The challenges around adapting to social ecosystems with less work, in a time of a disruptive Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), may be partially mitigated with a macro societal-level matrix management approach, with artificial-intelligence support. This concept suggests that human workers may engage with various cross-functional teams on various projects, so they would have both a basic supervisor based on function, and various other project leads to whom they report in a dotted-line way. This work highlights how this structure aligns with contemporary work culture and technologies and explores some possible implications of this approach.
TopIntroduction
“Matrix management,” stemming from project management advances in the 1940s and 1950s, emerged from the so-called “U.S. military-industrial-academic complex” as a way to enable work typified by “technical complexity and novelty” (Johnson, 2013, p. 670). Matrix management originally emerged as a way for engineers to report both to their line managers and to respective project managers supervising various projects that they were engaged in, in a practice known as dual reporting. In other words, the hard hierarchical report structure was overlaid with a softer one based on projects with limited time spans. The matrix approach, enabling “lateral authority, influence, or communication” was “born out of the aerospace race,” to accelerate engineering work by enabling workers to work across functional administration (Larson & Gobeli, 1987, p. 126). Various sources suggest that matrix management emerged from the 1940s to the 1970s, due in part to different time periods of its adoption and popularization in various fields. This innovation advanced from “the military and its associated aviation and proto-computer industry” to “other branches of government and other industries in the United States, and from there to Europe and then around the world” (Johnson, 2013, p. 680). In its dissemination, it took on various forms.
According to one source, “matrix organization” and “project management” are “interchangeable terms” (Ford & Randolph, 1992, p. 1), suggesting that the cross-functional structure originated as a way to advance various projects within an organization. Within an organization, people working under various functional roles would apply their skills across a range of projects regardless of whether the projects are parts of other “stovepipes” (Figure 1). Matrices are thought to increase line organization agility for those that are mostly project-based (Miterev, Mancini, & Turner, 2017).
Figure 1. A cross-project cross-function matrix management visual (with organizational overlays)
Would a matrix management structure, applied to particular work silos or even across them at a macro level, have a positive effect on the current and anticipated job losses from advances in the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR)? What could this look like? In this conceptualization, an individual is paramount, with formal lines of reportage but also dotted-lines to project managers based on project-based work and even trace data reportage to collaborative work systems (Figure 2). The employee is responsible, in part, for education, professional development, and skills updating. Supervision based on data means less subjectivity, less engagement of the imagination, less considerations about personal relationships in the workplace, less “impression management,” and less influence of personality over performance—by all stakeholders. Perhaps the focus will be on actual deliverables and actual work.
Figure 2. An employee and various lines of reportage
A macro-scale matrix would be a combination of technological and interacting systems that enable the following: