Introduction
Management has been with us since the dawn of civilization. In the primitive societies, everyone had to do physical labor except those who opted for politics and religion. With the emergence of civilization, urban societies have adopted more specialized ways of doing things. More vocational alternatives have come up as opposed to the manual labor and the laborers did their part and the first managers were there to tell them what to do to see that they did it and to chastise those whose performance was wanting. The main tasks of a manager were to get people do the things as opposed to the current where managers should help people do the things.
21st century has seen new types of organizations and new ways of doing things. Managers must now learn, study, and apply most current thinking. Behind the uncertainties that face the current business environment, firms must forge a new model of talent management better suited for current realities. Managers must now be ready to face challenges such as political instabilities i.e. Managers should outline good management strategies to control the effects of political turbulence to enhance sustainable integration of political cohesion, efficient management and sharing of political resources. Poor political thinking and technological repression of authoritarian leaders imposing their political dogmatic visions to oppress ousted regime resulting into uprising .The managers must define proper management mechanisms and tactic in terms of priorities and management options to control the impacts of political tyranny. The need to increase productivity; the managers will have a challenge of increasing the per capita in out put of knowledgeable staff mostly in manufacturing organizations. This would involve dealing with the flexibility of knowledgeable workers like what their tasks entail, their contribution and the
obstacles to be eliminated, focusing on quality as opposed to manual workers who basically target quantity, knowledge workers as assets and preserving them not as costs to be minimized, how knowledge staff will constantly upgrade their skills as they learn current technologies with managers enhancing in cooperation of new technologies and whether they are autonomously accountable for accepting their total responsibilities while managing them selves. Managing one-self; is principal quality which must be consistent with organizations’ values. It will be hypocritical for managers to implement standards on others but deviate when it come to them. It’s the role of managers to demonstrate their commands in all features showing how they are devoted to quality as they implement the attributes and values they require others to manifest. The manager should embrace change leadership where they not only want things done right but able to do the right things through their positional strength for the success of the organization. While showing leadership commitments to enhance large scale transformation and supporting efforts of change by developing structures and procedures. Knowledge is continuing to explode in the world of business and information is becoming the chief product of every business all the managers must embrace learning to keep abreast with this trends. The key importance of information does not end in data collection, transmission and presentation but rather the focus is purpose of the information, which is leading to redefining the tasks to be done with the information and with it to redefining the institutions that do these tasks as contended by (Drucker, P.F, 1997). Managers do not need more data, more technology and more speed from the information technology but rather until all these is organized in to useful management data.
There is also a need for being open to outside information as the internal information might be misleading as these could be supplied by the organizations’ team rushing to meet expectations. This will require the managers to embrace more education to widen their scope of information analysis as they focus on future needs.
Communication has become the major technique for planning, strategizing, decision making, and problem solving, the need to improve communication will be paramount and managers must now be ready to use dialogue and other communication tools. Communication fails when people are unable to understand one another within the organization. (Drucker, P.1997) observes that knowledge transfer for autonomous knowledge workers requires dialog to reach understanding. There must be right methods of inquiry to achieve a dialog. It’s upon management to propagate cohesive relationship within the organization by constantly reviewing and harmonizing the interactions between junior staff and their seniors. Effective communication and coordination is critical in motivating the employees as they are in cooperated in establishing clear goals and solving problems that might arise due to misapplication of objectives. The Management as change agent should reshape the society and the businesses as usual and everyone should embrace the best new practices. Managers who are poised to challenge the turbulent business environment must employ the feedback analysis where whenever one makes a decision or does a key action the expected result should be known so that the organization is able to do a comparison with the actual results. Every management should concentrate on its strengths and laid down actions to mitigate the bad habits inhibiting effectiveness and efficiency not forgetting jobs in areas where there are many talents for producing excellent results.
It’s prudent for the management to be a ware of the rapid globalization as it has dramatically increased the mobility of intellectual capital, goods and services .Hence the need to enhance speedy growth rates in conquering larger market segments in fast growing economies. The organizations’ realignment capacities should be exploited to compete with new competitors from industrialized economies at the same time evaluating the impacts of global sourcing. When the world is becoming a global village, boundaries seems to disappear within organizations, the scope of management will grow and managers will be organizational development, diversity, facilitation, consultation experts and so on. All these are the product of the desire to create an edge above the competitors. The results would be the need for employees from lower hierarchy to be empowered to especially the front offices which are always in contact with the customers. Globalized decision making, problem solving and innovation systems of the organization mostly in financial monitoring capacity and controlling capital assets must be able to harness the collective wisdom of the entire organization. The managers should formulate how they would meet the needs of stakeholders which may be interested in the organization .They may be internal like owners, shareholders, staff and other employees or external e.g. suppliers, customers, community and government. In order to make profit and indeed survive, the business management must meet the demands of their customers who may be individuals or other business who wants goods and services produced by the business as organization, encourage effective interactions with the suppliers to get quality supplies at sustainable prices, it’s the community which provide the business with customers and staff, therefore whatever is done by management should not offend the community.
Specifically the management needs to outline how to deal with economic policies and legislated regulations to create wealth and employment opportunities to the government. With the work of management becoming of higher purpose, the traditional objective of maximizing the shareholder wealth has become inadequate in the sense that it has failed in the quest to mobilize human resources and this has led to the desire to achieving more socially noble objectives. This will call for management to be innovative and inspiring in order to adapt to the modern changes, for example, technological forces like internet and email have changed the work of managers as it make it difficult to control and monitor virtual employees who work from home. Management now requires to broaden its horizons with insights from field as diverse as anthropology, political science, urban planning and theology as explained by (Srinivasan, M. and Dani, .P., 2011). The role of management is to deliver business performance evaluated in terms of strategy based on change and continuous improvement, constant research among customers, skills/career development and trust in employees to act on their feet with minimum supervision.
It’s a daunting task for 21st century managers to establish cohesively efficient and effective organizations, as they encounter management dynamics of managing different staff differently to maximize their productivity that matches the tasks of organization. The managers should aim at coping with demographic declines, equitable sharing of dispensable income, ever intensifying competition across the globe, technological advancement, nurturing accountability, controlling conflicts as they integrate economic and political realities. Management must be aware that technological advancement and rapid globalization will facilitate further research works with innovations to comfort human life calling for their long term management plans.
References
Drucker, F.P (1999), Management Challenges for the 21st Century, retrieved from http://books.google.co.ke/books?id=LSyZYy8GQVIC&pg=PA42&lpg=PA42&dq=Drucker,+F.P+%281999%29,+Management+Challenges+for+the+21st+Century&source=bl&ots=j9P85ScZk4&sig=mbPzlL2nRIVa8qz-XztBMTHMy8k&hl=en&sa=X&ei=GjOxUJuNMqvM0AXHo4DYBQ&ved=0CDMQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=Drucker%2C%20F.P%20%281999%29%2C%20Management%20Challenges%20for%20the%2021st%20Century&f=false
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The Institute Leadership and Management (2012), Leadership and management challenges, retrieved from http://www.i-l-m.com/about-ilm/challenges.aspx
Srinivasan M.S. & Dani, O.P, (2011), The Management Challenges Of The 21st Century: An Evolutionary Perspective, retrieved from http://integralmusings.wordpress.com/2012/04/04/ the-management-challenges-of-the-21st- century-an-evolutionary-perspective/
U.S. Department of Homeland Security (2011) Major Management Challenges Facing the Department of Homeland Security retrieved from http://www.oig.dhs.gov/assets/Mgmt/OIG_12-08_Nov11.pdf
