Forecasting and Management of Technology, Second Edition

1.3 Management and the Future

A standard college textbook defines management as

A set of activities (including planning and decision making, organizing, leading and controlling) directed at an organization's resources (human, financial, physical and information) with the aim of achieving organizational goals in an efficient and effective manner. (Griffin 1999, p. 7)

This definition is a static way of looking at what managers do. Scholars of organizational economics point out that managers must assign rights to make decisions, decide on rewards for making and implementing good decisions, and implement ways to evaluate the performance of both people and business units (Brickley, Smith et al. 2004, p. 5). However, the context in which managers act has become both more intense and more complex. Virtually every business and many not-for-profit organizations depend upon technology strategy for survival. While some industries are called high tech even a supposedly low-tech business, like retailing, is dominated by companies like Walmart, whose strengths were built upon highly sophisticated systems for logistics and inventory management. Thus, all managers need to realize that technologies are pervasive in all of their activities.

Several decades ago, Peter Drucker (1985) talked about strategic planning, which he described in the following way:

It is the continuous process of making present entrepreneurial (risk-taking) decisions systematically and with the greatest knowledge of their ...