Introduction
In the era of constant development and transformations that we witness today, there are several forces that put challenges that we face in every aspect of life.
These transformations reached such a dynamic sphere as a business in which many concepts either transformed or were replaced by more convenient and suitable to this era.
It can not be said that all of the transformations that the business witnesses are beneficial, on the contrary, many of them put new challenges to overcome.
This essay analyzes the issue of the challenges that the business faces today in a way that presents the top three challenges with possible means of overcoming them.
Challenge 1
The first challenge could be characterized as the management challenge. According to John Kotter, many organizations are experiencing a surplus of management and lack of leadership. Changes invade the life of the highest leaders at different levels.
In the first – the global level, a new middle class with new aspirations and demands changes the world economic landscape; the new technologies convert entire branches; new initiatives, owner’s structures, and power engineering create new growth.
These three factors play an extremely important role in the future global increase.
Deficiencies, which are associated with this increase, in the form of social frictions, and cultural incomprehension, economic monopolization, and worsening of the environment, differences in morals threaten these great opportunities for growth.
Secondly, on the national and regional levels, there are large upward and downward movements which neither a country nor a region can feel out of danger.
This growth stably pushes some countries and regions forward, while others, devoted to erroneous thinking and the old type of structures, increasingly fall behind.
The third – the branch level, in which entire branches underwent radical changes and as it has already been seen in the sphere of telecommunication (integration with computers), in the financial sphere (integration of the banks and insurance services) the life cycle of products do not exist at the level of branch and there are no formed forms of business.
Ways to overcome challenge 1
As the changes invade the leadership attributes, therefore, the first logical step would be to change the present form of the leaders who will be monitoring these changes. All changes require conversions, and all conversions require leadership – not simply routine management. Leadership for the conversions is required in the public sector; at the level of the company – both in order to change the type of businesses, with which the company deals and in order to change each of them individually it should be addressed at the level of each manager.
The probability of achieving overall economic success is higher where these three processes of conversions – at the level of the public sector, company and individual are closely interconnected.
When one or another key player abstains from the conversions, the general advance of the economy slows down. “Effective integration of an organization’s staffing and recruiting strategies are decisive factors in determining who among today’s business leaders will succeed in improving their bottom line and realizing sustained future growth.” (Spherion 2008)
Challenge 2
Another challenge that has been described in the book “Using the Power of Purpose” by Dean E. Tucker is the possible labor shortage that the business could be facing in the next seventeen years.
“As the Baby Boomer generation leaves the workforce at rates faster than they can be replaced by Generation X and Y, the labor force in the United States and indeed, around the world, will begin to shrink.” “(Tucker 2008)
Going further as the number of companies will be less than the number of the potential employees that will result in another problem which characterized in the attributes of the new generation that will replace the old one.
These attributes lie in the fact that the potential employees will be choosing the company that they want to work for rather than the other way around.
In that case, the applicants will no longer fear losing their job due to the enormous amount of opportunities. This will be particularly true if future adjustments in managerial issues are not made to adapt to the demands of this generation.
Ways to overcome challenge 2
In general, the logical way to solve the labor shortage will be the occurrence of another baby boom era, but as the economical situation is worsening this is unlikely to happen. Thus, two possible solutions are combining the fulfillment of the new demands of the following generation and raising the productivity to a level in which the growth rate compensates for the workforce shortage.
Fulfilling the demands of the next generation is not as the words imply simply giving them what they want. On contrary, it should be understood as implementing a strategy that will compensate their feelings of being irreplaceable with the feel of loyalty and as a first step get rid of “the rigid, bureaucratic command-and-control style of management.” (Tucker 2008)
Challenge 3
The third challenge that was meant to be shown is associated with technological development and the information age. However, if looking at this problem from a closer perspective it could be assumed that this challenge rather concerns “the fluid transformation” to suit the new information era.
As an explanation, the following statistic from the article “The Challenges Facing Small Businesses” by Isabel M Isidro could explain this aspect more accurately.
According to a study “only 16 percent of small businesses consider doing business on the Internet as a threat” and at the same time “half of the respondents of the survey (50 percent) intend to use the Internet as their key growth strategy for the next 12 months”. Furthermore “a mere 3 percent of small businesses surveyed indicate that e-commerce is an integral part of their doing business”. (Isidro 2008)
As an explanation it could be assumed that for newer companies the integration of internet and the e-commerce (obviously the internet is the key feature and the main attribute of the information era) is not an issue as the basis of their business has already gone through the transformation and could be positioned at the start of the full integrity.
However, the companies that implemented the classical business approach might have feel lost within the amount and the speed of the transferred information today.
In some business portals such as “Alibaba” which specializes in business-to-business trade, many deals are made with few clicks and large deals can be made without implementing production lines, warehouses, and other attributes of the classic business.
Ways to overcome challenge 3
It can not be said that reliance on e-commerce will totally destroy the classical business schemes, but rather an adaptation and implementation of these technologies as tools can be used to make a fluid transformation that suits the new era.
This challenge could be solved by integrating the process of business education at the first basic stages with the concepts and demands of this era in a way that they should consider as one complete process. In such a way the business and the e-commerce would no longer be considered as two terms that occasionally intersect.
“By transitioning from what will be described as the Industrial-Age Profit-Driven Business Model to the new Information-Age Purpose-Driven Business Model, companies can successfully address the challenges they are facing today as well as achieve dramatic increases in productivity and financial performance. “ (Tucker 2008)
Conclusion
Some challenges presented in this essay represent logical results of development other as the end of some era. However, all the challenges show that that they need certain transformations and adjustments in the persisted principles of business. In general, all the means that show the way these challenges should be dealt with considers some efforts and expenditures that in the long term could help the business to adapt to the new reality.
Works Cited
Kotter, J. P. (1999). John P. Kotter on what leaders really do. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.
Tucker, D. E. (2008). Using the Power of Purpose: How to Overcome Bureaucracy and Achieve Extraordinary Business Success!AuthorHouse.
Alibaba.com (2008). Company Overview. Web.
Spherion (2008). The Challenges Facing Business Leaders. Web.
Isidro, I. M. (2008). The Challenges Facing Small Businesses. Web.