Management

INTRODUCTION

In recent years, research in management has grown, and many new insights have found its way to business all over the world. Since the early days of management studies, such as the Hawthorne studies, a bigger focus has come on contingency and the specific character of human beings (Robbins & Coulter 2009: 38-57). Management is a demanding task, that requires technical, soft and conceptual skills for the manager (Robbins & Coulter 2009:27).

From a functional approach it has been established that managers must follow four steps to be successful. The four steps are: Planning, Organizing, Leading and Controlling (POLC) (Robbins & Coulter 2009: 24). Each step is of great importance, but often many businessmen and women neglect them. For this written report, we wish to study how managers are unsuccessful, when they don't follow the four steps, or when they tend to other management mistakes, such as overconfidence bias (Robbins & Coulter 2009: 149). But sometimes failures or success are caused by other factors outside the manager's control. From the symbolic view organizational performance is determined by the manager as well as other factors, such as economy, costumers, governmental policies, industry conditions and so on. (Robbins & Coulter 2009: 61). With this aspect in mind, we will in this report briefly discuss weather or not the managers have the sole responsibility for the performances.

The growing knowledge about management and the high status management have in our society today, have led to the development of a TV show about management failures and success – the show is called The Apprentice. The concept of the show is that two groups of aspiring young businessmen and women, have to impress Donald Trump, their group members and the viewers with their management skills, in the hope of becoming Donald Trump's next apprentice. We find The Apprentice relevant as empirical