The Key Administrative Competencies of Managers Required for Company Development in the Bani World

Abstract

Abstract When describing the state of the modern world, we can name it “marginal”, i.e. the one where there are hardly any orientations, with organizations having to face barriers in the business processes, which makes them constantly revise the strategies, methods or approaches to the achievement of their goal. It was in 2016 that Jamais Cascio, a futurologist and a researcher from the Institute of Future, brought forward a new conception being in perfect conformity with the present-day situation, dominated by the pandemic provoked by COVID-19, political imbalances, resource deficit, climatic disasters and the war that keeps us in tension. The new term that he proposed to use consisted of the abbreviations, i. e. BANI (brittle, anxious, nonlinear, incomprehensible world without a clear structure). Given that the development of organizations in BANI environment requires from managers the ability to use a symbiosis of various administrative competencies, the article defines the essence of various categories of competencies needed by an effective manager of today and analyses specific ways of their fostering in BANI environment. Three groups of competencies required for an effective manager were outlined. The analysis of conditions in which the Ukrainian business had to operate in the first year of the Russian-Ukrainian war, when businessmen and managers had to take administrative decisions concerned with the fate of their organizations and employees in the situation of survival, to exert extreme effort due to the simultaneous change in many business aspects and the impracticability of any kind of projection, with lack of mental and emotional support, allowed for categorizing the Ukrainian business environment in time of the war as BANI environment. Many companies had to close, but many of them could transfer their facilities and adapt to the present-day realities, change the vector of management and even introduce on new markets in spite that the Ukrainian economy had reduced by one third. This could be possible thanks to skilful actions of managers. The authors’ research allowed for a revision of the key competencies of effective managers in BANI environment with consideration to the Ukrainian realities for doing business. A set of administrative competencies allowing companies for not only keep afloat but to develop new business processes in the realities of war was defined. It is stressed that today Ukrainian managers are urgently in need to develop administrative competencies that help support and expand business, bring the staff together in consolidated and highly professional teams, set up business communications.