Analysis of Shifting Management and Leadership Roles in a Digital Age

The organizational competition, the nature of work and the managerial role in an organization can highly be influenced by the digitalization revolution, the organization and workers speed of creating new knowledge and globalization. Digital revolution has highly enhanced the growth and development of different organizations in the world. However, the impact of digital revolution on an organization management, competitiveness and work nature is highly depends on the level in which an organization has embraced this technology. This paper supports that the competitiveness of an organization, work nature and managerial role is highly influenced by digitalization revolution, workers and organization speed in developing new knowledge and globalization.

According to Kai-Tang et al. (2014), the internet advent and its convergence with progressive database technologies have allowed organizations to be competitive in the global market and turn to be more linked with their consumers. New technologies for distance learning that include synchronous internet communications for instance online customer service centers, white boards and chat rooms, as well as asynchronous internet communications that include that include surveys, bulletin boards and forums, and satellite boards, have drastically changed the global communication course and assisted to spread ideas and cultural values worldwide. In the digital era, organizations have to establish a novel paradigm which is digital and ubiquitous, cheap, mobile, personal, and programmable. Organizations which customize their services, products, and marketing to the demands and needs of their customers will win. Moreover, programmability permits an organization to customize orders based in the customers’ demands or specialization. This is a clear indication that digitalized revolution play a great part influencing global competition of different organizations in the world market. These organizations that will manage to keep up with the new digital technology stands a chance being highly competitive in the global market. Digital technology plays a great role in enhancing company competitiveness. It also eases the management role in an organization by providing programs that can be used to aid managers in decision making in an organization and organization of different activities. Digital technology also provides workers with unique tools that ease their work approach and working processes. It eases the communication between the organization and its customers, creating a feedback system and product review forum that can enable organizations to improve their products. In this regard, an organization which has highly embraced digital technology demonstrates a great chance of making viable managerial decision, demonstrating efficiency, accuracy and quick response from workers and improving their general workability as compared to an organization that fails to embrace this technology. This increases the organization general competitiveness in the market (Debmalya et al., 2012).

Digital technology has also introduced the concept of virtual workers or virtual workplace. This is a form of working in which employees work remotely from managers and each other. Virtual organizations are dynamic, multi-organizational, and multisite. Virtual organization and macro level contains a grouping contractors, consultants, and businesses which have come together in a coalition to exploit matching skills in following common strategic goals. The grouping stands for a drastic change on how organizations work. Virtual workplaces assist in lowering estate expenses, increasing productivity, and enhance global market accessibility among other benefits. Although this technique has its own disadvantages, it offers an organization a more competitive form of working and efficiency in work done since it is easy to measure individual work. It also gives an organization an opportunity to hire diverse employees globally, increasing the rate of innovation in an organization. It therefore enhances the competitiveness of a company in a global market by reducing the operation cost, increasing efficiency and productivity and hence, increasing the organization profitability (Kai-Tang et al., 2014).

Knowledge creation and sharing also play a great part in determining the competitiveness of an organization, managerial role and nature of work. Knowledge sharing refers to as a practice employed in problems solving. It enhances different ways of handling a problem and thus, it is normally employed by managers to enhance differentiation (Alrawi et al., 2011).  Knowledge sharing enhances communication between works which is very great knowledge benefit in an organization. Knowledge sharing enhances the employees and management of an organization to share the same perceptions, values, and to internalize the values, to strengthen the relationship between the employees and the organization leaders. It also enhances effective exploitation and stimulation of the employees creativity, an aspect that increases the organization level of innovation and hence its level of competitiveness. Knowledge sharing enhances the development or creation of new knowledge in an organization which is created from integrated ideas. Knowledge contains skills, know-how, technology and information, which assist in the creation of sustainability and value through the integration of the knowledge resources more effectively as compared to the organization competitors (Alrawi et al., 2011).

Virtual team is defined as electronically, temporary, geographically dispersed, and culturally diverse communicating members’ workgroup who act and think in concert within the global environment diversity.  The organization’s ability to efficiently and effectively employ global knowledge resources is vital in establishing its competitive advantage. Virtual teams are normally employed by multinational companies to take advantage of internationally dispersed innovation and knowledge resources, and fruitfully facilitate, coordinate and enable strategic activities which consequentially improve market responsiveness and flexibility. Moreover, virtual teams are frequently found to be relatively effective to implement since teams of this kind can be created without distance and time limitation, as well as significant discontinuities and cost associated with relocation (Ocker et al., 2011). Thus digital technology can easy enhance change in the nature of work, management role and competitiveness of an organization. It also enhances globalization which increases the level of diversity which in turn enhances innovation and hence increases in competitiveness. Virtual team also calls for different form of team management. There are a number of management issues which arises from distance and configuration of this work nature. They include decision on the physical location of a leader, individuals required to lead each team, and the leadership process. Unlike traditional face-to-face team, virtual team demands different form of leadership approach in which a leader should manage the team of individuals that are geographically scattered while located in a certain location. This can be enhanced by employment of a communication platform used to enhance team management. The organization can also use a program that will enhance monitoring individual working hours per day. This change of technology has highly enhanced globalization and hence diversity and innovation in organization, and hence the organization competitiveness, way of working and management (Debmalya et al., 2012).

A good example of management change that I witnessed and which impacted the organization is the introduction of the virtual team in a company I was attached in. The company was dealing with software development and had a problem with software development expertise. Most of the available experts were being found in different parts of the world and it was hard to relocate all of them. In this regard the company decided to establish a virtual software development team. The company developed a communication platform where all team members could discuss the problem at hand. They also created a job monitoring program that monitored the activities in the employee’s computer. Finally, they all shared in a conference meeting and divided the work and set milestone for each employee and what needed to be accomplished. Although this seemed hard at first it worked quite well in ensuring the programs that were had to develop locally could be developed effectively and without delay by a virtual team, managed locally by the system administrator of the company. This increased the company’s ability to handle complex projects effectively without incurring extra cost and without any delay or quality issues. It increased the company competitive advantage in the global market.

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