GOVERNANCE

The manager’s work in a new era

Introduction

It has become quite difficult to surprise the modern man. Sometimes, it seems that the discoveries and innovations entering our lives have become completely commonplace. We are a generation that, during our childhood, could not have imagined becoming contemporaries of new means of communication, the internet, digital photography, electronic data storage, satellite TV, and video calls via an «ordinary» mobile phone, mobile apps, e-commerce, digital currencies, augmented and virtual realities, social networks that allow messages to be sent instantly across the planet, humanoid robots, and many other astonishing innovations. These innovations have pierced our reality. We often don’t even have time to fully grasp the extent of their influence on our behavior.

Some inventions as tornado sweeps on well-established models of work. Sometimes, technologies disrupt other technologies. Some discoveries can radically change approaches that have been accepted as standards for centuries. We are currently in a time of explosive development of artificial intelligence platforms, the depth of whose impact is difficult to assess. However, we already understand that these technologies will leave no stone unturned across several professions and industrial sectors.

This work is dedicated to the evolution of control systems. We delved into one of the most conservative mechanisms that has ever existed in the history of human social organization – the system of social governance. Over millennia of forming models of hierarchical combinations of people into ordered systems, scales, ideologies, and governance formats changed. Cataclysms, revolutions, and wars have led to one state replacing another. Yet, the hierarchical model has remained unchanged. A rigid management framework, where a leader endowed with power and authority stands at the head of a social combination, whether state or private organization. This may be absolute power, a constitutionally limited model, a leader elected for a limited time, or one with a lifetime mandate. Power may be distributed across «branches» with parliamentary mechanisms balancing an individual’s authority. In any case, the universe governed by a leader is mathematically predetermined. Level by level, branches of management descend, headed by leaders of lesser rank, followed by their deputies, then middle managers, and so on down the hierarchical ladder.

The desire for order, predictability, stability, and self-preservation instincts spawn rules, sequences of actions, and a system for delineating levels of authority. Thus, bureaucracy is born. The generally accepted definition is this: a management system implemented by an administrative apparatus consisting of officials with specialized professional training, acting within the limits of formal rules.

In search of the best ways to organize the management process, leaders experiment with the number and purpose of subordinate organizations, structure reporting systems, and develop methods of encouragement and motivation, as well as penalties. A current trend is the debureaucratization and reengineering of internal business processes. States and companies are becoming more transparent.

However, as our research has shown, evolution can shake this seemingly unyielding framework. We do not know exactly and how far our research will go and what conclusions readers will draw. But we do know – we are on the threshold of a new era, and the familiar understanding of management systems is coming to an end.

What are we aiming for? It is not just about a new technological solution. We are creating a new mechanism for managing large collectives. We are literally providing the leader with a tool that can first create a spatial snapshot, or in medical terms, a contrast-enhanced angiography of the entire structure of the system they manage. Then it can disassemble it into parts and reassemble it into any other construction from the same components. The impact of this development is so profound that such changes usually occur through revolutions. We have found a way to achieve the same outcome through an evolutionary process.

In tackling such a fundamental and ancient topic as the unification of people, as well as state and social governance, we likely did not avoid putting our spin on observations that have repeatedly found their place in the works of researchers from past generations, as well as contemporaries who study the social structures created by humans. In terms of problem description, we do not claim originality, but we are poised to offer an innovative way to solve them.

If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants. 

Isaac Newton letter to Robert Hooke, 1676

We stand on the shoulders of giants who created astonishing digital technologies before us. We only added one new element, which ultimately changed our understanding of what a modern management system is and what it might become.

Another important aspect: the view of the existing management model in large organizations, especially government structures, presented in this work is not the view of a critic ready to blame any current authority. The shortcomings and systemic problems are merely consequences of existing methods, technologies, and approaches that do not allow for significant further progress in managing large social structures. To some extent, we have reached a ceiling with the set of tools used. Experience and history show that breakthrough phases in state development more often result from a repressive model of governance, strict, total national discipline when, in attempting to close the social gap with other more successful nations, the lives, rights, and freedoms of entire generations are sacrificed on the altar of economic development, modernization, and reform.

The presented cases equally apply to both successful and lagging systems. These are inherent to all governments and large corporate structures. We assert that criticizing contemporary leaders for an insufficient pace of socio-economic development is akin to criticizing medical treatment methods for certain diseases in the era before penicillin or slow logistics before modern transportation. Every era has its own set of technologies and approaches.

Within the research, we set three consecutive tasks:

To provide as broad an understanding as possible of what large social entities represent. We attempted to describe and assess the human-created approaches to the birth, development, transformation, adaptation, protection, and overall maintenance of social systems. Such understanding, we believe, is a step toward the second task:

To find new tools that facilitate the creation of more harmonious relations and social and psychological well-being within systems.

The third task is to create a more harmonious model of relations between systems and their external environment, applicable to the realm of governmental administration—between the authorities and society.

We do not claim that the new approaches and technological solutions proposed in this work will be a panacea for social instability, poverty, stagnation, or, in some cases, the degradation of nations or large private companies. No innovative technologies alone will ensure the creation of real conditions for dignified living, fair distribution of public goods, quality education, accessible healthcare, meeting basic needs, and overall social protection.

Nevertheless, we are confident that the key to solving pressing issues in government and corporate management lies in understanding their root causes, many of which, it turns out, have a technological solution. At the very least, we are ready to offer tools that can strengthen, stabilize, enhance the efficiency, and increase the fairness of systems.

This work is intended for leaders ready for a drastic reassessment of their views and approaches, consciously implementing reforms with the necessary mindset, motivation, and mandate. We do not guarantee quick successes or a comfortable transition process. We merely assert that we have identified the next evolutionary and more humanitarian model. How long it will last, we do not know. Perhaps a decade, perhaps century. However, we also assert that all modern state and corporate governance systems will transition to a new method of self-organization. Whether they are ready for it, whether they want it or not—and the sooner, the better.