The Digitalizing Dilemma

Contributors: Gülizar Karahan Balya, Büşra Akkökler Karatekeli, Çiçek Erlalelitepe

STORY

• Key characters of the story

WIOZ (Water and Infrastructure Organisation), the local municipal department in the city Zeo with an estimated population of 2,5 million, governs Zeo’s drinking water and wastewater systems for residents and industries. 

To improve organizational and financial efficiency by digitizing its workflows, WIOZ contracted YUSTA, a private IT company providing database service solutions. The company’s founders, Shailene and Erwin, have been the lead engineers working closely with WIOZ since the start of their business. 

54-year-old Mr. Ada, one of the 250 meter readers employed by WIOZ, visits residential and industrial sites to monitor and bill water consumption for each water meter and expects to retire in 2 years.

• Introductory data

Retrieved from https://www.baysoft.com.tr/el-terminali-sistemi-i

WIOZ managers assigned Shailene and Erwin to begin the workflow digitization process by focusing on the water meter reading system. To understand the existing process, Shailene and Erwin got in touch with meter readers, including Mr. Ada, and their supervisors. During these meetings, they learnt that reading meters was a rather low-qualification job that required locating the meters in buildings, reading the number recorded by the meters, and typing this number into the billing device. Meters were sometimes located in the most unpleasant and unsanitary areas of buildings. Further talk with Mr. Ada uncovered the financial challenges faced by readers: Their salaries were only slightly above the minimum wage, falling below the hunger threshold in the country in 2024. Their contract with WIOZ stipulated an 8-hour workday, but in practice, they typically worked around 4-5 hours per day, often reporting excuses for not being able to complete the assigned meter readings. Like many of his colleagues, Mr. Ada’s primary motivation was to finish the “official” work quickly so he could free up time for his “unofficial” job, where he earned extra money. Almost all the meter readers had a secondary, unofficial job, one of the main causes for inefficiency in this workflow.

Shailene and Erwin concluded that this inefficiency problem could be ameliorated by the deployment of data and monitoring systems. As a start, they considered suggesting a software solution designed to track meter readers’ daily activities and performance, significantly improving their efficiency. 

• The Solutions and Emerging Issues of This Technology

The new software would allow tracking the meter readers’ routes and monitoring their activities in real-time.  It would enable real-time tracking of routes and activities, featuring GPS monitoring, photo verification for obstacles like stray dogs, and automatic reporting of idle time. The supervisors at the central office would now be able to monitor the readers’ activities reflected on a digital map of the city, rendering unofficial work for meter readers impossible.

As a result, the new software would enable less than half of the current readers to record the same number of meters. The remaining readers could then be reassigned to other tasks at WIOZ, such as improving the city’s geographical information system and upgrading the standards of existing water meters. These improvements could help reduce the recorded water loss, which at the time was 65%, caused by issues like leaks or illegal usage. Another option could be decreasing the number of meter readers at WIOZ, leading to the dismissal of some meter readers, including employees like Mr. Ada. Furthermore, Shailene and Erwin’s findings revealed that the inefficiency at WIOZ extended beyond just the meter reading system, impacting other financial and administrative processes as well.

• The Dilemma

Shailene faced a conflict of ideas, although they offered a technological solution to a specific problem. On the one hand, he worried that a digitization solution limited solely to the water meter reading system would be a disservice to overall organizational equity and fairness. If strictly monitored, meter readers would feel more vulnerable to losing their jobs than other employees at WIOZ, as no other employee group would be tracked to a similar degree as the meter readers. On the other hand, his conversation with Mr. Ada echoed in his mind, leading him to consider the negative impacts of the digitization solution on the readers’ job security and welfare.

Erwin, however, offered a contrasting perspective. He viewed this as merely the initial step. He argued that if they could secure a longer contract with WIOZ, they could then propose software solutions to enhance other processes, such as the financial department, where two colleagues performing similar tasks showed vastly different levels of productivity.

INSTRUCTOR’S GUIDE 

STEPS OF THE CASE STUDY

1. Read the story of the case in class
2. Ask the students about their opinions on being in favor of or against the new technology developed by YUSTA.
3. Class Activity – Part 1 (time: 20 minutes)

1. Individually identify the stakeholders in the case

The instructor writes down possible answers on the board:

• WIOZ
• YUSTA
• Erwin
• Shailene
• Mr. Ada
• Other meter readers 
• Employees in WIOZ’s financial and administrative departments
• The inhabitants of the city Zeo

1. Individually identify what each stakeholder values and contextualize each concept (discuss their meanings and implications) 

• WIOZ: efficiency, profit, fiscal responsibility to the city Zeo, service excellence, sustainability (by digitalization)
• YUSTA & Erwin: profit, innovation, loyalty to the company 
• Shailene: fairness, loyalty to the company
• Mr. Ada: job security, equity, privacy (surveillance), survival
• Other meter readers: job security, equity, privacy (surveillance), survival
• Employees in WIOZ’s financial and administrative departments: privacy (surveillance), job security

1. Class Activity – Part 2 (time: 30 minutes)

1. Student groups write down and present their propositions for each stakeholder group and their values and then identify the right action from each stakeholder’s perspective. Make sure that the right action is justified by associating the stakeholders and their values. 

Pay attention to:

– how the ‘right’ action changes according to different perspectives

– how values change their meanings according to the different contexts (Values are never isolated.).

Note that here the discussion about the right action is a black-and-white approach.

WIOZ: 

Relevant Values: Efficiency + fiscal responsibility 

Action: Adopt the new technology

Why: Because as a public institution, WIOZ has a fiscal responsibility as well as the responsibility to be efficient for the public.

YUSTA & Erwin:

Relevant Values: Profit + Innovation + Loyalty to the company 

Action: Adopt the new technology

Why: Because as a company, YUSTA’s primary concern is making a profit by developing technological solutions for its customers. Also, YUSTA declares in its mission statement that innovation is a core value for them.  Erwin, being the co-founder and the leading engineer in YUSTA, has a responsibility to be loyal to his company in order to sustain and fulfill its mission of pushing the boundaries of technology (innovation).

Shailene:

Relevant Values: Fairness +  Loyalty to the company 

Action: Reject the new technology

Why: Shailene considers not only the immediate impacts of the new technology on efficiency, but also its possible future impacts on WIOZ’s meter-readers. Therefore, he feels concerned that when the sole focus is on the efficiency of WIOZ, adopting the new technology would be an unfair choice. Shailene also worries that applying the new technology solely to the water meter reading system would bring about unintended consequences, and therefore, it would conflict with the overall organizational fairness. If strictly monitored, meter readers would feel more vulnerable to losing their jobs than other employees at WIOZ, as no other employee group would be tracked to a similar degree as the meter readers. At the same time, being the co-founder and the leading engineer in YUSTA, Shailene feels a responsibility to be loyal to the company in terms of fulfilling its mission of fostering employee engagement and pride in being part of the organization. For him, being proud in this context means that the technological solutions that YUSTA develops are beneficial not only for WIOZ but also for the individual meter-readers.

Relevant Values: Innovation + Loyalty to the company 

Action: Adopt the new technology

Why: Here, loyalty to the company has a different implication. By developing such a technology, like Erwin Shailene thinks that being the co-founder and the leading engineer in YUSTA he has a responsibility to be loyal to his company in terms of sustaining and fulfilling its mission of pushing the boundaries of technology (innovation).

Student groups discuss and write down the propositions for the remaining stakeholders and their values.

Remark: Shailene’s adopted value can lead him to position himself in either group.

1. Is there a third option? Which value(s) lead to the third option? Discuss. (time: 10 minutes)

A third option might be developing another digitization solution for WIOZ’s financial and administrative departments and tracking the employees there, just like the meter-readers. Would this solve the equity and fairness problem within WIOZ?

The instructor can introduce the concept of “technosolutionism” into the discussion.

Technosolutionism is the ideology or mindset that assumes technological innovations are the best—or even the only—solutions to complex human problems such as poverty, education, and inequality, in this context, the problem of organizational fairness.

Key elements of technosolutionism for discussion:

• Simplifying complex social problems into technical problems
• Promoting efficiency and innovation as moral goods in themselves
• Often ignoring context, such as economic and social dimensions
• potential to give rise to unintended consequences, like vulnerability and inequality

1. The instructor returns to the question asked in the second step and asks the students to self-reflect on how their initial opinion might have changed. Students share their self-reflections in the class.