As technology reshapes the world at breakneck speed, organizations must evolve to stay relevant.

It would be interesting to examine how organizations are structured and articulated. In the long term, organizations with individuals willing to experiment, innovate, and embrace technology will be the ones that survive. At the rate at which technology and its variants are being shaped, many applications are being revealed almost by the minute, and the level of obsolescence and wear and tear of equipment is becoming extraordinarily high. In such a scenario, humans and organizations will be overwhelmed with various products and their variants. The human mind can no longer remain in typewriter mode. The garden of organizational theory and behavior is dotted with eminent researchers. Three pioneers, Adam Smith, Charles Babbage and Robert Owen, provided the ballast and foundation.

Adam Smith made the argument that countries and organizations would benefit from adopting the principles of division of labor, what today is called specialization. Charles Babbage, in his seminal work, postulated: Through the division of labor, the time required to learn a job or skill is greatly reduced. From the early childhood stage, wastage of materials is minimized and decreases. The mind is driven to undertake serious tasks when it achieves higher skills. In 1789, Robert Owen, aged 18, acquired a factory. He was a utopian, far ahead of his time. In 1825, he enacted regulated work hours, child labor laws, public education, and business participation in various community projects – a precursor to CSR. In today’s connected world, people work from home. Places with the latest technology and gadgets at their disposal. Over the last decade, the entire paradigm of organizational behavior has transformed. Technology looks at organizations with a scrutinizing eye, the complexity and dynamics of structures having undergone a complete metamorphosis. Let us look at Indian Railways. There was a time when operations and manufacturing had influence in the decision-making process. Today, it is technical services that are changing the game. The concept of fixed working hours is a thing of the past.

Staff must be vigilant 24/7. So, employees need to hone their skills to prepare for the challenges of the virtual world. Let’s look at the direct teaching model through online lessons – one-on-one, between the teacher and the tutor. The paradigm itself can affect teaching techniques in schools and universities. Likewise, skilled doctors instruct colleagues via Skype or other means during complex surgical procedures. Whether in surgical strikes or wars, instructions are delivered to infantrymen using the latest technology, such as the use of GPS coordinates and real-time imagery.

In such a scenario, many organizational structures, governmental or private sector, must adapt radically to survive. The workforce must continually upgrade its skills or risk extinction. Perhaps warm emotions are lost in the maze of technological evolution. The philosophy of an organization, its goals and objectives as well as the pattern of behavior between the structure and the staff got stuck in a traffic jam like the one encountered in major Indian cities like Gurugram. Stephen Hawking predicted, in a rather depressing prognosis, that life would disappear on this planet for four reasons: nuclear weapons, global warming, viruses created by humans or robots. Thus, the human mind should reinvent itself and its current behavior and organizational theories or prepare a plan to discover a sister planet to inhabit. Aristotle wrote: “We are what we repeatedly do. » This paradigm will have to change for organizations to survive.

(The author is the CEO of Chhattisgarh East Railway Ltd. and Chhattisgarh East West Railway Ltd. He is a professor at the Faculty of Lifestyle; views are personal)