Defining Management

Defining Management

• Management involves planning, organizing, leading, and controlling resources effectively to achieve organizational goals.
• The process is dynamic, adapting to meet needs and challenges within internal and external environments.
• Managers develop and implement management processes, switching between tasks to address issues as they arise.
• Key functions are planning, organizing, leading, and controlling, enhancing effectiveness (achieving desired outcomes) and efficiency (using minimal resources).
• Efficiency prioritizes using as few resources (labor, time, input, equipment) as possible to produce the required amount.
• Quality should never be compromised when aiming for efficiency.

Management Process

• Management operates in a dynamic environment, and adapts accordingly.
• Businesses exist to achieve objectives beyond individual capabilities.
• Organizational success heavily depends on management.
• Planning enables management to realize a business concept.
• Organizing allocates resources and personnel.
• Leading provides direction and motivation.
• Controlling measures results against plans.
• Planning is covered in depth in lesson 7, organizing in lesson 8, leading in lesson 9 and controlling in lesson 10, and these are done at all levels.

Levels of Management

• Top management sets strategic plans, long-term goals, designs policies, and defines organizational values. Examples include CEO, president, chairman, or board members.
• Middle management (e.g., Departmental managers, division heads, regional sales managers) implements strategic plans, designs tactical plans, allocates resources, and oversees lower-level managers.
• Lower management designs and carries out daily operational plans, guiding and motivating employees at the supervisory level.

Functional Management Areas

• General management controls the overall management process.
• Marketing management creates and delivers valuable products/services.
• Financial management provides financial performance assessments.
• Production and operations management transforms inputs into final goods.
• Purchasing management manages supply networks.
• Human resource management attracts, develops, and retains employees.
• Public relations management manages public perception.
• Special focus should be on general management, since all managers need to use general management in addition to specialist management.

Management Skills

• Technical skills are needed for specific tasks, important early in a career, and gained through education/experience like accountants preparing financial records. They are vital to front line managers.
• Interpersonal skills are critical for middle managers, and is the ability to understand and motivate people to promote trust and teamwork.
• Conceptual skills enable abstract reasoning and complex analysis, essential for top management to solve ambiguous problems.

Roles of Managers

• Managers support planning, organizing, leading, and controlling via:
  • Interpersonal roles: build external relationships.
  • Decisional roles: make decisions on behalf of the organization
  • Informational roles: gathering and sharing knowledge.

Schools of Management Thought

• The scientific approach views employees as machines, where experts determine the most efficient task methods, and workers are closely supervised.
• The management process approach identifies core functional areas, such as production, marketing and finance.
• The behavioral approach stresses respect and consideration for worker well-being with belief that happy workers will give their best.
• The quantitative approach involves using mathematical or statistical models for decision making, as with discriminant analysis in marketing and is an aid to management.
• The systems approach views the organization as an integrated system, requiring all departments to work cohesively with each other.
• The contingency approach tailors management to employee characteristics, adapting styles based on employee preferences for structure or freedom to encourage productivity.
• Strategic management in the 1960s-70s was used, where organizations adapted goals to rapidly-changing business environments, aiming to dominate markets by exploiting strengths and working to avoid weakness.
• Total Quality Management (TQM) focuses on providing quality in every facet of the organization.
• Re-engineering focuses on core activities while outsourcing non-core ones to improve efficiency/reduce costs.
• Diversity management responds to laws mandating diverse workplaces, necessitating management adapting to cultural differences.

Fundamentals of Organizing

• Key principles include:
  • Job design,
  • Departmentalization,
  • Organizational relationships,
  • Coordination.

Job Design

• It refers to strategically allocating duties and responsibilities, which ensures the task is economical in a safe and efficient manner.
• Division of labor divides work into specialized tasks.
• Job specialization organizes tasks into manageable units, which results in increased specialization. Advantages are efficient, clear roles as staff develop specialized skills, better equipment purchasing etc. Disadvantages can be boredom and under utilization of the employee.
• There strategies designed to offset job specialization's disadvantages, such as:
  • Job rotation is a systematic process of moving people between different positions.
  • Job enlargement increases the number of employee activities.
  • Job enrichment increases content as well high knowledge and expertise along with control over planning.
  • Work teams give employees the power to design their own work flow.

Departmentalization

• It is the grouping of employees, tasks and resources to facilitate planning, leading and control.
• Functional Departmentalization groups employees by skills like marketing/finance and is best suited for small-medium organizations, with the CEO connected to all functions.
• Functional Departmentalization can cause slow coordination between departments, and can be difficult to implement in larger organizations.
• Divisional Departmentalization is for when the company is too big, and this helps the company to take better care of customers and is self managed.
  • It can be divided by Product, Customer, Location, Process etc. Product creates individualized business units with specialized units that are managed with a product manager. Customer focuses on customer satisfaction as it is tailored to customer needs handled by a manager. Location allows the product to be tailored depending on the demand by a regional manager. Process focuses on the steps for production in a process based manager.
• Project structures assigns people to a mid level manage for a set amount of time, then they are re-assigned. Which removes normal company operation interference.
• Matrix structures has employees given over by the functional area for use for full time direction by a manager.
  • The staff has divided loyalty as a result.

Organizational Relationships

• Key elements include chain of command, authority and span of control.
• Chain of command establishes authority from top to bottom following unity of command (report to one supervisor) and the scalar principle (clear chain of authority).
• To better help the organization it can use staff positions.
• Authority can use:
  • Line authority when authority must be explicit.
  • Centralization which maintains consistent decision-making from executives.
  • Decentralization which spreads decision making throughout the organization.
  • Delegation is a vital step in authority where control is given to subordinates.
• Span of control can be wide (flat) for fewer managerial layers or small (tall) for greater supervision over employees. It is influenced by employee skill, company size, and work quality.

Coordination

• Facilitates the interdependence of departments and teams, aiding harmony and can include organizational charts, committees, budgets, policies etc.

Influences on Organizational Design

• This can include:
  • The stability and uncertainty of the business environment.
  • The business structure that allows the business to implement the plan.
  • Company size, with large companies needing multiple layers.
  • The capacity of both staff and management in the system.
  • Organizational culture and its impact on innovation.

Informal Organizations

• They are rooted in interpersonal relations beyond formal structure, supported by methods like group chats and regular personal calls.

Ubuntu Philosophy on Organizations

• Management theories can clash in African context due to western origins.
• Ubuntu is rooted in African culture, based on sharing, respect and community, where "a person is a person though other people".
• To use Ubuntu, managers can:
  • pool resources using shared values to end threats via conflict.
  • build solidarity in adhesion to coordination.
  • set up informal settings for village gathering.