Transcript No Slide Title

Future Management
Landscapes
Ted Fuller, University of Durham
March 2001
Creating Future Good Practice
Workshop
Cyngor Rheolaeth Cymru
Wales Management Council
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
© 2001 Ted Fuller
There are alternative futures
Who makes your future?
© 2001 Ted Fuller
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.
Future
Past
Present
Slaughter, R. A. (1995). The Foresight Principle; Cultural Recovery in the 21st Century. London, Adamantine Press.
© 2001 Ted Fuller
This presentation
• Purpose
– to provide a framework to think about the future of
management
– to stimulate ideas and challenge present thinking
• Content
– Today’s 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
© 2001 Ted Fuller
The near future… driving forces?
Global
financial
institutions
Global
communications
Individualistic
Consumption
Informatics:
digital
representation
Scientific
Knowledge
© 2001 Ted Fuller
Each driving force is implicated in a range
of cause/effect relationships
Global
competition
World trade
Corporate
structures
Labour
migration
Global
financial
institutions
Nation state
emasculation
Global
logistics
Cultural
hegemony
© 2001 Ted Fuller
Each with a reaction!
World trade
Global
Retention
Corporate
programmes competition
structures
Small
business
policies
Global
Labour
financial
migration institutions
Cluster
policies
Global
logistics Cultural
hegemony
Nation state
emasculation
Cultural
imperatives
and devolution
© 2001 Ted Fuller
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.
© 2001 Ted Fuller
A complex world
Constructing
sense
Order
Chaos
© 2001 Ted Fuller
Constructing
sense-patterns
© 2001 Ted Fuller
© 2001 Ted Fuller
Two dominant “constructions”
of our times
RISK
How much change is the
dominant power in
“society” prepared to risk?
CHANGE
© 2001 Ted Fuller
Some dimensions of change...
Systemic uncertainty (chaos)
High risk
Tight
Loose
Change in social structure
(e.g. social class)
(e.g. individualistic)
Low risk
Systemic certainty (order)
© 2001 Ted Fuller
Some scenarios arising...
Systemic uncertainty (chaos)
As now, but
ever faster
The
entrepreneurial
society
“tight”
social
structure
“loose”
social
structure
“Built to last”
institutions
The wired
society
Systemic certainty
(order)
© 2001 Ted Fuller
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”
© 2001 Ted Fuller
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
© 2001 Ted Fuller
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
© 2001 Ted Fuller
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.
© 2001 Ted Fuller
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
© 2001 Ted Fuller
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).
© 2001 Ted Fuller
Emergence - new enterprises from
the local milieu
• “Old milieu”
– Natural resources
– Local demand
– Cultural crafts and skills
– Clusters of activity
© 2001 Ted Fuller
New milieu
• Corporate-based business
• Knowledge-based
businesses
• Values-based businesses
© 2001 Ted Fuller
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
© 2001 Ted Fuller
The knowledge-based businesses
• Emerging from science and technology
– People-based,
• e.g. technologists, advisers
– Product based,
• e.g. software, bio-diagnostics, media
© 2001 Ted Fuller
Values-based enterprises
• Emerging from private and public sectors
• Quality of life as goal
• Resonate with values of groups e.g. “new cooperatives”
• Social entrepreneurs
© 2001 Ted Fuller
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
© 2001 Ted Fuller
Management
• Paradox
• Change
• Coherence
© 2001 Ted Fuller
What is really changing?
• The meaning of:
– Time
– Space
– Relationships
– Power
– Identity
– Knowledge
– Learning
© 2001 Ted Fuller
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
© 2001 Ted Fuller
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
© 2001 Ted Fuller
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.
© 2001 Ted Fuller
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”
© 2001 Ted Fuller
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)
© 2001 Ted Fuller
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”
© 2001 Ted Fuller
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
© 2001 Ted Fuller
Summary
• Today’s driving forces on business create the learning
landscape
• Society’s 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 socioeconomic world - time/space/knowledge etc.
• Learning is increasingly instrumental as a real-time
knowledge production process
© 2001 Ted Fuller
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?
© 2001 Ted Fuller