For all the lip service given to the virtual organization, however, the jury remains out. In fact, there is a growing number of stories about companies that tried to go virtual, only to bump into the unavoidable reality that scientists, social and otherwise, have recognized for years. (And artists, poets, and everyone else have apparently known for centuries.) People are, simply put, hardwired for sociability. This is not to say all people seek warm and intimate relationships within groups. How much emotional contact people want varies by individual. But broadly speaking, the human animal appears to be drawn inexorably into social relations. We need other people—their help, their approval, their companionship, and yes, even their affection. Try as a virtual organization might to keep the level of face-to-face social interaction low, its members will, we predict, eventually bite back. Additionally, trust is very hard to build without personal relations, and what organization can thrive in the long term without some form of trust? 7
American car companies learned the answer to this question the hard way in the 1920s. Inspired by the rise of scientific management, they designed their factories to turn workers into cogs in a machine. Workers were spaced along the production lines in a way that prevented them from talking, and the factories were too noisy for that anyway. Remember, they were designed to re-
duce sociability—to fragment. The environment was untenable; the workers resisted through strikes, demanding changes in their work conditions. They would not become automatons. The union movement, with its intense solidarity, brought the workers together. The legacy of this period has been high levels of distrust between management and employees. The paradox is that the intention to fragment produced an unwanted expression of solidarity.
If you find yourself in a fragmented organization by choice or accident, here are a few strategies for success.
THRIVING IN A FRAGMENTED ORGANIZATION
You are attracted to a fragmented form and likely to do well if:
• You are an introvert (reflective and self-contained).
• You possess a high autonomy drive and a strong desire to work independently with few controls.
• You have a strong sense of self.
• You consider yourself analytical rather than intuitive.
• You tend to be self-critical and criticize the ideas of others.
You will most likely succeed in a fragmented culture if you:
• Invest in yourself, adding constantly to your human capital.
• Keep focused on outputs and know the organization's reward system inside out.
• Make sure other very good people are recruited.
• Never let personal relationships get in the way of your evaluation of ideas.
• Manage yourself well—it encourages the organization to give you space.
It's important to acknowledge that many large companies can be fragmented in their most macro form and still be successful. Take a multinational where the exploration division of a mining division based in Ghana doesn't even know, let alone like or share a purpose with, the marketing group of a computer-making business unit in Tokyo. This kind of fragmentation doesn't matter so much if there are no synergies or economies of overheads between units.
But when fragmented cultures exist within groups, the dynamic must be understood and assessed differently. We cannot claim that there are a multitude of situations where the fragmented makes sense; indeed, compared to the networked, mercenary, and communal, there are few. The reason is that the low sociability and low solidarity of the fragmented form are an almost abnormal form of human interaction. That doesn't mean a fragmented culture cannot be sustained or that it doesn't have its time and place in the competitive milieu. But of all the cultures in the Double S Quadrant, it is the most attenuated. Few companies should stay there for long.
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