BRIC nations to transform global business landscape by 2018: Study

India, along with emerging market peers China, Brazil and Russia, is expected to transform the global business landscape and will have a greater influence on the markets across the world by 2018, a study says.

The study by UK-based Chartered Management Institute looking ahead to 2018, predicted what the world of work and management would look like and examined how organisations can prepare for it.

"In the probable future, Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC) nations will have a greater influence on business markets and transform the business landscape," the study said in its description of the most probable picture of the world of work and management in 2018.

The study also revealed that the business markets would be noticeably influenced by new players from India, Brazil, Russia, China, Eastern Europe and other developing countries as well as global businesses.

As new business models are introduced to respond to these changes, there would arise the need for greater emphasis on new skills, such as understanding diversity and foreign cultures.

The study titled 'Management Futures "" The World in 2018' forecast that in the next 10 years the business models and structures would change in nature and there would be a polarisation from global companies to virtual community-based enterprises.

To succeed, organisations would need technology that is able to capture and analyse implicit and tacit knowledge and allow the sharing of knowledge with customers and partners, it said.

The study also highlighted that organisations would have to be increasingly knowledgeable about world markets as financial affairs and interconnections between seemingly independent events may have a dramatic effect on their business.

Interestingly, as the developing and emerging nations grow economically strong in the global business arena, immigrants would choose to stay in or go back to their own countries and could lead to shrinking of workforce in the Western world.