DiDIY and work group level So far we have focused on forms of DiDIY occurring at the individual level. Nevertheless, we have seen in section 2 that the “yourself” in DiDIY could also, within the context of this research project, be understood as referring to groups of people, such as companies or industrial clusters. Can we find possible cases of group-level DiDIY that would have an ethically relevant impact on the work environment? We have already encountered some possible examples when considering D3.1’s list of hypothetical cases above: these examples would involve groups of workers within a company who start to perform certain task themselves with the help of DiDIY tools, when they would previously have solicited the help of a third party (whose services might henceforth no longer be as much in demand). The same holds for initiatives like FirstBuild, in cases where groups of amateurs, rather than single individuals, proposed an idea for a new product. To the extent that, as was mentioned in section 2, the “yourself” in DiDIY could also refer to an entity like a company, another potential candidate example of group-level DiDIY that some might cite in this context would be companies starting to make certain items (e.g., spare parts) themselves, locally, thanks to digital manufacturing technologies like 3D printing, rather than ordering them from other (possibly foreign) companies as they did before. According to Xxxxxxx: 3D printing may result in widespread copying, especially of consumer products. Perhaps more importantly, though, companies that formerly bought replacement or spare parts may start making or repairing the parts themselves. According to an IBM 3D printing study: “The competitive advantage from both proprietary design and parts production is expected to erode as basic design blueprints become widely available via open source... And the service parts business will lead the digital transformation, leaving companies unable to generate profits from selling spares.” (Xxxxxxx, 2015, p. 803) There is no doubt that such a phenomenon can be expected to have a significant impact on the work context. Many expect it to bring manufacturing jobs back from abroad (e.g., Xxxxx and Xxxxxxxxx, 2014) and give a boost to local production. Nonetheless, we believe that there is room for debate about the legitimacy of extending the concept of DiDIY to such cases. Consider for instance that there might be very similar scenarios in which a company that initially owned manufactur...
