The Role of Managers in the 21st Century Is Increasingly Diverse and Challenging
The Role of Managers in the 21st Century Is Increasingly Diverse and Challenging
Introduction
Nowadays, there are a lot of changes in the world makes the economy more instable. Such as, environmentally changes, technology and culture. Those changed a lot in this century. Compare with 20th century, the aim of industry was mass production. (Beynon, 1984, pp. 31) To be a successful manger required dealing with the diversity from those changes and the challenges developed from diversity and any others.
The diversity in management occurs because of the uniqueness of human. (Dr. Kurl, 2008) Everyone has their differences, Such as, gender, nationality and ethnicity. No matter how a person similar to another person, they still have differences. Therefore, managers have to associate the workers who have different personality into groups and make them work up, hence, to maximise the productivity and steady the quality of the product or service.
Besides the increase of the diversity in management cause a big challenge to managers, there are lot of challenges in managing an organisation. Although, technology brings lot of convenient to mange an organisation, however, it takes time to adapt the new system also can divest the leisure time from managers. Is that good or bad? (Silverthorne, 2007)The other challenges like, globalisation and organisational design are also contemporary challenges in 21st century. Hence, managers are facing more and more challenges recently.?
Discussions
Diversity
The reason why there is an increase of diversity is because of the changing in social culture. It breeds four factors that cause the increment on diversity, those are the demographics changes in the labour market affect the organisation structure, globalisation of markets and discover the competitive advantages in diversity.
In the 21th century, labour market in Australia becomes diverse than before. Ageing population is one of the reasons for the recession. The proportion of the population aged over 65 raised from 10.8% to 13.3% between 1988 and 2008, in twenty years. (Australian Bureau of Statistic, 2009) It also enlarges the diversity in management. That affects the diversity in age and physical capability but their work experiences and reliability are also valuable. Hence, it brings a challenge to the management how to cooperate with the elder worker and stimulate the productivity for the organisation.
The initial purpose of an organisation is to maximise wealth. That is why globalisation is the ultimate target of organisation. It is a process from domestic business transform to global business to maximise the wealth. Therefore, managers have to face more and more diverse to accomplish globalisation. Not only need to deal with different kinds of ethnicity, also different cultures have different kind of field of study, way to study and that will be a consideration for the workers training. (Waddel, Devine, Jones, & Geoge, 2007, pp. 24)
More and more organisations found out diversity can promote competitive advantages. For example, Union Bank of California, largest bank in United States, has being hired diverse employees. (Jones & George, 2007, pp. 31) George Ramirez, a vice president at Union Bank, understand that diverse employees have their personal or cultural background which can help the organisation enlarge business opportunity by their ethnic groups, age group or any other diversity. Hence, organisations are now trying to find diverse employees to expand their markets.
Challenges
Conducting an organisation is not an easy job for anyone. Many problems emerge on everyday in managing career, such as, deal with the new technology, globalisation.
Obviously, most of the adult who are living developed countries in their bag or suitcase. You can find that except wallet and keys, mobile phone is likely found. (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2008) Information technology become more and more necessarily in our lives. To manage technology becomes a huge challenge for all managers. Because of technology is changing everyday every moment. (Moores Law: Made real by Intel® innovation) That means managers have to handle all kinds of these improvement in technology and apply these in the working environment. Hence, it is hard to keep learning new technology which is improving rapidly, also fit that into the organisation and make sure workers also well trained in those new technologies.
The tendency in business is globalisation to open more markets gain more profit. But not only for the business, for managing company like, non profit making or government departments also need to react to main stream in the global. (Waddel, Devine, Jones, & Geoge, 2007, pp.22) Management is not aiming at controlling anymore, but reaction and precaution. Markets are being discovered or opened because