What the Digital Future Holds

The relationship between management and digital technology: experts present a new agenda for the practice of management.

Digital technology has profoundly affected the ways that businesses design and produce goods, manage internal communication, and connect with customers. But the next phase of the digital revolution raises a new set of questions about the relationship between technology and the practice of management. Managers in the digital era must consider how big data can inform hiring decisions, whether new communication technologies are empowering workers or unleashing organizational chaos, what role algorithms will play in corporate strategy, and even how to give performance feedback to a robot. This collection of short, pithy essays from MIT Sloan Management Review, written by both practitioners and academic experts, explores technology's foundational impact on management.

Much of the conversation around these topics centers on the evolving relationship between humans and cognitive technologies, and the essays reflect this—considering, for example, not only how to manage a bot but how cognitive systems will enhance business decision making, how AI delivers value, and the ethics of algorithms.

Contributors Ajay Agrawal, Robert D. Austin, David H. Autor, Andrew Burgert, Paul R. Daugherty, Thomas H. Davenport, R. Edward Freeman, Joshua S. Gans, Avi Goldfarb, Lynda Gratton, Reid Hoffman, Bala Iyer, Gerald C. Kane, Frieda Klotz, Rita Gunther McGrath, Paul Michelman, Andrew W. Moore, Nicola Morini-Bianzino, Tim O'Reilly, Bidhan L. Parmar, Ginni Rometty, Bernd Schmitt, Alex Tapscott, Don Tapscott, Monideepa Tarafdar, Catherine J. Turco, George Westerman, H. James Wilson, Andrew S. Winston