21st Century Organizational Trends

•Organizations in the 21st century are quickly adopting itself to the environmental changes and consumer expectations. 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 (http://www.analytictech.com/mb021/trendsin.htm).

Globalization - MNC’s and TNC’s are all the results of globalization. Companies today want to expand their operations globally. They want to have access to many different markets in different countries, which enable them to enlarge their domain and to spread risks about a larger customer potential. In multinational corporations of the 21st century, manufacturing and sales offices are spread across the globe. The exponential growth of truly global organizations, or globalization, has been a huge trend over the past century. 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.

Diversity - The global workforce is more heterogeneous in the 21st century: sexually, racially, culturally, and individually. Global companies hire employees with different backgrounds and nationalities, which fosters the learning process and helps in enhancing the performance of the company by taking the best of all the worlds. However, diversity is considered both a supporting factor of innovation, and a source of conflicts. Management and employees need to cope with different styles of interacting, dressing, presentation, and physically appearance in a multicultural company.
For example, Microsoft is committed to diversity for better performance. http://www.microsoft.com/about/diversity/default.mspx

Experience – Diversity in the faculty teaching at IUP has benefited me as a student as I get to learn from faculties who come from different cultural background. I get a chance to experience different teaching methods that enhances my knowledge and skills.

Flexibility – Flexible organizations are the ones in which organization systems, processes, and people are able to respond differently to different situations. 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.
For example, Google allows its employees to bring their pets at the workplace. http://www.google.co.in/intl/en/plex/index.html

Flat - Organizations in the 21st century are becoming more flat and the levels in the hierarchy are disappearing. Communication is fast in flatter structures and the chances for delays in communications are very low in this structure. This structure helps the company for speedy exchange of information and cost reduction. Better communication between management and workers, less bureaucracy, easier decision-making and better team worker are few of the advantages of the flat structure. The disadvantages of flat organizations are : workers may have more than one manager/boss, hinder the growth of the organization, structure is limited to small organizations such as partnerships, co-operatives and some private limited companies and function of each department/person could be blurred and merge into the job roles of others.

For example, Google has a flat organization structure with no hierarchies. Every employee and important and wears several hats.

Networked - Direct communication across unit and firm boundaries enhances the speed of decision-making. In a changing environment, chain of commands may loose importance, because they extend the time for decision-making. Many companies outsource activities that are not their core competencies. If they decide to offshore, they have to establish a network with their service providers in the other countries. The company has to keep in touch with its offshore locations, since they deal directly with the customers. This can only be achieved through networks. Many companies establish strategic alliances, which are also considered a kind of network.

Experience – For my travel to US in August, I have booked Jet Airways flight till New York and for my further journey to Pittsburg Jet is providing Continental Airline as it is does not flights operating till Pittsburg. However, this networked alliance has made my traveling easier and economical. http://www.iimahd.ernet.in/publications/data/2003-01-02AbhishekGoel.pdf