HC3031: Literature Review of Trends in the Global Business Environment

This paper provides a literature review focused on contemporary issues within the global business environment, particularly collaborative overload. It summarizes Rob Cross, Reb Rebele, and Adam Grant's article on collaborative overload, identifying four key questions related to structural changes for collaboration, reducing stress and burnout, resource utilization, and technology's role. The review explores the impact of employee stress, the importance of collaboration in mitigating workload, and the role of informational, social, and personal resources. It also discusses how technology can be leveraged to improve workforce capacity and achieve business objectives. The paper concludes by highlighting the challenges related to collaborative workload and emphasizing the need for organizations to adapt to the evolving global business environment.

Running head: TRENDS IN THE GLOBAL BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT
Trends in the Global Business Environment
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1TRENDS IN THE GLOBAL BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT
Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................2
Literature review..............................................................................................................................2
Question no 1...................................................................................................................................4
Question no 2...................................................................................................................................5
Question no 3...................................................................................................................................6
Question no 4...................................................................................................................................7
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................7
References........................................................................................................................................8

2TRENDS IN THE GLOBAL BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT
Introduction
The following piece of essay focuses on the different issues of the contemporary business
environment. The business environment in the modern day is indeed very much complex and it
demands the interference of the higher level managers. The business organizations in the
contemporary times focus around the improvement of their performance in the best ways. This is
why they need to engage in the collaboration with all the employees. It is indeed very definite
that the challenging business environment demands for better performance from all the
departments and their employees. If they engage in conflicts with another, this will be very much
problematic. So, it is better that the employees begin to collaborate with each other in their
workplaces to bring in the best results for the organization. The departments must connect with
each other to address the complexities and find out a better way. The organizations have greatly
understood the fact that they have to work with one another in order to survive in the
contemporary challenges in the business environments.
Literature review
In this section, a mini literature review will be conducted in order to discuss the
collaboration design in the workplaces. The article chosen here for the discussion is
Collaborative Overload published in the Harvard Business Review in the year 2016 written by
Rob Cross, Reb Rebele and Adam Grant (Cross, Rebele and Grant 2016). In this section the
different issues will be discussed in terms of collaborative practice in the organizations. It has
been mentioned in the article that collaborative designs in the contemporary times have been
increasing every day. The connectivity between the departments is gradually going up all the
time. This has been a major issue in the organizational success (Kaufman and Guerra-Lopez

3TRENDS IN THE GLOBAL BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT
2013). The managers and the employees need to work together to gain the competitive advantage
over their business competitors. It has been seen over the past few decades that the employees do
not have much time to work on their assignments as they have to do many things in their office
hours like checking the emails, taking part in the meetings and many more things. This has been
a very important part for the employees since they do not how to cope up with these issues in the
workplaces. This results in the job burnout and many more severe problems (Cross, Rebele and
Grant 2016).
Another issue in this scenario is the fact that the organizations is the good results of the
collaboration in the organizations. The employees are most times willing to assists their co-
employees to reduce the stress on them. This is indeed very much effective for them since they
get stressed after going through huge workload (Lee and Bonk 2014). This is why the
organizations need to provide the scopes for collaboration among the employees in different
contexts. If the employees help each other in difficult scenarios, their teamwork will increase and
cross cultural conflicts will be reduced to an extent. The role of collaboration in the workplaces
is growing all the more. If the team members collaborate with all other members, the integrated
team performance will surely be increased. There are some resources from the perspective of
collaboration (Lee and Bonk 2014). These are informational, social and personal. These three
types of resources refer to the individual expertise and skills, social awareness after getting
involved in a brand network and the time and energy of the team members. (Cross, Rebele and
Grant 2016).
The works of the employees would go in vain if the team members do not applaud it. The
case of a blue chip professional services firm has been provided in this set of the article to have a
view on the collaborative practices in the workplace (Cross, Rebele and Grant 2016). The aspect

4TRENDS IN THE GLOBAL BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT
of the behavioral change has been noted in this article also to show the impact on the
overburdened employees. The stress of the employees has to be reduced in order to get the best
kind of performance from them. The organizational behavior has to be changed as well in order
to maintain the integrity of the employees in the workplaces (Robbins and Judge 2012). They
have to answer to the incoming queries of the customers and the managers had eliminated the
meetings for some time so the employees could focus on their individual skills and provide the
best efforts for the organization indeed (Robbins and Judge 2012). The structural changes will
have to be included in the organizations to see what changes in the behavior could be seen. Some
key questions have been identified in this discourse regarding the subject of the article.
1. What structural changes should be incurred into the organizations for collaboration?
2. Can stress and job burnout be reduced by the collaborative overload?
3. How can the resources be used for betterment of performance among the employees?
4. How can technology be utilized in collaboration in the workplaces?
Question no 1
It has been a very complex thing to understand the competitive business environment in
the modern times. The organizations always need to slow down and show some efforts to make
the changes in their structures. As the employee burnout and stress is very much on the rise in
the contemporary times, the organizations would need to shift their focus on different things like
adopting the collaboration in their organizational framework (Ashkenas et al. 2015). The
managers in the leading organizations have to understand that too much stress on the employees
could lower their performance to a new level. They should imply the collaborative practice into

5TRENDS IN THE GLOBAL BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT
the organizations because if they engage more brains into a project, it will be completed faster
with more creativity.
The front-line workers in the organizations should be used to meet the organizational
objectives. This will also result in the organizational success in the future. The HR activities will
play the major role in redesigning the organizational structures (Ashkenas et al. 2015) The
managers have to look into the major problems and find out the best ways in which the problems
could be solved with effective decision making power of the concerned employees. The
organizations must go on to gain the competitive advantage with these steps from the managers.
The workload of the employees should be reduced but at the same time organizational success
has to be earned as well.
Question no 2
One of the major challenges in the modern business environment is the job burnout and
stress of the employees. The organizations have to handle it in the best possible ways so they can
retain the employees. The employee turnover and burnout have become real risks in the
contemporary management so they need to find some ways to mitigate this (Beheshtifar and
Omidvar 2013). The various issues like attending numerous phone calls in a day, answering the
emails and participating in the meetings have become huge issues. The research on the various
organizations has explored that the employees are not able to give their best efforts due too much
pressure in their workplaces.
This is why they will need to shift their focus on collaborating with other employees in
their departments (Beheshtifar and Omidvar 2013) The employees should be able to work with
value-added co-operations with one another in order to do what is best to gain the competitive

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advantage. When the employees are worth of providing assistance to their co-workers it should
not be a big problem for them as well. The importance of collaborative working is increasing to
minimize the workload from the shoulders of the stressed out employees. Hopefully, the
employees would be able to perform better if their stress is reduced.
Question no 3
This question deals about the different resources that are needed for the collaborative
work in the organizations. There are three different types of resources in the organizations so
they need to imply all of them in the equal ways (Melton and Hartline 2013) These three
different resources are informational, social and personal resources. The informational resources
of the employees signify the skills and capabilities that they have to complete the projects. They
should be adept in completing the projects effectively. The social resources mean the awareness
of the employees about the projects and the position that he holds in the distributive network in
the organization (Melton and Hartline 2013)
This can be used as a resource for collaborating with one another in a better method.
This will probably erase the cross cultural conflicts in the organizations as well. The personal
resources are the energy and time of the individual employees (Melton and Hartline 2013). These
factors do not work in the same way for everyone. So, the employees should always work as a
team. The inefficiencies of one team member should be covered up by the others. This should
really be helpful indeed. The personal resources cannot be shared but they can be utilized when
the employees work as a team in the collaborative method (Melton and Hartline 2013) The time
one project takes to be completed will obviously depend on the infinite energy of the employees.

7TRENDS IN THE GLOBAL BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT
Question no 4
Technology is a very important aspect in terms of the organizational procedures. The
organizations should utilize the technology for achieving the business objectives (Worthington
2012) In the modern context of the digital disruption, the organizations might go on to rely on all
the latest technological updates. The use of technology is very much influential in order to
improve the capacity of the workforce. The employees should be trained to work with
collaboration and produce the best results for the organization indeed. The knowledge of the
employees regarding the use of technology should be turned into action when they will use the
technology for the betterment of the business performance (Worthington 2012). The employees
should work together and use the current technological devices to provide the information faster.
These things would indeed very important for the organization to better their service to the
customers. The employees can use various social media tools and collaborate to build up new
strategies for the expansion of their markets (Worthington 2012) The technological solutions
should be based on the knowledge of the employees and how they can work together. The
smooth flow of the work should be enough to bring the organizational success.
Conclusion
This paper can be concluded by saying that collaborative overload has been a menacing
component in the modern global business environment. The selected journal has been analyzed
and the literature review has been given on this journal. The four key questions have been found
in order to to highlight on the components on this journal even more. These four questions have
been discussed and important information has been provided regarding this topic. Thus it can be
said that issues and challenges related to collaborative workload has been discussed in this paper
with much analysis.

8TRENDS IN THE GLOBAL BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT
References
Ashkenas, R., Ulrich, D., Jick, T. and Kerr, S., 2015. The boundaryless organization: Breaking
the chains of organizational structure. John Wiley & Sons.
Beheshtifar, M. and Omidvar, A.R., 2013. Causes to create job burnout in
organizations. International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social
Sciences, 3(6), p.107.
Cross, R., Rebele, R. and Grant, A., 2016. Collaborative overload. Harvard Business
Review, 94(1), p.16.
Melton, H.L. and Hartline, M.D., 2013. Employee collaboration, learning orientation, and new
service development performance. Journal of Service Research, 16(1), pp.67-81.
Worthington, J., 2012. Reinventing the workplace. Routledge.

9TRENDS IN THE GLOBAL BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT
Introduction