SAGE Business Researcher. Issues in Entrepreneurship & Small Business Management. by SAGE Business Researcher

Author:SAGE Business Researcher
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2017-04-04T13:30:06.213372+00:00

“Engaged, not led”

In the 1990s and 2000s, technological change accelerated, and the Internet and social media became integral to business. This propelled the move toward flatter management techniques, in part because information no longer flowed down from the top of a management pyramid, but instead spread horizontally.

Oswick points to three social and technological changes that have allowed flat management to gain favor:

The ability to communicate and disseminate information in real time through technology and with social media. Informal channels can challenge information disseminated through formal channels. “If a message comes down formally from the top downwards,” Oswick says, “already people who are stakeholders for the organizations are contacting people they know to come in to tweet on it in real time.”

A shift in social attitudes that has occurred gradually over the last 20 to 30 years. Younger workers are more likely to “want to be engaged, not led,” he says. “So that creates a very different dynamic.”

The slow reaction time of traditional hierarchical organizations because they’re very structured and rules-governed. “In an increasingly turbulent world,” Oswick says, “organizations need to be flatter so they can be more responsive and dynamic in the way that they treat challenges within their environment, but also the way to drive innovation.”

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