The acceleration of changes of all kinds, environmental, social, political, economic, organisational, technological and human lead the company to adapt in a semi permanent way. This implies that the old rigid structures are unable to support the jolts of the change.
The company must set up flexible structures, develop an evolutionary organization and a favorable framework in order to make it possible for the actors (employees/organisation) to succeed in adjusting to the changes and also to manage the resistance to this change in a dynamic transformation of mentalities.
The three vectors of change for an innovative organization are to control the competing environment, to unceasingly improve the business processes and to benefit the most from the human resources which is made up of a team-work with jointly negotiated objectives.
The social changes are characterized by consumers who are not satisfied any more with standard products, are attracted by low priced products and services, equipped with an irreproachable after-sales service and more highly more personalized offerings. The consumers requirements for quality pushes the company to adopt stricter controls. The company must take into account various desires and needs of the citizens who claim more freedom and for autonomy.
Political changes result in a transfer into private hands, hitherto public companies. Thereby increasing the climate of competition. In particular the deregulation of telecommunication (01/98). There is a confrontation between the authority of the national governments and the world network which crosses the borders becoming virtual.
Economic changes are characterized by the globalisation of the market, competition within the EEC, the USA and Japan which activates economic turbulence. The strategic driver of success for a company used to be its competitiveness, then the quality of its management or its information system.
Technological changes show us, in addition to the subject of this work, the significant projections made in the field of biotechnologies. Strategic data processing goes well beyond the business data processing when it utilizes telecommunications. We shall gradually pass from a synchronous mode of exchange of information between human beings to an asynchronous mode, thus defying time and space on a worldwide scale.
The changes of organization in the structures of the " modular " company more and more induce Cooperation , and the complementarity of internal and external entities known as " partners ", making the borders of the organization fuzzy. Certain entities form part of other companies physically and logically but are integrated virtually by and the co-operative data base telecommunications networks.
The flexibility of adaptability of the organization generated by the modular structure associated with the networks of telecommunication creates interdependence of a co-operative type of the organization with its environment reinforcing the links in spite of the nuclearisation. The costs of coordination become negligible if one in general considers the benefit generated by the co-operation by avoiding for example the stepping of the tasks (seized with the source, controls, pre processing, and diffusion). New forms of organization are necessary to structure the reports/ratios and to connect the actors of the internal organization with the broader/wider view of the company.
The human change vis-a-vis technological changes poses a problem of conscience and ethics of which the resolution necessarily passes by a reorganization taking into account the human dimension of change. We will comment on by a " human point of view " the projections technological. The human dimension of change is very delicate and at the same time reveals the training requirements.
The employees/main actors in the company feel threatened by information technologies; the leaders and the intermediate framing are not excluded from it. The question is to know how to dissipate this threat. We will focus some light on information technologies and will observe how they modify our way of working and how they structure the companies and the organizations.
We will also observe how certain companies approach their customers and make profitable the investments which they engaged in Communication and Information Technologies.
We will project the way in which the companies could collaborate and compete with itself in the future. We will report the observations which we made during experiments, we will pose working hypotheses and will reveal an original method of work and development of the attention and level of conscience individually and collectively. The work undertaken on the field of the conscience remains the building block at the end of this century and the beginning of the 3rd millenium.
Information technologies, whose constituent elements are the computers, the software, and the telecommunications networks, are integrated more and more into the working procedure of the company.
To be truly effective, the NTIC will have to be harmonized with the structure and the culture of the company, it's procedures, its total strategy and its policy as regards human resources.
This first internal stage must be followed of a second stage of harmonization with the external environment with the organization using technologies and communication networks through public and deprived networks. This can release three tension fields as regards progress containing these technologies.
The first tension field is the improvement of the performances of each constituent element of these technologies this in a factor of 10.
The second tension field is the availability of the data bases from which one can identify, extract, handle and communicate relevant information. Technologies in the course of appearance allow an increased speed, a fall in the costs and a simpler style of work giving access to information to the whole of the personnel of the organization.
The third tension field is the development of international standardization, connectivity between systems and the integration of the media a same network (ISDN) and the increase in the flows (ATM) which offer a field of opening for the communication.
The prospects for evolution will make significant improvements on the costs, speeds, the performances and the functionalities offering opportunities still not easily accesible today. However, a historical opportunity to get together is being offered with the advent of the telecommunications technology (the telephone) which allowed new previously unthinkable organizations.
Technology was always the engine of the evolution of the telecommunications networks, today one notes a convergence and a thorough integration of information technologies in the networks which become intelligent .
Telecommunications became with the wire of time the spinal cord as well of modern industries as of the economy of the services in a company which tends towards information. That means that the services and telecommunications networks play a vital role in serving the needs of the users. The best of which is assist to conclude its activities. The market trends of telecommunications networks are directly impacted by the deregulation of the market on a worldwide scale. The distribution of the roles of operators, on one hand and on the other hand providers of services and systems of telecommunication is called into question by privatization. Also the globalization of the market pushing each part of the chess-board in an infernal spiral of acquisitions and fusions.
The impact of TIC is still not very visible in companies, at the overall level. Although a certain number succeeded in certain functions or in certain isolated sectors. That is partly explained by the fact why the Western economies have behind them fifty years of traditional management. These practices are very delicate to make disappear and it is even more difficult to analyse them. One encounters traditional resistances to change while trying to include/understand the companies culture and to use its assets to contribute to the changes have to be tested. They have nevertheless an impact on the internal organization of the company and its relationship with its environment. The benefit will not come simply by employing information technologies in an organization, their productive use requires a strong commitment from the leaders in the decision making and the accompanying actions to be carried out.This is the major challenge faced by management of the Nineties.
In this second part, we treat new possible organizational structures in companies, using Communication and Information Technologies.
This transfer utilizes a strategy of transformation which comprises a certain number of levels or successive stages by which the company will have to pass to carry out its transformation smoothly. We noted that these internal changes were accompanied by an increasingly significant opening of the company to its environment.
This interrelationship pushes the company to use the means of information and communication at its disposal in order to assume the complexity which results from this and to reinforce and maintain the cohesion of the unit.
This approach leads us to reflect on the company, the methods and tools of modeling to include/understand and organize the increasing complexity of its operation. We traverse the conceptual, functional aspects of them well as the process unfolds.
Then we approach the problems of the reconfiguration of the processes of the company. This one passes by a questioning of the existing processes and the use of a step of the type BPR. Va one to change the process or one will change process?
The role of of Information Technologies and Communication as a lever in the reconfiguration of the processes of management is a critical factor of success, shown in practice by the capacity to transmit and share information in a transverse through the functions and the processes, thus breaking the old rules and constraints founded by Taylorization of the tasks. The role of general practitioner of the people/actors of the organization in the execution of tasks is extended and enriched thanks to tools of assistance, the access to shared data bases and the support of technologies of knowledge. Paradoxically, the increasing complexity of the economic environment which information technologies imposes on the organizations pushes a return to simplicity (to mobilize energies, to give the priority to the customers, etc....) The dimension of the evolution of the human being is the significant value to develop in increasingly complex organizations. Communication and information technologies associated with the new organizations are only tools and means with which the service of this individual and the collective development.
The third part approaches the company from the point of view human being and its success as such. After a historical rapid growth posed by the division of labour, the contributions of work of systemic as regards opening of the alive systems made it possible to introduce the concept of complexity and the concepts of Co-dependence, integration and car-organization.
Team work takes these concepts and makes them dynamic. In the decision-making process, the rare resource is less information than the capacity of attention of the actors of the organization tohandle and process.
This approach leads us to reflect on the human being, the laws and method of change to include/understand the complexity of its operation. A method of change is described and the aspects of much attention, the attitudes, the roles and the behavior are approached and an assumption on the development of the emitted conscience. Then the problems of the control of the change in the company are analysed. The systemic approach shows us the mechanisms concerned and their interrelationships but this approach cannot try out and include/understand the change for the person (its lived). Information east cannot be not the rare food product in the company and in the decision-making process which any actor is brought to try out in his everyday life let us observe for us even if by chance the attention would not be a rarer food product still.
The processes work in the development of information technologies and of communication comprising the new organizations on one hand and the need of the actorsstaff on the other hand. Who are characterized at the same time by a need to be autonomous/independent and being connected to communicate.
One can note these phenomena in communication and information technologies with the advent of the micro data processing in network and the world network Internet, organization with the optimization of the internal processes of the company and alliances, the partnerships and the networks of activities which they weave with the environment and finally in the human being with the need to outside affirm his personality while seeking to develop a common level of conscience within his relational network. The representation that we can have of the command in which carries out the technological, organisational development and human being depends on the conceptual glasses which we carry. That one is the engine of the development of the other in an evolutionary process in spiral, sequential, linear or the fact of concomitant emergences, the way in which that is carried out (the process) is as significant as the direction as it takes.
It is impossible to study a system of the universe without studying the man. At the same time, it is impossible to study the man without studying the universe. If a man knew himself and included/understood itself, he knows and would include/understand the laws which create and control the world and conversely. The study of the world and the study of the man must thus be led in parallel, one helping the other. The directions are the link between the world and the man and the attention his revealing.
Management Consultant
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