The emergence of knowledge as the key management resource will certainly necessitate radically new management theories and practices in future. The author envisions the changes that this knowledge era brings about in the management in future.
Management existed from the very ancient times. Various examples can be seen in Bible, Geeta, Ramayana, and Vedas. But management as a field of study is comparatively new. Management is multidisciplinary in nature. It is based on theories developed in various other disciplines like Sociology, Political Science, Economics, and Science Charles Babbage, Fayol, Taylor, Gilbreth, Max Weber, and many more had contributed in the development of management as a field of study. Now we have entered in to the new millennium in which every thing is moving fast. Speed is a buzzword. Many Superstar Companies of the yesteryears find themselves stanching and frustrated in unmanageable crisis.
Today, there are many new management tools and techniques viz., Downsizing, Total Quality Management, Outsourcing, Economic Value Analysis, Reengineering, Total Productive Maintenance, TQE, Benchmarking etc. Each one of them is powerful. These tools are designed primarily to do differently what is always being done. All these are how to do tools. Yet what to do is increasingly becoming the major challenge of the management in this decade.
We live in a world of profound transition and the change more radical than that what we saw in the 20th century. The emergence of knowledge as the management key resource will certainly necessitate radically new management theories and practices in future. |
