Managers for 21st C.(excerpt

Managers for 21st C.(excerpt

Managers for the Twenty-First Century

Historical development of the past half century and the invention of modern telecommunication and transportation technologies have created a world economy. Effectively the American economy has died and been replaced by a world economy.

In the future there is no such thing as being an American manager. Even someone who spends an entire management career in Kansas City is in international management. He or she will compete with foreign firms, buy from foreign firms, sell to foreign firms or acquire financing from foreign banks.

The globalization of the world’s capital markets that has occurred in the past 10 years will be replicated right across the economy in the next decade. An international perspective has become central to management. Without it managers are operating in ignorance and cannot understand what is happening to them and their firms.

Partly because of globalization and partly because of demography，the work forces of the next century are going to be very different from those of the last century. Most firms will be employing more foreign nationals. More likely than not, you and your boss will not be of the same nationality. Demography and changing social mores mean that white males will become a smaller fraction of the work force as women and minorities grow in importance. All of these factors will require changes in the traditional methods of managing the work force.

In addition, the need to produce goods and services at quality levels previously thought impossible to obtain in mass production and the spreading use of participatory management techniques will require a work force with much higher levels of education and skills. Production workers must be able to do statistical quality control; production workers must be able to do just-in-time inventories. Managers are increasingly shifting from a “don’t think, do what you are told” to a “think, I am not going to tell you what to do” style of management.

This shift is occurring not because today’s managers are more enlightened than yesterday’s managers but because the evidence is rapidly mounting that the second style of management is more productive than the first style of management. But this means that problems of training and motivating the work force both become more central and require different modes of behavior.

To be on top of this situation, tomorrow’s managers will have to have a strong background in organizational psychology, human relations, and labor economics. The MIT Sloan School of Management attempts to advance our understanding in these areas through research and then quickly bring the fruits of this new research to our students so that they can be leading-edge managers when it comes to the human side of the equation. （455）

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