Understanding of the Relevant Literature on the Skills Managers Dissertation

Understanding of the Relevant Literature on the Skills Managers Require in the 21st Century - Dissertation Example Understanding of the Relevant Literature on the Skills Managers Require in the 21st Century However, it is important to remember that the present age has new facets that are critical for the company’s success. Businesses nowadays are strongly influenced by globalisation and technological innovation. Hence, in order for managers to be effective, they must be capable of managing the forces that has characterized the new century. Moreover, since the new business age is very dynamic, it is therefore important for the managers of today to be more nimble and agile in order to anticipate and act quickly on the changes before they are pushed into obsolescence. That way, they can capture opportunities as they are realized or defend against threats as they emerge. Moreover, globalisation has demanded that managers become able to manage a diverse workforce as more and more companies are expanding overseas (Khatri and Ong, 1999). Hence there has been an increase in the demands of managers to go beyond their talents and skills to ensure that they are able to innovate themselves s ince this is basically the game that companies and managers have to play in the 21st century. The new century has offered new and exciting challenges for businesses all over the world. The massive improvements in technology have greatly helped in the advancement of communications and information capabilities of countries, companies and individuals worldwide. Basically, this has put an end to the industrial age and heralded the information age which has even brought to fore a new breed of employees, the knowledge workers. These people have radically changed the manner of doing things wherein the office hours as well as office spaces have been practically taken out of the equation (Serrat, 2008). This is all the more demanding if the company is trying to get and maintain a global presence since there is the inescapable need to source out manpower from the different countries from which they operate in as well as to be able to maintain this global workforce. Moreover, there has been a general shift from solely focusing on the financial indicators as the sole measure of the strat egic success of a company. Kaplan and Norton (2005) have shed light on the lack of capability of measuring the success of a company’s strategy by basing on the financials alone. According to these Harvard business thinkers, it is important to have a balanced view of the lagging as well as the leading indicators in order to properly gauge the company’s overall situation. Hence, they have brought forward the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) in order to properly capture these indicators in their four perspectives which are the Learning & Growth, Internal Business Process, Customer and of course the Financial Perspective. All these provide a confluence of indicators for the company to properly analyze their situation and make changes, if necessary, in order to ensure that they remain on track with their targets. However, all these goes to show the increasing demands to the managers of the 21st century wherein there seems to be a shift towards the capability to multi-task and be ab le to adapt to the fast-paced and multicultural business environment of today. Aim The purpose of this paper is to