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Cranfield School of Management - B2E Working in the Digital Economy Research.

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Cranfield School of Management will release new research to participants of the online forum that looks at workforce trends and identifies the characteristics of a high-performance workforce. Cranfield School of Management has interviewed over 500 enterprises and reveals how the workplace is changing in the digital economy.

New research to be revealed on May 23rd 2001. SEE BELOW:

NEWS RELEASE - May 23rd 2001. 11:00am

UK employees unable to let staff make their own decisions: says New Research

London - UK - May 23rd 2001. New research by Cranfield School of Management and Microsoft has revealed that the UK's senior managers are still reluctant to give staff overall responsibility in making decisions. The question, put to over 500 UK senior business decision makers, asked whether they encouraged a culture of independent decision making within their organisations to which only 24% said they did. Senior executives said that employee responsibilities should only be task-specific.

Dr Karin Breu, Research Fellow in the Information Systems Research Centre (ISRC) at Cranfield School of Management, commented: "Devolving decision making down the organisation hierarchy is not just a matter of senior management's willingness to share power and to create a culture of trust. It is as much a question of the availability of information. Imperfect and incomplete information is a dangerous starting point for decision making in any organisation. For decisions to be effective in today's fast-moving business environments, employees need not only be equipped with autonomy but, more importantly, access to fully integrated, consistent and real-time information."

In a related question, a majority of 78% of decision-makers said their employees would feel happier at work if they were given greater independence to do their jobs, yet only 24% actually strongly encourage a culture of independent decision-making within their organisations.

Richard Peers, head of Enterprise Marketing for Microsoft, said: "This disparity of views is interesting in that while employers recognise staff are motivated by challenges and having autonomy managers still feel uncomfortable when delegating responsibility and prefer to retain control over decisions. This may prove more an inhibitor for the future 'agile' organisation."

Continued Peers: "This is understandable in certain cases but senior executives appear hampered by culture and technology challenges preventing them from making informed decisions. Knowledge and full-visibility of information must be available for all if difficult decisions are to be made but not every employee has had this. And even when an organisation has the technology to collaborate then invariably the culture does not empower its employees."

Having access to information was also cited by senior executives as a major day-to-day constraint with executives stating they spend on average two to three hours per week searching for business information such as documents, data and messages. Senior executives were also found to spend one to two hours each week looking for contact information like names, addresses, telephone numbers and email addresses.

In total senior executives use three to five hours per week searching for information. Time-poor senior executives highlighted searching for information as one of the most annoying aspects of their job with a resounding 82% stating they would be happier if they could access people and information more quickly.

The research has also given Cranfield School of Management and Microsoft the opportunity to develop the first indication of workforce agility that assesses an organisation's use of b2e and new working models.

The workforce agility indicator evaluates the workforce's speed of action, flexibility to change and realisation of business benefits from their use of new technologies and new, virtual and collaborative working models.

Dr Christopher Hemingway, Research Fellow in the Information Systems Research Centre (ISRC) at Cranfield School of Management commented: "From an academic perspective, more rigorous testing will be needed before this indicator can be developed into a usable management tool but this is a significant step towards understanding workforce agility. Early indications show that the workforce agility indicator successfully associates workforce characteristics and technology utilisation with business performance. The realisation of agility benefits, this research has shown, depends on both increases in the workforce's speed of action and flexibility to change.

Take the example of an organisation's use of mobile devices. In the research high-performance organisations were identified to have readily provided their staff with new technologies such as mobile Internet and palmtop devices. The low-performing organisations made no provisions to plan ahead for information and technology requirements apart from the use of mobile phones, which are a basic necessity for decision makers now that market saturation has been reached. Whereas it's fairly straightforward to measure the deployment of mobile technologies, the research also considers an organisation's cultural support of mobile working - is mobile working encouraged and are mobile working benefits realised across the organisation?

Peers said: "This is a major breakthrough for UK organisations as we now have a clearer way to advise UK businesses on how and where to invest in technology and cultural changes that empower employees and create an 'agile' workforce.

What the Workforce Agility Research has shown us:
The majority of organisations tended to overestimate their ability to change flexibly i.e. the capability to continually monitor and update the organisation's skill base, use technology, collaborative and virtual working models and respond to external changes.

75% of those surveyed had yet to exploit the full benefits of B2E.

High-performing organisations lead in the self-management of career and skills development online at 61%. Low ranking organisations (3%) made no provisions for this function within their company.

Only half of the organisations surveyed said they had real-time business performance information such as up-to-date collaboration and sales information.

Other Key Findings:
Of the organisations surveyed 19% admitted to monitoring the time staff spent on private emails while 33% said they operated a policy of monitoring the content of private emails. It is not known whether any of these organisations have consent from employees to record their email usage.

75% of senior executives felt non-IT staff members were not proficient in technology skills and certainly required more training.
Peers responded: "This highlights the need to make software as easy and intuitive as possible as well as train business people to get the most from the technology.

A full copy of the Cranfield School of Management/Microsoft B2E report will be available for download at www.microsoft.com/uk/busines.

Notes to Editors:
The survey was carried out among Business Decision Makers (BDMs), of these 28% are board members and 18% CEOs. The sample of 540 organisations were taken from financial services, manufacturing, retail, public sector, IT/telecommunications, professional services sectors. Fieldwork and analysis were carried out by Cranfield School of Management.

About Microsoft
Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq "MSFT") is the worldwide leader in software, services and Internet technologies for personal and business computing. The company offers a wide range of products and services designed to empower people through great software - any time, any place and on any device.

Press Contacts:
Vanessa Wong
Edelman Public Relations Worldwide
Tel:
Email: vanessa.wong

Jimmy Tse
Edelman Public Relations Worldwide
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Email: jimmy.tse

Lorraine Wood
Cranfield School of Management
Tel.:
Email: lorraine.wood

Full report - pdf file (219k)

Links to PR questionnaires
Financial_Services.doc
Manufacturing.doc
Public_Sector.doc
Retail.doc
Total_Sample.doc