Author
Like many others writers, I am always full of ideas and thoughts. The best way for me to deal with this is to write and share it via articles and books. At this moment I (co) authored fifteen management books. The latest books is: ‘Datawijsheid: hoe datagedreven organiseren kantoorwerk reduceert’ (NL)
The first book I wrote is the management novel: ‘Every day when the sun rises’. It is about the history of the community economy, the basis for Blockchain Organizing. It’s a book to touch and inspire people with new thinking and a new organization model via an exciting story. This management novel describes the history of the community economy through the eyes of the two main characters: Miles and Susan. In their quest for another world, where companies and banks are no longer in the center of doing business, they develop a new vision and a new organizational model. ‘Every day when the sun rises’ is not an ordinary management book, but an exciting and easy-to-read story. This novel gives an inspiring and playful picture of a new future. Susan is studying organizational science and conducts her graduate research in Miles’s organization. You travel with them in their quest for another world. A world in which corporations, central governments and traditional markets are no longer self-evident. The book asks questions like: Why do we work? Why do we organize work? Why do companies actually exist and what is their meaning for our prosperity and our life?
Miles and Susan conclude that our social economic order is not based on technology, but on full-employment. They conclude that the future of work will change profoundly. First the meaning of work, and with that the meaning of unemployment, and second how we organize our work. They argue that firms will transform to shared transaction networks. ‘Every day when the sun rises’, it describes in a special way the community economy. As if you’re in the middle of it.
The vision, model, infrastructure and program, that Susan and Miles think about, are further elaborated and illustrated in the Weconomics books I wrote and co-authored. For more information please visit the website of the Weconomics Foundation (Dutch only).
Book: The Digital Assembly Line
More than a third of our work comes down to communication, control and information provision. Everyone is constantly receiving messages that we have to respond to. More and more lawyers are checking more and more rules, accountants are checking numbers and managers are checking lawyers and accountants again. Automation has made our work easier, but the current way of organizing also ensures that more and more communication and control are taking place. Automation has brought us a long way, but has contributed to the fact that we now have a digital bureaucracy while productivity growth slows down. When we combine modern organizational science with new data technologies such as internet of things, blockchain and artificial intelligence, the digital assembly line is created.
This digital assembly line has many similarities with the origin and principles of the physical assembly line. What the physical assembly line did in factories will the digital assembly line do in offices. By reducing digital waste in offices, we become more productive. This allows us to structurally solve the consequences of an aging population and shortages in healthcare, care taking, education and public security. These sectors are helped, not with more money, but with more time. Responsible administrators, politicians, managers and professionals must be aware of this.
This book is part II of the Weconomics diptych and contributes to the Weconomics mission and ambition: ‘Work Less, Achieve More: halve office work within one generation.’
More information (Dutch only).
Book: Organizing Sustainable Prosperity
This book is about organizing a broader and more sustainable prosperity with the help of modern organizational science and data technology, as part of the digital transformation and corporate social responsibility. A theme more current than ever. An unsustainable society in the “here and now” is also an unfair society for the “there and later”. An important transition that we will go through in the ‘roaring twenties’ of this century is the transition from a system that is aimed at increasing prosperity, to a system that is aimed at making more sustainable what we have. To achieve this, we will have to make more time available for sectors and themes where there are currently shortages, such as: healthcare, education, safety, democratization, circular economy, sustainable energy and climate. The time required for this can be gained in offices. By reducing digital waste, we have to do less office work. We can spend the surplus on making our prosperity more sustainable. The prosperity that we consume now is not yet produced sustainably, as witness the fundamental challenges that lie ahead: climate change, inequality, social unrest and the increased debt and chance of a new pandemic are perhaps fatal legacies of the ideology and policy of the past decades. This book is part I of the Weconomics diptych and contributes to the Weconomics mission and ambition: ‘Work Less, Achieve More: halve office work within one generation.’
More information (Dutch only).
“The book to read is not the one that thinks for you but the one which makes you think.” (Harper Lee)
Paul Bessems 