John Verdon - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by John Verdon

Research paper thumbnail of Toward an Epistemology of Gender

McGill-Queen's University Press eBooks, Mar 15, 1997

Research paper thumbnail of Change in Conditions of Change - A Foresight Analysis

Research paper thumbnail of Senior Strategic Human Resources Analyst / Defence Scientist

The paradigm of the last mile is most significant in its embrace of complexity, self-organization... more The paradigm of the last mile is most significant in its embrace of complexity, self-organization and achieving ends without direct control. Network technologies, architectures of participation and peer-production challenge traditional approaches to control but enable organizations to harness new and emergent capabilities including: • Engagement: by pursuing (work-related) interests that workers are passionate about • Continuity of effort beyond the boundaries of particular job • Extended Specialization: beyond the limits of the occupational structure • Increasing productivity • A deep culture of collaboration

Research paper thumbnail of Introducing Peer Production into the Department of National Defense

Research paper thumbnail of The Wealth of People - Collaboration and Knowledge Governance - A Strategic Discussion Paper

The paper examines the implications of hyper-connectivity associated with social media and argues... more The paper examines the implications of hyper-connectivity associated with social media and argues that the purpose of traditional organizational architecture aimed at minimizing 'transaction costs' must be re-evaluated. The traditional approach to organization human/collective efforts may now impose higher transactions cost than other structures mediated through digital networks. However, emerging digital environment and social media capabilities represent new modes of production that proliferate architectures of participation. To harness related capabilities organizational architectures will soon require new sets of rules-institutional, and governance frameworks based on the unprecedented collapse of traditional costs associated with search, transaction, communication and coordination of any large collective and collaborative efforts of people and organizations. Institutional innovation is needed in order to harness the cost savings made possible by new modes of production. The wicked problem for organizations is the challenge of developing an internal space for richer, more agile cloud-labor and talent-commons providing 'just-in-time' group-forming and peer collaboration within and between organizations. This would increase the capability to search a larger solution space, enable knowledge to flow and increase human and social capital and trust. These critical factors set the conditions for current and future operational agility. The concept of hyperspecialization relates to a type of 'cloud-labour' approach or what has been called social computing. The ability to harness agile self-organized social computing will require some institutional innovation related to collaboration and knowledge governance. The paper will conclude with a discussion of what a governance framework should provide in order to create a much richer ecosystem of talent and abilities that can be recombined in agile responsive ways to enable organizational, institutional, social, scientific and technological innovation enabling better flows and use of people's knowledge.

Research paper thumbnail of Stewarding Engagement, Harnessing Knowledge: Lessons Learned from the Future, Keeping the Future in Reserves

Journal of Military and Strategic Studies, 2010

Research paper thumbnail of How Network Technologies, Architectures of Participation and Peer Production Transform the Design of Work and Labour

The paradigm of the last mile is most significant in its embrace of complexity, self-organization... more The paradigm of the last mile is most significant in its embrace of complexity, self-organization and achieving ends without direct control. Network technologies, architectures of participation and peer-production challenge traditional approaches to control but enable organizations to harness new and emergent capabilities including: • Engagement: by pursuing (work-related) interests that workers are passionate about • Continuity of effort beyond the boundaries of particular job • Extended Specialization: beyond the limits of the occupational structure • Increasing productivity • A deep culture of collaboration

Research paper thumbnail of The Wealth of People – Collaboration and Knowledge Governance – A Strategic Discussion Paper: How the Digital Environment Re-Frames the Future of Knowledge and Work – From Knowledge Management to Social Computing

The paper examines the implications of hyper-connectivity associated with social media and argues... more The paper examines the implications of hyper-connectivity associated with social media and argues that the purpose of traditional organizational architecture aimed at minimizing 'transaction costs' must be re-evaluated. The traditional approach to organization human/collective efforts may now impose higher transactions cost than other structures mediated through digital networks. However, emerging digital environment and social media capabilities represent new modes of production that proliferate architectures of participation. To harness related capabilities organizational architectures will soon require new sets of rules -institutional, and governance frameworks based on the unprecedented collapse of traditional costs associated with search, transaction, communication and coordination of any large collective and collaborative efforts of people and organizations. Institutional innovation is needed in order to harness the cost savings made possible by new modes of production.

Research paper thumbnail of Collaboration and Knowledge Governance: How the Digital Environment Re-Frames the Future of Knowledge Work, Enables Social Computing and A Shift from Management to Governance

of the team to stay determined and motivated, to find new ways to accomplish their goal as the si... more of the team to stay determined and motivated, to find new ways to accomplish their goal as the situation changes, to switch to new goals if that's what's called for, to be resilient as members of the team are injured or taken up with other tasks. For Burgess, these are desirable characteristics of a team, not of any one individual. Leadership for Burgess is distributed throughout the team, so that leadership becomes a property of a unit the way robustness is a property of an organism. 1 David Weinberger (2012, p.161-2) We are in the midst of an exponential evolution in communication technologies that are forming a digital environment. This environment will make conversation and collaboration much more dominant in how we generate, discover, capture, analyze, distil, exapt, validate and apply knowledge and how we should structure the work environment. This environment is making an abundance of resources and relationships easily accessible which challenges our concepts of learn...

Research paper thumbnail of Stewarding Engagement, Harnessing Knowledge: Lessons Learned from the Future, Keeping the Future in Reserves

Journal of Military and Strategic Studies, 2010

Research paper thumbnail of How Network Technologies, Architectures of Participation and Peer Production Transform the Design of Work and Labour

The paradigm of the last mile is most significant in its embrace of complexity, self-organization... more The paradigm of the last mile is most significant in its embrace of complexity, self-organization and achieving ends without direct control. Network technologies, architectures of participation and peer-production challenge traditional approaches to control but enable organizations to harness new and emergent capabilities including: • Engagement: by pursuing (work-related) interests that workers are passionate about • Continuity of effort beyond the boundaries of particular job • Extended Specialization: beyond the limits of the occupational structure • Increasing productivity • A deep culture of collaboration

Research paper thumbnail of Plenary speakers and invited tutorial speakers

2012 IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence for Security and Defence Applications, 2012

Research paper thumbnail of Stewarding Engagement, Harnessing Knowledge: Keeping the Future in Reserves

Journal of Military and Strategic Studies, Jan 1, 2010

Research paper thumbnail of The Last Mile of the Market

innovation.cc

The paradigm of the last mile is most significant in its embrace of complexity, self-organization... more The paradigm of the last mile is most significant in its embrace of complexity, self-organization and achieving ends without direct control. Network technologies, architectures of participation and peer-production challenge traditional approaches to control but enable organizations to harness new and emergent capabilities including:

Research paper thumbnail of DSHRC Research Note 2/2000-Development of HR 2020: A Review of External Driving Factors

Research paper thumbnail of Concepts Toward a Theory of Human Network-Enabled Operations Directorate of Strategic Human Resources, Research Note, 02-2005

Research paper thumbnail of Scenario-based Strategic Planning: Integrating Strategic Planning and Decision-Making

Director of Strategic Human Resources Research Note …, Jan 1, 2000

Research paper thumbnail of Understanding the Impact of Network Technologies on the Design of Work–Social and Peer Production

Director General Military Personnel Strategy …, Jan 1, 2007

Research paper thumbnail of Organizational transformation in the digital economy

… Informatics, 2009. INDIN 2009. 7th IEEE …, Jan 1, 2009

This work sets the vision for organizational transformation that will secure competitive advantag... more This work sets the vision for organizational transformation that will secure competitive advantage in the digital economy, as the border between societymarketorganization becomes more permeated to facilitate new types of assemblages of "meshworks" within and across organizational boundaries. We argue that network technologies are feeding the emergence of architectures of participation, protocols of collaboration and the development of new concepts of how work can be accomplishednotably responsible autonomy and peerproduction. The concept of eNetworked ecosystem is used as metaphor for the need to embed responsible autonomy within the organizational structure via a new type of personnel platform and space for non-hierarchical (impersonal) exchange and collaboration which mirrors "the invisible hand" of Adam Smith. Assuming that the transparency of the digital environment will provide for dramatic and ubiquitous accountability of action we consider the parallel with the transparency of "good enough" information carried by the price mechanism that allows people to respond to price through the "invisible hand" of the market. We show how the melting of traditional constraints (e.g. geographical, transactions costs, coordination, job as identity, knowledge scarcity, etc.) makes room to a revolution in all social and political institutional frameworks via the integration of responsible autonomy within a more complex organizational architecture. This new mode of production capitalizes on the transparency inherent in the digital environment to set the conditions for responsible autonomy as foundation for a broader and more equal market for many more people to exchange anything, with anyone, anytime thus generating a ubiquitous expectation that the right individual (customer, employee) can connect to the right situation (product, job) at the right time. We conclude that the simple capacity to do more enabled by the transparency of the trusted situational awareness that allows decentralized action to be incorporated with agility of response through more relaxed organizational policies -will continue to be a force of change fuelled by the "organizational survival" drive to adapt and thrive in the complex and turbulent operational environment of the 21 st Century economic reality.

Research paper thumbnail of IT-Revolutions in the industry: From the command economy to the enetworked industrial ecosystem

… Informatics, 2008. INDIN 2008. 6th IEEE …, Jan 1, 2008

This paper explores the transition from the command & control (C2) structure and culture of the t... more This paper explores the transition from the command & control (C2) structure and culture of the traditional hierarchy -as backbone of last Century's Industrial Revolution -towards the eNetworked Industrial Ecosystem -as backbone for this Century's on-going IT-Revolution. Socio-cultural and economic contextual variables that may help or hinder the implementation of a heterarchical organization driven by responsible autonomy, are analyzed underlining the paradox hidden in the 'emergent' nature of an eNetworked organization. We illustrate how, within the classical 'top-down' managerial approach, the very power of initiative that can leverage 'bottom-up' clustering of resources to address dynamic organizational goals is hindered to conclude that a deep culture of trust and collaboration can unleash this power enabling the untapped 'mystery' of complexity to be used as a competitive advantage.

Research paper thumbnail of Toward an Epistemology of Gender

McGill-Queen's University Press eBooks, Mar 15, 1997

Research paper thumbnail of Change in Conditions of Change - A Foresight Analysis

Research paper thumbnail of Senior Strategic Human Resources Analyst / Defence Scientist

The paradigm of the last mile is most significant in its embrace of complexity, self-organization... more The paradigm of the last mile is most significant in its embrace of complexity, self-organization and achieving ends without direct control. Network technologies, architectures of participation and peer-production challenge traditional approaches to control but enable organizations to harness new and emergent capabilities including: • Engagement: by pursuing (work-related) interests that workers are passionate about • Continuity of effort beyond the boundaries of particular job • Extended Specialization: beyond the limits of the occupational structure • Increasing productivity • A deep culture of collaboration

Research paper thumbnail of Introducing Peer Production into the Department of National Defense

Research paper thumbnail of The Wealth of People - Collaboration and Knowledge Governance - A Strategic Discussion Paper

The paper examines the implications of hyper-connectivity associated with social media and argues... more The paper examines the implications of hyper-connectivity associated with social media and argues that the purpose of traditional organizational architecture aimed at minimizing 'transaction costs' must be re-evaluated. The traditional approach to organization human/collective efforts may now impose higher transactions cost than other structures mediated through digital networks. However, emerging digital environment and social media capabilities represent new modes of production that proliferate architectures of participation. To harness related capabilities organizational architectures will soon require new sets of rules-institutional, and governance frameworks based on the unprecedented collapse of traditional costs associated with search, transaction, communication and coordination of any large collective and collaborative efforts of people and organizations. Institutional innovation is needed in order to harness the cost savings made possible by new modes of production. The wicked problem for organizations is the challenge of developing an internal space for richer, more agile cloud-labor and talent-commons providing 'just-in-time' group-forming and peer collaboration within and between organizations. This would increase the capability to search a larger solution space, enable knowledge to flow and increase human and social capital and trust. These critical factors set the conditions for current and future operational agility. The concept of hyperspecialization relates to a type of 'cloud-labour' approach or what has been called social computing. The ability to harness agile self-organized social computing will require some institutional innovation related to collaboration and knowledge governance. The paper will conclude with a discussion of what a governance framework should provide in order to create a much richer ecosystem of talent and abilities that can be recombined in agile responsive ways to enable organizational, institutional, social, scientific and technological innovation enabling better flows and use of people's knowledge.

Research paper thumbnail of Stewarding Engagement, Harnessing Knowledge: Lessons Learned from the Future, Keeping the Future in Reserves

Journal of Military and Strategic Studies, 2010

Research paper thumbnail of How Network Technologies, Architectures of Participation and Peer Production Transform the Design of Work and Labour

The paradigm of the last mile is most significant in its embrace of complexity, self-organization... more The paradigm of the last mile is most significant in its embrace of complexity, self-organization and achieving ends without direct control. Network technologies, architectures of participation and peer-production challenge traditional approaches to control but enable organizations to harness new and emergent capabilities including: • Engagement: by pursuing (work-related) interests that workers are passionate about • Continuity of effort beyond the boundaries of particular job • Extended Specialization: beyond the limits of the occupational structure • Increasing productivity • A deep culture of collaboration

Research paper thumbnail of The Wealth of People – Collaboration and Knowledge Governance – A Strategic Discussion Paper: How the Digital Environment Re-Frames the Future of Knowledge and Work – From Knowledge Management to Social Computing

The paper examines the implications of hyper-connectivity associated with social media and argues... more The paper examines the implications of hyper-connectivity associated with social media and argues that the purpose of traditional organizational architecture aimed at minimizing 'transaction costs' must be re-evaluated. The traditional approach to organization human/collective efforts may now impose higher transactions cost than other structures mediated through digital networks. However, emerging digital environment and social media capabilities represent new modes of production that proliferate architectures of participation. To harness related capabilities organizational architectures will soon require new sets of rules -institutional, and governance frameworks based on the unprecedented collapse of traditional costs associated with search, transaction, communication and coordination of any large collective and collaborative efforts of people and organizations. Institutional innovation is needed in order to harness the cost savings made possible by new modes of production.

Research paper thumbnail of Collaboration and Knowledge Governance: How the Digital Environment Re-Frames the Future of Knowledge Work, Enables Social Computing and A Shift from Management to Governance

of the team to stay determined and motivated, to find new ways to accomplish their goal as the si... more of the team to stay determined and motivated, to find new ways to accomplish their goal as the situation changes, to switch to new goals if that's what's called for, to be resilient as members of the team are injured or taken up with other tasks. For Burgess, these are desirable characteristics of a team, not of any one individual. Leadership for Burgess is distributed throughout the team, so that leadership becomes a property of a unit the way robustness is a property of an organism. 1 David Weinberger (2012, p.161-2) We are in the midst of an exponential evolution in communication technologies that are forming a digital environment. This environment will make conversation and collaboration much more dominant in how we generate, discover, capture, analyze, distil, exapt, validate and apply knowledge and how we should structure the work environment. This environment is making an abundance of resources and relationships easily accessible which challenges our concepts of learn...

Research paper thumbnail of Stewarding Engagement, Harnessing Knowledge: Lessons Learned from the Future, Keeping the Future in Reserves

Journal of Military and Strategic Studies, 2010

Research paper thumbnail of How Network Technologies, Architectures of Participation and Peer Production Transform the Design of Work and Labour

The paradigm of the last mile is most significant in its embrace of complexity, self-organization... more The paradigm of the last mile is most significant in its embrace of complexity, self-organization and achieving ends without direct control. Network technologies, architectures of participation and peer-production challenge traditional approaches to control but enable organizations to harness new and emergent capabilities including: • Engagement: by pursuing (work-related) interests that workers are passionate about • Continuity of effort beyond the boundaries of particular job • Extended Specialization: beyond the limits of the occupational structure • Increasing productivity • A deep culture of collaboration

Research paper thumbnail of Plenary speakers and invited tutorial speakers

2012 IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence for Security and Defence Applications, 2012

Research paper thumbnail of Stewarding Engagement, Harnessing Knowledge: Keeping the Future in Reserves

Journal of Military and Strategic Studies, Jan 1, 2010

Research paper thumbnail of The Last Mile of the Market

innovation.cc

The paradigm of the last mile is most significant in its embrace of complexity, self-organization... more The paradigm of the last mile is most significant in its embrace of complexity, self-organization and achieving ends without direct control. Network technologies, architectures of participation and peer-production challenge traditional approaches to control but enable organizations to harness new and emergent capabilities including:

Research paper thumbnail of DSHRC Research Note 2/2000-Development of HR 2020: A Review of External Driving Factors

Research paper thumbnail of Concepts Toward a Theory of Human Network-Enabled Operations Directorate of Strategic Human Resources, Research Note, 02-2005

Research paper thumbnail of Scenario-based Strategic Planning: Integrating Strategic Planning and Decision-Making

Director of Strategic Human Resources Research Note …, Jan 1, 2000

Research paper thumbnail of Understanding the Impact of Network Technologies on the Design of Work–Social and Peer Production

Director General Military Personnel Strategy …, Jan 1, 2007

Research paper thumbnail of Organizational transformation in the digital economy

… Informatics, 2009. INDIN 2009. 7th IEEE …, Jan 1, 2009

This work sets the vision for organizational transformation that will secure competitive advantag... more This work sets the vision for organizational transformation that will secure competitive advantage in the digital economy, as the border between societymarketorganization becomes more permeated to facilitate new types of assemblages of "meshworks" within and across organizational boundaries. We argue that network technologies are feeding the emergence of architectures of participation, protocols of collaboration and the development of new concepts of how work can be accomplishednotably responsible autonomy and peerproduction. The concept of eNetworked ecosystem is used as metaphor for the need to embed responsible autonomy within the organizational structure via a new type of personnel platform and space for non-hierarchical (impersonal) exchange and collaboration which mirrors "the invisible hand" of Adam Smith. Assuming that the transparency of the digital environment will provide for dramatic and ubiquitous accountability of action we consider the parallel with the transparency of "good enough" information carried by the price mechanism that allows people to respond to price through the "invisible hand" of the market. We show how the melting of traditional constraints (e.g. geographical, transactions costs, coordination, job as identity, knowledge scarcity, etc.) makes room to a revolution in all social and political institutional frameworks via the integration of responsible autonomy within a more complex organizational architecture. This new mode of production capitalizes on the transparency inherent in the digital environment to set the conditions for responsible autonomy as foundation for a broader and more equal market for many more people to exchange anything, with anyone, anytime thus generating a ubiquitous expectation that the right individual (customer, employee) can connect to the right situation (product, job) at the right time. We conclude that the simple capacity to do more enabled by the transparency of the trusted situational awareness that allows decentralized action to be incorporated with agility of response through more relaxed organizational policies -will continue to be a force of change fuelled by the "organizational survival" drive to adapt and thrive in the complex and turbulent operational environment of the 21 st Century economic reality.

Research paper thumbnail of IT-Revolutions in the industry: From the command economy to the enetworked industrial ecosystem

… Informatics, 2008. INDIN 2008. 6th IEEE …, Jan 1, 2008

This paper explores the transition from the command & control (C2) structure and culture of the t... more This paper explores the transition from the command & control (C2) structure and culture of the traditional hierarchy -as backbone of last Century's Industrial Revolution -towards the eNetworked Industrial Ecosystem -as backbone for this Century's on-going IT-Revolution. Socio-cultural and economic contextual variables that may help or hinder the implementation of a heterarchical organization driven by responsible autonomy, are analyzed underlining the paradox hidden in the 'emergent' nature of an eNetworked organization. We illustrate how, within the classical 'top-down' managerial approach, the very power of initiative that can leverage 'bottom-up' clustering of resources to address dynamic organizational goals is hindered to conclude that a deep culture of trust and collaboration can unleash this power enabling the untapped 'mystery' of complexity to be used as a competitive advantage.