BMD interviewed with Dr Samantha Rathnayake, Faculty Member / Management Consultant from the Postgraduate Institute of Management, University of Sri Jayewardenepura to discuss how he looked at the transition and transformation of management thinking in the Covid-19 pandemic. He is a passionate advocate for management thinking derived from a new and foresight perspective. Dr Rathnayake is raising a question in the current context as a failure in our preparedness for future vs creating foresight for our institutional future? However, he is very optimistic on ample opportunities created after the crisis. Below are the excerpts of the interview.
Q: Would you like to set the tone for the above topic?
COVID-19 means Corona Virus Infected disease 2019. In the past, we have experienced frightening epidemics such as SARS/MERS which also belonged to the category of corona viruses . COVID-19 is the 7th. This is a health issue. It is a pandemic. The main difference on this occasion is that the magnitude is unprecedented. The US National Intelligence has predicted multiple pandemics to come. It indicates that we have to live with Corona. Corona is our future readiness testing imperative.
Let me next focus on Management. For some, management is Planning, Organizing, Leading and Controlling. For others management is a practice. It is simply a discipline of getting things done through people. Archeological history of management has a myriad of concepts, incidents, theories and cases. However, living history of the management subject reveals plenty of themes. One could say that management is a new social discipline with a lot of stories. Scholars have created theories and folklore wisdom has created ‘folklore theories’. We tend to respect and appreciate theories of scholars. It is a situational or a contextual response to given actions, people, and information. Eventually, management is by nature an integrating exercise. If I make it simple, it is about “Mixing well exercise” vs “messing up exercise”. If you mix well with the key functions of management in a given situation, we would say “it is well-managed”.
Read BMD September 2020 for more details…