Mgmt 1001 Textbook Summary Topic 1

TOPIC 1: ORGANISATIONS & MANAGEMENT

Managers are important, because:

1. Organisations need their managerial skills and abilities in handling such uncertain, complex and chaotic times.

• Gerry Harvey realized that as a manager he played a big role in showing leadership to lessen the impact of the gloomy economy due to the global financial crisis.

1. Managers are critical to getting things done.

• Managers as the leader has to make sure company goes on the right track. If it is not on the right one, managers must find out why, and bring it back to the track. This requires good communication in communicating values of the company.

1. Managers matter to organisations.

• Quality of the relationship between employees and managers.
• The way company manages and engages its people might affect the financial performance.
• Managerial ability was important in creating organisational value.

Organisation is a deliberate arrangement of people to accomplish some specific purposes. Three common characteristics of organisations:

• Distinct purposes; expressed in terms of goals
• Composed of people
• Deliberate structure; may be open and flexible (simple network of loose work relationships) (IKEA or Google) or traditional (clearly defined rules, regulations and job description) (Westpac, BHP Biliton).

• Contemporary organisations tend to rely more on flexible work arrangements, teamwork and open communication
• Traditional organisations tend to be inflexible, centralized, hierarchical.

Manager is someone who coordinates and oversees the work of other people so that organizational goals can be accomplished.

Managing is not about personal achievement; it is about helping others to do their work and achieve.[pic 1]

Managers do management. Management involves coordinating and overseeing the work activities of others so that their activities completed efficiently and effectively.

• Efficient: doing thing right. Concerned more in the resource usage.
• Effective: doing the right thing; concerned with the ends or the attainment of organizational goals.

Management functions refer to Henri Fayol:

• Planning; set goals, establish strategies, develop plans.
• Organising; arranging and structuring work in order to achieve the goals.
• Leading; motivate subordinates, help to resolve conflicts, influence individual.
• Controlling; evaluating whether things going right as planned.

Management roles; specific actions or behaviours expected of and exhibited by a manager. (Henry Mintzberg)

1. Interpersonal; Figurehead (greeting), Leader (motivate), Liaison
2. Informational; receiving, collecting and disseminating information. (monitor, disseminator/messenger, spokesperson)
3. Decisional; revolve around making choices. (entrepreneur, disturbance handler, resource allocators, negotiators)
4. Evaluation (Reflection)

At higher level, the roles of disseminator, figurehead, negotiator, liaison, spokesperson more important. Leader role is more important for lower level managers.

Managing is about influencing action.

• Directly
• Through people (motivating)
• Information (goal, budgets)

Managers need three essential skills: Technical, Human and Conceptual (Robert L. Katz)

• Technical: knowledge of and proficiency in a certain specialised field. More important for lower level managers, because engaged directly with the production line. Technical skills become less important as a manager moves into higher levels of management, but still needed.
• Human/Interpersonal: Ability to work well with and understand others. Cooperative, motivate and manage conflict. This skill remains important for all levels of management. (communicate, motivate, lead)
• Conceptual: Ability to conceptualise and to think about abstract situations. Manager must be able to understand the organisations as a whole. This important in top management position as they deal with abstract ideas.

Manager’s job depends on:

• Organisational level; indicates the amount of time they spend in each function. Top level more planning and less direct supervising
• Organisational area; indicates the proportion of the function. Production managers more of the decisional roles, marketing more of the interpersonal roles, accounting-informational. Universal role, the role of leaders, liaison, disturbance handler.
• Organisational type; most of them has similar job (between profit & not for profit org). All concerned with having mangers who can effectively and efficiently POLC.
• Organisational Size; Small and large business have different importance of roles. Small business managers are more likely to be generalists.

[pic 2]

Managers in both small and large org. perform essentially the same activities, but how they go about them and the proportion of time they spend on each one are different.