A look at the influence of modern technology on management practice.
This paper examines how, in the post-industrial age, the focus of business management has been concerned with implementing the most effective means of distributing technology and how, as technologies and processes have empowered people, people in turn have empowered the development of ever-changing technologies and processes. It looks at how management has consistently focused on the four basic functions of planning, organizing, leading, and controlling and how, as generations of management techniques evolve, these functions remain central to the management system. It shows how the future of business management will continue to engage in these functions and how both information-focused and knowledge-focused processes will make better use of human actions to yield improved performances and technologies.
“The modern approach to management supports individual recognition and open communication to improve performances, but with nearly seventy percent of all public and private technology-based systems currently failing, the added shift of creating a knowledge-based system is considered necessary for future management systems. The marginal improvements seen with information technology systems have failed as a result of the trend in an inability to effectively incorporate knowledge into an organizational approach. In business management, knowledge is defined as “the potential for action” that comes from an individual’s use of the information gathered.”