CH1 – Organisations and Management
Why are managers important to organisations?
Organisations need managerial skills and abilities in uncertain, complex and chaotic times
Managers contribute to employers productivity and loyalty; can affect organisation's financial performance;
managerial ability shown to be important in creating organisational value
Who are managers?
Management: process of coordinating and overseeing the efficient and effective completion of others' work activities
First-line managers: managers at the lowest level of the organisation who manage the work of non-managerial employees who are directly involved with the production or creation of the organisation's products
Middle managers: managers between the first-line level and the top level of the organisation who manage the work of first-line managers
Top managers: managers at or near the top level of the organisation who are responsible for making organisation-wide decisions and establishing the goals and plans that affect the entire organisation Non-managerial employees work directly on a job/task and have no one reporting to them
More loosely configured organisations may have less readily identifiable managers
Functions of management:
Planning: involves setting goals, establishing strategies for achieving those goals, and developing plans to integrate and coordinate activities
Organising - involves arranging and structuring work that employees do to accomplish the organisation's goals
Leading - involves working with and through people to accomplish organisational goals
Controlling - involves monitoring, comparing and correcting work performance
Mintzberg’s managerial roles:
Interpersonal roles: involve people and other duties that are ceremonial and symbolic in nature
Figurehead: symbolic head; obliged to perform a number of routine duties of a legal or social nature
Leader: responsible for the motivation of subordinates; responsible for staffing, training and associated duties
Liaison: maintains self-developed network of outside contacts and informers who provide favours and information
Informational roles: involve receiving, collecting and disseminating information
Monitor role: seeks and receives wide variety of internal and external information to develop thorough understanding of organisation and environment
Disseminator role: transmits information received from outsiders or from subordinates to members of the organisation
Spokesperson role: transmits information to outsiders on organisation's plans, policies, actions, results, etc.
Decisional roles: revolve around making decisions
Entrepreneur: searches organisation and its environment for opportunities and initiates 'improvement projects'
Disturbance handlers: responsible for corrective action when organisation faces important, unexpected disturbances
Resource allocators: responsible for the allocation of organisational resources of all kinds - making or approving all significant organisational decisions
Negotiators: responsible for representing the organisation at major negotiations
An evaluation:
Managers, regardless of the type of organisation or level in the organisation, perform similar roles
Emphasis that managers give to the various roles seem to change with their organisational level Mintzberg's newest description of what managers do proposes that managing is about influencing action by
o Managing actions directly
o Managing people who take action
o Managing information that impels people to take action
Management Skills: Katz's managerial skills include technical, human and conceptual Technical skills: knowledge of and proficiency in a certain specialised field
More important for lower-level managers who typically manage employees to produce g/s
Human skills: ability to work well with other people individually and in a group
Important for managers at all levels
Conceptual skills: ability to think and to conceptualise about abstract and complex situations
Needed by managers at all levels but more important in top management positions
Other managerial skills identified include: managing human capital, inspiring commitment, managing change, using purposeful networking, etc
Is the manager's job universal?
Organisational level: Differences in jobs of degree and emphasis, not function.
Content of managerial functions changes with manager's level.
As managers move up the organisation, they do more planning and less direct supervising
Organisational area: Relative degree and mixture of roles performed by a particular manager will depend on the functional area of the organisation e.g. manufacturing, marketing.
Some roles that are universally required for managers independently of their functional areas e.g. leader, liaison, disturbance handler.
All carry out management functions.
Organisational type: Regardless of the type of organisation, there are commonalities to all managerial jobs e.g.
make decisions, set goals, motivate employees etc.
Differences measuring performance within profit and not-for-profit organisations
Organisational size:
Small business manager spends more time doing outwardly directed activities
Large organisation manager's concerns directed internally towards deciding which organisational units get what resources and how much of them
Managers in small and large organisations perform essentially the same activities
Differences in degree and emphasis but not function
Cross-national transferability: whether mgmt concepts are transferable across national borders
differences in preferred managerial practices between countries, manager's job less universal How is the manager's job changing?
Global economic and political uncertainties
Changing workplaces
Ethical issues
Security threats
Changing technology
Importance of customers:
Employee attitudes and behaviours play a big role in customer satisfaction
Managers must create a customer-responsive organisation where employees are friendly and courteous, accessible, knowledgeable, prompt in responding to customer needs, and willing to do what is necessary to please the customer
Importance of social media:
Social media: forms of electronic communication through which users create online communities to share ideas, information, personal messages and other content
Importance of innovation:
Innovating: doing things differently, exploring new territory and taking risks
Important for organisations competitiveness
Importance of sustainability:
Sustainability: company's ability to achieve its business goals and increase long-term shareholder value by integrating economic, environmental and social opportunities into its business strategies
Concern with sustainability as business goals are developed
Why study management?
Universality of management: reality that management is needed in all types and sizes of organisations, at all levels, in all areas and in all countries around the globe
Reality of work: in career, must either manage or be managed
Managing yourself: assist to plan, organise, lead and control your own life
Challenges and rewards of being a manager:
Hard, can have more clerical than managerial duties, deal with variety of personalities etc.
Creating work environments to help people work to the best of their ability, supporting and encouraging others, helping others to find meaning and fulfilment in work
CH2 – The Evolution of Management Theory
Division of labour or job specialisation: the breakdown of jobs into narrow and repetitive tasks
Industrial Revolution: period during late 18th century when machine power was substituted for human power, making it more economical to manufacture goods in factories than at home
Classical Approach
Emphasises rationality and making organisations and workers as efficient as possible.
Scientific management: use of scientific methods to define the 'one best way' for a job to be done Frederick W. Taylor: studied manual work using scientific principles to find one best way for jobs
Four principles of management:
o Use scientific methods to find the best way to do a job o Scientifically select, train and develop the workers o Ensure cooperation from workers by offering incentives o Allocate work and responsibilities to workers and managers
Frank and Lillian Gilbreth: finding efficient hand-and-body motions and designing proper tools and equipment for optimising work performance
Devised classification scheme to label 17 basic hand motions called therbligs
General Administrative Theory: approach to management focusing on describing what managers do and what constituted good management practice
Henri Fayol: 14 principles of management - fundamental rules of management that could be taught in schools and applied in all organisational situations
- Division of work - Authority - Discipline
- Unity of command – every employee should receive orders from only one superior
- Unity of direction – the organisation should have a single plan of action to guide managers and workers - Subordination of individual interests to the general interest
- Remuneration – workers must be paid a fair wage for their services
- Centralisation – refers to the degree to which subordinates are involved in decision making - Scalar chain – the line of authority from top management to the lowest ranks
- Order – people and materials should be in the right place at the right time - Equity – managers should be kind and fair to their subordinates
- Stability of tenure of personnel – management should provide orderly personnel planning and ensure that replacements are available to fill vacancies
- Initiative – employees who are allowed to originate and carry out plans will exert high levels of effort - Esprit de corps – promoting team spirit will build harmony and unity within the organisation
Max Weber:
Bureaucracy - a form of organisation characterised by division of labour, a clearly defined hierarchy, career orientation, formal selection, detailed rules and regulations, and impersonal relationships
Theorising work performed in large groups
Quantitative Approach
The use of quantitative techniques to improve decision making
Total quality management (TQM): philosophy of management driven by continual improvement and responding to customer needs and expectations
1. Intense focus on the customer. Includes internal customers who interact with and serve others in the organisation
2. Concern for continual improvement. Commitment to never being satisfied.
3. Process focused
4. Improvements in the quality of everything the organisation does. Not only to final product, but how the organisation handles deliveries, responds to complaints etc.
5. Accurate measurement. Statistical techniques to measure every critical variable in operations. Compared against standards to identify problems, trace to roots and eliminate causes.
6. Empowerment of employees. Teams widely used in programs as empowerment vehicles for finding and solving problems.
Organisational Behaviour Approach
Field of study concerned with the actions (behaviours) of people at work
Early advocates: Robert Owen, Hugo Munsterberg, Mary Parker Follett, Chester Barnard
All believed that people were the most important asset of the organisation and should be managed accordingly
Hawthorne Studies: started as a scientific management experiment, dramatically impacted management beliefs about the role of people in organisations, leading to new emphasis on human behaviour factor in managing
Concluded social norms/group standards were key determinants of individual work behaviour. Money is less a factor in determining output than group standards, attitudes, security
Human relations movement: the belief, for the most part unsubstantiated by research, that a satisfied worker will be productive
Behavioural science theorists: psychologists and sociologists who relied on scientific method for the study of organisational behaviour
Contemporary approaches
Systems theory: basic theory in physical sciences, says an organisation takes in inputs (resources) from the enviro and transforms/processes these resources into outputs distributed into enviro
System: set of interrelated and interdependent parts arranged in a manner that produces a unified whole o Closed systems: not influenced by and do not interact with their environment
o Open systems: dynamically interact with their environment (organisations)
Managers must ensure interdependent units are working together in order to achieve co goals
Realise that decisions and actions taken in one organisational area will affect others
Org not self-contained, rely on enviro for essential inputs and as outlets to absorb outputs
Contingency theory: says that organisations are different, face different situations (contingencies) and require different ways of managing
Stresses no simplistic or universal rules for managers to follow. Must look at situation
Organisation size: affects type of structure
Routineness of task technology: require organisational structures, leadership styles and control systems that differ from customised or non-routine technologies
Environmental uncertainty
Individual differences: affect motivation techniques, job designs etc
Current trends and issues
Globalisation: More diverse workforce --> understand culture, geography and religion shaping values/attitudes/beliefs
greater markets sourcing/access --> balance interests of org with community responsibilities
Ethics:
Unethical behaviour, corporate lying etc. as ethical behaviour is forgotten or ignored by managers placing self- interest ahead of consequences
Political/regulatory commitment to pursue corporate crime and punish white-collar criminals
Organisations taking more active roles in creating and using codes of ethics/providing ethics training programs/hiring ethics officers
Workforce Diversity: more heterogeneous in terms of gender, race, ethnicity, age etc.
Diversity enriches country --> contributes to population growth vital in overcoming skill deficits of ageing workforce, brings broad range of viewpoints and problem-solving skills
Older workers valuable exp and knowledge --> training programs and flexible work schedules
Different groups have different expectations, attitudes towards workplace --> challenge to create multigenerational workplace
Entrepreneurship: process of starting new businesses, generally in response to opportunities
Pursuit of opportunities, innovation, growth
Learning organisations: have developed the capacity to learn/adapt/change continuously
Knowledge management: cultivating a learning culture where org members systematically gather knowledge and share it with others in the organisation so as to achieve better performance
Sustainability: ability of humanity to ensure that it meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs
Sustainable management: responsibility of all organisations to ensure operations use all forms of capital in such a way that stakeholders receive value and capital required by future generations is maintained
Recently businesses moved to assess performance not just against their profitability but three bottom lines - environmental, social, economic
Leading edge of sustainable management moving beyond saving money to making money as sustainability is seen as a means of creating new business value/reduce risk/attract and retain employees etc
