A research project (1996-98) aimed at producing knowledge that can be useful to Norwegian businesses in their choices of solutions for future organization of work.

Funded by Telenor and run by Telenor R&D Tromsø.

Introduction

Observing the increasing turbulence in the marketplace characterized by factors like deregulation, sharpened competition, global markets and new technology, the project has addressed the emergence of new types of organizations as a response to an increasingly competitive business environment.

The NETTO project has sought to fulfil its objective through studies of businesses' inner life, organization and co-operation with others, and further of how networked-based information technology solutions and modern telecommunications can facilitate for new/alternative work arrangements.

Overall questions

Over the course of the project, it has addressed a number of questions, including:

We believe that information systems contribute to the increased pressure on today’s organization, that they enable new organizational forms, and finally, that they have the capabilities to help organizations cope with the identified challenges. In the later parts of this project we have primarily concentrated on challenges tied to management, coordination, collaboration, and; organizational learning and knowledge management.

Approach

Activities conducted by the project include studies of existing literature, surveys of trends in how organizational changes are being wrought by information and communication technologies, case studies of the implementation and use of collaborative technologies in distributed organizations, case studies of knowledge creation and management in a networked organization, longitudinal field studies of collaborative technology use in small groups with introduction of deliberate changes (action research), and prototyping and piloting of advanced collaborative technologies.

In addition, being a project with members geographically dispersed, we have had the opportunity of relating findings made in external cases with the experiences we have gained ourselves from using collaborative technologies in day-to-day work over a three year period.

Results

We have conducted lots of activities on a number of problem areas, see (Akselsen, et al. 1997) for an overview of the project. Our confidence has grown in some brief answers to the overall questions, i.e. that tomorrows organizations will be network-based (both technological and social) and that the main force that lead to restructuring is the need for flexibility (both numerical and functional). Further, we have to some extent documented that the challenges related to management, coordination, collaboration and, organizational memory and learning can be meet by ICTs - to some degree and, under certain circumstances. Our knowledge on implementing this kind of ICTs has also been broadened.

We argue that this project has given some deeper insight into problems that to a limited extent has been documented in previous research and, that it provides a good starting point for further studies. In addition, we believe that some of our results are applicable as a basis for planning and implementation of network-based work arrangements in organizations that are currently in a restructuring process.

A more detailed description of results and suggestions for further work is available.

The project has produced a number of deliverables dealing with the overall and more specific questions of which most are available for download. In addition, as part of the reporting of results, the project organized a seminar in co-operation with the IA/TsT project at Telenor FoU. Tromsø. This seminar was entitled Avansert samhandlings- og agentteknologi – grunnlag for et brukervennlig informasjonssamfunn? (Advanced collaboration- and agent- technologies - a basis for a user-friendly information society) and it was held in Tromsø, 3-4 December 1998.

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