New Hierarchies in the Network Society

Since the spread of the frictionless paradigm in Internet research, few authors have disputed its major claims from different fields (Shapiro & Varian, 1998; Porter, 2001; Norris, 2000, 2001; Mandelli, 1998, 2001b), even though not in a unitary framework. The core argument of the frictionless paradigm is the idea that the Internet eliminates transaction costs and communication asymmetries. If we challenge the idea that the Internet eliminates transaction costs and asymmetries, we seriously cast doubt on the entire frictionless paradigm.

In this work, for economic paradigm we intend (as in Rullani, 1998) a coherent abstract system of technology, organizational model, type of marketing and labour relationships. Our intention is adopted from Rullani "an abstract framework that theory can build and practice can use ... an intelligent reducer of the social and natural complexity, which is selected by a cognitive filter that drives it toward the production of value. ... a kind of collective intelligence" (p. 30).

We accept this call in Rullani (1998) for challenging the fundamentalist answer to the crisis of fordism, which mixes a naive mythology of digital revolution with social darwinism. Citing Habermas he reminds us that this fundamentalism "... which is nurtured by technology and nature's laws, is in search of a program of technological transformation driven by the force of self-organized systems, with abdication of the political power and the sacrifice of collective action. It is only apparently a liberal form of post-fordism; actually it is an authoritarian form ... because, without the old constraints, the new dynamic technostructures and the interests which lead these social transformations can easily dominate all the others" (Rullani, 1998, p. 27).

For achieving this goal we need to clarify what we mean with the term hierarchy. In this work we use three ideas of "hierarchies":

• The first one is strictly linked to the idea of information asymmetry, the unequal access to relevant knowledge by relational parties; relevant for this study is the unequal access to both diversity and richness of information;

• The second one is the idea of power asymmetry in dyadic relationships, based on selection and delegation (when people explicitly, even though not always because of their willingness, give up variety options in their content and social encounters, even if they have access to them);

• The third one is, at the network level, the more complex idea of organizational hierarchy, as the governance institutional alternative to the market form of coordination, in the transaction-cost theory approach to organization (Williamson, 1975).