MGMT2035 Managing Organisational Change

The industrial revolution in the world has always provided some specific advantages to the organizations and businesses as transformation of working system and growth. The innovation in first industrial revolution was related to water and steam power to mechanize production. The innovation in second industrial revolution in the world can be identified as electric power that helps organizations to create mass production and conduct businesses effectively and efficiently (World Economic Forum, 2022). The innovation in third industrial revolution is associated with electronics and information technology development that have made the production automatic and benefitted to the organization at the large level. Now, the innovation in the fourth industrial revolution is digital revolution that is the advanced version of electronics and information technology. Now, this report will discuss about how innovation in the fourth industrial revolution is impacting organizations and businesses in the areas of leadership and skills. The other aspects will also be discussed in this report related to changes in the organization.

Impact of Innovation in the Fourth Industrial Revolution on Organizations and Businesses Leadership:

The innovation in fourth industrial revolution is digital revolution of electronics and information technology (IT) that has impact the leadership of the organization and the businesses as exponential pace of change. The digitization of electronics and IT is impacting leadership of the organizations and businesses as driving fast decision-making process and bring effective change in the business operations like fast work and growth. The fast decision-making process of the leadership is possible because of using digital technology in data analysis and getting fast information of market condition (World Economic Forum, 2022). This situation of digital technology has also impact the leadership of a leadership as increasing responsibility to increase more financial advantage by fast progress.

As a result, digital technology has increased the large mental pressure on the leaders and uses the leadership to take competitive advantage more than rivals of the company. The pressure to take advantage of digital technology more than the expectations has large psychological and physical issues to the leaders in leadership responsibilities to achieve growth of the organizations and the businesses (Totterdill, 2017). The digital innovation in the fourth industrial revolution is impacting organizations and businesses in the leadership as quick breaking down traditional hierarchies and boundaries of leadership because of increased connectivity and free-flowing information.

The impact of innovation on organizational and businesses’ leadership in the fourth industrial revolution can also be seen as shared leadership in teams in a project based approach to work in which members are also making decision power instead of relying on one sole leader. This situation has removed the value of a leader in the organization. The power of a leader within an organization and business operations has been reduced because of taking advantage of digital and information technology by team members in their decision making (Totterdill, 2017). Therefore, the strong value of a leader in organization and business that guides the decisions and behavior of employees or team members is now ineffective.

Impact of Innovation in the Fourth Industrial Revolution on Organizations and Businesses Skills:

The organizational skills are considered to efficient and effective use of resources at the particular workplaces where the employees perform their job or tasks and fulfill the needs of the company. On the other hand, the business skills are required in every professional need in order to understand the economics and increase its baseline knowledge regarding business management, effective communication, negotiation capabilities, etc (Schwab, 2016). However, on these organizational and business skills, digital information technology that is the fourth industrial revolution is dominating as changing the ways of interaction with the customers and transforming internal processes. The impact of digital technology on organizational skills can be seen as increasing work overload, complexity in the work, excessive rely on technological solution and privacy concerns with data breaching.

The impact of digital technology on business skills can be seen as reducing interpersonal relationships and lack of direct contact with the customers or clients. The physical disconnect and technology dependency has reduced the interpersonal communication and negotiation capabilities of the employees in the business operations. The use of digital technology assures effective and efficient working process in the company both internally and externally. However, the organizational and business skills both are expensive in the adoption of digital information system in the fourth industrial revolution (Schwab, 2016).

At this stage, the negative impact of digital information and technology impact of fourth industrial revolution on both the organizational and business leadership and skills can be resolved using n control managers. The dependency on digital innovation should be minimized and face-to-face personal interaction is necessary to increase on the priority basis. Apart from this, a proper security system and automation function of the digital technology should be used properly to reduce dependency on such type of technology because its failure and hacking of cyber criminals can increase financial and data loss.

Changes that are Organizations Facing and Dealing with this New Era:

The current digital technology that is the innovation of fourth industrial revolution has brought various changes that are facing by the organizations, such as increasing work pressure on employees, increasing responsibility to establish efficiency in work, a constant rotation of retraining of employees on processes and software, etc. The changes that are also facing by organizations can also be determined as information security, increasing burden for risk management and governance and maintaining regulatory compliance on the priority basis (Mdluli & Makhupe, 2017). These changes of the organizations are more costly to manage effectively and needs other resources to bring efficiency at the workplace.

The organizations are also facing other changes like infrastructure management, resource management and integration of technology and its upgradation to meet the needs of the business and market environment. Without proper management of the digital technology, the challenges of the market and needs of different stakeholders cannot be managed appropriately because of competitive marketplace. The fraud monitoring and disaster recovery are also necessary changes of the organization because of needs of safety and efficiency in business continuity of the organization (Mdluli & Makhupe, 2017). Apart from this, cloud computing is a necessary change in the present scenario in order to connect with employees at remote location at the same time and with same information.

In order to deal with the changes of digital technology in the new era, the organizations can make an effective plan and strategies. The recruitment of talented candidates that have knowledge and experience about the proper management of digital technologies can be appointed for grabbing benefits in this new era. Further, the organizations should provide regular training and education about efficient use of digital innovation to their employees because they can help to address different changes of the system on the priority basis (Mdluli & Makhupe, 2017). The improvement of the ROI of the workforce and energizing and empowering employees can also be considered on the priority basis to deal in new era.

Conclusion:

After discussion of digital technology innovation in the fourth industrial revolution that is impacting organizations and businesses in the areas of leadership and skills, it can be stated that it has improve the organizational value in the market. However, this innovation is not easy to adopt in the organization and business process as it has created several condition to the companies to face as challenges. This innovation has a large impact on the organizational and businesses leadership because of the needs of increasing responsibility for more financial advantage and fast progress.

References

World Economic Forum. (2022). The Fourth Industrial Revolution: what it means, how to respond. Retrieved from: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/01/the-fourth-industrial-revolution-what-it-means-and-how-to-respond/

Totterdill, P. (2017). The Corporate Response to the Fourth Industrial Revolution. European Journal of Workplace Innovation, 3(2), 117-138.

Schwab, K. (2016). The Fourth Industrial Revolution. USA: Crown.

Mdluli, S. & Makhupe, O. (2017). DEFINING LEADERSHIP COMPETENCIES NEEDED FOR THE FOURTH INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION: LEADERSHIP COMPETENCIES 4.0. Retrieved from: https://www.bankseta.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Bankseta_Defining-Leadership_Siboniso-Mdluli-Olebile-Makhupe.pdf