Can Social Media Help Big Organizations Act Small?

Watching the movie Michael Clayton on Friday night got me to thinking about how large and powerful groups like corporations and governments work. These organizations are structured around sets of ideas that are codified into policies, vision and mission statements, constitutions and the like. But invariably it’s a slow process to change these to match changing social priorities, economic conditions, etc. And sometimes, as in the movie, policies can cause organizational decision makers to take actions that would clearly otherwise be considered immortal, because that’s what the inflexible organizational goals demand.

I think many of the problems stem from the fact that the adversarial standards of our political and legal systems have come to define so much of our interaction in large groups. You’re either in power or you’re out; you’ve either won your lawsuit or you’ve lost. In many theories of small group interaction, voting on an idea is considered a last resort when a shared understanding can’t be reached through discussion. Traditionally of course the problem is that shared understanding within a large group is nearly impossible to achieve, since people are separated by time, space, language, etc. That’s where social media comes into play.

Recently I wrote about “sociosemantics”, the concept of using the social interaction with information to help classify that information. The specific example I used was how the site last.fm uses the information about what music I listen to as a way of determining other music I might like by looking at people with similar tastes. But I believe that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Here’s an example: Could socisemantic concepts and social network interactions be used to determine budget allocation for local transportation? In my neighbourhood in east Toronto, there is a mix of people who drive to work, people who take buses, people who take commuter trains and people who work at home. What if there was a way to determine how many people are doing what at what time, in real time? Social network profiles could be tied to measuring thing the things people already do. The technology exists – GPS systems, scanning of transit passes or tickets that could be tied to particular profiles, etc. Tying it all together and addressing concerns like privacy would be tough nuts to crack, but not impossible. Once the neighbourhood was being profiled, the information could be used to determine how monies assigned to transit should be allocated – do we need more buses on a particular route, do we need to fix the pot holes on one street more than another because 70% more people on that street drive to work, etc.

The best part of this is that people within a local social network would be able to see much more easily what things were happening where, and why their tax dollars were being spent in a particular why. ‘Oh, I didn’t know so many people were taking the bus from XYZ Street, it makes sense that they should get more buses.” People could quickly comment, share information, and further impact priorities through their online and offline actions. Could we use a carpool lane? Let’s form a group within the social network of people interested in carpooling. If we start doing it, that actions would be measured, and policy could be set and budget could be allocated to further encourage that behaviour.

This is just one example. I believe there is potential for these kinds of concepts to be used in the governance of all kind of large organizations.

The evolution from using social networks to help figure out what your next favourite song will be to helping govern your community or run your corporation would certainly not be a quick or painless one, but it is certainly something I for one would love to see!

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