Digital Relationships: Its Residual Deposits in Orgnaizations - Implications and Potentials

This paper presents the experience and observations gained under two group relation exercises (Miller, 1990) conducted as part of two university courses for graduate student at CBS (Copenhagen Business School). The paper suggests that despite a decidedly clear ability to present themselves as authentic members of temporary organizations the students also displayed a clear inability to connect to the presentations of each other. This apparent high skillset in presenting but low skillset in relating led us to formulate a thesis of Facebook behavior aimed at describing and suggesting the presence of residual deposits from technology in organizations and its effect on individuals ability to connect to one another. Based on the case study the paper describes indications and suggests potential implication hereof. Given the inherent enhancement possibilities of technology our expectation for entertainment-­rich information and highly interesting communication are sky-­high and rising. With a continuous increase in digitized communication follows a decrease in face-­to-­face encounters and our ability to engage in inter-­personal relationships are suffering for it (Davis, 2013). The behavior described in this paper suggests a regressive behavior -­ one I suggest it is conditioned and legitimized by the use of technology. The risk is one of churning out callous members of society high on overt people skills but potentially incapable of building relationships. Since society is constantly looking to technology (Howard-­‐Jones, 2011) for increases in effectiveness and efficiency we indiscriminately embrace digital communication and digitized information dissemination with enthusiasm – at the risk of ignoring the potentially dark side of technology. However, technology also holds a promise for better understanding precisely for the same reasons – that the growing amount of digitized communication “out there” represents data waiting to be sifted, analyzed and decoded. In this paper “Facebook behavior” refers to a particular behavior characterized by presenting your self and representations of selected self in the hope of getting a response. The responsive behavior you in turn expose your self to, can oscillate between complete ignorance as one polarization or a Like and possible a short comment being the other end of the scale – neither of which constitutes a relationship but both ends are accepted as representations of such.