Tools are more than producing and reporting, they are about exploring and supporting change
Information systems are about computing data and help automate information processing. They are the followers of automated production lines. Same principles apply everywhere in the organisation. Generally people try to automate processes because it helps securing standards, both for quantity and quality. But this perspective leads to the understanding that systems are there only for operations and the investigation of organisational functioning to make sure that reality is conform to expectations.
In reality, there is a natural process that happens in work, everyday. This is exploration: people learn to do things right and then try to find ways to improve things. The experience curve in industrial economy is the graphical representation of this natural, human process. Production and Exploration are two sides of the same coin.
The result is that management tools do more than the mere investigation of organisational functioning and conformation to plans and budgets. Tools support change and facilitate exploration of novelty. They help the organisation structure their evolution and future.
The major intellectual challenge for management is often to admit that organisations are unstable. Management is often assimilated to managing existing environments with the creation of routine processes. Managers are most of the time the very opposite of Entrepreneurs: their DNA is packed with risk aversion. Management love stability and try hard to make sure it happens creating formal and structured routines. Managers are Newtonians. Routines make sense-making but also evaluation and consequently co-ordination and decision-making simple.
What is the benefit for social computing? Enterprise social computing still is in its infancy. People have to explore the possibilities of these tools, in professional contexts. At this stage of ‘maturity’, social computing tools are part of the tools that help structure the change as well as experiment novelty. This is particularly the case because social computing does not follow the same way of traditional computing as previously mentioned. They dramatically increase access to relevant information. They help employees being more informed business-wise and perform better. They can be the social, informal layer around explicit processes that make them more efficient. They favour exploration and as such they contribute to innovation.