Systems diagram of Rose Toys-Successful manager in modern.

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Successful Management in the 21st Century
Management in the 21st Century

As the world moves through the 21st Century, business is becoming more dependent upon professional managers, who can bring success to an organization. Issues such as globalization and decentralization adds to the need for organization's to hire flexible managers capable of leading. A 21st century manager should possess three traits and utilize them to lead organizations: the ability to stimulate change, excellent planning capabilities, and ethics.

What a manager does and how it is done can be categorized by Henri Fayol's four functions of management: Planning, Organizing, Leading and Controlling. Through these functions managers can be catalysts for change or by definition change agents - "People who act as catalysts and manage the change process." (Robbins, Bergman, Stagg and Coulter, 2000, p.438) Whether performing the role of the change agent or not, change is an integral part of a manager's job. Change is "An alteration in people, structure or technology." (Robbins et al., 2000, p.437) Change occurs within and around organizations today at an unprecedented speed and complexity. Change poses threats and creates opportunities. The fact that change creates opportunities is reason why managers need to encourage change.

What a manager can change falls distinctively into the three categories stated in the definition of change: people, structure, and technology. The manager can make alterations in these areas in an attempt to adapt to or facilitate change. The change of people involves changing attitudes, expectations, perceptions and behavior. These changes are used to help people within organizations to work together more effectively. Changing structure relates to job design, job specialization, hierarchy, formalization and all other organizational structural variables. These changes are ones that need to be flexible and not static to be adaptable to change. Technological change entails modification of work processes and methods and the introduction of new equipment. Changes in this area have been enormous especially in the areas of computing and communications.

An organization's environment has both specific and general components, and micro and macro environments. The organization also has its own personality or culture. This environment and culture can be the generator of forces for change. Needs from within the organization can stimulate change; these are internal forces for change. "Of course, the distinction between external and internal forces is blurred because an internally induced change may be prompted by the perception of an external event." (Barney, 1992, p.755) Today's organizations are characterized by frequent disruptions to its environment. New strategy, new technology and change in employee mix or attitudes are all internal factors that can create force for change.

The introduction of new equipment or technology can create the need for change within the workplace. The staff will need to learn how to use the new equipment and it may affect the duties required of them. Their jobs may have to be redesigned. New company strategies, which may involve the change in management practices, enterprise agreements and industrial relations, will create a vast variety of needs for change. So will the attitudes of the workers. In fact employee attitudes can create the need for new company strategies in the case of job dissatisfaction, poor team spirit, lack of commitment and job insecurity.

External forces affecting an organization demand change by creating threats and opportunities. The organization it compelled to respond to these threats and opportunities. These external forces are apparent in many of the segments of the organizations external environment. These include political-legal, technological, economic, marketplace and socio-cultural dimensions.

The political-legal environment is that which consists of government bodies, pressure groups and laws. It is pertinent for companies to keep abreast of and change in political environment because these changes can have dramatic effect. Change in political environment can see legislation introduced that will not make selling or providing a product feasible or somewhat difficult. There are many political factors and laws that can affect business. Pricing, competition, fair trade packaging, labeling, advertising, product safety and minimum wages can all affect business. The marketplace is a major contributor to forces for change. These forces are created by changes in customer buying needs, expectations and buying habits. The lifting of import tariffs or market deregulation are other factors. The technical environment is created by developments of new products or processes that affect an organizations opportunities and operations. These advancements in technology purvey benefits and impel organizations to change.

The first factor to consider for motivating change deals with whether the organization is facing some obvious need for change, such as increasing competition; pressure on prices; changing customer needs / expectations; advances in technology; reductions in external funding; or regulatory changes (Cummings, 1997, p. 81). The actual change does not occur until the force for change exceeds that of the force resisting the change. People who may not necessarily lose from the change still contribute to the force resisting change. People inherently resist change because change causes uncertainty and ambiguity. Through good management these uncertainties and ambiguities will be removed and the resistance to change will not be as great.

Planning is "A process that involves defining the organization's objectives or goals, establishing an overall strategy for achieving those goals, and developing a comprehensive hierarchy of plans to integrate and coordinate activities." (Robbins et al., 2000, p.247) One of the reasons for planning is to reduce the impact of change. It does this by creating an environment that is accepting of change and by predicting change. "Planning reduces uncertainty by forcing managers to look ahead, anticipate change, consider the impact of change and develop appropriate responses." (Robbins et al., 2000, p.247) No amount of planning or anticipation can get rid of change all together. "Planning cannot eliminate change. Changes will happen regardless of what management does."(Robbins et al., 2000, p.437) Planning just enables us to best cope with and manages change.

Change can be modeled by two different metaphors: calm-waters and white-water rapids. The calm waters model involves unfreezing changing and refreezing; this is also the some as Lewin's model of change. We have seen that planning is a tool that can be used to predict change. In this environment of predictability the calm waters metaphor is an apt model. The organization is in a stable environment and can anticipate change so it goes through a process of unfreezing, changes implemented to overcome differences and meet new goals, and refreezing to keep changes in effect and return to stable environment. Total quality management uses this model. "Total quality management is essentially a continuous, incremental change program. It is compatible with the calm waters metaphor..." (Robbins et al., 2000, p.454) Total quality management continually seeks out problems and implements changes as they strive to ever improve their organization's efficiency and effectiveness.

Plans are difficult to develop for a dynamic environment. "This calm waters metaphor has become increasingly obsolete as a way of describing the kind of seas that managers in today's organizations have to navigate." (Robbins et al., 2000, p.441) This calm waters metaphor "... is not very helpful to people faced with the detailed task of bringing change about." Today the white water-rapids metaphor is more prevalent in organizations. It is a more comprehensive model. The white water-rapids metaphor depicts change as an ever-present perpetual event. An organization in white-water rapids is in an uncertain dynamic environment (Barney, 1992, p.757). Disruptions to the status quo may never stop. Managers in this chaotic world need to respond quickly to every changing condition.

Organizing is defined as "The process of creating an organization's structure." (Robbins et al., 2000, p.351) By comparing the definition of organizing to the definition of change we can come to the conclusion that organizing, a function of management can be a major contributor to the change of an organization through change in structure. Changing technology may be a contributor to an environment full of uncertainty, although this technology has enabled managers to organize for much greater efficiency and effectiveness.

Work specialization is necessary as jobs become more complex and it also increases efficiency. Although job specialization does not create an environment that is capable of accepting change; managers could adopt a structure of multi-skills. This multi-skills approach will provide the organization with an adaptable workforce.

Decentralization is "The handing down of decision-making authority to lower levels in an organization" (Robbins et al., 2000, p.359) Decentralization is prevalent in organizations that exist in complex uncertain environments. An increase in decentralization would create an organization capable of making faster decisions. This faster decision making ability is far more capable of reacting to change. This ability to react quickly to change is hence conducive to change.

An organization that is well structured for change is one that is organic. An organic organization has the structural characteristics mentioned above and others like wide span of control, cross-functional teams, free flow of information ...