Concepts of socially responsible management in the context of the methodology of complexity and the ‘new normal’
Socially responsible management as a theory and methodology of complexity is developing in the context of its components, such as general systems theory, cybernetics, dynamical systems theory, evolutionary theory, chaos theory, which are giving rise to a new generation of methods and techniques.
The architecture of complex systems develops in a non-linear manner, determined by the principles of synergistic, systemic approach and Agile management, determined by information support programmes and design of structural units as teams based on the management of people and their relationships.
The main goal of socially responsible management as a science and a discipline is to conceptualise new methods, approaches, and principles aimed at forming organisations that are flexible and based on complexity and nonlinearity, and whose managers are guided by systemic, analytical, and expert thinking.
The main goals of socially responsible management as a science and an academic discipline are to form flexible teams that would have advanced algorithmic thinking and a culture that would allow them to move away from old management approaches and methods and master new trends that would help them survive in conditions of instability, uncertainty, and information stochasticity.
The task of socially responsible management is to increase the role of organisational units as systemic integral units, taking into account economic, socio-political and cultural factors. The main goal of management personnel is to form the concept of social responsibility of managers, which would help to resolve contradictions in the human-nature-society-government system and would be aimed at socially oriented and environmentally balanced development of organisations.
Management in the modern world has led to a ‘situation of risk’ that requires a way out of instability, complexity and uncertainty, so the development of the concept of socially responsible management should be aimed at using environmentally friendly technologies through the use of Agile management, Enlightenment 2.0, new digital technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The concept of socially responsible management is based on a new management concept of eco-regenerative management as a basis for achieving a circular economy and 17 Sustainable Development Goals, a new culture of thinking, management culture, and environmental friendliness.
The development of the concept of socially responsible management includes the formation of new management approaches to the organisation of work on the basis of collective cooperation based on the principles of noospheric thinking; culture management as the main priority for expressing the social responsibility of organisational leaders.
The concept of socially responsible management is based on ecosystem principles and a new ethical system of values capable of solving the problems of interaction between humanity-biosphere-technosphere-infosphere. The concept of socially responsible management is aimed at using new environmentally friendly trends that will allow us to move to eco-regenerative development of management and its environmentally sound dimension, based on the circular economy. The systemic components of the concept of socially responsible management are based on the social responsibility of managers, determined by the use of new digital technologies and innovative solutions, based on the goals of socially oriented, environmentally balanced and socially responsible management to overcome the covid and post-covid development.
The purpose of the concept of socially responsible management is to formulate the theoretical and practical foundations of the concept of socially responsible management as a factor of sustainable development of organisations, based on the transition from a state of instability, uncertainty and ambiguity to balanced sustainable development, transition from environmentally hazardous to environmentally safe development, structural changes that will contribute to the resolution of crisis situations and use of the organisation’s competitive advantages using the ideas of the UN Global Compact. Objectives of the concept of socially responsible management:
1) to study the processes of evolution from unsustainable management to environmentally balanced, socially oriented and innovative breakthrough development in the context of instability;
2) search for innovative mechanisms for implementing sustainable development management, which is formed on the basis of advanced breakthrough information and communication technologies with advanced innovative technologies that contribute to the formation of a high-tech base;
3) research and use of smart data science technologies, based on data mining (data search) as the main resource of organisations, which is a factor in overcoming information stochasticity, aimed at overcoming the lack of information and ways to achieve sustainable development;
4) forming the concept of management development as an expression of social responsibility of organisations, which would help to identify the natural interdependence between three variables – innovation and technological potential of organisations, quality of cultural and business regulators and management of organisational culture as conditions for transition to sustainable development and sustainable economic and social system, based on social responsibility of all managers.
The formation of the concept of socially responsible management as a factor of socially oriented and environmentally balanced development is based on the fact that we live in a time of deep instability and crisis, transition to digital development of society, which is influenced by the Fourth Industrial Revolution, which requires innovative approaches to implement its tasks.
Modern management, caused by the global and paradigmatic crisis, requires a reboot of the organisational and management principles of organisations facing global challenges of the world order. Due to the fact that man and nature were opposed to each other, they became widely connected to market relations, which deepened the contradictions in the ‘man-nature-society’ system and led to the loss of control by managers over the situation of instability.
And to survive in the global world, organisations need to be dynamic, able to adapt quickly and adjust to the requirements of this world. Since management is in a situation of slowdown, uncertainty, turbulence, chaos, risks, managers must master all new approaches to overcome the crisis, for which they must master the entire volume of information, advanced creative technologies to survive the coronavirus pandemic, overcome information entropy (a measure of uncertainty, chaos, disorder).
This instability has been caused by the fact that governance is experiencing a critical situation of ‘planetary limits’, unable to provide the entire population with the fruits of civilisation – food, clean water, clean air, and the Internet. The technosphere has also joined the human-nature-society contradiction. The formation of a new concept of socially responsible management as a factor of socially oriented and environmentally balanced development in the context of COVID-19 will be able to predict non-linear development, find answers to global evolutionary crises and new patterns of behaviour. The implementation of the concept will result in a new understanding of congruence with complexity, acceptance of complexity and a transition to a congruent restoration of human subjectivity through a new system of values of management as socially oriented, environmentally balanced and socially responsible.
Under conditions of uncertainty, the complexity of an industrial enterprise increases, which requires self-regulation of the system, on the quality of which the performance results depend. According to the theory of complex systems, the implementation of certain processes affects the entire system of an industrial enterprise, whose uncertainty will always exist, so it is necessary to adapt not only to changes but also to optimise the system. The complex problems of an industrial enterprise are related to unpredictability, the solution of which lies in a critical analysis of the entire system, not just in changing certain processes. It should be noted that the conditions of survival of an industrial enterprise in the face of uncertainty and adaptation to changes contribute to the fact that the entropy within it, as well as in society, is increasing, and if the environment becomes more complex, the enterprise evolves towards complexity and uncertainty. The steady state of the industrial enterprise system is the search for an attractor (point of attraction) that sets all subsystems of the enterprise in motion, so it is important to find an attractor as a point of attraction. Forced implementation of ‘improvements’ only rarely yields the desired result. We believe that the solution should be sought in the external environment, since attractors depend on the environment in which the system is located, and when the environment changes, the system and subsystems of the enterprise change. Some changes introduced to the environment have such a powerful impact on the attractors that they simply disappear, and the system automatically finds a different trajectory for itself, leading to another attractor. This may be an attractor that did not exist before. When making changes to the team and the company, you should not try to push them out of the rut in which the company has found itself, as this will require enormous effort and bring average results. It is much better to change the parameters of the environment in which the company or team operates until its current state becomes unsustainable, and eventually impossible. It is necessary to create an adaptive landscape in which the enterprise would exist effectively, exceeding the degree of its adaptability. Systems that are able to reach the highest points in the adaptive landscape have the best chance of survival. Systems that have the ability to reconfigure their internal organisation each time take an adaptive walk through the relevant landscape. Adaptive walking is the process by which a system moves from one configuration to another in order to maintain its adaptation to circumstances by changing functionality requirements, people and tools, revising schedules, and making changes to production processes. The shape of the adaptive landscape depends on both the system and the environment. Therefore, the survival strategies of one system are not easily transferable to other systems, as the adaptive landscapes of other enterprises are different and can be implemented by the leaders of the enterprises. Systems adapt to the environment and to each other, i.e. they coevolve in the new conditions of informatisation, digitalisation, and globalisation. Thus, we can note that: 1) the internal structure of each enterprise has its own internal code, which should be filled with new innovative content; 2) people or processes work well only in combination with certain people or processes; 3) the survival strategy of an enterprise should be reassessed by recomposing the system components and creating an optimal configuration in which the impact of each element will be positive if complexity disasters and chaotic fluctuations are overcome. Self-organisation is the process of emergence of structures or forms in a system that is not the result of centralised or external influence or planning; it is a natural norm, the behaviour of typical dynamic systems, regardless of whether such systems are made up of atoms, molecules, viruses, biological species or companies. Self-organisation as a principle of creating structures permeates the whole space as a result of creative self-organisation, creating the concept of ‘self-organised teams’ working on the basis of cooperation and creativity.