Exploring the Future of Management: Facts, Fashion and Fado
"… we also know that, as well as there is fashion in dressing, there is also fashion in ideas. In the absence of science, today’s ideas bear no advantage over those of yesterday, since there is no increase in knowledge. And, as far as social matters are concerned, there is still no science."
(in The Essence of Commerce, Fernando Pessoa, 1926)
Organisations, as open systems embedded in a larger open system that we usually call environment, establish bi-univocal relationships that mutually impact each other. Thus, the need for us to continuously study, discuss and understand not only both systems but how they influence one another. What are the main trends in the environment? How will current and future demographic and technological developments affect organisations and their societal role?
Artificial intelligence, Big Data, demographic imbalances such as, in the case of Europe, a decreasing and ageing population are deeply transforming the way we understand and manage organisations. What will work look like in the years ahead? How much of what we do will be replaced by robots and what will the interaction between these and humans be? How to manage such challenge? How to finance such system and keep social order?
The last few years have been marked by a number of migration movements that not only transform and enrich the human landscape of many countries, but appear to be a long-lasting trend. How to qualify and integrate these migrants in the workplace? How to manage an increasingly diverse and multicultural workforce? Couple this with the challenge of robotisation and scholars will have multiple reasons for wanting to continue their mission of probing into and exploring the future. Management is about doing things through people. Who are these new people? The behaviour of organisations vis-à-vis the society is increasingly scrutinised and its impact cannot be ignored. Strategy, behavioural sciences, business and society, networks, services and global value chains, entrepreneurship and innovation… these and many other topics can and will be discussed during EURAM 2019. We hope that EURAM 2019 will be a forum where new propositions and answers will be debated, where new theories will be exposed to address the many problems that challenge organisations and their management.
Welcome to the luminous city of Lisbon! A city that you will leave with saudade.
