People; Organisational Structures: Within you, without you

GENERATION 21X SPEAK : ORGANISATION
Within you, without you

By Zubin Mulla

The Millennium Organisation will have to live with increased competition. That will call for quicker decision making and faster reflexes. In addition, companies will have to factor in the employee's need to find more meaning in her work and personal life.

The 2 main drivers of change in this millennium are infotech and mankind's quest for a more meaningful life. The infotech revolution has enabled quick communication and has made available a wide range of choices to consumers. This has led to the rise of consumer awareness and consumer activism. Due to increased competition, there is a need for more flexibility and quicker decisions. The other prime driver of change is the awakening of mankind. People disillusioned by a materialistic existence are turning towards philosophy and spirituality to provide meaning and purpose to their lives. They are looking for experiences beyond simple employment and satisfaction. There seems to be a general movement of mankind towards self-actualisation.

In Keynesian times, the primary focus of companies was on providing employment. This gave way to the emphasis on the need for organisations to keep employees comfortable. Today, employees are looking for a challenging and meaningful job. Companies too are making efforts to make jobs enjoyable and exciting. They emphasise vision and mission statements, entrepreneurship, empowerment, and employability to add meaning and significance to routine and mundane tasks. Both employees and customers are more sensitive and conscious of the social, ecological and ethical aspects of business.

The mingling of these 2 drivers (the infotech revolution and humankind's awakening) have had their impact on the organisation of the future. Companies have responded to the need for quick decisions and the need for meaning by launching movements like empowerment and job enrichment that are combined with techniques like TQM, TPM, and Kaizen to enhance competitiveness.

The essence of this is the integration of various facets of the job. The employee not only looks after the task that he or she is assigned to, but also keeps in mind peripheral issues like quality, maintenance, innovation, marketing, and housekeeping. This integration is quite similar to the work of a potter, carpenter or blacksmith. The craftsman is an entrepreneur who looks after all aspects of his or her job in addition to the pure act of manufacturing. Organisations of the future can be seen as elaborate networks of craftsmen, each of whom looks after all aspects of the job.

When we look at India, we see the same drivers as the rest of the world, but with a difference. Globalisation has had a greater impact and assumes greater significance in India because of years of protectionism while the collective awakening in India is almost on a par with the rest of the world. We are not far behind the West in terms of spiritual awakening because Indians have traditionally been philosophically inclined.

Another factor in India's favour is the survival of the craftsman. The industrial revolution came late in India, and when it did, it attracted members from the artisan classes to seek employment in factories. Something similar happened in the West, but the difference is that in India the transformation from traditional craftsman to assembly line worker is very recent and, hence, not complete. It will not be difficult to retain the craftsman's instinct in Indian workers and mould it with modern technology and quality standards.

Indians have not only accepted western standards for development, but have also followed the path used by the West to achieve those standards. If we continue to imitate the West, then, by design, we must always remain second to them. The American business model has been replicated with little modification in several developing countries, including India. Most western management ideas and practices are centred on core American values and, hence, cannot and should not be blindly imported to countries such as India, where the cultural, social, political, economic and judicial environment is different from that in the US.

In order to beat the West we must look within for our inherent competencies and capitalise on them. We must define our own standards for development and adopt our own path to achieve those standards. Indian values and ideals must be used as the building blocks of our strategy to come up with alternative and creative methods of competing beyond the traditional discriminators of price, quality, distribution, productivity and financial wizardry.

We must maintain and reinforce our strengths in spirituality and craftsmanship and simultaneously look for creative Indian solutions for efficient communication systems, flexible organisation structures and effective employee retention policies to compete in world markets.

Infotech and the awakening of mankind promise to revolutionise the organisation into a flexible and dynamic entity with networks of empowered and intelligent workers, free of the drudgery of routine tasks. So, at the beginning of the millennium, can we look forward to a more exciting worklife?

We may try hard to create our vision of the future, but there are other forces at work. People all over the world are at different levels of physical, mental and spiritual well being. For them, the future is just an extension of the present .

What we have discussed academically needs to be tested in real life. Simple concepts that get packaged as management philosophies will claim to revolutionise the workplace. But the bottomline is that people want to be cared for and respected. On their part, companies want commitment and integrity. The successful marriage of committed people and a benevolent organisation creates wealth . That could well be the way of the organisation in this century.

Zubin Mulla is a second-year MBA student at XLRI

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