This book was awarded the 2019 Axiom Business Book Award - Business Technology, Bronze Medal.

Users of twenty-first century, digital-era technologies are "technology takers," accepting of and adjusting to whatever the market offers them. Similar to small firms that lack the market power to set prices and are economic "price takers," managers today are increasingly unable to customize the digital-era technologies their organizations use. Technology takers have little influence over the capabilities of the technologies they adopt; they cannot expect to improve on or customize for themselves the features of Facebook, Google, the iPhone, the blockchain, cloud-based enterprise resource planning systems, or other game-changing and often disintermediating technologies.

The inability to modify available information technologies is a shock to leaders and managers alike. Cloud-based technologies arrive with set processes developed by others, and users must learn new ways of working each time the technologies themselves evolve. But refusing to adopt and adapt to digital-era technologies is, increasingly, not an option. Change in the digital era is constant and behavior-transforming. Managers must respond to these changes, or they will get left behind by those who do. The constancy of change also means that organizations have to do more than launch typical, one-off change management or transformation projects to succeed.

To adopt efficiently and adapt effectively to behavior-changing technologies, astute leaders should employ change leadership techniques as a strategy for the digital era. This book offers technology takers a playbook to manage change, create value, and exploit the digital era's strategic opportunities. The book draws on research and recent case studies to explain what it means to be a technology taker. Organizations and their managers are offered change leadership plays, which emphasize the iterative nature of change management in the digital era. The book also describes how technology taking can create value through data stream analytics and be used strategically to respond proactively to the challenges of the digital era.

About the Author

Jens P. Flanding trained as an economist at Royal Holloway College and McGill University and earned his doctorate from the London School of Economics and Political Science. He is Faculty for Designing and Managing Organizational Change at the United Nations System Staff College and a Member of the Change Management Peer Network of the UN Laboratory for Organizational Change and Knowledge. He has led strategic change initiatives for Deloitte Consulting clients and senior staff member at the IMF, UNHCR, UN Environment, and PAHO/WHO. He authored, with Genevieve and Sheila Cox, award-winning The Technology Takers: Leading Change in the Digital Era (Emerald Publishing, 2019).
Genevieve M. Grabman is an attorney and expert on strategic planning, governance, and risk management. Based in Washington, DC, she has advised public, private, non-profit, and United Nations organizations and helped draft and pass organizational policies and procedures, national laws and regulations, and international treaties. Ms. Grabman holds a master's degree in health policy and management from Johns Hopkins University and earned a Juris Doctor from the Georgetown University Law Center. Ms. Grabman is passionate about using digital-era initiatives and the perspectives of human rights and diversity to achieve good governance and institutional change.

Sheila Q. Cox leads transformational change at the intersection of technology and human behavior. After graduating from Harvard, Ms. Cox became a systems engineer at IBM, designing and implementing application software. She earned an MBA at the University of Chicago and worked as a management consultant at BearingPoint. Combining hands-on experience in information systems implementation with an in-depth understanding of organizational, team, and individual behavior, Ms. Cox founded Performance Horizons, a change management firm in Charlotte, NC. For more than 30 years, Ms. Cox has helped management teams successfully adapt to rapid changes within their industry.

Reviews
'Projects are dead; continuous change is here. Embrace change or be left behind. Everyone needs to understand all five technology-taker plays. Read this book now.' -- Tim R. Lister, Atlantic Systems Guild, United States and United Kingdom
'This captivating book helps us understand the importance of adopting and adapting to the digital-era. With engaging cases, the book shows what it means to be a twenty-first century change leader.' -- Pilar Jimenez Rius, Court of Auditors, Spain
'A great read to understand the technology marketplace, the rush to standardization, inflexibility, and how to "take" technologies more cost-effectively than you've ever acquired them before.' -- Stephen J. Andriole, Villanova School of Business, United States
'Transformations can occur by accident, rather than deliberately. Yet, there are successfully planned transformations. For those, public policy leaders will find this book highly useful.' -- Francesco Mancini, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore
'Change leadership is a cornerstone of the 2030 global development agenda. The book outlines strategic choices to help leaders leverage technology when implementing change.' -- Mads Svendsen, United Nations Lab for Organizational Change and Knowledge (UNLOCK)
'Refusing to adapt one's practices to digital era reality poses great risks to an organization's long-term development. A must-read for all involved with risk management.' -- Jorge Huntley, RAM Consulting, Chile
This guide for managers gives tips for change leadership and transformative leadership in the digital era. Drawing on recent research and case studies, the guide presents a 'playbook' of five frameworks for establishing and sustaining technology-driven organizational change, from creating a change management function, to establishing governance of technology adoption, advocating for continuous change, training staff, and evaluating managers' embrace of technology change. The authors bring backgrounds in political science and law as well as management consulting as they explain how to avoid failed technology experiments, let go of outdated technologies, and create value through data analysis and behavior change. -- Annotation (c)2018 * (protoview.com) *
'The Axiom Business Book Awards are intended to bring increased recognition to exemplary business books and their creators, with the understanding that business people are a very well-read and informed segment of the population, eager to learn about great new books that will inspire and inform them, and help them improve their careers and businesses.' -- Axiom Business Book Awards


Awards
Winner of 2019 Axiom Business Book Award - Business Technology, Bronze Medal 2019 (United States).



Book Information
ISBN 9781787694644
Author Jens P. Flanding
Format Hardback
Page Count 224
Imprint Emerald Publishing Limited
Publisher Emerald Publishing Limited
Weight(grams) 397g