The systems integrated business

The larger the company, the more involved its organization, the slower its responses, and the greater the bureaucratic mix-up in the middle. All alert companies are now endeavouring to flatten the hierarchy and loosen the structure, often as an urgent matter of survival. Such a process reduces costs, and increases efficiency and competitiveness. Moreover the reduction of managerial layers has been found to pay dividends: the staff become better motivated because the company is now clearly visible, and each person´s `ownership´ of a sector of its operations is more apparent. The company, particularly the large corporation, that adopts these new management and organizational capabilities will gain significant strategic and tactical advantages. But these `technological fixes´ will place new demands on the parallel human management system: it will need higher levels of intellectual force coupled to a mastery of systematic organization. These will require significant changes in the concept and style of management. The thought of integrated system design being applied to human management structures may cause trouble. But system design need not be an inhuman process consigning people to a managerial production line. Indeed it is the very opposite, because it can liberate large numbers of middle management and clerical staff from their conventional routine. They have the opportunity of upgrading to the new species of `information manager´