| Future United States-based organizations will be quite different from their contemporary counterparts. The foundation upon which future organizations will be based is one of true openness, sharing, and common caring, both for the individual member and the organization. Unlike many of today's organizations that treat members as separate from the organization, future organizations will realize their true nature as dynamic human systems. The future organization is not a culture, it is not a structure, it is not a product, it is not a set of processes...it is people and relationships.;In an effort to better understand and prepare contemporary organizations for the future, this paper explores the drastically changing organizational landscape to derive common characteristics of US-based organizations from 2000 to 2025 C.E. To accomplish this goal, this work fully explores the literature in the key areas of emerging demographic, economic, societal, and technological trends and combines this information with a multi-phase qualitative research study. The focus of this work was not intended to predict what the future organization will be, but instead to build a foundational understanding of the potential organizational characteristics of US-based organizations resulting from an in-depth analysis of the key trends. The trends studied to support this work range from the continued economic globalization to the promise and peril of information, and from the upcoming clash of generations in the workplace to the fusion of work, play, and learning. As a result of these and a variety of other trends studied in this work, the organization of the future will be comprised of much smaller interdependent groups of contract workers that openly share knowledge between members across all organizational and geographic boundaries. |
