Brand Course for International Students
Management refers to the process of coordinating and integrating work activities so they’re completed efficiently and effectively with and through other people.
Efficiency refers to the relationship between inputs and outputs and is often referred to as “doing things right.” Effectiveness refers to completing activities so that organizational goals are attained, and is often described as “doing the right things.”
All managers perform the four functions of planning, organizing, leading, and controlling. Planning is the process of defining goals, establishing a strategy for achieving them, and developing plans to integrate and coordinate activities. Organizing means designing an organization’s structure. Leading means integrating and coordinating the work of the organization’s people. Controlling is monitoring, comparing, and correcting the actual work performance.
A manager is an organizational member who integrates and coordinates the work of others. Operatives do not integrate and coordinate the work of others.
The three different levels of management are first-line managers (the lowest level, often called supervisors), middle managers (all levels between first-line and top level), and top managers (responsible for making organizationwide decisions and establishing policies and strategies that affect the entire organization).
Robert Katz felt that managers needed three essential skills—technical, human, and conceptual. Technical skills include knowledge of or proficiency in a certain specialized field; human skills are the ability to work well with other people both individually and in a group; and conceptual skills include the ability to think and conceptualize about abstract situations. The importance of the three skills varies with management level in that top managers need more conceptual skills and lower-level managers need more technical skills. Human skills are important at all levels of management.
Mintzberg concluded that managers perform 10 different but highly interrelated roles. These are interpersonal (figurehead, leader, liaison), informational (monitor, disseminator, spokesperson), and decisional (entrepreneur, disturbance handler, resource allocator, negotiator). They explain what managers do by describing specific categories of managerial behavior.
A system is a set of interrelated and interdependent parts arranged in a manner that produces a unified whole. An organization is an open system because it constantly interacts with its environment. From an open systems perspective, a business organization uses a transformation process to turn inputs such as raw materials and human resources into finished products or services through employees’ work activities, management activities, and technology and operations methods. Outputs include products and services, financial results, and levels of job satisfaction and productivity.
The contingency perspective emphasizes the fact that organizations are different, face different circumstances or contingencies, and thus may require different ways of managing.
An organization is a deliberate arrangement of people to accomplish some specific purpose. Its three characteristics are a distinct purpose, people, and a deliberate structure.
Managers have an important impact on both employees and the organizations in which they work. The following three reasons address their importance:
a. Organizations need their managerial skills and abilities more than ever in these uncertain, complex, and chaotic times.
b. Managers are critical to getting things done in organizations.
c. Managers do matter to organizations! Managers contribute to employee productivity and loyalty.
Organizations are becoming more open, flexible, and responsive to changes. They are changing because the world around them has changed.
The importance of studying management in today’s dynamic global environment can be explained by looking at the universality of management, the reality of work, and the rewards and challenges of being a manager.