21st century Trends
21st century Trends
Borgatti defines 5 trends for organizations in the 21st century. In this blog entry, I will describe each of the following trends: Globalisation, Diversity, Flexibility, Flatness, and Networking.
Globalisation:
Over the last years, globalization increased everywhere and took a tremendous part of our life, such as business life. The number of global sales went up, production costs went down, and investments took place everywhere around the world. The global marketplace for production and goods became more and more international due to reduced transportation costs and less regulations. But there is a downside too with globalization. Some organizations like Nike in the 90’s had bad working conditions and minimum wages in their productions plans. They also had child labor in countries like Pakistan. This is a good example for the other side of the coin. So Globalization has a lot of positive and negative affect of the business world, but overall the positive effect might overbalance
Diversity:
In today’s business world the workforce of companies is getting more and more diverse. In some situations companies outsource their production plans to countries with competitive advantages. In other situations companies like to work with employees together from various different countries. The European union might be a good example for the diversity on some workplaces. Pretty much all members of the European union are allowed to work in all countries within the EU. Workforce diversity can have advantage like the source of innovations different points of view, but there can be also problems with that like communication and conflict problems.
Flexibility:
Another 21st century trend is flexibility. This is a very central factor in the business world. Many organizations trend to have fewer rules and regulations to adapt faster to major trends. Especially, the flexibility in the workforce trend to be more and more open. The greater autonomy encourages employees to show more initiative. On the other side it is impossible for a company to guarantee lifetime employment but they can guarantee an employee lifetime employability. A organization has to be more flexible than some years ago to serve different customer needs and handle the increasing diversity in the workforce. Without being flexible an organization might be not competitive in today’s business world.
Flat:
The 4th trend of the 21st century is that the companies´ structure is becoming flatter. There are usually fewer levels hierarchy and the workers are empowered to make decisions by their own. This trend is maybe the result of the increasing speed in today’s business world. Decisions have to make fast and therefore employees get more power to make their own decisions. Communication technologies also assisted this trend and helped it to emerge.
Networked:
Even though a company’s structure is flat, networking is one of the key points to stay competitive. Direct communications across units, divisions, subsidiaries, firms, or even countries increased over the last years as well. Boundaries trend to be less than some decades ago. The communication technologies made it happened. New information technologies allow the companies to communicate and network in an easier and faster way than in the past. Furthermore, rapidly changing customer needs force the companies to have a good working network.
Examples:
I think that these 21st century trends affect every human being. They also make life much easier, faster, and more effective. I felt that I have to be more flexible than maybe my father was. Firms like to see young professionals with flexibility. I think this is very important in the competitive business environment in the 21st century.
I also felt that globalization is so close and effect my life every day. I study now in the US, but I have the chance to go for just couple hundreds dollar to Germany and back. Some decades ago, flying was so expensive and just some people cold afford it, but globaization made it possible.
I also saw in my home country the network in my bank. Everything is now connected with each other. The customers, the employees, and other constituencies are all linked up. This increased business life and made it much more efficient.
Links:
http://www.analytictech.com/mb021/trendsin.htm
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,522628,00.html
http://www.law.georgetown.edu/workplaceflexibility2010/
