Real-Time Management in the Digital Economy

In digital business environments real time has become a critical strategic enabler. Enforced by new digital and social technologies we consider the temporal phenomenon real time to play an increasingly central role for strategic value creation and competition. More than ever, managers use real-time information, real-time events, and real-time processes to improve their businesses.

Real-time data flows enable managers to dissect events in real time, shorten their decision-making time, and at the same time deepen their understanding of markets. Moreover, real-time technologies offer the possibility of supplying markets with whole new types of services and experiences, which affects the tasks, the timing, continuity, and rhythms of the organization.

But the developments in the digital economy also create a diverse sensing of real time, which triggers central questions of how should management adjust strategic decision-making processes towards a real-time-based business, and second, how can the organization build the conditions needed for capturing these strategic opportunities with real time? The increasing use of real-time technologies in business encourages us to unravel decision-makers’ real time perceptions and practices in strategy and organization.

From a theoretical and historical outline and empirical findings this chapter aims at bringing knowledge to the increasing influence of real time on strategic management. This knowledge is vital for understanding the tenets of real-time management and to better guide managers and organizations into future strategic directions.