21st Century Organizational Trends

Just as the 21st century has seen new types of organizations and new ways of doing business arise, so, too, will there be new management trends, ideas, and techniques. To successfully implement flexible management practices the organization needs to use the 21st century trends. Stephen P. Borgatti identified five organizational trends that influence the workplace of the 21st century. These trends also have an effect on workplace communication. The major trends that will influence the way we do business in the 21st century are globalization, diversity, flexibility, flat structures, and networks.

Globalization

International communication, transnational investment, international trade, and international travel are all growing rapidly. Increase in sales for the product internationally and increase of multinational companies are results of globalization. The key benefit of global organizations is the ability to exploit regional differences in customers’ needs and production capabilities, such as worker expertise, costs, government aid and so forth. Due to the effect of globalization many companies enjoy the convergence of prices, products, wages, rates of interest and profits around the world.

For example, Globalization advocates such as Jeffrey Sachs point to the above average drop in poverty rates in countries, such as China, where globalization has taken a strong foothold, compared to areas unaffected by globalization, such as Sub-Saharan Africa, where poverty rates have remained stagnant.

Diversity

Diversity is approached as a strategy for improving employee retention and increasing consumer confidence. The global workforce is more heterogeneous in the 21st century: sexually, racially, culturally, and individually. Management and employees need to cope with different styles of interacting, dressing, presentation, and physically appearance in a multicultural company. Diversity becomes a source of both innovation and conflict/communication problems.

Flexible

Flexibility means that the organization is flexible regarding processes, people, rules, procedures, autonomy etc. Flexibility is needed to stay competitive, to adapt to new situations, and to compete with other organizations. By being flexible, the corporations have fewer detailed rules, greater autonomy, and special job schedules for mothers, and women. The corporations have been able to save huge amounts by letting the employees to decide the working schedules, working from home, job sharing and paying according to the skills. Individuals also should be flexible to adapt to different levels in an organization.

For example, back in 1994, shortly before retiring as chairman and chief executive officer of
Lucas Industries, Tony Gill addressed his shareholders and Lucas employees, With the following words:
"We aim to ... develop, through commitment to innovation, communication, training and successful management of change, a Lucas [Industries] culture which encourages and rewards enterprise, professionalism and flexibility at every level”. He justified the words by telling how he lost his credits in his earlier days when he was not ready to move from one task to another within a short notice.
http://www.umanitoba.ca/unevoc/conference/papers/rosen.pdf

Flat

Flat organizations enable discussions, decision making of employees and increasing motivation among employees. Flat organization can be more flexible and more competitive than an organization with more hierarchical levels, as communication is necessary to adapt to new situations. In order to maximize response time to the changing competitive environment, organizations have been flattening, downsizing, and networking. Flat organizations make decisions more quickly because each person is closer to the ultimate decision-makers. Organizations that flatten tend to simultaneously encourage horizontal communication among workers. Rather than work through the hierarchy, it is often faster for workers that need to coordinate with each other to simply communicate directly. Analyzing all the advantages organizations in 21st century are trying to be flat in structure.

Networked

Networks are necessary to deal with customers, competitors, the media and suppliers, as well as shareholders and all stakeholders included. Networks can be an important part in a company's gained success. Networked organizations are particularly important in industries with complex products where technologies and customer needs change rapidly, such as in high tech. Close ties among a set of companies enables them to work with each other in ways that are faster than normal contracts would permit.
For example, retail giants like Big Bazaar maintain various networks with various retailers and wholesalers so that they keep their inventory update without any wastage.