3.1 Digital transition and smart self-organisation

  Digitalization is changing managerial approaches, organisational architectures and personal interactions. Strong innovation rates are questioning the validity of highly hierarchical structures requiring for new approaches able to increase actors’ engagement, participation, and contribution. New organizational assets are emerging in which digital technologies define the new rules for accessing and participating, leading a path into what we may refer as a hybrid reality. Large-scale automation of routine-based work processes is requiring high intellectual effort and collaboration abilities to human resources. New competencies and skills are required to human resources, engaged in the challenging human-machine interactions.

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  Accordingly, new horizons appear for social and economic studies related to the need for discovering how a digital transition is affecting business and social behaviours and how (and if) it is possible to manage the emerging bottom up and self-organized digital platforms. New questions seem to emerge about the ‘Ethics by Design’ and its multiple dimensions and processes.

 The COVID-19 pandemic is accelerating the above mentioned transition towards a digital world showing us multiple advantages related to the definition of an engaging community supporting faster reactions to unexpected changes. Despite this, several doubts exist with reference to an unclear spreading of smart self-organizations, as their composition, structure, dynamics, and codification implications are not really known.