Emerging Management Issues and Challenges

Emerging Management Issues and Challenges

Since a few decades ago, the business environment has undergone a significant transformation, primarily as a result of the quick advancement of the transportation and communication networks, the invention of new knowledge, the globalization of business, the combination of multi-cultural professionals, and other factors. Therefore, managers need to be able to adapt to the new issues that are arising. The management faces the following significant challenges:

Globalization

• The development of networks for communication, transportation, and economic interdependence has brought people from all over the world together and made the world smaller. Any good or service created in one area of a nation can easily and without any obstacles spread over the entire world. Particularly, multinational corporations compete on a worldwide scale in order to operate effective commercial operations as well as to survive. Globalization introduces the idea of fierce competition among international businesspeople. Therefore, current managers must work while taking a global perspective into account. They need to be creative and adaptable to the shifting environment.

Development of Environmentalism

• In management today, environmental issues are of utmost importance. These problems include deforestation, global warming, ozone layer loss, hazardous waste, and air, land, and water pollution. In poor nations like Nepal, an enterprise may not be concerned about these environmental difficulties. However, these issues grab the interest of several social, commercial, and political institutions. Politicians and social activists in the global mainstream have embraced the environmental cause. In order to preserve the environment's ecology, the green movement has grown throughout Europe, North America, and other regions of the world. Because of this, the current managers are faced with the issue of coming up with innovative strategies to turn a profit without endangering the environment during the production process.

Quality and Productivity

• In the modern business environment, difficulties with quality and productivity are also on the rise. Many managers believed that the only way to raise output was to decrease quality in the past. However, current managers have discovered that such an assumption is nearly never accurate. They have acknowledged the connection between production and quality. The implementation of a quality improvement program gives management generally three advantageous outcomes. First off, there will be fewer flaws, which will result in fewer returns of defective products from customers. Additionally, as the number of defects decreases, fewer resources will be required to rework the flaws, minimizing resource waste. Thirdly, the organization's efficiency and effectiveness will increase as a consequence of reducing the need for quality inspectors as a result of employees taking ownership of sustaining quality. In the end, maximizing productivity reduces the cost of production per unit of output.

Ethics and Responsibility

• Today's managers are becoming more and more concerned with issues of ethics and social responsibility. An individual's personal moral convictions are what they believe to be right and bad. It is shaped by elements like as family, experience, individual morals and beliefs, and environmental circumstances. Knowing how an organization treats its employees, how employees treat the organization, and how the organization handles other economic actors like consumers, competitors, suppliers, unions, etc. is the most important ethical concern for modern managers. The managerial role includes using leadership, culture, training, rules, and standards to support staff members and other economic agents in upholding ethical behavior, which is constantly evolving. Even if the idea of social responsibility originated in the entrepreneurial period, it is now being stressed more than ever. The set of duties that an organization needs to do for society is known as social responsibility.

Workforce Diversity

• Because of the shift in the population dimension, the company is seeing an increase in workforce diversity. Although there are many aspects to diversification, age, gender, and ethnicity are the most crucial. The workforce as a whole is getting older. In a similar vein, more women are participating in the workforce. Different organizations may be impacted by workforce diversity in different ways. From a certain perspective, it can be a source of cost advantage, a source of resource acquisition, a source of marketing, a source of innovation, a source of issue solutions, and a system of flexibility. From a different perspective, it may be a cause of conflict within a company.

Innovation and Change

• The creation of new knowledge to meet stakeholder expectations is growing every day. It is now a reality of daily life for everyone involved in corporate operations. Currently, management turnover presents a significant difficulty to lenders, consumers, employees, and competitors. It is crucial that managers address such transformation in a methodical and scientific approach. To satisfy evolving customer needs, they must raise the quality of their goods and services. Additionally, managers can use a number of measures, including as the installation of a reward system, the promotion of entrepreneurship, and organizational culture, to harmonize the working environment of the firm.

Empowerment of Employees

• The primary component of an organization's internal environment is its workforce. It is easier to accomplish corporate goals when management and employees share the same values and objectives. Delegating decision-making authority to lower-level employees is necessary to sustain the mutual relationship between managers and staff, although doing so can be difficult. Because of dispersed power and labor unions linked to political parties, employees now have more clout. This has been a significant issue for numerous organizations. Top-level managers must provide subordinates power to make decisions about their work as well as to retain complete control over the work they accomplish. The personnel are responsible for their task and can do it however suits them best.

Knowledge Management

• Knowledge has evolved into power in this hostile environment. The society demands innovation, novelty, and creativity in any organization's product or service. The manager must gather information and suggestions from all team members in order to live up to such social expectations. When managing knowledge, a model manager must be adaptable and take the situational factor into account.

Technological Development

• The process of technical growth nowadays is always expanding. The aspirations and expectations of consumers, investors, rivals, employees, and other stakeholders of a business tend to rise as a result of technological growth. It develops the idea of a competitive marketplace for suppliers and producers. Information should be shared with clients through modern communication tools. Finding and predicting the ever-evolving new technologies is the managers' biggest task. A recent development in the realm of management is the management of technology. The management must stay up with technological advancements and seize opportunities to advance the company's prosperity. According to the shifting needs of the customer, they must adapt their products and services.

Multi-Cultural Effects

• The development of modern transportation and communication systems has united people from all cultural backgrounds. Despite the fact that they have distinct traditions, values, social attitudes, religious beliefs, and ways of living, they cooperate to achieve their shared and professional goals. Professionals from different cultures are increasingly involved in organizations. Only when management is able to sustain coordination among multi-cultural specialists is it effective. The biggest difficulties for managers in Nepal are related to political instability, strong labor unions connected to political parties, increased public expectations, and a shortage of skilled workers as a result of brain drain. Because of the aforementioned issue in recent years, a large number of Nepalese commercial organizations are currently working in measured conditions. Nepal's exports have drastically decreased since it joined the World Trade Organization (WTO), but imports have increased. The economy of the nation is being severely harmed by this. In this situation, Nepalese management must overcome the aforementioned difficulties, and the government must act as a facilitator.

Reference

(Podyal, S.R., Pradhan G.M. and Bhandari, K.P. (2011). Principles of Management. Kathmandu: Asmita Publishers and Distributors (P) Ltd.)