We consumed every ounce of our energy to explore different dimensions of human behavior from Hawthorne Studies to present time Gallup and McKinsey surveys for optimum productivity. We started our journey from identifying human needs to exploit factors which drive human motivation to excel. A little later we found it is actually the process which keeps people motivated. We also tried law of effect to control behaviours, our scientists worked day and night to explore several dimensions of the jobs to ensure people remain engaged at the workplace for required outcomes.
Inspiring and influencing remained a daunting task for centuries. In the corporate sector it is even more challenging due to the formal environment where chanting popular slogans is not a norm. Where people weigh your argument, analyze your approach, consider your gestures, evaluate your communication, criticize your vision and question your projections. In the early 20th Century the leadership gurus started to explore the phenomenon of driving people towards the objective through domination while  control and centralization remained main themes.
During the middle of the last century we realized that leadership is not about dominance, it is the behaviour and traits of leaders that influence others. In the last few decades human beings thought leadership is probably a transformational process to build strong teams for success. But now we are finding ways to deal with human-robot teams where only obedience will remain the main concern, and all the rest will probably be a matter of theories and books only.
Job burnout sought a central place in the research and publications from the 1970s onwards. A huge amount of resources were dedicated to comprehend the occurrence. We have already embarked on the era of Elenoids where job burnout, stress and work-life balance, are all non-existent commodities. Theories of motivation successfully determined that needs drive human efforts.
Job enrichment served as a tool to enhance employee engagement, satisfaction and productivity. But rapidly evolving robotic technology has enabled these machines to replace humans who needed such interventions for their effective and efficient performance. Robody is transforming elderly care, though leading to further dryness in the aging population but at least making sure that they are engaged and less dependent on fellow human beings.
AI and robotics have already threatened a number of professions: medical doctors and teachers are probably on the hit list. Though the need for human intervention cannot be replaced because of complex decisions in medical treatments and developing critical and social skills in students will certainly require human beings. However, diagnostics and dyadic lecturing will be replaced most probably by machines and humanoids resulting in reduced demand for these professions. Most of the data driven and repetitive jobs with standard procedures such as analysts, translators, manufacturing & assembly workers and even the logistic sector will see massive automation opening a new era for organizational studies where people will find it convenient to deal with cobots and humanoids.
I wonder if our existing understanding of management & leadership, motivation and commitment, and diversity and inclusion will sustain in the world of humanoids. It will be irrelevant to master theories of leadership and management. It will probably be useless to expand knowledge of human resource management when the majority of the workforce will constitute humanoids that will perform their tasks without any shadow of doubt and tiredness. Organizations will engage customized cobots to serve their specific needs. Work-life balance theories will vanish and control as a management function will cease to exist when objectives will be delivered exactly as envisioned or fed.
We can conveniently squeeze our conventional curriculum of BS level to be delivered in half of the time and the remaining time we can dedicate to learn these emerging technologies to make sure that our future workforce is capable of coping with the deception capabilities of AI for smooth business operations.
We have always been in need of eloquent and charismatic leaders to inspire and influence fellow beings towards their shared objectives. Future workplaces will probably not require any persuasive leaders because humanoids will not be in need of any oratory to perform their jobs.
The way I look at the future workplaces is at least a partial demise of existing body of organizational studies. Because it will be probably the matter of planning and executing what we desire to achieve. However, setting directions and allocating resources to achieve organizational objectives will only require human intellect thus reducing the burden for the experts of organizational studies. However, new dimensions of human behaviors will need new insights to understand evolving challenges for human behaviors under new automated workplaces. New disciplines may emerge needing fresh minds, new thoughts and new theories. Because it is a time to explore human – humanoid relationship, where your customized coach will be a click away having thousands of ideas in a moment fulfilling strategic needs. AI is also enabling us to look into our own future, which has both pros and cons, creating a whole new field for behavioral scientists.
I remember a major shift in the curriculum of business schools after the Enron scandal in 2001, resulting in emphasis on incorporating ethics as an important component of organizational and business studies. Today again there is a need to revamp the curriculum of organizational and business studies to develop a workforce with relevant knowledge and skills for future workforce. Our existing curricula seem redundant due to the rise of AI interventions in business applications where learning, reasoning and self-correction will probably manage every business or organizational process. Machine learning, deep learning and augmented reality is making it even more convenient for future workforces to simulate and project their operations. Learners in schools and universities are far more informed and capable to adopt these emerging technologies than our teachers.
We can conveniently squeeze our conventional curriculum of BS level to be delivered in half of the time and the remaining time we can dedicate to learn these emerging technologies to make sure that our future workforce is capable of coping with the deception capabilities of AI for smooth business operations.
Because, it has been proven through recent experiments that AI has the ability to deceive even without being taught to do so. Therefore, it is high time once again for business schools around the globe to redesign organizational studies to avoid complete death of the discipline.
