IMPACT OF THE FUTURE ECONOMY ON MANAGEMENT

Author: Dan RugetCoordinator: lect. univ. dr. Simona Vasilache

Key words: management, Gen Y, virtual economy

As economists, we use a variety of theories as instruments that help us look at the past, understand it, and use it to predict the future. But, as Niels Bohr famously said, prediction is hard, particularly when it concerns the futurei. Niels Bohr was not an economist, and although his theories may have referred to nuclear atoms, his observation holds truth today in the world of economics. When reading the works of the fathers of modern economic theory, we understand how they describe, quantitatively and qualitatively, the world of economics over the past century. Ever since the industrial revolution, certain economic facts and behaviors, well documented in the relevant literature, could have easily been predicted, observed, understood and explained. The reality conformed to the theory for the most part of the past century, and so managers could apply the theory and have trust that it will all be fine.

But what theory could have predicted what happened to the global economy in the past few decades?

The internet happened and it was undoubtedly a game changer. The European Union and the single European currency altered in a profound way the European marketplace. China and India are now massive economic super-powers, driving production, as well as demand in numerous industry segments. The baby boomer generation, that re-built the world after World War II and ran it for the entire second half of the 20th Century is now retired and has the means to demand that their wants and needs are catered to in various ways. A new generation, Gen Y’s, the Millennials are now entering the workforce and are using the real money they earn there to buy virtual goods and services in the virtual world of Second Life. They also communicate and interact in ways unheard of even 20 years ago while expecting the workplace to adapt to them. There are now blogs, vlogs, Twitter, Facebook as well as Pinterest and many others. The environment is a concern for some but not others. In 2012, there are those who are willing and even demand to pay for the carbon credits to compensate for the environmental damage flying in an airplane causes. There are also those who struggle with famine and lack of clean drinking water. More of information than ever is accessible to people all over the world free of charge, and there are artists and creators who claim they can no longer do their work if they are not compensated for it.

These are all big, important, world-shaping developments.

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Yet, nobody was able to accurately predict any of these things, even a few years before they took place. There were maybe visionaries bold enough to say that the economy will undergo major changes, but even they were not able to say what those changes will be, when they will occur and how this will change the global economy. Furthermore, many of the classic economic theories need to be stretched in order to be usable to describe and quantify these shifts.

In 1999, TIME magazine had a special edition, via their Board of Economists and it started off by saying that what is present is prologueii. What that means is that what is ahead of us is much greater, more fundamentally different, much faster moving and changing than anything else that has happened so far. The economy of the future will turn what is happening now into just a simple, small, brief introduction to the truly big, profound changes to come.

As managers, interesting as it may be to dwell on economic theory or pore over analysis and policy and how that is now also re-shaping to better describe current events and developments, the more pressing issue is how to prepare ourselves and the organizations we work in to be successful in this economy of the future. This is both important and urgent, for existing managers as well as those who are just now entering the ranks of management.

Niels Bohr also said, when speaking to one of his students that the theory that the young scientist was developing was crazy, but it was not crazy enough to be true.iii When we think of the future and what it may bring to the global economy, many thoughts and ideas may seem crazy, but there is a possibility that what will happen will prove that our initial thoughts and ideas were in fact not crazy enough.

So, the remainder of this paper will explore possible directions for this economy of the future and, more importantly and immediately useful, how managers can prepare for these developments in order to ensure the success of the organization, however broadly that is defined. The goal here is not to predict, but rather to stimulate speculation. After all, speculations is nothing but a form of simulation and playing “what if…” helps prepare for that which cannot be predicted.

The Future of Euro and That of Money

Currently, the Euro is the hot topic of the day. How will the Central European Bank manage it in these murky waters of the various European economies? In a very-well-read satireiv, the assertion was made that the euro is dead and all the European super-powers are doing now is fighting over who is responsible to pay for the funeral. While that statement is meant to be humorous, the reality remains that at this moment in the history of the euro, nobody can say what the future holds, even the short-term future. Will the Euro survive as it is now, disappear altogether or change dramatically in form and purpose?

Let us now take a step back and look at the sub-prime mortgage crisis in the United States, one that not only lead to people losing homes and livelihoods, but it also lead us all to re-

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examine the values built into our financial systems. At its core, what happened is that in 2007 housing prices started to stagnate and even to fall. Homeowners and builders started to default on their loans. As banks had financed and invested into these projects, they suffered losses. After the collapse of the investment bank Lehman Brothers interbank lending collapsed and governments intervened. They bailed out banks and, thereby, assumed the losses of the banking system resulting from these bad investments.

Now, this scenario above, made many stop and question how it was allowed that the US banking system got to this point.

However, something very similar has been happening in the euro-zone now. In the euro-zone, several independent governments can use one central banking system to finance their deficits. For example:v The Greek government spends more than it receives in taxes. For the difference, the Greek government prints bonds. The banking system buys these bonds because banks can use them as collateral for new loans from the European Central Bank (ECB). When the banks pledge the Greek government bonds as collateral with the ECB, they receive new central-bank money. Banks can then use these new reserves to expand credit. The money supply increases, and prices rise. The deficit is thereby indirectly monetized, and the users of the currency pay. Prices rise not only in Greece but all over the euro-zone. In this way a part of the costs of the deficit is externalized to foreigners. Not only the Greek government but all governments can externalize the costs of their deficits in this way, resulting in perverse incentives. There is a monetary redistribution from the fiscally sounder to the unsound governments.

As these perverse incentives were easily predicted from the introduction of the Euro, the plan was to restrict these incentives to deficits below 3 percent of GDP via the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP). Yet, this plan failed, primarily because although there were numerous infringements, no sanction was ever imposed. The main problem is that governments are their own judges. Until now they have always decided that no penalty was necessary.

Today government debts in several euro-zone countries are so high that they will never be paid back. Governments are unable or unwilling to do so. If they increase tax rates, their economy will collapse and deficits may actually increase. If they reduce expenditures, there may be social unrest, as we have seen in Greece last year. In either case, they would lose influence and votes.

The big question is now who will pay for these bad debts. The answer will ultimately determine the future of the Euro. Options exist. It could be that the Governments pay themselves for their irresponsible behavior. They can do so easily by reducing expenditures and privatize public property. However, they are fully aware that this will cause them to lose influence and probably votes. So, they may be tempted to have the taxpayers pay for the Government’s irresponsibility via a much-higher tax rate. Or it could be that Governments in the core of the EU, such as those of Germany, the Netherlands, France pay. They could do so themselves, either directly by selling public property, or indirectly by imposing a higher tax burden on their

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taxpayers. Or maybe the financial system pays. Over-indebted governments default on their loans and as the financial system has financed the excessive government spending and is interconnected, a banking crisis would be the result.

At this point, there is the possibility that one of these options would work and the Euro will come out to be a stronger currency after this. It is also possible that more austerity measures and a reduction of the living standard may lead to unsustainable social unrest in countries such as Greece. Greece may then leave the euro-zone and devalue its new currency to continue its spending spree. This could trigger a chain reaction with other countries exiting the euro-zone and cause a banking crisis.

The truth is that nobody knows and the economic theory is not very helpful in predicting what will happen, even as far as next year.

But what managers need to keep in mind when thinking of the Euro-zone crisis is that right now, Tide, the detergent, in some circles, performs perfectly fine the role of currency.vi Now, this is not new, as over the course of history, a number of very different things served as currency: tobacco leaves when the Spanish were doing trades with the Native Americans, cigarettes in war prisoners’ camps etc. Now, in the United States of America, people involved in the urban drug trade are using Tide detergent as currency. This discovery came recently when during a police raid in the beginning of 2012 on a drug dealer’s home in Washington D.C., the police found cocaine, the reason why they were raiding the house in the first place, but also noted the 20 large bottles of Tide on the dealer’s shelves. Now, either this was a very cleanliness-oriented cocaine-dealer or, as it turns out actually happened, users paid the dealer in Tide rather than U.S. dollars. This is starting to appear a reasonable option when realizing that Proctor & Gamble’s best-selling laundry soap is holding its value better than the US government’s bonds and currency. Now, it is easy to see the other reasons why Tide can serve as excellent currency. The brightly-colored bottle makes Tide easily recognizable. It is expensive when compared to other laundry detergents so it has relatively high value per weight. The bottles even have handles, making it portable. It is divisible so a person can trade in half bottles and other increments. Tide does not go bad, making it durable. And, as everyone has to wash their clothes so it is valuable for other users than just drug trading.

One can easily now note, not without a grin, that Tide laundry detergent does considerably better at satisfying these requirements than does the US dollar. Therefore, at the beginning of 2012, some stores cannot buy large enough quantities to keep it on the shelf and rather than robbing convenience stores for the cash in the register, thieves are now stealing Tide and running out the door with as many bottles as they can carry.

Informants and undercover officers say that drug dealers actually encourage their customers to pay with Tide rather than cash. “I’m out of marijuana right now, but when I get re-upped I’ll hook you up if you can get me 15 bottles of Tide,” one dealer was quoted as telling an informant, according to police.vii

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Now, while the tempting conclusion is to say that even addicts know more about money and its value than does the Federal Reserve or the US Treasury, what we as future managers have to take away from this is the same thing we have to take away from the debacle of the euro-zone crisis. We need to understand that money and currency are only as strong and as powerful as the quality of the decision-making behind it. The European Central Bank, much like the drug addicts already know, cannot expect to print more and more paper and have it traded for valuable goods.

One safe prediction to make is that during our career as managers, there will be at least one bubble, whether it will be a real-estate one again, a IT one again, or maybe a laundry-detergent one, we need to be able to maintain a healthy perspective on the developments and look at a currency as a mean to simplify trade, not as a real, intrinsically-valuable good. When the decision making behind it is faulty, when the values behind it are un-ethical, when the incentives are perverse, money becomes worthless, or even poisonous.

The Future of Resources

James Moody, in the book he co-authored with Bianca Nogrady, called “The Sixth Wave”, viiiclaims that since the Industrial Revolution, progress has not been a smooth, constant up-swing, but rather that the tide of progress has ebbed and flowed. He argues that five distinct waves, each starting with disruptive new technologies and ending with a global depression, have transformed our industries, societies and economies almost beyond recognition. We are now on the cusp of another massive transformation – the sixth wave.ix

In this wave a spectacular boom in technology and powerful new markets will drive a shift away from resource dependence to a new way of life: resource efficiency.

The fifth cycle, which ended by 2008 (it started in 1981) was characterized by an especially fast development of electronics, robotic technologies, laser and telecommunication technologies. It was in fact a cycle of information and communication technologiesx. The economic development of the world was based on the development of those technologies, whereas all other economic spheres were being led by these developments.

However, according to Moody, the cycle of information and communication technologies has now already ended. Now it is time for a new cycle to begin, and the goals of the new cycle will be absolutely different from those of technological innovation and scientific discovery. The new priorities will include the development of means of production that are able to consume energy and other resources in a responsible and efficient way. To describe the new cycle briefly, one may resort to an old motto of late-Soviet times: "Economy must be economical." Dr. Moody believes that mankind has already reached the point when there is no denying the shortage of any resources, particularly those of energy.

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James Moody believes that people need to learn how to use their own garbage, if possible converting it into useful material with as little as possible environmental damage. He referred to Storm Brewing, a Canadian company, which grows shiitake mushrooms on wastes resulting from a beer factory. The mushrooms turn the wastes into animal feed, and thus there are two outcomes of the process: both mushrooms to be sold in supermarkets and nourishing animal feed to be sold to farmers.

In addition, Moody believes that the world economy under the conditions of limited resources will be oriented at selling services rather than products. There are companies that are already focusing in this direction. In Britain, for instance, there is a company called Streetcar whose members do not want to buy cars for themselves, because they do not need to use cars every day therefore they become members of this organization and are thus able to access community cars and only pay for what they use. The company has its own car fleet, and members can find cars on thousands of streets in the UK whenever they need to use a car.

Dr. Moody is also of the belief that there will be no gigantic corporations in the new world. Millions of people work for those corporations now, but the basic profit comes only to a small group of people. The companies of the future will be organized similarly to Streetcar, as described above. In the product-selling world, customers buy, a durable good, for example a washing machine and want the machine to work for as long as possible in order to derive the most benefit from their purchase. However, there is a catch here as the wishes of the customers are not aligned with the interests of manufacturers. The manufacturers do not envision their machines lasting forever because, if they do, they will not be able to sell large numbers of them and will thus not be able to earn any profit. This conflict does not exist in the service-selling world because in this world people simply do their laundry outside their homes.

Moody also claims that in the sixth cycle companies will be going to remote regions of the world in order to purchase information, rather than raw materials and goods as it happens now. Today the situation is different. One country that is industrially-developed goes to a remote geographical location in order to buy crude oil from a poorly developed state. In the future, ss Moody sees it, the flow of the purchase will be reversed and a poorly developed state will purchase a technology from a post-industrial country. The technology will give the poor country an opportunity to exploit its resources more effectively.

Thomas Friedman, in an articlexi in the New York Times, claims that what will drive innovation is what has to be the next great global industry: energy and resource efficiency. He builds on the premises in his most recent book called “Hot, Flat and Crowded”xii to say that the planet is getting flatter and more crowded. There will be two billion more people here by 2050, and they will all want to live and drive just like we do. And when they do get to the point of being able to do these things, there is going to be a very serious traffic problem and massive pollution cloud, unless we learn how to get more mobility, lighting, heating and cooling from less energy and with less waste and do so for so many more people. Whether or not one believes in climate change, these disagreements and “climate wars” cannot be allowed to derail efforts to

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have an energy policy that puts in place rising efficiency standards, for buildings, windows, traffic, housing, packaging and appliances.

So, what can we as future managers do with this information above? Beyond this being a question of the ethics of personal life choices, this is also a hint that whether we work for a Save-the-planet NGO or a coal-fired power plant, climate change, over-population and scarcity of resources will affect us in profound ways. If we become in any way responsible for or involved in drawing up an energy policy, be it for a company, or a country, we need to treat this with the understanding that this is no longer a problem of money only. “We are going to go from green versus gold to green equals gold,” claims Moody, because the only way to grow without consuming more and more resources is through innovation, by developing new business models to deliver mobility, heating, cooling and lighting with dramatically fewer resources and pollution.

As future managers, we will all be responsible to do so, responsible both to our shareholders, but also to our children.

The Worker of the Future

When we enter the workforce as young managers, we will encounter there workers referred to as being of Generation Y. These are the Millennials, children born between 1978 and 1990 and one of the newest and hottest management challenges. Bruce Tulgan in his famous book on the topicxiii argues that globalization and technology has shaped Millennials into young adults who seek to maximize tangible benefits as well as their social connections. That is primarily because most of them are working in unstable institutions with uncertain futures. Knowing that the industry they work in is ever-changing, they are aware that today’s cutting edge is likely as relevant as tomorrow’s old Facebook look, these workers question authority, command an ever-present access to accurate research via technology and have mastered the short-term goal of focusing their brilliant ideas and earning their trophies.

Other people in the workplace view Generation Y as the multi-tasking generation. They are very good with technology, type at warp speeds, and are often seen multi-tasking at a rapid pace. The other side of the coin is that Generation Y is often labeled as “lazy because they ask for the compensation they believe they are worth and desire more money, more responsibility and to rise in the work place as fast as possible. Gen Y’s also do not share their parents’ hesitation about job-hopping and they often are skipping from job to job, often sticking with one workplace for only 2-3 years before moving on. Current trends indicate that the “majority of twenty-something’s job-hop every 18 months - a phenomenon often blamed on restlessness”. xiv An example of how to manage this phenomenon comes from Deloitte. The consulting firm was at one point alarmed by the high turnover of its youngest employees, so it asked one of its consultants, Stan Smith, to find out more about what attracts them to and keeps them at a job. His research reveals that job hopping is not an end in itself but something young workers do when they see no other choice. "People would rather stay at one company and grow, but they don't

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think they can do that," he says. "Two-thirds of the people who left Deloitte left to do something they could have done with us, but we made it difficult for them to transition." So Smith, who is now in charge of recruiting and retaining Generation Y as national director of next-generation initiatives, created programs at Deloitte that focus on helping people figure out their next career move. Smith is betting that in many cases, the best place for a restless young person is simply another spot in Deloitte. This saves the company the $150,000 cost of losing an employee. xv

Generation Y can also be characterized by their entrepreneurial instincts. They are the brains behind many startup companies, whether in IT or other fields. Even within companies, they exhibit this entrepreneurial instinct and are interesting in building ideas, teams, and projects.

These workers bring with them a different attitude towards work and the workplace. This attitude does not always combine well with the traditional, nor the “9 to 5” schedule. Generation Y does not place “much emphasis on how and when the work gets done, just that it gets done”. xvi “Some younger workers believe they work more effectively and efficiently from 9 p.m. to 3 a.m., which begs the question, ‘is it really about face time or getting the work done?’ said Brown from Rockwell Collins”.

These workers also bring an expectation for promotions to come much faster than previous generations expected. There are obvious problems from a few hard charging youth who supplant the longer tenured employees, and one challenge is that the older employees have deeply rooted social and corporate norms they do not want to change. Another problem is that if young employees have not had the time to learn management skills, they may rise up to a management position without having any experience, Jonathan Fitchew states, “one of the dangers of the 'leapfrogging' phenomenon is that managers never actually get the chance to observe management practice; good or bad” xvii.

So, how can managers motivate this workforce?xviii

First, these are workers that not only appreciate, but actually require feedback. That hunger for feedback should make the manager’s easier, even if occasionally this perceived neediness may bother in the short run. The challenge for the manager will be learning how to give feedback to a generation that is used to nothing but gratuitous praise.

Secondly, this generation cannot work without teams. If teams are not mandated by the organization, they will find a way to build them informally, without any input from the management. They hate making decisions by themselves, and prefer to do things by getting and taking into account a number of different opinions first. However, this is a management issues that can be handled if known, and the upside is that this preference for teamwork can be used to pair up more senior employees with more junior ones -- pairings that all managers say they want, but that many employers do not make a priority.

Also, one must be ready to negotiate with these workers. They have spent their entire college careers negotiating grades and deadlines and feeling entitled to accommodations. They do

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not respond to top-down orders because they simply have not had to deal with them before. Their first boss may be the first real authority figure they encounter, and real authority will come as a shock to them. This generation will question anything asked of them to do and expect to be persuaded why they should do what is asked by their managers.

Additionally, these young workers often have trouble with longer deadlines and project management because they treat their work assignments as if they were college term papers to be written the night before the due date, for professors who often no longer enforce deadlines in the first place. So, it now becomes the task of their managers to teach them basic time and project management techniques.

The Millennials also respond very well to flattery because they think very highly of themselves. To older generations they seem arrogant and overconfident, and they do have little respect for acquired wisdom, age, or a higher spot in the hierarchy of the organization. They will also expect management responsibility on their first jobs out of college. However, they are also enormously creative and love to identify and solve problems. If their managers are able and willing to put in the time to harness that creativity and penchant for problem-solving, the organization will definitely benefit.

While counter-intuitive, the manager must also be prepared to teach these young workers how to effectively use technology. While they can happily program any smart-phone spend inordinate amounts of time on Facebook, many of them have only the most primitive experience using corporate software. They are much more familiar with stripped down, free software and mobile apps. However, the positive is that they are absolutely fearless about learning new technology. The bad news is that they are overconfident and it does not occur to them that they are not able to learn how to use the software intuitively, just by clicking a few buttons. Their overconfidence can sometimes cause significant damage or time-delays at best, so it is the managers’ responsibility to teach them the basics of software used in the corporate world.

Throughout their entire childhoods, these young people have been told repeatedly that it is their volunteer work that makes them productive and decent human beings. Even when they start work and come to realize that only private industry makes big paychecks possible, they struggle with the pull towards dedicating themselves to non-profit work. If the manager can understand that any Gen Y employee in the for-profit sector is going to feel that pull towards the non-profit world, the manager can then highlight for them how they can do good while in private enterprise.

Millennials are willing to work hard and consider it normal to be "findable" at any hour, as they are permanently online anyway. However, they do not want bosses to abuse that availability, and they expect the flexibility to mold their work lives around their personal lives. They will expect to be able to leave in the middle of the day for a gym workout and will wonder why there are no vegan offerings in the company cafeteria. While as a manager, there is no need to accommodate all manner of preferences, there is the need to understand that this is a lifestyle that they have become accustomed to and the realities of the workplace came as a huge shock to them.

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More experienced workers know that sometimes you need to sit in the same room with colleagues, partners or clients to get something accomplished, but young workers are so used to interacting online that they prefer to just send an e-mail or a text message. The manager must insist on a live meeting in order to actually get one. They also need to be taught how to interact professionally when meeting with clients and senior colleagues. Their writing, particularly professional writing, is lacking, as colleges are putting less and less emphasis on developing this skill. They are willing to learn if their boss is willing to teach them, thus it becomes the manager’s job to do so.

Because Millennials are very much used to publicizing all the details of their private lives electronically via MySpace, blogs, and Facebook, they will not feel particularly deterred by the company's policy to monitor or document company email messages. Their managers will have to educate them about what kinds of things they cannot say using company email. This will likely require a conversation about the propriety of sharing work information in public and using company resources to do so

Finally, these young workers need to be rewarded intelligently. They tend to work hard and not complain about it if their work environment is more of a meritocracy. Therefore, the best performers should be rewarded considerably more than mediocre ones. Now, unlike Gen Xers 20 years ago, they are not easily impressed by offices with cool views or lunch rooms with foosball tables or free junk food or even casual dress. They are, however, impressed by the latest and greatest technology that lets them do their jobs more efficiently and minimize their time spent in the office.

According to experts, the best place for a Gen Y worker is at a company that can offer a flexible reward system that includes monetary incentives, time off, varying start times, and has a supervisory staff willing to teach the basic skills of good manners, critical thinking, and what the consequences are for one’s actionsxix. The question remains if there are companies that have been able to do so.

For example, the accounting software company Intuit conducted interviews and focus groupsxx, and discovered that younger workers like to have greater visibility to career paths and the ability to explore different career options. Therefore, the company has created a Next Generation Network to facilitate networking and mentorship through social networking events and lunches with senior leaders. Intuit also promotes cross-company innovation through reverse mentoring programs where younger members are encouraged to share social, mobile and productivity tools with colleagues. Furthermore, Intuit purposefully keeps design teams small enough for two pizzas to feed them and ensures ideas are executed into concepts in less than six weeks, resulting in an environment that is very similar to that of a network of start-ups with the support and resources of a large, established company.xxi

Similarly, the management of L’Oreal USA believe the most important way to attract Millennials is by clearly articulating that the professional life at the cosmetics and beauty company implies numerous options for personalization. The organization’s message is about

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opportunities versus careers. “Millennials want a plan that is specific to them,” said Sarah Hibberson, senior vice president of human resources at L’Oreal USA. “They want a lot of information and guidance on their development. Learning more closely resembles games than logic to them, and multitasking is a way of life.” To cater to Gen Y’s career projections, L’Oreal offers a management development program in several areas, including marketing. In this program, a new hire goes through six months of integration including a week-long discovery program. This includes three months of sales experience and three months of consumer intelligence experience. Then the employee begins a rotation supporting a marketing team. During this time the employee attends several formalized learning programs and can spend up to 18 months in this program before graduating to a specific open position in marketing.xxii

As young managers having to manage the changing demographics and sociographics of the workforce, it is important that not only the younger employees need to be understood, but also the more senior employees need help understanding and embracing the change. It is important to consider how your company will embrace, manage, promote, and retain, these new, highly technical workers because Millennials are not going away, they will only grow in the work force.

Conclusions

It is common to conclude by suggesting that the challenges facing management today are different from those it faced in the past. So, forecasting becomes simple: the future, too, will be different from today. While that may very well be true, no matter what century or circumstance one is talking about, organizations have succeeded or failed for the same reasons. To succeed, one needs luck, courage, flexibility, and focus.xxiii

So, to sum up, this is a proposal for the homework of one who aspires to be a successful manager of the future:

Develop a strategic vision that would allow you to see beyond the present situation, develop a wider range of experience and start realizing that decisions cannot center on the summit.

Be flexible and view changes in a socially beneficial form, accepting the following challenges: to commit yourself completely to the effective employment of diversified manpower, and to create a company where they are able to work successfully, a company that would be productive and able to innovate and open up new markets.

Become an excellent inspirer, promoter and facilitator. Be an integrator, overcoming the differences between organizations, and also be a diplomat, able to transport them better from one place to other, from one market place to another. Be creative, able to offer new possibilities.

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Develop carefully and then stay true to your personal values. Be authentic and always act in consonance with not only your personal values but also with the main values of the company. Show integrity and ensure that different aspects of life fit in a coherent and consistent form; be responsible for seizing synergies using all the aspects of your life: work, home, community and yourself.

Be creative and always call into question the traditional assumptions and the way things are done, promoting actively and even initiating the change.

In his work The World is Flat (2007),xxiv Thomas Friedman states that the manager of the future, the manager of the flat world, "knows and uses technology, communicates simply and efficiently, directs according to an example, conceives the company as a network in continuous expansion, possesses general knowledge, thinks that the distance is not a barrier, believes in quality life, stays focused on the mission and vision and, also, he is cheerful".

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i http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/26159.htmlii http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,992161,00.htmliii http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Niels_Bohriv http://twitter.com/#!/gselevatorv Book: The Tragedy of the Euro by Philipp Bagusvi http://bastiat.mises.org/2012/03/tide-as-money/vii http://bastiat.mises.org/2012/03/tide-as-money/viii http://www.amazon.com/The-Sixth-Wave-succeed-resource-limited/dp/145872249X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1332598361&sr=8-1ix http://sixthwave.org/x Anton Yevseyev in an article from Pravda Russian newspaperxi http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/04/opinion/sunday/friedman-take-the-subway.html?_r=1xii http://www.amazon.com/Hot-Flat-Crowded-Revolution-America/dp/0312428928/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_3xiii http://www.amazon.com/Not-Everyone-Gets-Trophy-Generation/dp/0470256265xiv Solomon, Rachel. (March 15, 2008). Running a Business: Learning to Manage Millennials; Online edition. Wall Street Journal (Eastern edition). New York, NY.xv http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1640395,00.htmlxvi Rorholm, Janet. (Sept 24, 2007). Generational gap changes roles for employees. Knight Ridder Tribune Business News. Washington D. C.xvii Fitchew, Jonathan. (June 26, 2007). Give Graduates their Rites of Passage. Personnel Today. Sutton. United Kingdom. pg. 24, 2 pgs.xviii http://www.annaivey.com/workplace_advice/15_tips_for_motivating_gen_y_in_the_workplacexix http://www.empoweringparents.com/blog/adult-children/generation-y-in-the-workplace-would-you-call-your-childs-boss/#xx http://www.intuit.com/xxi http://clomedia.com/articles/view/the-gen-y-workplace/4xxii http://clomedia.com/articles/view/the-gen-y-workplacexxiii http://www.dnaindia.com/money/comment_seven-thoughts-for-managers-of-the-future_1328146 xxiv http://www.amazon.com/The-World-Is-Flat-Twenty-first/dp/0374292884