Organization is a form of human interaction within specific temporal and spatial domain. As part of their day-to-day activity humans have to interact within and with variety of organizations, which differ in terms of goals, complexity, decision-making process, hierarchy and performance.
We would like to focus on two general trends, which may not present holistic foresight, but rather state central to our discussion questions. First trend is the changing nature of interrelation between human and communication. Second trend is dynamic interaction process between organization and operational environment.
Individualization of communication and its affect on human behavior
New means of communication increase personal connectivity to the existing technological and social networks. As the amount of exchanging data increases, humans demand faster, more reliable and more capable channels of communication. Such channels allow humans absorb information in print, audio and visual format at much faster pace than ever before.
Individualization of communication affect human learning pattern, which shifted form printed books and formal learning to wide range of new learning methods and informal education processes. Move over, the monopoly of formal institutions to generate knowledge and to confirm facts changes human behavior dramatically. Such behavior is vivid in current ability to respond instantaneously to news, events, communication messages, personal or collective moods, political opinions, etc. Each human today can be considered not only consumer, but also a possible generator of information and knowledge.
Interrelation between organization and operational environment
Standardization of operational procedures such as international financial and accounting standards, currency exchange, financial planning and economic forecasting led to common themes of operational environment in different countries. Different benchmarking in terms of competitiveness, business-friendliness, corruption, penetration of information and communication technologies create certain expectations from national states to progress towards commonly acceptable standards.
Organizations do play significant role in persuading nation states to remove certain barriers and create favorable operational environment. On the other hand, key characteristics of favorable operational environment over time become embedded in organization’s structure and behavior. For example, state’s requirement for certain transparency may not benefit particular organization in the short term, but over time becomes unquestionable part of organizational behavior. In sum, organizations push for more acceptable standards of operational environment, as well as adapt to the changing operational environment.
Decision making process
Keeping these two trends in mind, we need to step back to get clear picture of the evolution of decision-making processes. Let us evaluate such decisions in terms of frequency, proximity, magnitude and immediacy.
In terms of frequency, today’s decision makers are equipped with complex analytical tools that can measure uncertainty and allow exercising options as frequently as it may require. New means of communication allow individuals within organizations to calibrate their decisions in a continuous mode. More over, new facts and consequences of a certain decision take much less time to communicate and could be shared with wider audience. Outside party of specific organization such as stakeholders, consumers, client, watchdogs, etc. may have as much influence on the frequency of such decisions as any internal party with the organization. In sum, constant flow of information and analysis makes the decision making a truly continuous process with numerous calibrating interferences.
New means of communication and human behavioral patterns change human perception of proximity. Our perception of distance and time changes with the ability to communicate with different parts of the globe at lower cost and faster pace. Virtual collaborative projects are erasing physical borders. Decreasing cost of physical shipment and steady decline in the cost of travel narrows the gap between physical and virtual domains of human collaboration. Popular culture, common perception of standards of living, shared goal and ability to communicate frequently helps to narrow most important cognitive gap – trust between individuals.
Favorable operational conditions and new means of communication do affect the magnitude and immediacy of decisions. One may assume that the power of top management would increase with increased magnitude and immediacy of decisions. However, in such environment the top management does not posses the monopoly of knowledge and facts. The same constant flow of information that was described above could paralyze the top management with multiple decision options, which presumably are subject to immediate and frequent revision.
In addition, middle management may have as much power to generate equally significant or insignificant decisions in terms of magnitude and immediacy. Availability of information, facts and knowledge give middle management a perception of complete picture in which this particular organization has to operate. In other words, information is not longer collected and decisions are no longer disseminated from the top of organization’s paradigm. How can top management expect to keep its house in order if its directives become irrelevant before they reach their addressees?
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