Joseph F. Coates

Management from a to Z: 2057

OVERVIEW: Continuity and change will mark the rubbery boundaries of a managers worklife 50 years from now. Information technologies will facilitate and improve the handling of such issues as education and training, while cultural elements in a globalized world will raise new problems. While American English will be the lingua franca, it will be far from the universal culture, which will demand new levels of managerial sophistication. The unionization of R&D managers will create new benefits, including sabbaticals, profit sharing on inventions and discoveries, and sophisticated training to keep up with new developments. Anonymous electronic voting on merit and credibility will guide relations with a firms top management.

Coming to Grips With the Future

OVERVIEW: An awareness of the corporations external environment and longer-term future is becoming increasingly important in technology planning. Building an internal futures competence is the most promising way to gain this awareness. It involves, at the outset, understanding what futures research is and what it is not, and what futurists can deliver and what they cannot. Based on this, management can proceed to staff a futures unit, assign the tasks it will perform, monitor progress, communicate the results, and assess their implications for the business.

One Point of View: Science and Technology Issues/Opportunities for the New U.S. Administration

The time has never been better or more appropriate for business and industry to create an unequivocal constituent base for radical changes in federal policy toward science and technology. Insofar as science is the key to new technologies, and technologies are the source of much of our future economic well being, the examination of past practices and the resetting of goals is in order. A long-term perspective is essential in order to test short-term proposals and actions. A clear perspective of the long-term objectives of science and technology becomes a primary evaluation mechanism. Will the new action promote, retard or not affect that long-term objective? The long-term objectives of science and technology fall into five broad categories: 1. With regard to the economy, the promotion of competitiveness, job formation, productivity, the stimulation of invention, and its reduction to effective practice, are essential. 2. The quality of life for the citizenry, as individuals and in the aggregate suggests: environmental clean-up, environmental maintenance, environmental enhancement, health, and safety, and security. 3. The educational steps necessary to create, appreciate and fulfill the above elements. 4. Regional development in two broad forms: * The development of rural America, based on a re-injection of technological capabilities going beyond agriculture and the present relatively moribund state of light manufacturing, to link rural America to metropolitan America and to the global economy. * The revitalization of metropolitan areas, not mere attention to the most deprived and depressed but a systematic address to the future economic base of all communities and the technological stages and steps for that implementation, including both private sector development of new businesses and industries, and public sector attention to infrastructure and related matters. 5. Growth in Gross National Product per capita, whether measured by the current means or by new improved means, which would include measurements of externalities in order to throw the true negatives of the society and the economy into a more balanced calculus. THE ROLE OF GOVERNMENT Government relates to science and technology in three ways: 1. Scientific and technological activities unique to government include: Defense. Weather forecasting. Disaster anticipation, management, control. Research essential to regulatory functions and understanding the background of a regulated industry or sector. Environmental assays and monitoring. Space exploration. Much of the physical infrastructure. With regard to these unique scientific and technological roles of government, the key issues deal with: Scale. Quantity and quality of the actions taken. Priorities. 2. Research best supplied by government to achieve speed, balance and direction, and to promote developments and applications in the private sector. The clearest examples of this are: Health research, as practiced at the National Institutes of Health. Scientific research to promote selected areas through the National Science Foundation and the National Institute for Science and Technology (NIST). Elements of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. In this regard, the key issues are: Target selection. Balance among competing goals and objectives. Technology transfer; that is, making the fruits of research effective in the general economy. 3. The third role of government in relation to science and technology is to stimulate, support and promote private sector research. In addition to those elements which flow out of 1 and 2 above, the key objectives of government lie less in the direct support of research and more in the use of the other instruments of government to promote private sector activities. …