[In-Depth Look] Autonomous Management System and Golmok Sangkwon

Kim Dong-chul, Ph.D. in EngineeringㆍOutside Director of Ubicare

The gigantism of organizations triggered by mass production has made it difficult to create the best organization solely based on individual capabilities. In companies above a certain scale where various specialized fields such as raw material supply, manufacturing in factories, marketing and sales, warehousing and inventory, and cash flow come together, the field of professional management inevitably emerges. As companies grow, hierarchical organizations by field inevitably follow.

During the period when computers were spreading, vertical organizations began to change into so-called matrix organizations, which are three-dimensional and horizontal. Employees belong to two or more organizations simultaneously, and thus the number of managers to whom they must report has increased. With the emergence of various systems and the establishment of databases, tasks that used to take a week to prepare a single report can now be done in an hour. Beyond this productivity improvement, there is a trend to unify all ranks as team leaders. The focus of management is shifting toward the field. For example, the structure has changed from one where supervisors were praised when employees performed well to a system where employees themselves receive company incentives.

When employees receive company stock options and become shareholders, it is natural for them to develop affection for the company. At the same time, the company demands a higher level of ownership from employees. It encourages them to work overtime voluntarily and contribute directly to the company’s growth without being told. The more global the company, the more necessary it is to create such an organizational culture, especially since employees often work remotely over long distances. However, there is a pitfall here: while busily working within the organization, one may not realize that what is being displayed is not true ownership but loyalty disguised as ownership. If strong ownership were truly cultivated, employees with some company experience would be able to start their own businesses or maintain strong vitality even in heterogeneous organizations, but in reality, this is not the case. Most people accustomed to global companies continue their careers by moving to other global companies.

What is future-oriented management? Clues can be found in the concept of a self-evolving autonomous management system in the era of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, introduced in Brian J. Robertson’s book Holacracy. The Holacracy system documents all tasks employees must perform in governance. Instead of receiving orders from someone, employees look up the governance that records their responsibilities and perform their work autonomously. It is a bossless autonomous management system. The author benchmarks the phenomenon where all organs of the human body operate harmoniously relying on the autonomic nervous system. For example, the heart pumps blood without consulting other organs, and the liver filters harmful substances without apologizing to the stomach for doing so. However, it takes about five years, depending on the size of the organization, for the entire rapid management change to be completed and effective, which poses a challenging issue for managers.

The author argues that systems perfected during the stable industrial era demonstrate value when prediction and control work well. The world from now on changes rapidly and diversely, so it is natural that prediction and control do not function properly. There are clear limits to demanding endless passion and creativity from employees to add agility to organizations.

Individual entrepreneurs lack the concept of processes, making it difficult to manage large-scale enterprises. Conversely, even if a large company manager retires and becomes an individual entrepreneur, success is not guaranteed. The larger the organization one has experienced, the more specialized one may be, but social adaptability may be lacking, reducing the probability of personal business success. Retirees lacking the muscles for autonomous management are fiercely fighting for survival in local markets, engaging in real battles with their whole bodies. The number of stores changing their signs is evidence of this.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.