Individual Research Essay

Effective management

We live in a world where change is continuous; managers need to effectively manage resources to keep up with changing environments to achieve organizational goals and objectives. The four functions which managers perform are communicate within and outside the organization, traditional management like planning, organizing, staffing, networking with people inside and outside the organization and human resources development.(Luthans, 1988)

  Some researchers argue that managers can be effective by developing an eye for art & science; also emphasizing that management can be taught through education(Cassirer, 1953) while Henry Mintzberg (1973-2014 ) claims that the effective management is not science, organizations cannot follow a pre-defined structure or methodology as organization are different in size, age, location and organizational culture. He also argues that management cannot be taught as a profession since it does not have a specified or predefined structure like medical or engineering supporting his argument that managing is more about the application of soft kills which cannot be infused in schools by the conventional teaching practices, and can only be learnt through practical experience over time.

This essay supports (Mintzberg, 2009, Mintzberg, 2004) position that management is neither a science nor a profession and argues that in order for managers to deal with problems, they need to learn to apply soft skills to relevant concepts, ideas and theories in practice. We define soft skills as imagination, interpretation, conceptualization, ethics, and creativity.  The Application of concepts, ideas and theories could be thought of as a mix of art and craft. For instance Art teaches us to visualize and conceptualize, we try giving meaning to those concepts through theories and concepts of science, eventually craft helps us to bring the ideas and concepts together in a chronological order. This essay first highlights management as an art and craft instead of science and then discusses change in the management style post globalization and thirdly the qualities a manager needs to be effective.

In the pre-globalization era, managerial practice was delivered in a mere scientific manner as all organizations were involved in domestic business  but as markets grew with globalization the complexity of organizations increased, as of today companies operate in multiple countries. It has become a need of the time that managers must use soft skills to art, science and craft for tailoring existing concepts and theories of business practices according to organizational needs.

 Dealing with human resource management can be taught of as an art as it involves a good deal of tactic knowledge, tactic which can be learnt only through experience. The characteristic of each employee is different and managers need to use different methods and techniques to motivate, train and develop each employee, a manager uses art and craft when we co-ordinates, negotiates and controls the different activities of business. The qualities needed to be an effective manager are as follows