Future Management Landscapes

Ted Fuller, University of DurhamMarch 2001

Creating Future Good Practice Workshop

Cyngor Rheolaeth CymruWales Management Council

© 2001 Ted Fuller

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.

Present

Past Future

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 communi-

cations Informatics: digital

represent-ation

IndividualisticConsumption

ScientificKnowledge

© 2001 Ted Fuller

Each driving force is implicated in a range of cause/effect relationships

Global financial

institutions

World tradeWorld trade

CorporateCorporatestructuresstructures

Nation stateNation stateemasculationemasculation

Global Global competitioncompetition

Labour Labour migrationmigration

Global Global logisticslogistics Cultural Cultural

hegemonyhegemony

© 2001 Ted Fuller

Each with a reaction!

Global financial

institutions

World tradeCorporatestructures

Nation stateemasculation

Global competition

Labour migration

Global logistics Cultural

hegemony CulturalCulturalimperativesimperatives

and devolutionand devolution

Retention Retention programmesprogrammes

SmallSmall business business policiespolicies

ClusterClusterpoliciespolicies

© 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

Order Chaos

Constructingsense

© 2001 Ted Fuller

Constructingsense-patterns

© 2001 Ted Fuller

© 2001 Ted Fuller

Two dominant “constructions” of our times

RISK

CHANGE

How much change is the dominant power in

“society” prepared to risk?

© 2001 Ted Fuller

Some dimensions of change...

Change in social structure

Loose

(e.g. individualistic)

Tight

(e.g. social class)

Systemic uncertainty (chaos)

High risk

Systemic certainty (order)

Low risk

© 2001 Ted Fuller

Some scenarios arising...

The entrepreneurial

society

“tight”social structure

The wiredsociety

“Built to last”institutions

As now, butever faster

Systemic uncertainty (chaos)

Systemic certainty (order)

“loose”social

structure

© 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 ForumGE 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 co-

operatives”• 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 socio-economic 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?