Knowledge Update

Metaverse, which alludes to the next generation of the Internet, has become popular in our society's most contemporary contexts.

Many academics have highlighted that the organizations of the twenty-first century differ from those of the previous centuries in a number of significant ways (Cascio, 2006).

Leadership is a much needed and cherished role that only a few fit into. Managers come in several shapes and sizes but leaders are curated with special traits, exceptional talent and noticeable charisma.

Social Media means engaging people to create videos or thoughts or share them with others using virtual network. Social Media started with simple platforms such as GeoCities, launched in November 1994, and Classmates.com in 1995 and then SixDegrees.com in 1997 (Wikipedia, 2022)

No doubt that the world is undergoing many fundamental changes in all aspects of economic, political, social, and technological life. The rapid development of digital technologies, such as artificial intelligence, big data, the Internet of Things, and many other modern concepts constitutes a real opportunity to address many of our contemporary problems, foremost among are environmental pollution, global warming, population overcrowding, and increasing pressure on limited natural resources. These problems are worsened and their impact is increasing in major cities. Statistics estimate that the population of the Earth will reach 9.8 billion in 2050, 70% of them will be living in cities. Hence, the search for solutions has become inevitable and even existential to ensure the survival of future generations and their right to live in a clean and safe environment.

One of the most prominent of these solutions that float on the surface is the so-called smart or digital cities.  Cities where technical, human, and physical infrastructures are available to optimize the use of modern technologies that can achieve economic sustainability and improve the quality of life in all its details and ensure the wise use of resources and maximize their value. The concept of SMART cities has developed from an ambitious idea in the 1990s into a reality in many cities of the world. Many countries have developed the necessary mechanisms and technologies for these cities and have created practical models that have achieved many of the strategic and lofty goals, such as providing clean energy and increasing agricultural productivity through horizontal farms that rely on intelligent irrigation. These models have also developed transportation, health, and educational systems with modern technologies such as artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, and advanced sensors. These technologies enabled the collection and processing of the big data needed to improve decisions relating to the daily life of individuals in streets, in parks, in shopping malls, and their workplaces. Many cities are becoming relatively SMART. Cities like London, Seoul, Singapore, and Dubai are seen as role models.

Despite the positive outlook, digital transformation is not without challenges. Data security and privacy may be among the top concerns. Some also believe that with the use of modern technologies in such a transformational way, we may lose control of our lives and put ourselves under the control of many digital companies, whose motives might be questioned by many. Others call for the need to return to the land and promote a reverse migration from crowded cities to rural agricultural areas as a means of distributing the development gains and strengthening our capacity for food and agricultural production to achieve self-sufficiency and food security, rather than absolute dependence on imported consumer industries.

Despite the foregoing, and given the challenges and contradictory views on the reality of smart cities, the rate of transition towards smart cities is still modest. Nevertheless, the future looks promising in this direction, especially with the increasing problems of environmental pollution and global warming, which threaten the entire world and call for more efforts to protect the future of the Earth on which we live.

There is a strong belief that even with the logical decisions we make, there are a lot of emotions feeding that logic. Professionals try to assure that people can put aside their feelings while they are making a particular decision, but in reality, that is almost impossible. The emotional dimension of the brain and its logical dimension are integrated in a way in which we cannot make any part work individually. The best way to improve the decision-making process is to enhance the skills on how to use the emotional and the logical dimensions in the proper manner. This process is called “emotional intelligence”. In enterprises and institutions, the top management is often assessed based on their effectiveness and efficiency decisions. This means that the top management is under constant stress while taking their decisions.

In work-life situations, emotional intelligence is closely associated with harmonious and friendly relationships among employees. Controlling self-emotion helps the effective management in preventing disruptive emotions and impulses or the buffering of negative emotions in favor of mood enhancement. Human intelligence and its implications on the organizations ought to be distanced from emotional and intellectual views, where emotional intelligence proves to have a greater effect on the organizations’ success. This harmony is the basis of synergistic sharing of skills within groups, whose performance surpasses that of other groups with similar technical skills but fewer social skills. Moreover, emotional intelligence is directly related to workgroup cohesion, which is closely related to superior performance.

Many successful managers believe that emotional intelligence can be trained and developed since the intellectual use of emotions gives individuals the ability to make accurate decisions when they are self-aware of their power and limitations. Hence, they feel more confident. Having good levels of emotional intelligence skills can protect the management from the anxiety and difficulties they experience when making wise decisions.

Finally, recent studies have illustrated that the more the managers have the understanding and practice to adapt and control their emotions will impact their abilities to produce more effective decisions.

Knowing what the future holds for us is nothing but an estimation of the present. We are aware that since the last eighteen months, the world is undergoing dynamic changes and rapid evolution. Over a period of time, organizations have realized that these changes are needed for the functioning of people, departments and leaders’ roles in organizations. Several latest researches indicate that current trends in HR and Hospitality Sector focus on building new and better workplaces.

The first and foremost trend points towards Upskilling and Reskilling of Employees. To handle a VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous) business environment, there is a need for managers to plan and foresee requirements for upskilling and reskilling employees to fit into new and unexpected roles. HR needs to let employees shift their focus from traditional career paths spanning over decades to think outside their role in the organization. There is an urgent need among employees to develop critical and newly-found skills so that they can be more competent over a period of time. The critical skills required for the future may include higher-order cognitive, social, emotional and digital skills along with higher-level of adaptability, resilience and empathy. HR should offer greater development and learning opportunities to employees. The hospitality sector needs special upskilling and reskilling as this sector has suffered much and it needs a heightened level of resilience (ability to bounce back to new normal and adapt new requirements). 

The second trend focuses on Adaptable and Flexible Work environment. The traditional work environment, large offices, requirement for parking spaces, excessively high costs for amenities, business travel and physical presence for work completion as well as meetings has become a thing of the past – as the pandemic has challenged it in an extreme manner. Things that were not even imagined till last year have become a reality and the need of the hour. The change in organizational structures and hierarchy need to be replaced by distributed structures and delegation for faster decision-making as required by the new order of the world. The current trend is to let HR teams focus on bringing flexibility and agility in their actions rather than just being service providers. Supporting employees in efforts of enhancing their work-life balance should be the goal of the HR department. The latest McKinsey report on leadership during tough times highlights the value of collaboration and networking of teams along with enhanced information sharing and distributed authority among employees to handle tough situations like these pandemic times. So HR and most sectors should try to bring about more flexibility at the workplace with remote working, diminished travel, and spatially spread-out teams.

The third and dominant trend is related to embedding forward-looking technology and AI techniques within the workplace. The surge in technology usage has been the most important and direct consequence of the pandemic COVID-19. Suddenly employees and management have realized that everything can be done with the help of technology, practically in all sectors. Integrating technology and AI at workplace can support employee “superteams” to produce more impactful work that enables organizations to transform and achieve high performance SMART goals. It is being experimented that with heightened usage of AI, the teams can use data more effectively to generate future-looking market trends and business insights. Further, this can help teams analyze and use data for superior decision-making and faster action by leaders.

So overall, these trends have been viewed and experienced by organizations, managers and employees alike, and they need to be sustained for better success in the future. These business developments cannot be negated post-pandemic times and therefore leaders need to study trends and develop suitable infrastructure to bring forth changes related to the functioning of teams, organizational structures, policies related to employees and provide enhanced opportunities for training and development in the near future.

The COVID-19 pandemic has evinced how well financial institutions can operate with remote staff, which is a positive aspect. In view of the combination of new technologies and digital accounting, CPAs operating remotely may still deliver high-quality service to their clients.