calming words to those affected?

Many situations are very complex and, as a way of coping with this complexity, we might tend to ascribe more to the contribution of leaders than is really due. Historical examples illustrate this. Today, a statue of Nelson stands aloft in Trafalgar Square to commemorate his victory and sacrifice at Trafalgar. So, Nelson won at Trafalgar, did he? Did he? Alone? What about the sailors, the massed ranks, and their contribution to an array of thousands and millions of acts of courage and leadership that took place on those seas? Look again, look at Nelson's life history and his tactics, and another perspective emerges. Most leaders, like Nelson, actually understand that they participate in a collective process in which they are never wholly in control, never wholly influential. His greatest virtue was to build the collective, develop the esteem and share the responsibility to such an extent that, though he was mortally injured early in battle, the collective never faltered. Leadership is more this process, this collective, than it is the actions of one steersman at the helm, as vital as that role is. Returning to football, the touchline hug between the victorious manager and his victorious players is a tacit acknowledgement of leadership as a shared, collective process. It does not diminish the manager to acknowledge the contribution of his players. Rather, it is likely to strengthen him.

Then, if a football fan expects every player in his team to act with authority and creativity, and to lead the team through certain key situations, then why does he not expect the same of himself in his community? Is it just easier for him to 'outsource' the leadership problem to someone else? Aren't communities somehow to blame when leadership fails? If students of history can appreciate the shallow drawn breaths of nervous sailors at the dawn of battle, if they can empathise as these sailors struggle to hear the pronouncements of leaders to their massed ranks, why do these same students not take it as an historical truth that leadership is ultimately collective? Why don't these students also see that it an historical truth that people will act on behalf of each other? Why don't the same principles apply, albeit in a much more mundane form, in the everyday organisation of community? Anthropologists will tell us, repeatedly, that communal ritual, that the sharing of responsibility amongst members of a community, is a common, historical pattern. If a community is malfunctioning is it really a problem of leadership? If it is, how soon is it before you follow that loop around and recognise that it might be your own contribution to that collective process of leadership that is missing?
 
Hence, whilst many of the stereotypes of the leader portray him (usually) as a dominant, powerful figure, a 'Do-as-I-say' kind of guy, perhaps it should be no surprise that the early evidence from TALK is that success is associated with a different set of leadership skills - the softer skills. Leadership is about charisma, and ideas, and creativity, and tough decisions, but so too is daily life. The 'leaders' who seem to be prospering most are those who recognise this, who foster and shape the collective process of leadership, and who see themselves embedded within this process.

The Soft Skills of Leadership

A rediscovery of 'soft' skills (fostering trust, building teams, developing win-win relationships) is very much at the epicentre of the best of modern business practice. New studies suggest that these are being rediscovered, not discovered. Many of the great companies were established around strong leadership, yes, but a strong leadership that was very highly connected with frontline issues and empathetic with needs that arise there. John Kotter, a very eminent management writer, talks of the skills required to develop "complex webs of aligned relationships." These webs of relationship are seen to unleash the energy and commitment needed to make transformation projects happen. You have to be very knowledgeable about the everyday occupations of the organisation, and in some way good at interpersonal skills, to make this work. You might find that need to be methodical and rigorous in thinking about everyone and each different perspective.

So, next time you read a report that says that local government needs 'Good Leadership', it will be obvious that this statement itself needs to be subject to critique. Leadership is not necessarily about the recruitment of a few, charismatic folk to occupy senior positions in organizations. It is as likely to be about engendering collective processes. Ultimately, perhaps, it means different things in different contexts. The tacit knowledge gained so far is that in local government, the teacups stay on the tray. The collective knowledge, the soft skills, and the cool determination to see them realised, dominate the case evidence so far.

A world of great teams

The council of 2020 will have stopped waiting for Godot. Leaders will still exist, they will still be vital, but a much greater emphasis will be placed on the collective. The council of the future will be made up of great teams, within which leadership will be shared, diffuse and alive. Key people will still occupy key positions, we will still call them leaders, but a much greater emphasis will be placed on the responsibility of individuals. In time, it will found that building great teams is not easy either, and that a lot of our assumptions about committees, democracy and participation are in themselves problematic. Nonetheless, great teams will be developed. A new public administration will learn as much from Toyota, the birth of Du Pont and Bell Labs, and the Lockheed-Martin 'skunk works', as it does from its own history.  The internet and social computing will greatly lower barriers to participation and increase local activity. Crucially, the council will lose control of this, but will be able to interface to it and participate in local forums invented by others.

An age of slogans, of mission statements and exhortations will have passed. Performance measurement, however, will survive, but in a way that allows teams to invent the greater part of it, and to relate it to matters of community and learning, as much as to matters of finance and quantity.

Teams will be great, but more dynamic, as technology and new organizational practices allow special boundary-less projects to be developed. The leadership role will have changed into a being one of creating and influencing networks of people, relationships and projects. A representative democracy of checks and balances will be augmented by a 'can do' democracy which both expects and facilities short-term involvement. Often this will be voluntary.   

Looking back, focusing on questions of leadership, council staff will acknowledge that the leadership debate of the past became a red-herring. It became easy to focus on the individual, to give everyone else an excuse, and to miss the point about collective endeavour. In a society with new technology and high levels of education, this was increasingly anachronistic.

TALK Evidence

The Connected Cumbria Partnership and the Digital Pen and Paper project show how two widely different approaches have been successfully implemented. In each case, the public sector workers at the frontline have employed different leadership approaches to work in their favour and to the benefit of the project. One relies on strong leadership whilst the other takes its lead from a management strategy also known as the 'skunk works'. The Oldham: In Control case marries the two strategies together, and there are lessons to be learnt in the interplay and changing of modes.

Information Technology

Questions

Digital technology, as we know it today, was an indirect outcome of World War II that ran from 1939 to 1945. Machines were developed that would run ever more complex algorithms and mathematical functions in order to break enemy ciphers. Many of the world's first computers such as The Bombe, The Manchester Mark 1 (or Baby), and The Colossus would fill the size of a small hall today and their realisation took many years, many minds, and a stream of government funding.

After the war, many of those machines were scrapped to protect their secrets, but the knowledge that reliable high-speed electronic digital computing devices were feasible had a significant influence on the development of early computers, resulting in significant year on year advances since the 1950's. Although many of the advances have been great it is only in the last twenty years that we have seen contemporary developments that signature the start of the Digital Revolution such as the launch of Microsoft Windows in 1990, and the mainstream development of the Mosaic web browser (The Internet) in 1993.

Like the early computers, technology advancements have taken significant time and intellectual effort. Technology has therefore been expensive, and difficult to implement. It requires technical capability and understanding to make systems work for an organisation, and acute management to make it financially feasible and justifiable.

It is, in essence, a big problem, but also a big opportunity that has brought many widespread positive changes to societies and peoples lives. It would, in fact, be almost impossible to imagine a local authority powering down their ICT infrastructure, let alone a global bank. Technology is pervasive, but this simplified look over history also tells us that technology is relatively young. We are only just beginning to understand how technology might be developed, applied, and managed within our organisations. Email itself is one application that has emerged, and it has brought about levels of communication never seen before. However, Email itself is not perfect. It can plague the life of a professional worker, and as such we need to ask how such a system can be redesigned, or even bettered?

Also, technology adoption and thinking is more sophisticated as it plays an ever-greater role in peoples lives. The increasing functionality of mobile phones would suggest that every employee of the local authority might actually bring their own IT into the organisation and manage their own computational needs in the year 2020? Citizens are also enjoying more advanced digital services through their television sets as the technology moves far beyond passive entertainment where the nation sits and watches the same film on Christmas Day. Rather they allow users to control their viewing through on-demand and interactive services.

These developments sit in another paradigm to large-scale ICT procurement and management, the position of most large organisations today. Technology was complex and expensive and it was right to commit IT budgets to large venders of hardware, software, and network technology. But does this trend need to continue? Can we avoid the next expensive upgrade and instead look towards creative applications and development of ICT?

Looking towards 2020 there are many questions that remain unanswered:

• Who will own and manage local authority ICT?
• How will electronic processes be enacted?
• How much will technology cost?
• Who will develop and support your authorities network and hardware?
• Who will be the predominant supplier of software? Microsoft, Apple, Google, Open Source, or even you.
• Will users still require the same level of support and training?
• Will your organisation still exist as we currently know it? Bricks and mortar may no longer be required?

Future Scenarios

Looking back, to see forward

When rethinking the design of our organisations we must first understand why our organisations are as they are? Most importantly, we must understand how technology has developed in organisations over time and how history has taught us to manage that technology? Consider for one moment those technologies that signalled the start of the Industrial Revolution. The introduction of steam power and cotton spinning underpinned a dramatic increase in production capacity. Factories were able to reorganise the way they went about work through semi-automated work processes and production lines.

The Industrial Revolution brought about great economic and social changes, such as an improvement in health, education, and overall wealth, but the journey was far from easy. As with any technology-based innovation, the road is often uncomfortable and difficult. Many people were made redundant, as cottage businesses were no longer able to compete with the larger factories on output and price. The cottage entrepreneur could not meet the cost of the new production technology. Mills themselves required substantial investments from financial lenders and relied on efficient and effective processes coupled with sound management.

Control was inevitably built into the system - control of finances, control of processes, and control of people. Administrative offices and functions oiled the industrial machine. The administrative offices were, by and large, the bureaucracy of the organisation using a recognised technology of the time - the Pen and Paper. Forms, accounts, production schedules, and business payments connected the organisation and people. The very nature of paper asks that functions and people be located within the same location. Paper can only travel so far before it loses immediacy in communication. It demands a centralised structure, maintaining people, resource, and function within one factory or mill (The Organisation). It was, however, the most advanced model of organising work and people, and probably the only communication mechanism across a large organisation and workforce.

The Diminishing Firm

The factory or mill owned all the elements that made-up the means of production from powering their mills to moving materials to market. Their location suggests this, having positioned themselves next to waterways so that the power of the river could be harnessed for driving any number of cogs and mechanisms, and later used to supply the steam engines. Owning and managing this core means of production was widespread, but consider the world today. Does any organisation own or manufacturer its own energy? This does not make sense, unless the business is supporting itself through environmentally sound sources, such as solar panel technology. Power and electricity is now distributed freely across an advanced network, at a cost substantially cheaper than producing power within any one organisation.

Power was not the only feature that began to erode the classic image of the mill or the factory. Advanced production was also coupled with advances in transportation infrastructure such as the roads, canals, and railways that allowed goods to be transported with greater ease across the country and wider world. Improved infrastructure allowed supply chains to emerge so that each factory could begin to procure (at a lower cost) some of the means of productions such as natural resources or components of a finished product. Similarly, advances in telecommunication suggested that administrative functions could be located outside of the manufacturing facility, giving rise to the concept of the Head Office.

This trend suggests that firms can actually diminish over time. They develop a set of core competences and seek to procure services outside of the organisation. The decision is made when the costs of organising an extra transaction within the firm becomes equal to the costs of carrying out the same transaction by means of an exchange in the open market (2).

Many leading businesses today play this idea to optimum effect. Consider, for example Audi. Audi understand that their competences and value is situated predominantly in car design, sales, and financial services. It is not in their interest to employ and manage groups responsible for developing plastics, advanced car technologies such as Anti-locking Brake Systems (ABS), or even windscreen wipers or indicator lamps. Where complexity is involved, such as ABS, you are better procuring from best in class. Where components are perhaps in abundant supply, such as indicator lamps, then it is worth reviewing the marketplace for best in price.

However, there are often quite severe costs associated when entering into a transaction on the opening market. A business must think about the costs of searching for a suitable supplier, analyse product features, determine supply options, and negotiate contracts through to fulfilment. If those costs outweigh the potential savings of running the service internally then the firm is unlikely to diminish.

However, the emergence of the Internet, and in particular electronic marketplaces, has catalysed the trend of the diminishing firm. Technology now allows businesses to search, procure, and switch suppliers with relative ease and at low cost. eBay plays the role of electronic market maker in a consumer based setting. It allows individuals and entrepreneurial cottage businesses to sell products and items between each other. No rating is given to the relative size of the supplier, only that a price be negotiated and a delivery date agreed. This suggests that large organisations do not necessarily have to procure from large organisations. The web looks for islands of activity and flourishes through the marriage and divorce of links between those islands. But this philosophy must be balanced with the responsibilities of local government, so that we avail of the same effect, but also maintain the same checks and balances, including transparency and probity.

The Digital Revolution

Moore's Law is often cited amongst ICT professionals. Gordon Moore, a co-founder of Intel, made the astute observation that the number of transistors, per square inch, on integrated circuits had doubled every year since the integrated circuit was invented. This is a much simplified version of the model, and is often in used in different forms. For example, it is possible to inverse the statement and suggest that the price of technology will almost half every year. It some instances this is true, but overall the price of technology halves around once every 18 to 2 years, and the trend shows little sign of diminishing.

Those two views put forward can often confuse our impressions of Information Technology. Is technology advancing? Is it really getting any cheaper? Or are we paying more simply to keep up with advances? These might be the pragmatic questions asked by a Head of Service or your CE. They are demanding that new challenges be set for Information Technology investments so that we might draw more value out of our current and proposed infrastructures, and perhaps lower the financial burden on our local authorities. This is possibly the most interesting time to begin setting these new challenges as the 'Digital Revolution' follows a similar pattern to the 'Industrial Revolution'. Like the Industrial Revolution technology has been a huge force for good. Our organisations are far more efficient and effective than anything that came before it. Transaction costs are lowered, and we are more productive. Just think how your local high-street bank has changed. Through paper-based processes one transaction used to cost a bank up to £1. Through electronic means this can be as low as £0.01.

However, the cost of implementing large mainframes and complex server infrastrucures was substantial. It was not just the cost of the technology, but the overall cost of expertise, full-time support personnel, and specialist storage centres that sit alongisde. And like the Industrial Revolution, each organisation or local authority had to procure their own systems as technology had to be kept within close proximity of existing paper-based processes, so data could be fed into the system. Also, centralised services were unrealistic given the state of telecommunication infrastructures in the early 80's and 90's (much like canals, and railways grew up alongside). This in turn has led to over 400 authorities employing the same means of production - servers, support services, and storage facilities. The question now stands as to whether we should keep it this way.

According to 'The Diminishing Firm' we need to look at our current ICT infrastrcuture with a more analytical eye. It is now plausible to suggest that the cost of maintaining a service in-house might actually be more than locating it elsewhere. But, isn't this just outsourcing? Well, let's be cautious and think about the notion of the 'The Long Now'. Outsourcing has arguably not lived up to expectations. But what are the alternatives?

Taking a simple example for one moment, and one ICT system we all recognise - Email. Every authority will likely maintain their own email servers. Privacy and security suggested that it was better to operate your own system than to trust this to a third-party supplier. In the early days, email required expertise in order to install and maintain the exchanges. Arguably email systems now require continued maintenance and surveillance as demand shows no signs of diminishing. There may even be times when the email system falls over and the system is off-line for an extended period. In this sense, email is business critical, but it is equally a commodity item - we all need them, we all have them. Yahoo and Google Mail know this and they maintain millions of global users each day. They no longer restrict their email storage space, and in fact incrementally increase this every second of every day. We would be right, in many ways, to ask why one organisation must maintain its own email system and the costs associated with it. Can Google Mail do this more effectively than our own organisation? It could well be that Google mail is more secure and private than our own systems as they follow and develop the leading protection filters and security technologies. This is, after all, the best in class.

So, maybe we all move to something like Google mail? They maintain our alias - email@localauthority.co.uk, and the authority maintains a light contractual agreement. If this is unrealistic, perhaps we can think about procuring Google or Yahoo's email technologies and share these across a number of authorities, if not all 400. If it is possible to support millions of home users across the globe, then we can't be too many steps towards supporting one system across 400 or more local authorities, and imagine the cost savings that could be brought upon from just this simple example.

This scenario, however, does not unearth many of the practical implications that come about from such an undertaking, but perhaps we need to begin thinking about our local authorities ICT systems in this way. We need a critical eye that takes each ICT system situated within the organisation and, in turn, sets a mark next to each. A mark that determines its future trajectory. We could start with four possible markers:

Mark 1: This ICT system is best provided by the local authority in which it is maintained. This might include those systems that are business critical or requires delivery at a local level.

Mark 2: This ICT system could be shared, and maintained, across a number of local authorities within the same region. A CRM system could be procured on behalf of four or five local authorities, for example, and the expertise shared across those sites.

Mark 3: This ICT system could be shared nationally, possibly through a utility supplier. It is concerned with those commodity systems where only incremental changes are ever made. Email is one example. Payroll might be another.

Mark 4: This ICT system could be delivered by a third-party supplier or best-in-class provider. What ICT systems do you maintain that could be done better elsewhere? Again, this might be through an on-line 'utility.'

Mapping out the future of ICT in this way could lead to quite dramatic business savings, and perhaps, overall, a more secure and stable ICT system?

Control and Command

The very nature of expensive, large-scale ICT systems, has led IT service departments to concentrate their efforts on control of those very assets. They have been managed with both financial and operational constructs in mind. They require informed maintenance, due diligence, not to mention codes of use, and backup procedures. These controls are critical when managing big systems. Without them the system would suffer overload and possibly outside attack.

Big systems are with us today - Benefits systems, ERP etc, but will this always be the case? It is difficult to imagine what might replace those structures, but presumably 'something' will. Consider the BBC or SKY Television for one moment. The resources and technology that go into running a broadcasting operation are substantial. Technology is abundant from content libraries, to tape players, to digital servers, and even expensive studios. We also have the cost of television production - people, resources, and support services. Control structures piece this together so that the broadcaster can maintain maximum network up-time over the course of year. From a commercial point of view, a company like SKY Television cannot imagine a loss of signal during a crucial Premiership fixture. This could result in millions of lost advertisement revenue. Such pressures are equallled in government, if not more so.

However, another model has emerged that challenges the BBC's and SKY's paradigm of expensive, complex infrastructure to deliver broadcasting output. YouTube, and other similar online TV channels, have identified a niche in the market. They operate on people's access to low-cost production technologies and a low-cost deliver mechanism - The Web. Millions of users upload their own content to YouTube every day, and the audience generated is commanding ever larger advertising fees than their television counterparts. A $1.6 billion buy-out from Google suggests this. Serious numbers are involved, but the really interesting phenemenon is the switch from big systems thinking to emergent models.

It is not easy to draw paralles within the public sector. How can we move from big systems to emergent, bottom up systems? The answer is not clear but it does not negate the chance of a similar disruptive trend occuring within local government. Could local groups organise through the internet? Could local areas and issues attract many stakeholders to them (public, private, voluntary, elected, local community). If this happens, if we have lively, engaged internet forums competing for influence with traditional forums (e.g. committees), which shall win? Which shall win in 2020? TALK evidence (below) suggests that users themselves may be able to control and develop the systems they use, just as YouTube users generate the content they view. The Connected Cumbria Partnership, for instance, developed CRM software that enables the users themselves to design and implement the data screens, and input values as they see fit. This requires little or no intervention from the big system supplier. The CRM database is emergent. It is generated by the users themselves.

The Multi-staged Development Process and Open Source

There is a consensus amongst ICT professionals, practitioners, and academics that user-involvement is key to a successful IT implementation. There have been countless stories where a technology was implemented with little or no engagement from the users. Although this consensus exists, there is no wide-spread view as to how much users should be involved in the design and implementation process, or even how best to go about this? Given the context of 2020, we have no image of how involvement might play out over the next decade, assuming technology is easier to understand and non-technical users themselves are more knowledgeable about ICT capability.

User involvement must also be considered with respect to the high risks associated with a new technology development. New technologies are often creative ventures and invariably this leads to uncertainty, in particular, uncertainty of outcomes, uncertainty of costs, and uncertainty of user support. Perhaps, nobody knows. We must take a risk and try our best to make the new product a success.

A similar level of product uncertainty is evident with the creative industries. Imagine for one moment that have you started your own band, and maybe even produced your first album. A record company may even be interested and be willing to take in risk in launching your new CD to market. But, how do you know whether your new sound will rewarded through popular demand, positive media coverage, or artistic acclaim. How does the record company? Presumably, bands and other artists will manage the process. It might fail, but the aim is limit the amount of uncertainty.

'Jerry Springer the Opera' was seen as a radical departure from other management techniques that go towards diminishing demand uncertainty around creative products.

The Jerry Springer The Opera case study suggests four key lessons that could be applied within the multi-staged development process. These include:

1. Developing early interest/ audience,
2. Allowing for open audience interaction and feedback,
3. Ruthless script re-writing,
4. And the importance of managing success. We must not be afraid to scrap a project if it shows no potential.
   Surprising as the case may seem, it only takes a few small leaps to see how these lessons might be applied within Local Government. The model fits many areas of service development (e.g. leisure, education, childrens) but perhaps particularly the high uncertainty of new technology implementations. Open source is actually suited towards open interaction and feedback and could be considered with the context of the multi-stage development process. Open Source software can be freely updated and developed by anyone who downloads it with the caveat that any updates are fed back into the user community. In this way, software development can be undertaken quickly, cost effectively and by using the collective knowledge of all users.

TALK Evidence

New organisational designs, diminishing firms, multi-staged development, and open source are all interesting concepts, but where are these concepts being realised? The following sections present excerpts from TALK research across the group spaces. The evidence shown supports many of the conceptual designs put forward for 2020, but like any application of a vision the journey is far from easy.

Local Engagement

Questions

• Who governs?
• How do people engage?
• In what do they engage?
• Which decisions matter?
• What is the motivation?

Future Scenarios

Before facing up to 2020, it is useful to set out two scenarios for today. What is the status of our local political processes? How do questions of leadership and governance sit within them? How healthy is democracy in the United Kingdom today? These are widely debated questions.  Summarising, we can take the evidence and apply radically different interpretations to it.

The Alienation Scenario

People are disillusioned. They are sceptical or cynical of politicians. They are resentful of the political process. There is a lot of evidence for this. For example:

• They join political parties in ever fewer numbers.
• They turn up to public meetings in ever fewer numbers.
• They vote in ever fewer numbers.

Some interpret this to argue that this is the selfish generation that is incapable of collective action. They have no interest in the elegant art of compromise that for party-politics is a necessary pre-requisite and outcome. Equally, politicians have become more remote and less willing to engage directly in communities. They rely increasingly on skilled media manipulation and a sequestered cadre of senior leaders. Within this cocktail of pressures, the media itself becomes ever more intrusive and even dominant as it claims the cloak of public representation from a docile, sidelined populace.

The 'Moved on to Other Things' Scenario

People are generally ok. They are busy with their lives. Society as a whole is richer and more productive than it was. People have privileges like automotive transport, foreign travel and personal media. They have more to amuse them, and less to worry about than was ever envisaged in the 1950s or even the 1970s. Moreover, more people work than ever before. So, they are busier. Time is scarcer and they are more willing to let politics run itself. After all there are a number of well-understood consensus positions:

   1. Clean streets
   2. No crime
   3. Excellent education
   4. Excellent healthcare
   5. Lowest possible tax whilst achieving as much of 1,2,3 and 4 as is possible.  Several trade-off positions are possible here, hence this is where the party political divide usually sits.

Specialist groups are needed to represent minorities who do not enjoy the fortunes of the many, but the general majority are more content about the everyday order of things. There is a lot of evidence for this. For example:

• They join political parties in ever fewer numbers.
• They turn up to public meetings in ever fewer numbers.
• They vote in ever fewer numbers.

We know this to be the case. People have not disengaged, they have just moved on into their own lives, their own social networks, into Children in Need, the local hospice campaign, Live Aid/8, charity-giving, environmental concern etc.

What the Future Holds

These two scenarios interpret the same evidence in opposing ways. For example, in the first, declining party membership is taken as evidence of disengagement. In the second, it is evidence of contentment. Which of these two scenarios is more correct? That is for you to assess, but whichever scenario you tend to favour will dictate your understanding of what the future holds. Perhaps in the first scenario it is an evermore disconnected, dissatisfied public. In the second, there is an eventual realisation that it is ok for the public to not turn up to environmental services committee meetings when they are instead at home campaigning to save the whale, helping their children with their homework, or out dining in the local Thai restaurant with friends.

Essentially, it is guesswork and political theory that will eventually take us to a better understanding of the health of our democracy and its likely prognosis. However it is possible to engage in this contested area by focusing on two fundamentals of democracy itself. These are the importance of knowledge and control.

The sharing of knowledge about what is going on, and the opportunity of control are key to the health of the democratic corpus. There are many sources that testify to this including those from classical political theory and organisational theory. Even before the advent of the democratic state, society was concerned with its ability to share knowledge and provide opportunity for control. For example, the idea of subsidiarity, much contested in the debate over European integration, derives from a 13th Century moral principle that stealing another person's decisions is wrong.

Knowledge and control are important variables here because they can be greatly affected by technological reform. Take the issue of knowledge first: the history of ICT is replete with examples of its redistribution of knowledge. These are simple, indicative examples:

• People who know more about their medical conditions because of research done using the internet.
• Enterprise systems bringing immediate access to production statistics, financial performance and customer records in a factory. This allows both senior and junior members of staff to gain access to information that was previously managed by the middle tiers of the organisation.
• A bank that knows more about its customers' financial and personal profile than ever before, leading to concerns for personal privacy.

Across each of the examples of above the introduction of new technology redistributes knowledge and control in some or other pattern. The effective management of this redistribution, its cultivation, must be the most potent concern of all who seek greater engagement.

The Red Herrings of Big Brother and X-Factor

If it is true that knowledge and control are the important variables, then the act of voting is just one dimension of expression in a democracy. It is true that it is vital, obviously, but it remains only one of several dimensions. This means that those commentators who see the public's enthusiastic response to television shows like Big Brother and X-Factor, and then wish for similar, immediate voting mechanisms, are perhaps following a red-herring. The choice between contestants in a TV show might trigger passions, but it is not something of lasting consequence. So, if your favourite does not win Big Brother, does this 'defeat' reverberate down the weeks and months that follow? It is surely unlikely that it does. It is not the same as, say, failing to gain approval on a planning application, losing an appeal over a school place or having the level of local taxation changed.

Knowledge, Control, and Community.

A more mature response is perhaps to see local authorities as having responsibility for sharing knowledge about local knowledge and, alongside this, optimising control. At the moment, everything tends to be 'one size fits all' i.e. decisions get made through party political processes, committees and lobbying. In the future, some decisions may be made this way, but others may be pushed out to local groups, to individuals and to forums. Remember the principle of subsidiarity: "stealing other people's decisions is wrong."

All the time, as this vision develops, the authority tends to become less important as a decision maker, but more important as a knowledge provider and, yes, arbiter. Just as councils are becoming more skilled at sourcing services from various providers (large corporations, local builders, independent contractors, schools), the will become skilled in sourcing decisions from different forums (internet-based residents groups, local mums groups, wards, streets, whole-city consultations).

Sourcing decisions from dynamic forums! Sharing knowledge! Encouraging quality of debate! Stepping back! This is not the local council of today. It must be 2020.
 

TALK Evidence

Team Working

Questions

• Will local authorities always write long reports, follow minutes, and make decisions through committee based structures?
• Do organisational structures promote innovation and creativity?
• Are hierarchies and scientific principles really the most effective mode of management?
• Is society destined to work longer hours, at a more frantic press, under ever increasing stressful conditions?

Future Scenarios

2020 and Work

"We are clearly entering an age of uncertainty in organization structure. Technological developments such as the possibly bunched innovations in computerized intelligence systems seem poised to produce very different organizations that will certainly have unforeseen political effects." (Clegg 1981).

There is a growing consensus that the world is working harder than ever? This is a debatable point, but we are working longer hours, and dedicating more of our free time to thinking about work. We might even be connecting to work from home through broadband connections and laptops. This growing trend is somewhat confusing as the emergence of new technology, and in particular the Internet, promised to free us from the mundane tasks in life so that we could move into more creative spaces, or simply spend a greater amount of time with family and friends. In many ways this premonition has come to light. Remember the earlier quote from Shimon Peres, the Nobel Peace Prize winner and former prime minister of Israel - "The task of a human being is not to remember but create, imagine and discover. The Internet has liberated us from the great effort to remember things".

Yet, the Internet is, on the great scheme of time, still relatively young. Think back to the discussion about the Industrial Revolution where an abundance of machines and technologies were brought to bear, but this was over 100 years in the making. The Internet is arguably only 10 years old. But what does this mean, if anything, and has the Internet in fact contributed to an ever-greater workload? The straightforward answer is no. The Internet has had a dramatic effect on all our lives. We can hardly imagine what it would be like to communicate without email, or make arrangements without our mobile phones. We are dramatically more efficient, and far more effective, with Internet technology. We know more, we see more, we learn more.

However, the downside has been 'integration' with systems of old. We still maintain the concept of the committee meeting, the minutes, the form, and the report. These are the standards by which our organisations were set, but we are having to couple this with technology innovations, such as email, web feeds, word documents, and txt messages. We are, in essence, running two systems and this is potentially why we are working so much harder. We are doing two jobs.

Not only are we doing two jobs, but we are begin to loathe the former (the bureaucracy), but also beginning to ask bigger questions of the latter (the Internet). We can see this in our own organisations. How many times do you hear the following statements?

• "Emails are the bane of my existence"
• "How many reports have I written that have had no positive effect - is anybody reading them?"
• "Nothing ever happens at meetings"
• "I have little time to invest in all the knowledge currently out there."

Some of these statement refer to the old organisation, and others are citing frustrations with the Internet. We are, then, entering a crisis and we are looking for a more effective means of going about work. A style that obliterates the old forms, and then looks towards making the Internet more accessible and meaningful. Web 2.0 and Social Computing is being cited as a potential solution. A more mature response to the Internet and ultimately how we go about work. But what is social computing and Web 2.0?

Social Computing: A mature response to the Internet?

"Nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic." Karl Marx in (Tucker 1972).

Social Computing is far more than a technology fad. Social computing allows anyone with an Internet connection to release their own music, publish their own book, produce a movie, and lead their own environmental campaign. Hollywood pales into obscurity, record labels cease to exist, and organisational hierarchies begin to look dated at a time of great innovation. Each of us can become a movie producer, a journalist, author, critic, or even a musician. We can command an audience through social computing sites such as myspace, facebook, or flickr. A trend that was not possible even a few years ago. The Arctic Monkeys, a product of myspace, still refuse to attend award ceremonies as they develop music notoriety unknown to the present music industry structure. Rocket Boom an online TV channel broadcasts news items each day to a number of viewers around the world. Rocket Boom is not associated to any studio or TV company.

Within the public sector we might look to Tom Reynolds, a London paramedic, who writes eloquently about his life in the emergency services. His blog, Random Acts of Reality, was taken from the web and was recently published as a book - 'Blood, Sweat, and Tea". Tom, armed with a mobile phone and an Internet connection, portrays life at the coalface of public services. His stories are human first and foremost, but they are loaded with knowledge and expertise. Those moments that say - "Next time I'm in that position I will avoid x, y, or z". Imagine how valuable his blog entries are to a new recruit in his first year of service? One story could actually save a life. It is that powerful.

It also asks 'what is management information?', as Tom can move beyond case descriptions and into constructive and often challenging debates as to how the service is organised and ultimately delivered. They may not necessarily be right, but they certainly can't be ignored as they are manifested from first hand experience. A collection of these thoughts is surely richer than a line graph stating the number of calls reached in less than 10 minutes? It may not necessarily outweigh the contextual data, but it completes the picture and allows a management team to make more informed decisions and assess the impact of those decisions to the delivery of the service.

Tom Reynolds, is one story, but there are millions of others. The technology behind these innovations does not restrict entry. Blogs, and online profiles can be formed within minutes and anyone can do it. The trend is so dramatic that we are seeing a move away from the notion of one to many media, and the declining influence of celebrity. The effect is so far reaching that Time Magazine took a dramatic turn in their award for 'person of the year'.

In December each year Time Magazine names their person of the year as someone who has significantly impacted events of that particular year. Recently, they've named George W. Bush (2000, 2004), Jeffrey Bezos (Founder of Amazon.com) (1991) and Rudolph Giuliani (2001) as their choice, all of whom were notable nominees. Last year, 2006, was different. The Time Magazine Person of the Year for 2006 was YOU. Yes, you. As notable as the others are, you are even more remarkable.
 
Why did Time Magazine feel compelled to make you their person of the year? Because, in their words...
 

This trend is all-important, but what does it really mean? How can yet more noise in the system actually move us into more effective forms of organisation? One founding proposition begins to suggest why social computing and Web 2.0 is perhaps different to what has come before and that is the 'Wisdom of Crowds'.

The Wisdom of Crowds

James Surowiecki put a timely response forward in his book 'The Wisdom of Crowds'. The book suggests that the many are more expert than the expert, and points to many examples where this is shown to be the case. The opening story takes us to a country fair where the crowd were able to accurately guess the weight of an identified ox. When each of the individual guesses were averaged the weight was closer to the actual number than any of the weights put forward by the expert. Surowiecki presents many other strong anecdotes, but does offer a set of caveats where the crowd can make poor decisions and judgements, mostly when they are self-referencing the same idea due to some cultural or shared belief rather than displaying a breadth of opinion. These constructs are analysed to a degree, but the central tenant is strong.

This effect is manifesting in many places in the world of web 2.0 as a number of websites are asking for contributions from us all. Not just the few. Wikis are perhaps the most known of all the social computing technologies, demanding the collective use of our intelligence. A wiki page allows many authors to contribute to a dynamic and changing document, and not just a single author, otherwise known as the expert. The word wiki is derived from the Hawaiian term 'wiki-wiki' that means quickly. An idea can manifest itself very quickly as thousands of people contribute to the article.

Wiki based working could be seen as inherently chaotic. How many versions are in existence? And who takes overall control? Yet the system follows emergence theory, and it works. A simple set of rules allows something creative to emerge. Wikis have only one or two steps to create or contribute to a page, but it is the community itself that monitor inaccurate or inappropriate entries by selecting previous versions. Wikipedia, an online encyclopaedia, runs wiki technology and now possesses up to a billion separate pages from contributors across the globe. Wikipedia is now a trusted resource for many journalists, educators, and academics as Wikipedia's accuracy was recently tested against Encyclopaedia Britannica by Nature magazine, and Wikipedia came out level on nearly all tests, and even surpassed Britannica on others (Giles 2005).

Other sites follow the same principle - a simple set of rules that allows us all to contribute. YouTube and flickr have followed this to great effect. We all upload our own films and photographs and they are judged in the system. Those that are viewed, commented upon, and referenced will likely rise to the top. Content will emerge, and if James Surowiecki's theory is correct - quality will emerge. Consider for a moment the 'Most Interesting' photos on flickr. These pictures arguably compete, and in some cases are better than what we might find from the professional photographers - the expert.

These technologies are subtle, but they dramatically change how we organise our work, make connections, transfer knowledge, influence debate, and manage our professional identities. They move us far beyond the systems of old and even take us away from some of our early thinking and applications of the Internet. Consider how each of the following technologies might begin to change how we approach and organise our work.

Blogs: Blogs are a clear advance on email in that they allow us to capture and communicate our thoughts to the many, as opposed to the singular. There is still a very clear place for one to one communication, but it seems that our working days can be caught up in email when possibly two blog entries could communicate a message to a number of colleagues, associates, or project teams... and they can comment back. Evidence from the TALK projects suggests that busy projects or groups can often be caught in a circle of communications, emails, and presentations with outside authorities. This is an important task, but one blog could capture the story and be read by many. It allows knowledge to be transferred as a project is developed, and in the end allows for more meaningful conversations when the time is appropriate.

RSS Feeds: RSS is a simple response to the ever-growing sense of information overload. Each news page or blog site can be fed into a newsreader so that you can be sure you never miss an important announcement, particularly on those projects that are of direct relevance to you. RSS also ensures that an idea is kept with the original author. If you upload a thoughtful piece to the TALK pages your RSS feed will always cite your name.

Online Spaces/ Profiles: Online spaces place the human being in a context. They allow us to cite our beliefs and objectives when operating in the world of work. It allows us to form commonalities and relationships where they may not have existed before; knowledge is always transferred through people and conversations. They be just a gentle reminder as we approach a meeting with people we have only met on one occassion, but ultimately it expands our horizons to communicate with those tackling the same problem across all local authorities rather than relying on our immediate colleagues.

New Media: The written word has served us well, but it often fails to have the impact we would wish. Video and audio are becoming the new standard. If the written word fails to have an impact, perhaps these media types could serve us better. Watching a short video highlighting the problems of a local park that has fallen into disrepair is much more powerful and contextual than describing a park that has fallen into disrepair through words.

Wiki Technology: Wiki technology brings about true collaborative work. It is a gigantic step away from word-processing. Word processing asks that an initial version is constructed by one author, and then passed to the next co-author. With two or more co-authors, however, the process can become very complicated and is prone to version control errors. Wiki based systems take this problem away, and allow documents to have multiple authors at any one time. Reports can emerge from a groups input and direction, and we certainly diminish the pain of version control through electronic documents and email.

To learn more about the technologies and effects of Social Computing refer to the sister report - Social Computing... more Social than Computing.

Kicking it with the Kids

Many of these technologies are revolutionary. They are challenging. They ask us to be creative with our message, and how we deliver that message - the written word, a video, or audio. Yet, we must understand that the next generation of local authority applicant will be confident with these approaches. They will have new skills and new means by which to influence the organisation of government and place. The next generation of managers will have been brought up on Flickr, You Tube, and all the technology of Web 2.0. They are going to wonder why photographs are stored individually by different officers, they will question why reports are long and boring, they will ask why people sit in meeting after meeting, when in the time taken knowledge could have been shared amongst a whole team, and an initiative already launched.

Consider for one moment Anna Eagin, and the expertise she will have built up as we approach 2020. 

TALK Evidence

In Conclusion: Designing the Council of the Future

When we take a step back from the challenges of local government, and there are many, and consider some of our ideas for 2020, and couple these with the work of teams across all 410 authorities, it would not be too bold to say that is probably the most innovative and exciting sector in the world, would it? In our increasingly virtual, global and fast-paced world, perhaps the most exciting fact is that locality still matters. Arguably, it matters more than ever. And local government enjoys the greatest of challenges, from caring for an individual who has been involved in a road traffic accident, right through to administering large benefits systems, and providing an education and locality to inspire the next generation of global citizens.

But, this report has clearly suggested that the sector has the thought to move beyond the concepts and designs of old, and the real drive and determination to build an authority with a new image. The truth is not so much that we know what the future holds, but that we know we are invested with unsafe assumptions about it. We will have to give up a lot of what we consider important or precious today if we are to have things that are more important, more precious tomorrow. And to know what is important tomorrow, to know what we must divest, we need to learn new concepts, new language:  emergence, orchestration, personalisation, choice, the concept of the diminishing firm, efficiency.

However, whatever is said, the one thing that is shared amongst all the cases in this report, including Oldham Social Services, The Connected Cumbria Partnership, Leeds Digital Pen and Paper, and countless others, is 'people'. People with ambitions and dreams to make the lives of others better. The life of a local citizen, a community, or a council worker themselves. Each story, or innovation presented here, has been marked by a group's tenacity to deliver. All of them agree that the road is never easy. It is fraught with danger. There may be arguments. There may be tears, but the goal is too important to get wrong.

So in looking for a design for 2020, look around. Talk to people. Talk to projects. Use TALK. It is your window to other networks. Other conversations, and ideas that have not yet been thought of.  All we ask is that you share them and make this report the first version of many.

References

1. http://www.longnow.org/about/
2. Coase, R.H. The nature of the firm.  Economica n.s. 4.386-405 (Nov 1937).
3. Dempster, A.M. (2006) Managing Uncertainty in Creative Industries: Lessons from Jerry Springer the Opera. Creativity and Innovation Management, 15(3), 224-234
4. Clegg, S. "Organization and Control," Administrative Science Quarterly (Vol. 25:No. 4) 1981, pp 545-562.
5. Tucker, R.C. The Marx-Engels Reader Norton, New York, 1972.