THE FUTURE OF MONEY Bernard A. Lietaer - library.uniteddiversity ...

we do all the right things we will move up through the ranks until
retirement. But this whole idea has already become as obsolete as the
dodo.
For the past three decades businesses have invested billions of
dollars in information-processing equipment. The rate of growth of
such investments has been higher than any technology in history. For
instance, the share of Information Technology investments in US
firms has jumped from 7% of total investments in 1970 to 40% in
1996. Add the billions of dollars spent on software, and the amount
spent on Information Technology, annually, now exceeds
investments in all other production equipment combined.
To understand the true scale of this, one needs to multiply this
extraordinary increase in dollar investments by the even more
remarkable drop in unit cost. Computer processing costs have
continued to drop by 30% per year for the past two decades and all
experts agree this will continue for at least another decade or two.
Initially repetitive tasks were computerised in one area after
another of the corporation. However, all computer applications were
really being built around the existing organisational structure and
management procedures. One day someone thought to reverse the
process by asking the simple question: 'how should we organise
ourselves to best take advantage of the available information
technologies.
Re-engineering was born. So were 'strategic layoffs'. In all fairness,
such layoffs were not the intent of the original re- engineering
inventors. One of the earlier pioneers was Thomas Davenport,
research VP at CSC Index (the 'home' of re-engineering). In an article
in First Company, Davenport reported that: 'Re-engineering did not
start out as a code word for mindless corporate bloodletting. It wasn't
supposed to be the last gasp of Industrial Age management. I know