Chapter 1 - Managing and Organisations

Chapter 1 - Managing and Organisations

• Organisations are purposive, goal-oriented instruments designed to achieve specific objectives
• Managing involves leading to achieve organisational objectives (missions, visions, etc.)
• Sensemaking (SM) is a process where individuals and groups create meaning, especially for novel events. It involves ongoing, retrospective examination, plausibility, use of images, rationalization, and acknowledging the role of people
• Framing involves selecting relevant information and making sense of it. Leaders frame the sense-making of others to recruit and enroll them.
• Sensebreaking occurs when members disrupt existing sense-making and propose alternatives.
• Sensegiving aims to influence the sense-making of others, framing perceptions to align with a preferred perspective. Emotional responses are important for sense-giving.
• Managerialism is the belief that managerial competence justifies decision-making power conferred through education.

Chapter 2 - Managing Individuals

• Organisational behaviour (OB) studies human behaviour in organisations, encompassing a group, organisational and individual level of analysis.
• Nature vs. Nurture debate examines the relative influence of genetics (nature) and environment (nurture) on behaviour.
• Selfish gene/Survival of the fittest theory proposes that competition is fundamental to survival.
• Perception is the process of receiving, attending to, processing, storing, and using stimuli to understand and make sense of the world. Perception can be influenced by schemas.
• Schemas are cognitive frameworks that aid interpretation of stimuli. Examples are person, self, script, social and role schemas. Perception can be influenced by prior expectations and experiences.
• Values are guiding principles in people's lives.

Chapter 7 - Managing Power, Politics and Decision-Making

• Organisational politics is the network of power relations within an organisation.
• Power is a chance to realise one's will against resistance. It's most effective when it isn't overtly apparent, and uncertainty is a source of power.
• Authority is legitimate power conferred by individuals in positions of trust and higher status.
• Legitimacy is the widespread belief that something is just and valid.
• Resistance is challenging or changing existing societal relations.
• Management of meaning is about establishing legitimacy, through initiative actions and delegitimizing opposition.
• Strategic contingencies theory highlights the importance of tasks for power and decision-making, with leaders required to have certain personal attributes.

Chapter 8 - Managing Communications

• Communication involves the exchange of ideas, emotions, messages, stories, and information through different methods.
• Cybernetics focuses on the study of feedback and other communication mechanisms.

Chapter 9 - Managing Knowledge and Learning

• Knowledge management involves managing knowledge (know-how and know-why) to meet existing and future needs.
• Organisational learning is the process of detection and correction of errors and the acquisition of knowledge and capabilities. Sources of knowledge can be learning by doing, stories, and research.
• Knowledge exploitation focuses on making existing knowledge more efficient and effective.
• Knowledge exploration involves creativity, accident, randomness, chance and risk-taking.
• Atrophy is the decrease in activity or productivity in an organisation.

Chapter 10 - Managing Innovation and Change

• Innovation is the implementation of new or improved products, services, or practices.
• Innovation process has stages from initiation, development, implementation and scaling.
• Leading innovation is led by sponsors, mentors, critics and leaders.
• Openness and external sources are important for innovation, trusting external sources as well as internal ones.
• Collaborations can be used for innovation
• Technology paradigms/Innovator's dilemma are aspects to be considered as innovations are brought to market in different technological markets.
• Disruptive innovation means a simpler and cheaper product for a market that does not offer sufficient profit/margin for an incumbent firm
• Social innovation is innovative solutions to social challenges, considered as balancing social and technological factors.

Chapter 11 - Managing Ethically and Sustainably

• Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is the voluntary commitment to sustainable economic development on the part of an organisation.
• 3 levels of analysis in CSR are institutional, organisational and individual level
• Neoclassical economists (Friedman) argue that business's primary responsibility is to its shareholders.
• Stakeholders are those who have an interest in an organisation's actions.
• Relevance stakeholders have varying relevance to the company, short or long term.
• Interpretation of CSR is a way of understanding CSR, involving thinking paradoxically.
• Corporatism (social partnership) occurs when the state encourages cooperation between stakeholders.
• Focuses on CSR to be sustainable in areas of profit, people and the planet.
• Stakeholders & non-humans need to be considered when deciding the ethical behaviour or direction of an organisation.

Chapter 12 - Managing Organisational Design

• Direct management control involves combining ownership and knowledge to manage labourers effectively.
• Panoptical principle is control through surveillance based on the perception of being watched.
• Early modern management is based on efficiency and worker control.
• Limited liability separates personal and business assets.
• Internal contracting is when work is contracted out with a business rather than employed directly.
• Scientific management improves efficiency through worker specialization, task-based work and training.
• Taylor's 4 principles improve efficiency in work through the scientific analysis of motion and task allocation
• Bureaucracy: a form of organization characterised by hierarchical structure, clear rules, and division of labour.
• Rational-legal principles in bureaucracy based on authority and are based on legitimate rules.
• Weber's three main principles are charismatic, traditional and rational-legal.
• Critiques of bureaucracy suggests bureaucratic organisations are too rigid and can impede innovation.
• Praise for bureaucracy suggests these characteristics can give predictability and structure to an organisation.