What will the manager 3.0 look like in the company of tomorrow?

The business world is changing. Substantial transformations, which follow the movements and fluctuations of an even greater revolution: that of digital. In support of the digital transformations of companies, new models of work organization are drawing new production logics and new perspectives for innovation. Following the general overview of these new models that aim to optimize the functioning of tomorrow’s societies, a fundamental question emerges: what effects do these changes have on the professions? Faced with the emergence of Learning by doing, the horizontalization of work organization, the increase in flexibility and collaboration, the job of manager seems to be at the heart of all discussions. It is in this case that we are going to take an interest, firstly because it is at the heart of the changes being implemented, and secondly, because it is the subject of all the predictions, from the most realistic to the most fanciful, about its sustainability. Finally, because the manager of tomorrow will surely be the first to embrace these new models and to propose new visions and innovative strategies that will accompany, if not direct, the digital transformations to come.

Management, daughter of revolutions

Management is the daughter of revolutions. Born of Taylorism, a current promoting a scientific organization of work, the discipline has strived, over time and changes in society, to identify new organizational patterns seeking to make the aspirations of companies coincide with the spirit of the times, new ways of thinking and paradigmatic, economic, scientific and now technological changes. In short, the manager is the very figure of the organization of work and embodies its currents. To take an interest in it is therefore to substantially question the future of work and its emerging frameworks of thought. The manager is not at his first transformation. A recent figure, appearing at the very beginning of the twentieth century in the midst of the industrial revolution to confront a rigorist and productivist conception of the economy, the manager was first considered as the guarantor of the vertical division of labor, ensuring the proper functioning of production chains, protocols and other scientifically rationalized procedures. But as Karl Marx said, “lui_même work is harmful and disastrous not only under present conditions, but in general, inasmuch as its aim is the mere increase of wealth. . And the organization of work, more than being limited to productivity, must make men free to create, experiment and innovate. For “the realm of freedom begins where the work determined by necessity ends”.