INTRODUCTION:
•Management: Management is a set of
activities (including planning and decision making, organizing, leading, and
controlling) directed at an organization’s resources (human, financial,
physical, and information) with the aim of achieving organizational goals in an
efficient and effective manner.
•Efficient: Using resources wisely
and in a cost effective way.
•Effective: Making the right
decisions and successfully implementing them.
•Manager: A manager is someone whose
primary responsibility is to carry out the management process. In particular, a
manager is someone who plans and makes decisions, organizes, leads, and
controls human, financial, physical, and information resources.
The Management Process:
Management
involves four basic functions:
•Planning and Decision Making:
—Planning
means setting an organization’s goals and deciding how best to achieve them.
—
Decision making, a part of the planning process, involves selecting a course of
action from a set of alternatives.
•Organizing:
—
Organizing means grouping activities and resources in a logical fashion.
•Leading:
—
Leading is the set of processes used to get people to work together to advance
the interests of the organization.
•Controlling:
—
Controlling means monitoring organizational progress toward goal attainment.
Kinds of Managers
1.
Managers at Different Levels of the Organization:
Top Managers:
•Top managers make up the relative
small group of executives who manage the overall organization.
•Titles found in this group include
president, vice president, and chief executive officer (CEO).
• An organization’s top managers
establish its goals, overall strategy, and operating policies.
•They officially represent the
organization to the external environment by meeting with government officials,
executives of other organizations, and other parties important to the
organization.
•The job of a top manager is likely
to be complex and varied.
•Top managers make decisions about
such activities as acquiring other companies, investing in research and
development, entering or abandoning various markets, and building new plants
and office facilities.
Middle Managers:
•Middle managers is probably the
largest group of managers in most organizations.
•Common middle-managers titles
include plant manager, operations manager, and division head.
•Middle managers are primarily
responsible for implementing the policies and plans developed by top managers
and for supervising and coordinating the activities of lower-level managers.
First-Line Managers:
•First-line managers supervise and
coordinate the activities of operating employees.
•Common titles for first-line
managers are supervisor, coordinator, and office manager.
•In contrast to top and middle
managers, first-line managers typically spend a large proportion of their time
supervising subordinates.
Managers
in Different Areas of the Organization
Marketing Managers
•Marketing managers work in areas
related to the marketing function—getting consumers and clients to buy the
organization’s products or services.
•They are responsible new product
development, promotion, and distribution.
Financial Managers
•Financial managers deals primarily
with organization’s financial resources.
•They are responsible for activities
such as accounting, cash management, and investments.
Operations Managers
•Operations managers are concerned
with creating and managing the systems that create an organization’s products
and services.
•Typical responsibilities of
operating managers include production control, inventory control, quality
control, plant layout, and site location.
Human Resource Managers
•Human resource managers are
responsible for hiring and developing employees.
•They are typically involved in
human resource planning, recruiting, and selecting employees, training and
development, designing compensation and benefit systems, formulating
performance appraisal systems, and discharging low-performing and problem
employees.
Administrative
Managers
•Administrative, or general,
managers are not associated with any particular management specialty.
•They tend to be generalists; they
have some basic familiarity with all functional areas of management rather than
specialized training in any one area.
Other
Kinds of Managers
•Public relations managers, for
example, deal with the public and media for firms.
•Research and Development managers
coordinate the activities of scientists and engineers working on scientific
projects in organizations.
BASIC MANAGERIAL ROLES AND SKILLS
Regardless
of their level or area within an organization, all managers must play certain
roles and exhibit certain skills if they are to be successful.
MANAGERIAL ROLES
According
to Henry Mintzberg, managers play ten different roles and that these roles fall
into three basic categories: interpersonal, informational and decisional.
Interpersonal Roles:
•Interpersonal roles entail the role
of figurehead, leader, and liaison, which involve dealing with other people.
•The manager is often asked to serve
as a figurehead—taking visitors to dinner, attending ribbon-cutting ceremonies,
and the like. These activities are typically more ceremonial and symbolic than
substantive.
•The manager is asked to serve as a
leader—hiring, training, and motivating employees. That is, encouraging
employees to improve productivity.
•Managers can have a liaison role.
This role involves serving as a coordinator or link between people, groups, or
organizations.
Informational Roles:
The
roles of monitor, disseminator, and spokesperson, which involve the processing
of information.
•The first informational role is
that of monitor, one who actively seeks information that may be of value. The
manager questions subordinates, is receptive of unsolicited information, and
attempts to be as well informed as possible.
•The manager is also disseminator of
information, transmitting relevant information back to others in the workplace.
•The spokesperson formally relays
information to people outside the unit or outside the organization.
Decisional Roles:
Decisional
roles are the roles of entrepreneur, disturbance handler, resource allocator,
and negotiator, which primarily relate to making decisions.
•Entrepreneur is the voluntary
initiator of change.
•Manager responds to her role as
disturbance handler by handling such problems as strikes, copyright
infringements, and energy shortages.
•As resource allocator, the manager
decides how resources are distributed, and with whom he or she will work most
closely.
•
•As negotiator, manager enters into
negotiations with other groups or organizations as a representative of the
company. (e. g., with union contract, an agreement with a consultant, or a
long-term relationship with a supplier). It may also be internal: e.g., mediate
a dispute between subordinates, negotiate with other department.
MANAGERIAL SKILLS:
One
classic study revealed three important types of managerial skills: technical,
interpersonal, and conceptual.
Technical Skills:
•Technical skills are skills
necessary to accomplish or understand the specific kind of work being done in
an organization.
•Project engineers, physicians, and
accountants all have the technical skills necessary for their respective
profession.
•They each develop basic technical
skills by completing recognized programs of study at colleges and universities.
•These skills are specially
important for first-line managers.
Interpersonal Skills:
•The ability to communicate with,
understand, and motivate both individuals and groups is referred to as
interpersonal skills.
•Managers spend considerable time
interacting with people both inside and outside the organization.
•Thus managers must be able to get
along with subordinates, peers, and those at higher levels of the organization.
•A manager must also be able to work
with suppliers, customers, investors, and others outside the organization.
Conceptual Skills:
•It is the manager’s ability to
think in the abstract.
•Managers need the mental capacity
to understand the overall workings of the organization and its environment, to
grasp how all the parts of the organization fit together, and to view the
organization in a holistic manner.
Diagnostic Skills:
•A manager’s ability to visualize
the most appropriate response to a situation.
•As a physician, a manager can
diagnose and analyze a problem in the organization by studying its symptoms and
then developing a solution.
•The Science and the Art of
Management
The Science of Management:
•Many management problems and issues
can be approached in ways that are rational, logical, objective, and
systematic.
•Managers can gather data, facts and
objective information.
•They can use quantitative
models and decision-making techniques to arrive at a ‘correct’ decision.
•They need to take such a scientific
approach to solving problems whenever possible, especially when they are
dealing with relatively routine and straightforward issues.
The Art of Management:
•Even though managers may try to be
scientific as much as possible, they must often make decisions and solve
problems on the basis of intuition, experience, instinct, and personal
insights.
•Relying heavily on conceptual and
interpersonal skills, a manager may have to decide between multiple courses of
action that look equally attractive.
Classical Management Perspective
Scientific Management:
•Frederick Winslow Taylor
(1856—1915) is said to be the father of scientific management.
•Scientific management is concerned
with improving the performance of individual workers. The four steps of
scientific management are:
—Develop
a science for each element of the job to replace old rule-of-thumb methods.
—Scientifically
select employees and then train them to do the job as described in step 1.
—Supervise
employees to make sure they follow the prescribed methods for performing their
jobs.
—Continue
to plan the work, but use workers to actually get the work done.
Administrative
Management:
•Administrative management focuses
on managing the total organization.
•The primary contributors to administrative
management were Henri Fayol, Lyndall Urwick, Max Weber, and Chester Bernard.
•Henri Fayol was administrative
management’s most articulate spokesperson. His fourteen principles of
management are as follows:
1.
Division of labor;
2.
Authority and responsibility
3.
Discipline:
4.
Unity of command;
5.
Unity of direction;
6.
Subordination of individuals to the common goal;
7.
Remuneration;
8.
Centralization;
9.
Scalar chain;
10.
Order;
11.
Equity;
12.
Stability;
13.
Initiative;
14.
Team spirit.
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