What a great paradox. In search of reality, man permanently distances himself from the ecosystem of the universe. He isolates himself marching inexorably towards solitude. Man has disintegrated man ».
At the gates of the next millennium, we are facing the fact of developing in a society that is in total crisis, and it is not only a crisis of an administrative or philosophical type, but a crisis at a social, political, economic, but basically ethical.
Why is this crisis occurring? Everything goes to make the man of the XXI century a restless being, worried about his future, scared before his own image. We attend to the fact that all the traditions, all the norms of morality, all the administrative and philosophical systems, together with the "values" have once again been brought to the fore to be discussed, confronted, controlled, analyzed and criticized.
Being aware of reality was the fundamental reference that led us to think and question the need for the emergence of a project for a new type of man and society, and if we are more specific to our area, the emergence of a new administrator. and of a new organization. And it is precisely here that the rethinking of socioeconomic values, as markers of a better future, that overcomes the dehumanizing aspects of the past, plays.
Furthermore, there is no doubt that the main challenge for Colombian senior management is no longer only in vision, globalization, the client, or even in organizational development; but the one that is imposed by the complex situation of our society. Under this premise, the recovery of the main »ethical« values has become an ingredient that in no way can be ignored in the challenge of «managing in Colombia».
For our country, the role of senior management has to be much more committed to people, if it is taken into account that the surrounding social environment is increasingly harmful. The fight to establish values in the Colombian organization must be one of the pillars of strategic direction in the national entrepreneur. Thus, it must be handled by senior management, ethics in all its dimensions and all this professional code must be responsibly transmitted to a society like ours, in which the fundamental interests of the collectives.
This is why we consider it important to treat the subject of "Sustainable Development" as a way to outline the new administration towards a holistic, comprehensive, and ethical conception, based on a totality of values, but giving greater importance to the environmental part, which is a of the bases of such development, of course, without neglecting the social, cultural and economic sustainability of the Colombian population.
And it is through Generative Management that we find that these new concepts of values, ethics, ecology, culture, economy and development are collected. Perhaps being a concept that incorporates the entire problem, it responds to its complexity with a practical and simple answer.
But what does generative management consist of? We define it as an open way of thinking, capable of accepting new problems and continuously solving them as a set of elements related to each other and harmoniously conjugated.
This new way of seeing the problems of the organization, of producing and of interacting, is aimed at a new concept of management that comprises the following pillars:
- Adapt systemic thinking. Generative management seeks to create and develop the surrounding environment. Decentralized and autonomous organizational functioning is encouraged. An economic approach is given on a human scale. Achieve a complete information system by all employees at the time of decision-making, functioning as a large network that works in parallel, sharing everything that others need and offering help when necessary, that is, there is an all-to-all operation.
Thus, the new role of generative management will be to leave behind its role of only controller, to stimulate creativity, asking questions inside, planning solutions together, so that an environment without conflict is created, and always depending on what the customer wants, so that not only zero emissions are sought, but also zero defections in the market, with no loss of customers. In this way, the generative manager must combine intuition and knowledge, together with her experience.
The objective of this management is to achieve and permanently improve the level of sustainability, creating the awareness of establishing new humanistic values and global economic imperatives, that is, "Generate an economic approach on a human scale" that achieves an integral development of the organization, where Competitiveness and productivity by themselves mean nothing, if these achievements do not translate into the holistic development of the organization.
And it is through the application of generative management as we propose that a true "quality of life" can be achieved, derived from the internal fulfillment that people receive from the intrinsic value of life, from acting in harmony with certain values and from feeling made with an ideal.
Thus, terms such as: Generative Manager, generative quality of life, generative information and everything that this word carries indicates development and not growth, taking the whole as a system and man being part of it. For growth by itself is shown as a quantitative phenomenon, which is managed within a mechanistic conception / while development is a qualitative phenomenon at the level of processes and not of specific executions, which involves systemic thinking.
In this way we project generative management not as just another fad, but a way of thinking that will finally make possible the formation of organizations on a human scale.
Note: This article is an abstraction of the paper with the same title, developed by the authors. It was presented during the I Congress of Administration Students of the CCEA, Cartagena de Indias, August 1999 and it was postulated to be exhibited at the University 2000 Workshop, held in the city of Havana, Cuba, in February.
