Major Challenges for Business and Management Professionals for the 21st Century
We are living in a whirlwind of change happening all over the globe. In these times of unprecedented challenges, flexibility and the ability to move with the times become very critical virtues. Rigidity may lead to decay and eventual organizational “bankruptcy.” The ability to surf the giant waves of change and not be drowned is something that must be conscientiously learned and practiced. For companies and corporations to move head on and face the challenges brimming with positivity, they have to be able to welcome changes and be willing to be changed themselves.
What are the major challenges that face Business and Management Professionals today?
The Challenge of Information Society
We can no longer deny that technological advances have led the whole world into a qualitatively new era. Information society is just dawning and we still can barely intuit the way it will comprehensively change the global landscape of business. Yet the facts are clear and undeniable. Whatever we can conceive in our minds we can input in the computer. Whatever we can input in the computer, we can transmit through the internet. Thus all mental labor can be done through the internet. All jobs that require mental labor have transcended the traditional office set up. They can be purely located within cyberspace. This has tremendous implications for production and employment schemes worldwide. How will corporations cut costs and maximize profits by factoring in these opportunities?
The Challenge of the Global Financial Crisis
The most recent global financial crisis has shattered a lot of myths about the systems we have perfected for a long time. The frequency, the increasing intensity and the seemingly cyclic nature of the crisis, has not only eroded our confidence but has placed critical issues to the fore. Our methods in financial speculation and the derivatives market must now undergo a serious review from a multi perspective, interdisciplinary, and global scale. The world can no longer afford another crisis of such breadth and magnitude. Yet as the Chinese saying goes, “For every crisis, there is an opportunity.” Richard Bach also quotes from his book “Illusions”, that “ …we need problems because we need their gifts.”
If we are going to be keen enough, we can see a bright side to all of these. We have to be open to a lot of ideas. For one, the internet is providing a way out of the crisis in the area of Business Process Outsourcing. This is how many companies can escape bankruptcy by cutting costs and maximizing profits. Another is that it is paving the way for a global coordination and mechanism to anticipate problems in the market. For the first time, corporations, banks, industries, and governments have to coordinate and interlink on a deeper level in order to avert another financial crisis. In life, as in business, we can say that the only real mistake is one from which we learn nothing.
The Challenge of the Environment
There is now a global scientific consensus that the problem of global warming is real. The sooner corporations can accept this, the better. This is important to be able to make timely and critical changes. For all the pride and glory of our modern industrial society, we are still no match when the elemental forces of nature begin to shake us. The human race is threatened by an ecological time bomb. Corporations have to act fast to rally for the survival of our species. Thus we need to have a deep re-examination of the way we have been treating Mother Nature for a long time. Mikhail Gorbachev once posted the question, “Which will come first-the recovery of the human spirit or the ecological time bomb?” To this query we can only search ourselves.
There are still a lot of challenges that we need to face but if we embrace change and are willing to be the change, then there is a promise of a new prosperity waiting around the bend.