PEOPLE AND ORGANIZATION MANAGEMENT

Managing People and Organizations in the Telecom Industry

Managing People and Organizations in the Telecom Industry

Keywords

People Management in Telecommunication industry

Introduction

Rapid and short-lived technology advances, deregulation and greater competition have transformed the Telco industry to bring new products into the market faster. Yet, the literature contains little about this hypercompetitive industry today. This research aims at filling this gap; it examines Telco new product development (NPD) projects, their contemporary challenges, and then defines skill sets that enable project managers, who are critical for managing these projects, to be successful.

With an increasing trend towards a managing by projects concept, several project management institutes have developed standards and certification programs to qualify project management

Aims and Objectives

Selecting suitable candidates and developing project managers has immediate implications for managing projects successfully. This research study has responded to this need by addressing the gap: going deeper and investigating the foundations of project manager competency in Telco NPD. It consisted of sub-questions that progressively elaborate towards the main research objective to describe the successful project managers: what is the basis for evaluating project managers?; what skills are used, and can they be represented more simply?; which kind of projects should be examined closer to reveal better information, and their indicators?, etc.

Different Sections

The telecommunication industry has experienced significant growth in recent years. Rapid development of the internet and information technology has pushed telecommunication organizations into the era of a new competitive business environment. The increasing globalization of businesses, leaner organizations, products and services convergence and vast development of technologies implied that a more efficient and effective operation of the telecommunication organization's knowledge assets has become more important than ever before. (Kerr, M. 2000 Pp. 22-23)

As such, telecommunication organizations are starting to understand and appreciate knowledge as the most valued asset in the emerging competitive environment. Technology is being rated as the most important and implemented KM strategy. The results make sense since most of the telecommunication organizations are equipped with advanced technological tools and methods due to their competitive environment.

They are the users of multimedia/IT products and services, as such they are expected to be knowledgeable on the type of technological tools used in their organizations. Furthermore, many of them have equated KM to technology, and this belief might have led them to perceive their intensive technological usage as suitable platforms for KM implementation. However, a significant gap between the degree of importance and implementation of the technology strategy suggests that there is more to be done by the telecommunication organizations surveyed in order to bridge the gap. Information technology changes rapidly and becomes obsolete quickly and therefore, investment in information technology requires constant and continuous attention to enable organizations to build their core competencies. In this case, since most of the companies surveyed have just begun their operation in KM, they are still developing their information technology infrastructure.

Problem Statement

Managing people and organisations in the telecom industry requires the best know how and knowledge alongwith multitasking ...