Stories and Maps: Postmodernism and Professional Communication

The most famous proponent of the networked, or post-hierarchical workplace is Peter Drucker (1992, 1993), whose definitions of the concept push the necessity of flexible structures in place of the traditional corporate hierarchy. In a post-hierarchical workplace, workers form temporary teams to address specific, usually short-term problems. Increasingly, workers are temporary, hired only for the duration of the project.

Businesses used to grow in one of two ways: from grassroots up or by acquisition. In both cases, the manager had control. Today, businesses grow through alliances, all kinds of dangerous liasons and joint ventures, which, by the way, very few people understand.…

Would you believe that you're going to work permanently with people who work for you but are not your employees? Increasingly, for instance, you outsource when possible. It is predictable, then, that ten years from now a company will outsource all work that does not have a career ladder up to senior management. To get productivity, you have to outsource activities that have their own senior management. (quoted in Harris, 1993).

Because such workplaces rely heavily on communication across networks (rather than the top-down model characterizing hierarchical organizations), control of space becomes paramount. The best information workers are those that gain the ability to abstract corporate and social flows of information, services, and goods in order to recognize—and make—connections between markets and buyers.