10 Emerging Challenges for Management
The business environment since the last few decades has witnessed a sea change mainly due to rapid development in transportation and communication networks, an innovation of new knowledge, globalization of business, the combination of multi-cultured professionals, and so on. That is why managers must be capable enough to adjust to the emerging challenges for management.
10 EMERGING CHALLENGES FOR MANAGEMENT
The following are some of the major issues and challenges for management:
- Globalization
- Development of Environmentalism
- Quality and Productivity
- Ethics and Social Responsibility
- Workforce Diversity
- Innovation and Change
- Empowerment of Employees
- Knowledge Management
- Technological Development
- Multi-Cultural Effects
Globalization
The introduction of a network in transportation, communication, and economic- interdependency has tied the people of the world together and causing the globe to shrink. Any quality product or service produced in one part of a country can easily reach all parts of the world without any restrictions or barriers. Especially, multinational companies are global players in business not only to survive but also to prosper business operations.
Since globalization has already brought the concept of keen competition among the entrepreneurs of the world. Therefore, the present managers have to work hard by considering the global perspective. For that, they must be innovative and adjustable according to the changing environment.
Development of Environmentalism
Environmental issues are one of the major issues in management these days. These issues involve deforestation, global warming, and depletion of the ozone layer, toxic waste, and pollution of land, air, and water. These environmental issues may not be a matter of interest to an enterprise, especially in developing countries. But, these matters draw the attention of different social, business, and political institutions. For, the main-stream politicians and social activists around the world have picked up the environmental banners.
The green movement has spread in Europe, North America and other parts of the world to maintain the environmental ecology. Therefore, the present managers have the challenge to develop creative ways to make a profit without harming the environment in the process of production.
Quality and Productivity
Quality and productivity are also emerging issues in the present business world. In the past, many managers assumed that it could increase output only by decreasing quality. However, present managers have concluded that such an assumption is almost always wrong. They have recognized that quality and productivity are interrelated to each other. The introduction of a quality enhancement program provides, broadly, three positive results to the management.
Firstly, the number of defects will be decreased causing a low return of defects from customers.
Secondly, when the number of defects goes down, the involvement of resources to rework on the defectives will decrease resulting in minimized wastage of resources.
And thirdly, when employees become responsible to maintain quality, it reduces the need for quality inspectors as a result of which efficiency and effectiveness of an organization will improve.
Also Read – Total Quality Management – Definition, Objectives, and Tools for TQM
Ethics and Social Responsibility
Social responsibility has become a growing concern for managers today. Ethics is an individual’s personal beliefs about what constitutes right and wrong. It is developed through family, experience, personal values, and morals, and situational factors.
The most vital ethical concern of modern managers is to know how an organization treats its employees, how employees treat the organization and how an organization treats other economic agents like customers, competitors suppliers, unions, etc. It is also a part of the managerial function to use leaders, culture, training, codes, and guidelines to help employees and other economic agents to maintain ethical behavior, which is ever-changing.
Workforce Diversity
Workforce diversity is increasing in organizations today because of changing population dimensions. There are several dimensions of diversification; however, the important ones are age, gender, and ethnicity. The overall age of the workforce is increasing.
Similarly, more women are also getting involved in the workplace, and this diversification in the workforce can affect an organization differently. From one angle it can be the source of cost advantage, source of resource acquisition, marketing, creativity, problem-solving, and system of flexibility. From another angle, it could be a source of conflict in an organization.
Innovation and Change
The innovation of new knowledge to fulfill the expectations of stakeholders is increasing today. It has become a fact of everyday life for everyone in business operation. At present managing change is a critical challenge to the managers. Change may occur in an attitude and behavior of stakeholders like competitors, customers, employees, suppliers, and lenders. It is an important responsibility of managers to handle such changes scientifically and practically. They have to improve the quality of products and services to fulfill the changing need of customers.
Besides, managers can use a variety of tools to harmonize the working environment of the organization like the implementation of the reward system, the development of entrepreneurship, and organizational culture.
Empowerment of Employees
Employees are the major element of the internal environment of an organization. When managers and employees embrace the same values and have the same goals, it becomes convenient to achieve organizational objectives.
To maintain a mutual relationship between managers and employees it is essential to delegate the decision making authority to subordinate level employees, which is a challenging task.
At present, employees have become more powerful due to decentralized authority and labor unions affiliated to political parties, and this has been a serious problem for many organizations.
Knowledge Management
In this competitive environment, Knowledge has become power. And society expects new ideas, new things, and creativity in product or service from any organization. To fulfill each social expectations, the manager has to accumulate knowledge and ideas from all members involved in the organization. A model manager must be flexible to manage knowledge and should consider the situational factor.
Technological Development
Today, technological development is an ever-growing process. technological development tends to increase the aspirations and expectations of customers, investors, competitors, employees, and other stakeholders of an organization. It also develops the concept of a competitive environment among manufacturers and suppliers.
Thus, modern means of communication should be used to transform information with customers.
Multi-Cultural Effects
An Innovation of modern communication and transportation system has tied the multi-cultured people together. They work together to meet their common and professional objectives even if they have different traditions, values, social attitudes, religious beliefs, and living approaches. The involvement of cross-cultural professionals in organizations is continuously increasing. Management is effective only when it can maintain coordination among multi-cultural professionals.
Conclusion Emerging Challenges For Management
In conclusion, there are lots of emerging challenges for management these days. In the era of global competition, managers must be competitive enough to hustle with the global market and situational factors. Globalization is shrinking the globe in a narrow vision. To make the business successful and competitive firstly managers should be competitive and updated.
Reference:
- Pouydal, Santosh Raj – Principles of Management, Edition 2017, Ashmita Books Publishers and Distributors – Kathmandu