Researchers have long argued that a “right” degree of closeness among team members is necessary for innovation. At unhealthy extremes, while closeness leads to cloning and copycat attitude, increased distance can result in incompatibility and dissonance. Hence, actually building teams that possess “creative-tension” is easier said than done. This chapter develops specific factors that conceptualize an “optimum” distance (vis-à-vis closeness) in teams and later extends the factors to argue for a novel organizational form, the “segmented network.”
For several years, researchers have argued that too much closeness or distance among the team members inhibits intellectual debate and lowers the quality of decision-making. In fact it is often said that if two people always agree, then one is useless and if they always disagree, then both are useless. While too much “closeness” leads to copycat attitude, too much “distance” among the team members results in incompatibility. Creating teams in which the members experience “optimum distance” is not easy. In this backdrop, we have identified certain gaps in the contemporary organizational learning theories and developed conceptual constructs and conditions that are likely to cause optimum distance in teams.
During the past few years, e-security solutions (e.g., digital certificates, e-signatures, e-IDs) gained tremendous attention as they promised to plug security loopholes and create trusted electronic markets. Implementation of such critical, complex and costly security solutions demands thorough assessment at technical, as well as business levels. Based on the author’s experience at one of Scandinavia’s leading vendors of banking solutions and infrastructure, the paper develops basic concepts, discusses strategic (product, market and technical) concerns and, finally, summarizes the contemporary challenges facing the implementation of e-ID schemes.
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