A Moment Of Truth
by Isabella Mader

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The On-Demand Economy provides a preview of where society is going: now and more so in the future typically employed work will be sourced from platforms: graphics design, secretarial services, programming … Logical consequence will be a strong increase of freelance work. In 2015, in the US more than 40 percent of the workforce were in insecure contingent jobs [1]. Employment is slowly going to erode and companies will shrink to a strategic core of managers who source most work from platforms.   In addition, such commoditized labour experiences a globalization of competition (unless it’s bound to a site like taxi driving). Crowdworkers (freelancers on platforms) will also not have a work contract, but sign […]

Claiming Our Humanity in a Digital Age: Big Questions in Vienna
by David Hurst

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The theme of the 2015 Drucker Forum that ended in Vienna two weeks ago was “Claiming Our Humanity: Managing in a Digital Age”. Nearly 500 management academics, business people and management consultants from all over the world attended the two-day conference in Vienna.   The preliminary events began with a CEO Roundtable on the afternoon of Wednesday November 6. The opening ‘provocation’ was supplied by Tom Davenport and Julia Kirby’s June 2015 Harvard Business Review article “Beyond Automation”. In it they address the threat that artificial intelligence in the form of smart machines is encroaching on knowledge work to such an extent that it will lead to widespread unemployment. In the past machines took over […]

Entrepreneurs are self-centred
by Nick Hixson

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A reflection on some aspects of the Global Drucker Forum 2015, with thoughts pertaining to the 2016 Forum theme: The Entrepreneurial Society   …by which I mean they have self-belief, self-control, and self-actualisation.   But they’re not the solution to rising unemployment caused by the rise of machines. We heard a lot at the recent Drucker Forum about the rise of machines, and how natural monopolies are being eliminated as competitive advantages erode quicker. Stability is not normal any more.   So we can plan our societies for reducing levels of employment, and find things for people to fill their time with, together with a socially inclusive way of allowing them to fulfil their needs […]

In The Creative Economy, Mindsets Matter More Than Technology
by Steve Denning

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“The world,” writes Alan Murray in Fortune, “is in the midst of a new industrial revolution.” The “frictionless corporation” of the 21st Century is “driven by technology that is connecting everyone and everything, everywhere and all the time.”   What then are the management practices of “the frictionless corporation” that enable “labor, information, and money move easily, cheaply, and almost instantly”?   Over the last year, a group of companies interested in finding out joined together to form a Learning Consortium for the Creative Economy, sponsored by Scrum Alliance, a membership association of more than 400,000 members with the mission of transforming the world of work.   Following nine site visits conducted during the summer […]

Meaningful work
by Jim Keane

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I was speaking this week with a new CEO of a new public company that is just being spun off from their parent company. Imagine all the important tasks on his plate involving investors and customers. And yet he told me his top priority is getting his employees engaged in the mission of their new company and helping them see how their industrial products are really becoming technology products and playing an important role in the lives of their customers.   He’s not alone. Gallup tells us that 87% of global employees are disengaged, so it should be the top priority for every CEO. Since work is fundamental to the human experience, employee engagement is […]

How to make technology more human
by Gianpiero Petriglieri

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One early evening a few weeks ago I went for a walk in the streets of Vienna. I was there for a gathering of Human Resources executives, the third conference I have attended this autumn in which a central theme was the “technological revolution” and its implications for employment, education, and lifestyles.   An hour earlier, while on a panel, I had answered some audience members’ tweets—sparking a minor controversy. Did reading from that tablet on stage enhance or diminish my humanity? Did it make me more connected or disconnected? I was still mulling over it when a row of benches on a side street distracted me.   I turned down it, pulled by a […]

Between a rock and a hard place
by Herminia Ibarra

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Few disagree that the time is ripe for reimagining complex organizations so that they are more human and more agile. But, existing models for how to make the shift seem to offer a choice between a “rock and a hard place.”   Take the thorny problem of developing people. Anachronistic annual performance appraisal systems, everyone agrees, must give way to more fluid and continuous feedback. Or, consider the issue of working flexibly while maintaining an esprit de corps. Standardized arrangements and face-time ism, we concur, must cede to more bespoke arrangements and an outcomes-orientation.   But, while the ideals are noble, the jury is still out on just how to re-invent the workplace. Managers today […]

MANAGING IN THE DIGITAL AGE
by Nick Hixson, Drucker blog moderator

Posted on guestLeave a commentPosted in 7th Global Peter Drucker Forum

IN AN AGE OF INCREASING DIGITALISATION AND AUTOMATION WHERE DO MANAGERS FIT INTO THE WORKFORCE, AND HOW WILL MANAGEMENT TECHNIQUES HAVE TO ADAPT TO THE NEW WORKING LANDSCAPE?   So are we managing, or just coping, in the fast-emerging digital age?   Bloggers have brought visions of dystopic societies where we are ruled by machines; worries concerning the disenfranchisement of vast swathes of the workforce when machines take away jobs; and questions regarding how developing countries may suffer most from the loss of low skilled jobs to autonomous contraptions.   These are reasonable concerns, and mirror the worries that many had during the rise of the Industrial Age, with Victorian machines changing the face of the countryside; […]