A survey of trends indicating what the organisation of the future looks like across multiple comparative dimensions.

1. What the Organisation
of Tomorrow Looks
© 2012 Copyright Bryan Fenech
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Bryan Fenech
Founder and Director, Building the Organisation of
Tomorrow

2. About Building the
Organisation of Tomorrow
Building the Organisation of Tomorrow aims
to increase awareness of progressive
organisational models and management
practices as pre-requisites to success in the
21st century knowledge economy,
© 2012 Copyright Bryan Fenech
dramatically improving commercial, social and
ecological outcomes for organisational
stakeholders.
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LinkedIn – au.linkedin.com/pub/bryan- Founder and Director – Building
fenech/2/23a/730/ the Organisation of Tomorrow
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3. Key themes
• Why we need a new form of organisation?
• What does the organisation of the future look like?
• What are the implications for us now?
• Areas for further research
© 2012 Copyright Bryan Fenech

4. The greatest crisis in history
• A critical flaw in basic organisational design increasingly
exposed by 21st century technological and socio-economic
developments
• Managerialism and bureaucracy – the smartest guys in the
room keep making really dumb decisions – degradation of
© 2012 Copyright Bryan Fenech
organisational performance and destruction of value
• Externalising and obscuring costs – exploitation and inequality,
environmental degradation, and animal cruelty as a result of
shifting costs from the balance sheet to governments, the
public, and the environment
• Over concentration of power – manipulating markets and
democratic processes – stifling debate

5. Organisation of the future
• Research across a Determines
• Environment and Context
number of
• Enterprise Logic
dimensions to get a Frames
comprehensive
© 2012 Copyright Bryan Fenech
• Strategic Imperatives
picture Requires
• A comparative study Facilitated by
• Key Capabilities
to give context –
• Governance, Leadership and
traditional versus Enabled by Social Practices
future organisation
• Structure

6. Environment and context
Traditional Organisation Organisation of the Future
A socio-economic era built on the A socio-economic era built on the
technological breakthroughs of the technological breakthroughs of the ICT
industrial revolution revolution (and now robotics and
© 2012 Copyright Bryan Fenech
biotech)
Increasing globalisation – opening up Unprecedented globalization –
of vast new markets for products and competition, dynamic and volatile
services markets, short product lifecycles
A world of unlimited resources to be A world of limited resources to be
exploited – the New World, Africa, conserved and sustained
India, China and the East
Positivism as the dominant worldview Constructivism as a challenge to the
dominant positivist world view

7. Enterprise logic
Traditional Organisation Organisation of the Future
Raison d’etre – a vehicle for achieving Raison d’etre – a vehicle for
personal financial wealth and power achieving social as well as financial
value and meeting a broad range of
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objectives
Beneficiaries – a narrow set of Beneficiaries – a broad range of
shareholders, the capitalist project stakeholders, the social enterprise
project

8. Strategic imperatives
Traditional Organisation Organisation of the Future
Standardisation and repeatability – Differentiation and innovation – mass
mass production customisation
Size and stability Nimbleness, flexibility and
© 2012 Copyright Bryan Fenech
responsiveness
A relentless managerial focus on cost A relentless leadership focus on
containment, reducing unit costs investment in new products and
services
Economies of scale Economies of scope
“Sweating” value from tangible assets Creating value in intangible assets –
– property, plant and machinery knowledge and the social capital that
underpins it
Beating the competition Building strategic alliances and
partnerships

9. Key capabilities
Traditional Organisation Organisation of the Future
Strategy formulation Strategy implementation
Operational management Project management
Development and application of The commoditisation of specialist
© 2012 Copyright Bryan Fenech
specialist technical knowledge technical knowledge and the need to
dynamically reconfigure and apply
collaborative knowledge resources –
“dynamic capabilities” and “absorptive
capacity”
Management – causal rationality, from Leadership and entrepreneurialism –
a pre-determined goal and given set of effectual reasoning, from a given set of
means identify the fastest, cheapest, means allow goals to emerge
most efficient etc contingently over time

10. Governance, leadership and
social practices
Traditional Organisation Organisation of the Future
Application of principles of command Application of principles of market
and control economics to internal economics to internal organisation –
organisation – central control of devolving of power and decision
© 2012 Copyright Bryan Fenech
resources and planning making and free flow of resources
Management practices embedded with Leadership practices embedded with
the strategic intent of command and the strategic intent of empowerment
control and facilitation
Rules based on rational legalistic A negotiated order based on principles
principles – sine ira ac studio of community, and renewal practices
required to manage sustainability and
success
Centralised leadership Distributed leadership

11. Structure
Traditional Organisation Organisation of the Future
Bureaucracy, hierarchy Networked, cellular
Segregation of labour by discipline into Integration of labour into autonomous
functional silos multi-disciplinary teams
© 2012 Copyright Bryan Fenech

12. Ideas for further research
• 3 things to consider
• The Organisation of Tomorrow as an emergent and political
phenomenon
• The signification of hierarchy with structure as a justification for
retaining layers of management – the “semi-structured
© 2013 Copyright Bryan Fenech
organisation”
• Ambidexterity and matrix organisation as reactionary expressions