Top Down Or Bottom Up?

Prima facie, Enterprise 2.0 and Presence software require a supportive culture. Their adoption is therefore top-down dependent. However, their potential to sustain adoption makes them bottom-up friendly. In contrast, the Science induces its own culture. Hence, once it is introduced by the management, its spread is bottom-up.

The question has overtones. It also addresses the Jeffersonian belief that no human being is fit to wield power over others. This has proved itself often enough in the corporate and world stage yet the reality is that organization performance depends on top-down management power. Drucker sought to liberate employees with Management By Objectives, which still underpins most management practices. It enables subordinates to work with autonomy and "self-control" rather than as pawns manipulated from above.

The operational question then becomes: Do the 2.0 avatars enable autonomy and self-control? They could if they were to foster communities of practice but they securely belong to the paradigm that ‘IT is a tool’, viz., they cannot assure a practice within the community. The tools have the potential to nurture ‘freedom’ but the fact is they do not.

The science delivers an architecture that is bottom up in adoption as well as in its creation of communities of practice. Yet, it respects the importance of management power by creating a reliable mechanism to spread the influence of leadership.