The Posthuman Management Matrix: Understanding the Organizational Impact of Radical Biotechnological Convergence
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Posthuman-Management-Matrix-(M-Gladden).pdf (2.2 MB)
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2016-06-15
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Defragmenter Media
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Abstract
In this text we present the Posthuman Management Matrix, a model for understanding the ways in which organizations of the future will be affected by the blurring – or even dissolution – of boundaries between human beings and computers. In this model, an organization’s employees and consumers can include two different kinds of agents (human and artificial) who may possess either of two sets of characteristics (anthropic or computer-like); the model thus defines four types of possible entities. For millennia, the only type of relevance for management theory and practice was that of human agents who possess anthropic characteristics – i.e., natural human beings. During the 20th Century, the arrival of computers and industrial robots made relevant a second type: that of artificial agents possessing computer-like characteristics. Management theory and practice have traditionally overlooked the remaining two types of possible entities – human agents possessing computer-like physical and cognitive characteristics (which can be referred to as ‘cyborgs’) and artificial agents possessing anthropic physical and cognitive characteristics (which for lack of a more appropriate term might be called ‘bioroids’) – because such agents did not yet exist to serve as employees or consumers for organizations. However, in this text we argue that ongoing developments in neuroprosthetics, genetic engineering, virtual reality, robotics, and artificial intelligence are indeed giving rise to such types of agents and that new spheres of management theory and practice will be needed to allow organizations to understand the operational, legal, and ethical issues that arise as their pools of potential workers and customers evolve to include human beings whose bodies and minds incorporate ever more computerized elements and artificial entities that increasingly resemble biological beings. By analyzing the full spectrum of human, computerized, and hybrid entities that will constitute future organizations, the Posthuman Management Matrix highlights ways in which established disciplines such as cybernetics, systems theory, organizational design, and enterprise architecture can work alongside new disciplines like psychological engineering, AI resource management, metapsychology, and exoeconomics to help organizations anticipate and adapt to posthumanizing technological and social change.
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Gladden, Matthew E., “The Posthuman Management Matrix: Understanding the Organizational Impact of Radical Biotechnological Convergence,” in Sapient Circuits and Digitalized Flesh: The Organization as Locus of Technological Posthumanization, pp. 133-201, Indianapolis: Defragmenter Media, 2016.