Connecting the Unconnected

I had previously only associated Charles Reigeluth with instructional theory, but as I discovered, he has written extensively on the need for systemic change in education. In The Imperative for Systemic Change he lists the major differences between the industrial-age and the information-age that affect education:

Industrial-age	Information-age
Mass production	Customization
Adversarial relationships	Cooperative relationships
Bureaucratic organization	Team organization
Autocratic leadership	Shared leadership
Centralized control	Autonomy with accountability
Uniformity	Diversity
Autocracy	Democracy
Representative democracy	Participative democracy
Compliance	Initiative
One-way communications	Networking
Compartmentalization	Holism
(Division of Labor)	(Integration of tasks)

I have found this list useful in identifying themes and making connections between several links circulating in the blogosphere recently:

Thomas Malone talking on decentralisation suggests the reduced cost of communication and ubiquity of information ensures employees are well-enough informed to "make decisions without waiting for someone above them to tell them what to do." The benefits of this shared decision-making are that employees are "…more motivated, creative, flexible, and often just plain like it better."

Marc Prenksy gives examples of just this sort of democratic decision-making when he speculates that "…the end of command-and-control management may finally be here" and observes that digital natives "don't need to adapt to fit into the agile, flat, team-based organizations older [digital immigrant] executives are striving to design."

Valdis Krebs writes about the importance of recognising the value of networks in managing an organisation's knowledge: "For the HR department it is no longer sufficient to just 'hire the best'. You must hire and wire! Start new networks, help employees and teams connect—connect the unconnected!"