Technology, the planet, society: What transformations matter most to managers?

The second edition of the Observatory of transformations at emlyon business school is out and provides preliminary insights hinting at potential changes in managers’ perceptions of the strategic landscape that business organizations are navigating. Specifically, transformations in the society appear to become more of a concern in 2024 compared to a year earlier, and relatively to transformations pertaining to technology and the natural environment.

The Observatory of transformations is a somewhat rudimentary instrument measuring the extent to which a panel of managers the impact of external changes on their business. It relies on a survey conducted by students in the school’s flagship ‘Programme grande école’ as part of a mandatory course titled ‘Technology, the Planet, Society: Transformations in strategizing and organizing’. While approximately 600 students took part in the first edition in 2023, the number doubled this year.

Working in teams of five, students are tasked with submitting a questionnaire to senior managers. In 2024, 191 firms participated, twice as many as the year before. More than half were medium-sized or large, one-third was listed, and while a majority of the respondents were based in France, most firms had international activities to an extent or another.

The survey questions are straightforward: “To what extent do transformations in technology, the planet, and society respectively, make your business easier or more difficult?” (Students then follow up with open questions to specify the type of transformations that matter, and how firms themselves transform their strategy and organizations to cope).

The first edition of the Observatory had revealed an intriguing phenomenon: whereas ‘Digital transformation’ has been for years cited as a crucial and difficult challenge for organizations, a more than three quarters of senior managers perceived technology disruptions as contributing to making business easier, not more difficult. The 2024 edition (with a different and larger sample) provides a confirmation, with a full 80 percent of respondents perceiving technology transformations positively and only 14 percent saying that this factor makes business more difficult.

Yet the major insight from the 2024 survey may relate to how senior managers and executives relate to transformations in society. Those include changes in behaviors and expectations from the workforce, from attitudes linked to remote working to the aspirations for the recognition of LGBTQ+ identities. Respondents noted society transformations in evolutions in consumer reactions and, more broadly, the acceptance of businesses in their local or global community.

In 2023 already, close to half of the managers interviewed perceived societal transformations as moderately or strongly negative. This proportion jumped by more than 8 points in 2024 to 58 percent. Only 21% percent of the respondents judged that transformations in society make business somewhat or definitely easier.

How and why did this evolution occur? Preliminary elements hint at increasingly strained relationships between managers and the workforce manifested by difficulties to recruit qualified and dedicated people, particularly among the younger generations. Qualitative analysis of the contents of the interviews should provide a more fine-grained understanding in the coming months.

Another intriguing pattern surfaced in the data from the 2024 Observatory of the transformations relates to how managers and executives react to the disruptions in their societal context. Asked about what they do in their own firms, about half of the respondents say they operate ‘important’ or ‘complete’ transformations in their strategy and organization. By comparison, more than two thirds engage in such transformations in the face of technological change.

Last, students surveyed managers about their perceptions of the transformations in the planet that is, the natural environment and particularly climate change. Preoccupation is growing, albeit in relatively small proportions. Most significant is probably that managers and executives judging that planet concerns have ‘no impact’ on their business went down from 28 in 2023 to 21 percent in 2024.

All in all, while differences in samples forbid formal conclusions, the picture painted by the latest edition of the Observatory of transformations at emlyon business school seem to reflect not only the perceptions of accelerated changes in the strategic landscape, but also the pace with which business organizations conduct their transformations. Further analysis is underway on both fronts.