Management 1A and 1B

What is Management?

• Definition: The pursuit of organizational goals efficiently and effectively.

• Key Components:

  • Integrating the work of people: Aligning resources and efforts to achieve goals.

Concepts of Efficiency and Effectiveness

• Efficiency: Minimizing or optimizing the time and resources (which are limited) used to achieve results and goals.

  • Explanation: This involves doing the work well, ensuring that tasks are completed with minimal waste.

• Effectiveness: Doing the right things in order to achieve desired results and goals.

  • Explanation: This focuses on the importance of aiming at the correct objectives for organizational success.

Competitive Advantage

• Definition: The ability of an organization to produce goods or services more effectively than competitors do, thereby outperforming them.

Skills Required for Management

• Conceptual Skills: The ability to think analytically, visualize an organization as a whole, and understand how the parts work together.

Management Functions

• Controlling: Monitoring performance, comparing it with goals, and taking corrective action as required.

• Decisional Roles: Managers making strategic decisions for the organization's well-being.

Types of Managers

• First-Line Managers: Make short-term operating decisions, directing the daily tasks of non-managerial personnel.

• Team Managers: Responsible for facilitating team activities toward achieving key results.

• Four Management Functions: Planning, organizing, leading, and controlling the organization’s resources.

• Functional Manager: Responsible for just one organizational activity (e.g., director of finance, vice president of production).

• General Manager: Responsible for several organizational activities (e.g., executive vice president, executive director for a nonprofit).

Managerial Roles

• Informational Roles:

  • Monitor: Collecting information on organizational performance.

  • Disseminator: Sharing meaningful information across the organization.

  • Spokesperson: Representing the organization to outside stakeholders.

• Leading: Motivating, directing, and influencing people to work hard and achieve the organization’s goals.

Middle Managers

• Role: Implement the policies and plans of the top managers above them and supervise and coordinate the activities of the first-line managers below them.

Organizational Concepts

• Organization: Arranging tasks, people, and other resources to accomplish the work.

• Planning: Setting goals and deciding how to achieve them.

• Process: Planning, organizing, leading, and controlling activities to achieve organizational goals.

Human Skills

• Definition: The ability to work well in cooperation with others to get things done, which includes motivating, inspiring trust, and communicating effectively.

Sustainable Development

• Focus: Meeting present needs while ensuring that future generations will be able to meet their needs.

• Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs):

  • Zero hunger.

  • Decent work and economic growth.

  • Affordable and clean energy.

  • Responsible consumption and production.

Technical Skills

• Definition: Job-specific knowledge needed to perform well in a specialized field.

Top Managers

• Role: Make long-term decisions about the overall direction of the organization and establish the objectives, policies, and strategies for it.

Administrative Management

• Concern: Managing the total organization.

Behavioral Science Approach

• Definition: Relies on scientific research for developing theories about human behavior that can be used to provide practical tools for managers.

• Disciplines Included:

  • Psychology.

  • Sociology.

  • Anthropology.

  • Economics.

Behavioral Viewpoint

• Emphasis: The importance of understanding human behavior and motivating employees toward achievement.

Classical Viewpoint

• Definition: Closed systems; meaning they have little interaction with their environment.

• Closed System: Systems that have little interaction with their environment.

Contemporary Approaches

• Learning Organization: An organization that actively creates, acquires, and transfers knowledge within itself and can modify its behavior to reflect new knowledge.

• High-Performance Work Practices: Focus on enhancing employees’ ability, motivation, and opportunity to contribute, and thus improve an organization’s ability to effectively attract, select, hire, develop, and retain high-performing personnel.

• Shared Value and Sustainable Development: Aligning business success with societal progress.

Contingency Viewpoint

• Definition: A manager’s approach should vary according to the individual and the environmental situation.

Evidence-Based Management

• Definition: Translating principles based on best evidence (from research) into organizational practice, bringing rationality to the decision-making process.

Quantitative Management

• Definition: Involves the use of numbers, statistics, and computer simulations.

Scientific Management

• Objective: Emphasized the scientific study of work methods to improve the productivity of individual workers.

Systems Perspective

• Subsystems: Parts making up the whole system.

• Supply Chain: Coordinates the entire flow of goods and services, from sourcing raw materials to delivering finished products to customers.

Synergy

• Definition: Synergy is formed when two or more forces combine to create an effect that is greater than the sum of its parts.

System Concept

• Definition: An organizational framework of interconnected processes, procedures, and resources that guide an organization's activities to achieve its goals through continuous improvement and efficiency.

• Systems Viewpoint: Regards the organization as a system of interrelated parts.

Transformational Processes

• Definition: Strategic, significant changes to an organization's operations, culture, or systems, often involving a complete redesign of processes to achieve dramatic improvements and adapt to new environments.

Feedback Mechanisms

• Concept: Open systems stress multiple feedback from both inside and outside the organization, resulting in a continuous learning process to try to correct old mistakes and avoid new ones.

Hawthorne Effect

• Definition: Employees worked harder if they received added attention, believing that managers cared about their welfare and that supervisors paid special attention to them.

Human Relations Movement

• Proposal: Better human relations between managers and workers could increase worker productivity.

Inputs in Management

• Definition: The resources, data, actions, or materials that are put into a system, process, or project to produce a desired outcome or output.

Outputs in Management

• Definition: A direct, tangible result or deliverable created by a specific activity or process.

Operations Management

• Focus: Managing the production and delivery of an organization’s products or services more effectively.