Blurring Boundary

Technology had changed our lives in many different ways, blurring the boundaries between people, countries and ethnicities. Information flows over distance with fastest speed that we could never have imagined without having the internet. Emerge of the technology changed not only the communication style, but also the value of networks, and how we operate businesses.

“economists tend to define propinquity in terms of cost of transporation rather than the actual number of miles between nodes.”

The distance between people was used to be measured in terms of physical distance. In small villages, physical barriers and cultural barriers, such as mountain, and language, has distanced people from each other. However, in modern technological society, ego-centric relationship hardly exists. We can be connected to anyone through internet, and we can be on and off anytime we want. In such society, the physical distance can no longer be valid measures of distance, since people can have common attributes without having to be physically close to each other. Cyber space blurred the boundary between people, and therefore, shaped totally different way of communication values.

Since it is very easy to get contact with anyone in cyber space without having to visit people, being able to contact with someone is not advantages anymore. It is rather, how strong you can build your network and being able to get response from somebody that you can reach. To make the communication between groups efficiently, organization need more brokers and trustful mangers to operate the business. It is because, without having mutual trust or reciprocity relationship, it is hard to get valuable feedback since it is easier to ignore or pretend to not noticing the emails or any contacts. Also brokers are very important leaders because having understanding in both cultures can integrate two different communities into one bigger virtual group. This would greatly benefit the organization by lowering the conceptual barriers, the only, but large barrier that virtual teams need to deal with.

In this ever changing business environment, company would have large portion of highly conceptual and invisible assets that is trust relationship. Therefore, being able to know the relationship between people and respond to the change quickly would be especially important for the organizations.