DECODE BLOG

There is a great paradigm shift in the midst of happening that is leading us to a very a very decentralized society, where the roles of hierachy and authority are being disolved in the creation of a flatter organizational structure for the society at large.

The economics of information is particularily relevant in helping to explain some of the variables in play.

Where there are two parties (i.e. buyers and sellers) who are attempting to conduct an exchange of some sorts which entials goods or services, there is a natural phenomenon of “assymetric information“.

Essentially what this means is that the two parties are not equally well informed about the characteristics of the product/service in question.

One of the key variables that helps faciliate the transaction is “trust”. For example, in order for you to confide in your doctor about your particular illness you need to place your trust in a variety of things. The expertise of the doctor to know how to properly diagnose you or the trust placed in the confidentiality of the exchange.

It is important to note that some services like that of a doctor or virtually any other professional are dependant on “assymmetric information”. Because the transaction itself is based on the fact that the supplier knows more than a buyer.

Another relevant example might be that the reason an employee respects the authority of a manager is because the manager is more experienced and hense has a great deal of expertise or information if you will regarding the particular area of work.

So let’s look at the trends that seem very overt in today’s workplace and marketplace.

Consumers no longer trust the producers after years of marketing and advertising taking on the effect or eroding the necessary “trust” that facilitates the transactions.

Gen. Y employees no longer feel inferior to their superiors and have little tolerance for an authoritative genstures that suggests the use of position or coersion.  Gen. Y feels they know enough to start their own venture and are willing to put off the corporate world all together for it’s inherent authoritiave heirachal structure.

So, one of the key questions to ask is why are such trends taking place?

The dissemination of information is one variable to requires attention. With the adoption of the Internet, there is a general upsurge in the leveling of the playing field upon which consumer and producer, or employee and employer might once have engaged in.

“Asymmetric Information” is leaning more and more towards “Symmetric Information” where the consumer feels s/he knows just as much as the producer, or the employeer feels s/he knows just as much as the manager.

Be it blogs, video posts, social networking sights, wikipedia, search engines with the calibre of google or yahoo, people have this sense that the world of information is at their finger tips. And with the natural erosion of trust on part of the corporations usage of marketing and advertising tactics, or corporate scandals, the sense of empowerment that exists today for the average layperson is a turning point in the history of humanity.

Whether it is a postive one or a negative one, that is still to be determined. There are apparent pros and cons that have already emerged, and the real test of our time is whether a healthy medium can be found that allows for trust, respect, and acknowledgment in the expertise of the expert minus the maniuplative tactics once employed by those in ositions of authority.

Humayun Khan Attitudes, Civic Participation, Consumer, Employee, Employee Engagement, Entrepreneurship, Generation Y, Job Attributes, Leadership, Young Employees, Youth Trends

Let’s take a quick look at the evolution of the modes of communication that we human beings have experienced. Around 5,000 years ago, the very first crude writings on caves appeared. It took 4,500 years for Guttenburg to invent the printing press (in case you had difficulty doing the math was 500 years ago). The very first photograph was take 180 years ago and something called the “radio” was invented around 100 years ago. Our beloved television was invented only 70 years ago, and the first staelliate message was relayed 48 years ago. Today, the “internet” is embedded in the day to day lives of hundreds of millions of people. Google, iPods, Wikipedia, YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, are words that we just casually throw out as if they’d been around as long as our parents when only Google has been around for longer than a decade.

So what does this all have to do with commitment? Let’s start with a very general statement. The more information a person has the less ambiguous a situation becomes. So then when a person is confronted with a lot of ambiguity there is a natural drive to search for information.  So what happens all of a sudden that number of information sources surges and increases exponentially. Simple, the time required to make a decision goes up, and decisions are delayed.

So what might be some situations or issues that human beings would consider involving a lot of ambiguity? How about all the major transitions that we take to mature? Things like buying a house, marrying, having kids, choosing a steady career.

So let’s strip away the frills again and go to the basics. When there is the natural search for information while facing ambiguity, the number of sources influences how long a person spends searching. So an increase in the number of information sources means an increase in the time spent search, which means an increase in delayed decisions.

What then do we qualify as a commitment? Many of us would say, “making a decision”. So just to extropolate from what I’ve written above, the more our decisions are delayed, the less committed we must be. And the final equation would look something like “Increase in Information Soruces = Decrease in Commitment”.

A human being is a human being is a human being. No one generation is less committed than the other. We have innate desires and tendencies that have been the same and consistent since we first decided to cease being nomads and settle with the invention of agriculture. But only the environment changes and the environment most young people find themselves in today has them drowning in information. Which explains the tendecy to put off major life state decisions untill they feel comfortable given all the information available to them.

Humayun Khan Attitudes, Employee, Employee Engagement, Families, Generation Y, Job Attributes, Life Stage, Young Employees, Youth Trends

Technogolgy has progressed tremendously over the past few decades, most would argue for the better, but the downsides exist and have yet to be recognized and dealth with. With the advancement of technology has also come a surge of information, which ironcially more often then not is irrelevant, unnecessary, or unapplicable relatively speaking of course.  

More people generally have the idea, more information = better decisions, but the quality, content, and relevance of the information are completely neglected. 

I will attempt to showcase in a series of blogposts that the current nagging of Gen. X and Y being portrayed as not being commited enough or loyal enough in their relationships both personal and organizational speaking stems in part from drowning in information that creates a distorted perception of thir world. 

Technology is hardly ever blamed or referred to when dealing with intergenerational difference, but I believe it might be one of the underlying premises behind the phenomena of the short-term focus of many young people today. 

The reason being, in order to only think about decisions short-term, an individual has to have a bias against thinking long-term. And the only way a long-term focus bias might exist is if the individual percieves the environment/world/reality to be too unstable, uncertain, and complex to make any long-term plans as the world could fall apart as quick as tomorrow.

So then the question is, where does the percpetion that the world is unstable, on the verge of falling apart and going to pieces come from? Where do most people get their information from?

Take a few seconds to think and jot them down. I’ll elaborate more next week on how those very sources are the cause of the distortions that exist and prevent people from feeling they can devote themselves to a wide variety of things from partners to employers.

With no end in sight for the advancement of technology, it appears that people sooner than later will have even more difficulty in feeling secure, which, on a sidenote is an innate human need as discussed by Abraham Maslow.

Humayun Khan Attitudes, Generation Y, Job Attributes