Future Management Landscapes

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Future Management Landscapes

• Ted Fuller, University of DurhamMarch 2001
• Creating Future Good Practice Workshop
• Cyngor Rheolaeth Cymru
• Wales Management Council

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The future...

• "Strategic foresight is the ability to create and
  maintain viable forward views and to use the
  insights arising in organisationally-useful
  ways".
• Richard Slaughter

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There are alternative futures
Who makes your future?
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Foresight guides actions

• Our present actions are guided by the
  interactions of
• our interpretation of the past,
• our assumptions about the present,
• our expectations of the future.

Slaughter, R. A. (1995). The Foresight Principle
Cultural Recovery in the 21st Century. London,
Adamantine Press.
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This presentation

• Purpose
• to provide a framework to think about the future
  of management
• to stimulate ideas and challenge present thinking
• Content
• Todays driving forces on business
• Society, change and the organisation of economic
  structures
• Order and chaos
• Management - bringing coherence to paradox and
  change
• Learning as a production process

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The near future driving forces?
Global communi- cations
Global financial institutions
Informatics digital represent- ation
Individualistic Consumption
Scientific Knowledge
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Each driving force is implicated in a range of
cause/effect relationships
World trade
Global competition
Corporate structures
Global financial institutions
Labour migration
Nation state emasculation
Global logistics
Cultural hegemony
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Each with a reaction!
Small business policies
World trade
Retention programmes
Global competition
Corporate structures
Global financial institutions
Labour migration
Nation state emasculation
Global logistics
Cluster policies
Cultural hegemony
Cultural imperatives and devolution
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The tensions

• How does society achieve progress in an age
  that announces the end of progress
• How does society protect itself against the
  unwanted outcomes of its own actions
• polarisation of wealth and opportunity
• irreversible environmental degradation
• exploitation of human frailty

Cf. the End of Progress in Hamel, G. (2000).
Leading the Revolution. Cambridge Mass, Harvard
Business School Press.
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A complex world
Constructing sense
Order
Chaos
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Constructing sense-patterns
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(No Transcript)
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Two dominant constructions of our times
How much change is the dominant power in
society prepared to risk?
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Some dimensions of change...
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Some scenarios arising...
Systemic uncertainty (chaos)
The entrepreneurial society
As now, but ever faster
tight social structure
loose social structure
Built to last institutions
The wired society
Systemic certainty (order)
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Faster, faster...

• The GE model
• a corporate ecology
• adaptive tension
• you can get rich or you can get fired
• successful people are moved to where they might
  fail
• be 1st or 2nd or quit
• production on a barge
• no barriers to sharing knowledge

Faster Faster from Sparrow, O (1998) Open
Horizons, 3 scenarios for 2020, Chatham House
Forum GE case adapted from McKelvey (2000)
Dynamics of New science Leadership
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Built to last...

• In this scenario, the UK economy is built on the
  basis of stable, generally large corporations
  which have grown up to retain and protect their
  source of competitive advantage - the knowledge
  of their employees. Self-employment and contract
  working are correspondingly rare in the more
  productive sectors of the economy
• We offer a full package of benefits share
  options, healthcare, insurance, social
  facilities, family benefits and nursery schools.
  We are proud of our education facilities, a
  corporate university open to all our staff with
  core time set aside for learning activities. We
  offer opportunities for work in different parts
  of the world through our network of sister
  companies. If you work hard for us, we will work
  hard for you."

DTI Future Unit - Work in the knowledge driven
economy
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Wired World

• In this scenario, the UK economy has become
  increasingly reliant on the self-employed as an
  engine of growth... based on secure electronic
  communications, which allow contract
  relationships to flourish.
• One of their (workers) major bones of contention
  is that we have become a society in which
  relationships are treated as a commodity -
  everyone gets paid only for measurable services,
  which undervalues the intangible "human touch".
  Everybody's performance is measured, giving rise
  to a pervasive culture of monitoring."

DTI Future Unit - Work in the knowledge driven
economy
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Entrepreneurial Society

• The constitutive elements of an entrepreneurial
  life , by contrast with the wired life, include
  many of the basic virtues of careers. The
  entrepreneur assumes a defining commitment to
  develop an ignored practice that will resolve a
  disharmony on a small or large scale.
• Entrepreneurs support others involved in similar
  ventures, as evidenced by the way successful
  entrepreneurs become venture capitalists.
  Finally in declaration of responsibility for a
  certain resolution of communal disharmony, they
  become authors of a continuous life story.

Flores, F. and Gray, J. (2000). Entrepreneurship
and the wired life. London, Demos.
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A metaphor for the times...

• '(an) evolving perpetually novel world where
  there are many niches with no universal optimum
  of competitor, where innovation is a regular
  feature and equilibrium rare and temporary and
  where anticipations change the course of the
  system, even when they are not realised.'

John Holland describing Complex Adaptive Systems
in 1995
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Complex Adaptive Systems

• Ecological metaphors. e.g.
• emergence (of structure)
• adaptation (learning)
• co-evolution (generations and relationships)
• fitness (competition and co-operation in niches)
• Systemic perspectives
• open, interconnected
• Unit of analysis is patterns of coherence and
  order (e.g. networks / clusters)
• Models as theories (Cf. business model)

Fuller, E. C. and Moran, P. (2000). "Moving
beyond metaphor towards a methodology for
grounding complexity in small business and
entrepreneurship research." Emergence A Journal
of Complexity Issues in Organizations and
Management 2(1) 50-71. Fuller, E. C. and Moran,
P. (2001). "Small enterprises as complex adaptive
systems a methodological question?"
Entrepreneurship and Regional Development 13(1).
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Emergence - new enterprises from the local milieu

• Old milieu
• Natural resources
• Local demand
• Cultural crafts and skills
• Clusters of activity

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New milieu

• Corporate-based business
• Knowledge-based businesses
• Values-based businesses

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The corporate milieu

• SMEs and corporates mimic each other
• Widening corporate stake-holding in SMEs
• Brand identity for products and services (even
  local/personal)
• Corporate systems partners
• system integrators
• fulfilment houses
• specialists

SME - Small and medium enterprises
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The knowledge-based businesses

• Emerging from science and technology
• People-based,
• e.g. technologists, advisers
• Product based,
• e.g. software, bio-diagnostics, media

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Values-based enterprises

• Emerging from private and public sectors
• Quality of life as goal
• Resonate with values of groups e.g. new
  co-operatives
• Social entrepreneurs

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Management

• If nothing changed and if no conflicts existed
  there would be no need for management
• Getting the work done would just be a matter of
  co-ordination

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Management

• Paradox
• Change
• Coherence

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What is really changing?

• The meaning of
• Time
• Space
• Relationships
• Power
• Identity
• Knowledge
• Learning

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Time

• Paradox The red Queen effect - running fast to
  stand still
• Change technology is not a tool, its an
  environment and competition is created from
  saving time in that environment
• Coherence the meaning of time is being
  reconstructed, e.g. 365/24/7, JIT, internet
  years, work-time/home-time

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Space

• Paradox The technological promise of location
  independence has given rise to greater
  geographical concentrations
• Change Flows of information are as important as
  flows of physical goods - space has a virtual
  dimension
• Coherence Social principles apply to the human
  use of space
• e.g. communities, cultures, tribes, belonging

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Relationships

• Paradox independent businesses are dependent on
  stakeholders
• Change cosy relationships are quickly broken
  by external forces
• Coherence the generation (emergence) of novelty
  from live relationships and the strength of weak
  ties

Granovetter, M. (1973). "The Strength of Weak
Ties." American Journal of Sociology 78(6)
1360-1380.
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Power

• Paradox The socially significant small
  enterprises are mostly harmless
• Change The path is increasingly regulated with
  corporate/consumer inter-relations (e.g. brands,
  standards)
• Coherence Collective power, open standards,
  customisation in niches of one

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Self-identity

• Paradox Self-identity created reflexively from
  others (professional career or consumption) not
  through your own creative acts
• Change Rising social standing of
  entrepreneurship
• Coherence achieve recognition by declaration of
  responsibility for resolution of disharmony (cf.
  Flores and Gray)

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Knowledge

• Paradox Deep knowledge comes from knowing and
  experiencing more about less
• Change Process of manufacture separated from
  process of creativity
• Coherence Capital created through specialisation
  and the co-ordination of distributed
  intelligence

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Learning

• Paradox When you sell knowledge, you keep it
• Change Knowledge-based business codify
  knowledge or ideas and re-use them in novel ways
• Coherence Learning takes an ever stronger
  work/economic perspective
• Learning and the exploitation of knowledge is a
  real time production process

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Summary

• Todays driving forces on business create the
  learning landscape
• Societys ability to deal with change and risk
  arising from complexity leads to a prominence of
  certain organisational types
• Complex adaptive systems are open, ever changing
  and unpredictable, moving from one pattern to
  another - humans construct patterns of reality
• Management is necessary to create coherence in
  the disharmony of the many building blocks of the
  socio-economic world - time/space/knowledge etc.
• Learning is increasingly instrumental as a
  real-time knowledge production process

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The challenge

• If the near future is a more entrepreneurial
  society
• and is evolving in complex ways
• that change the social meaning of the basics...
• then...
• What are the implications for the roles and tasks
  of management?
• What and how should managers learn?