Management and Machines – American Thinker

There is a contention about what we call “management” and how it will function in the workplace alongside machines – which is to say, robots or AI. Few managers see machines as good and positive, so let us be honest — management see machines generally as competition. Even management is subject to the influence of machines. This being the case, it is surprising that few see this as a massive challenge for management. For a long time, management has focused on people and a firm’s structure, culture, and strategy. While these have relative importance, do these areas determine what management is now and in the future? Management may see the future wrongly because of its steadfast focus on fixing structures to create a harmonious workplace, drive human performance, and fix toxic employee behavior. While the leading outlets pound these same ideas into the management industry, something more important is at hand. That is, how management will work with machines. Management’s theories and history need to refocus from what has been to what is to come — machines as coworkers or even supervisors.

The loudest outlets always focus on the c-suite — upper management — and the same old jargon that has caused disasters in many corporations; instead, the focus must be on real flesh and blood managers not in the c-suite who will work with machines of mass proportions. These are the challenges of modern management that are going to change the overall notion of management. Management is setting objectives and strategy and overseeing human behavior, but let’s be real and see where things are going; there is serious contention about the rise of machines that will enable or take over management. Some of it is doom and gloom, such as Sara Brown’s 2020 MIT article “A New Study Measures the Actual Impact of Robots on Jobs. It’s Significant,” in which she said,

“The impact is more sizable within the areas where robots are deployed: adding one more robot in a commuting zone (geographic areas used for economic analysis) reduces employment by six workers in that area.”

Alternatively, on the optimistic end, Nahia Orduña, in “Why Robots Won’t Steal Your Job,” in the Harvard Business Review, acknowledged, “HR departments and finance companies use robotic process automation (RPA) to verify payroll systems, create email reports, and manage expenses, among other tasks typically handled by employees. Moreover, computer vision now makes it possible for machines to scan barcodes and track packages without the help of human hands.” So, are we overmaximizing human performance, correcting toxic employee behavior, or building strong corporate cultures?

Here’s the reality: Man is not ready to work with machines on a daily basis. Such is the case with a piece in Medium by Subhakanta Dhal, “I am an employee, not a machine.” While I concur with the author’s sentiment about management treating people as robots, I disagree with his premise because now management has to learn to work with robots in the workplace.

People love the latest technology, but only if it does not compete with their human energy. It is not that machines can compete or do what humans can do on a broader scope; it is the perception of many managers that machines can and, on some level, replicate their tasks and responsibilities. Customers love fast and efficient service provided by machines and AI when they are shopping and downloading, but not to work with on a daily basis. Management is said to make data-driven decisions — data performed by some variation of machine learning and large language models to create the data. Why not let a robot do the data-driven decision-making? Because management is resistant to the robot doing it, utilizing it as its co-pilot instead of letting it go full throttle. To me, and maybe you, data-driven decision-making requires robust AI and robotics since human thought and intuition are no longer in vogue.

This brings us back to what management is about rather than what it has morphed into over the centuries and decades. Alfred Chandler, a highly regarded management historian, tells us that business management was not always about control over people, nor was it about employee empowerment or coercion of human behavior — these were amendments made over time due to changing times. Nor was management focused on eliminating toxic people or long meetings that sap energy or productive time doing managerial tasks. Nor was management about corporate culture design. So what is management about? As we have seen, it changes over time. Nowadays, management does not want to make these adjustments as to how management looks — again, the caricature of management is not the big mean boss terrorizing underlings. How can management mistreat machines into productive modes of work? How can managers punish robots for breaking a code of conduct or arriving to work late? How can a company check or give performance reviews to machines?

Management has to consider the challenges of moving into an epoch of machine learning, where machines learn to do things humans do; that is, machines work much like humans. Just think: managers, particularly in the food industry, use delta robots, sorting and grading robots, autonomous robots (AMRs), and automated guided robots (AGRs). Robotics Tomorrow gives us staggering statistics about the growth of robotics in the food industry. These data are representative of many other industries across the globe.

We may have our differences about machines in the workplace, but surely, we all will have some interaction with machines as helpers, coworkers, or bosses. How do we move management toward machines and less on human behavior that maximizes performance?

AT via Magic Studio” src=”https://images.americanthinker.com/up/up7xe4szksgdge40pbi0_640.jpg” width=”450″ />

Image: AT via Magic Studio