Written by Mahan Mohammadi, Ph.D. Candidate & International Ambassadors
Nowadays the work environment has become more of a digitized and conceptual entity for many companies than a real place. Running works from distances and “telecommuting” is increasingly becoming a norm for many technologically oriented businesses. Few have ignored technologies such as videoconferencing, which significantly lowered workplace travel and administrative costs. But now using mobile devices and cloud computing innovations for data transfer and storage, “work” can be done almost anywhere for many intents and purposes.
This may lead to the point that all business would be conducted by numerous and diffused “remote” offices, without any central business offices. For any of this brings a much greater degree of flexibility on how, where, and where workers get their job done. all these changed in the work atmosphere pose new challenges for managers and company owners to maintain distributed work environments without relying on values that can be added only by in-person relations. This has raised questions about how multicultural and globalized workplaces will prevent conflicts that eventually occur between language, cultural, regulatory standards and other barriers.
Increased interconnectivity, along with bringing together people from around the world, brings closer competition with broad implications for outsourcing, cost pressure, and local economic conditions.
Apart from these widespread debates, for employees who are used to working in the traditional “office,” which requires physical presence, adjustment to these new realities could be difficult or disorienting. Just like with any technology, when transitioning to some fundamentally different business paradigms, organisations have to be very careful.
However, all these online advantages may remain as a part of a “wish list,” if we can not step beyond trend listing into the actual application. It is easy to claim that technology sets many new competitive advantages for businesses but introducing such technology does not make it so easy to make the case firmly enough for organisations to participate seamlessly.
The data on involving new trends provided shows that small companies are seldom first-time adopters when addressing development opportunities for organizations. Instead, they often face implementation constraints that can prevent adoption (neither early nor late).
Therefore, in addition to discussing these trends, it is recommended to have the potential to revolutionize the way companies work. purchasing strategies, the prioritization of IT investments, assessment of the relationship between IT and market, the identification and codification of appropriate internal and external know-how are as important for the transformation of organizations as the dynamic technological evolution that drives economic change.
Source: Katia Passerini, Ayman El Tarabishy, Karen Patten. Information Technology for Small Business: Managing the Digital Enterprise. 2012
