What is Management

Dear readers, One of my notes for Management unit. Please read on: • Definition of management: involves coordinating and overseeing work activities of others to achieve efficiency and effectiveness so work activities can be completed effectively and efficiently (Robbins & Coulter, 2014). • Effectiveness = goals = doing the right things. • Efficiency = getting the most output from the least amount of input = doing things right. • Effectiveness and efficiency are related. • Management strives for low resource waste and high goal achievement. • Organisation is a group of people who work together to achieve a common purpose which provides goods/services to value society to satisfy customer needs. Management as an integrating activity: integrated behavior on influences in work organisation. Individuals: personality, work and attribution, values, needs and expectation. Groups: Structure and function, informal organisation, role relationship, group influence and pressure. Organisation: objectives, policy, technology and method of work, leadership style. Environment: technical, scientific, social, economic, cultural and gov. • Management levels: for typical business, people of top managers are board of directors, Chief Executive Director (CEO), Chief Financial Officer, Chief Operating Officer, president, vice president. These top managers comprises of executive team who reports to the board and responsible for performance of an organisation. Top managers make sure strategies are set and purpose and mission of organisation are achieved as well as pay attention to external environment and be alert to potential long-run problem and opportunities. • People of middle managers include clinic directors in hospitals, deans in universities, division managers, plant managers and regional sales managers in businesses. The jobs of middle managers include working with top managers, coordinating with peers and providing support to lower managers to build and pursue action plans that implement organizational strategies to achieve main objectives. • First-line managers/lower level managers people include department head, team leader and supervisor. Responsible for work that makes direct contribution to org output. For instance, retail manager, president and department supervisors of a local department stores all have line responsibilities. • For typical non-profit, top managers are board of trustees, executive director, president administrator, vice president. For middle managers, they are division, regional and branch managers. For first-line managers, they are same as typical business. • According to Henry Minzberg, manager is the most important job to society as they determine whether social institutions serve people well or vice versa. • Organisation as an iceberg. • Functions of management: Proposed by Henry Fayol. 4 functions: planning, organising, leading, controlling. • Planning is the ability to set performance objectives and decide how to achieve them. Henry Fayol mentioned that planning is looking ahead to the future and drawing up a good plan of action is the most difficult task among the four functions of management as this requires an active participation of an organisation as a whole. With respect to time and implementation, planning must be linked to and coordinated on different levels. It must take organisation’s resource availability and flexibility of employees into consideration as this will ensure continuity. For example, if managers of an organisations would like to carry out a project, they must all come together to discuss on the plan of actions which will be time-consuming. Top managers such as the board directors must liaise with middle managers and first-line managers to divide the tasks to save time and ensure organisations run smoothly. Another example from the Mullins textbook for planning is that once upon a time, there was top management of Ernst & Young became concerned with the firm’s retention of female professionals. A Diversity Task Force was launched by Laskawy with the planning objective to decrease turnover rate for females. • Organising/coordinating is the ability to arrange task, people and other resources to accomplish the work. An org must be well-organised in order to function well. This means that there must be sufficient capital, staff and raw materials to ensure organisation runs smoothly and develop a good working structure. An organisational structure with good division of functions and tasks is of crucial importance. When the amount of functions rises, the org will expand horizontally and vertically respectively. This requires a different type of leadership. Organising is also a significant function of the four functions of management. For instance, top managers must ensure that their middle managers an lower-level managers are capable to arrange tasks, allocate people to complete different tasks and allocate different resources of inputs to produce an output. This is an effective organising function. When every activity is harmonised, the organisation will function better. Positive influencing of employees’ behaviour is important for this. Coordination therefore aims at stimulating motivation and discipline within the group dynamics. Only through positive employee behaviour management can the intended objectives be achieved. • Leading is the ability to inspire people to work hard to achieve high performance. Leading is also known as commanding. A leader, for example, must inspire the follower to work hard in the job that the follower is doing by showing a good example of his hard work and good attitude to his follower. When leaders give orders and clear working instructions, employees will know exactly what is required of them. Return from every employee will be optimised if they are given concrete instructions with respect to the activities that must be carried out by them. Successful managers have integrity, communicate clearly and base their decisions on regular audits. They are capable of motivating a team and encouraging employees to take initiative. • Controlling is the ability to measure performance and take action to achieve desire outcomes. By verifying whether everything is going according to plan, the org knows exactly whether the activities are carried out in conformity with the plan. Control takes place in a four-step process. Firstly, it begins with the establishment of performance standards based on organisational objectives. Secondly, it measures and reports on actual performance. Thirdly, it compares results with performance and standards and fourthly, controlling takes corrective or preventive measures as needed. • Managerial roles introduced by Henry Minzberg. Henry Minzberg proposed three roles which can be divided into 10 subroles. First role is informational role which is more prevalent in the middle level managers. The subroles under informational role are monitor, disseminator and spokesperson (MDS). The job of monitor is to seek and receive info, scan web periodicals, reports and maintain personal contacts. The job of a disseminator is to forward info to other organisational members, send memos and reports as well as make phone calls. The job of a spokesperson is to transmit infor to outsiders through speeches and reports. • Interpersonal role is more prevalent at the top level management. People who perform interpersonal roles are figurehead, leader and liaison (FLL). The job of a figurehead is to perform ceremonial and symbolic duties such as greeting visitors and sign legal documents. The job of a leader is to direct and motivate subordinates, provide training and counseling to subordinates and communicate with subordinates. The duties of a liaison is to maintain info links inside and outside orgs, use emails, phones and meetings. • Lastly, is decisional roles and people who use this role are resource allocator, disturbance handler, entrepreneur and negotiator (RA, DH, E, N). Decisional role is more prevalent at the lower level management position. The jobs of a resource allocator is to decide who gets resources, schedule, budget and set priorities. The duties of disturbance handler is to take corrective action during conflicts/crises and resolve disputes among subordinates. Entrepreneur initiates improvement projects, identify new ideas and delegate idea responsibility to others. Negotiator represents team/department interests and represents department during budget negotiation and purchase of unit contracts. • Katz’s essential managerial skills. 3 skills. Conceptual, human and technical skills. Conceptual skill is the ability to tghink analytically to achieve integrative problem solving. This skill is more important at the top level management. For example, president requires conceptual skill to come up with solutions when conducting meetings or projects. President plays a significant role in determining whether the project being planned is successful. • Human skill is the ability to work well in cooperation with others or called “emotional intelligence”. This skill is equally important for every top managerial level. Every field requires good human skill • Technical skill is the ability to apply expertise and perform a special task with proficiency. This skill is more important at the lower level management position. For instance, when IT head of department desires to solve any hardware issue of the computer, it requires the ability to apply expertise and extraordinary task. This may be difficult tasks that need cooperation among team leaders, supervisors and all the departments of IT company. • Changing nature of org and managerial work. Can be seen in structural changes. From rigid bureaucratic structures to flexible and respond to uncertain business environment. Use bottom-up approach in decision-making to be more responsive to market demands. Org culture that supports creativity and autonomy. In terms of changes in managerial work, it emphasises on more proactive and creative aspects of managerial roles, dynamic view of manager’s role in value creation which is context dependent rather than static view of what managers do which is based on their position or title. Key managerial processes in exercising judgment and the use of influence. • Duties of top managers are to make sure org’s mission and strategies clear. Top managers support team leaders and managers by helping with the operating workers do their jobs and solve problems. Team leaders and managers support frontline operating workers who work directly by affecting customer/client satisfaction. Frontline operating customers serve customers and clients who are the ultimate beneficiaries of orgs efforts. • Contemporary issues of management. There are 6 issues. Talent: People and their talents are the ultimate foundations of organisational performance. Technology: Leveraging on technology in work arrangements, operation management, customer service, etc. Globalisation: the worldwide interdependence of resource flows, product markets and business competition that characterise our economy. Ethics: preserving ethical leadership and integrity at all levels, social responsibility and sustainability. Diversity: workforce diversity reflects differences with respect to gender, age, race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, presenting opportunities and challenges. Careers: emergence of free-agent economy where people change jobs more often and work on flexible contracts. The need of self-management in own careers. Organisations can be distinguished by their nature and type, goods/services, size, aim and objectives and the people who work within in organisation. Common classification of organisation is major purpose –business –public sector –social enterprise –religious orgs –politics –education –voluntary and community services.