Management Principles, Key Concepts

• Management principles cover managers and managing, and key management concepts.
• Management also includes organizational performance, functions, levels, restructuring, and skills.

Key Concepts

• Organizations involve people working together, coordinating actions to achieve goals.
• A goal is a desired future condition sought by the organization.
• Management uses organizational resources, planning, organizing, leading, and controlling to achieve goals.
• Resources include people, machinery, raw materials, information, skills, and financial capital.
• Managers supervise the use of an organization's resources to meet goals.

Achieving High Performance

• Organizations must provide goods or services customers desire.
• Examples include Campbell Soup providing quality food, healthcare providers offering healing, and McDonald's selling burgers, fries, and shakes.

Organizational Performance

• Organizational performance measures how efficiently and effectively managers use resources to satisfy customers and to achieve goals.
• Efficiency measures how well resources are used to achieve a goal and managers minimize resource input to attain the same goal.
• Effectiveness measures the appropriateness of goals chosen and the degree to which they are achieved.
• Organizations are more effective when managers choose correct goals and achieve them.

Managerial Functions

• Henri Fayol first described the four functions while CEO of a mining company in the late 1800s.
• Managers, at all levels, perform functions in for-profit and non-profit organizations.
• The four functions are:
  • Planning: Choosing goals.
  • Organizing: Working together.
  • Leading: Coordinating.
  • Controlling: Monitoring and measuring.

Planning

• Planning identifies and selects appropriate goals and actions which involves deciding:
  • Which goals should be pursued.
  • How the goal should be attained.
  • How resources should be allocated.
• The planning function determines organization strategy, effectiveness and efficiency.

Organizing

• Organizing creates the structure of working relationships between members for the best cooperation and goal achievement.
• Managers group people into departments based on tasks and outline authority/responsibility.
• An organizational structure results from organizing, coordinating employee motivation to achieve common goals.

Leading

• Leading involves managers guiding direction, having a clear vision for employees to follow, and assisting with understanding roles in goal attainment.
• Leadership involves power, influence, vision, persuasion, and communication skills.
• The outcome of leading involves a high level of employee motivation and commitment.

Controlling

• In controlling, managers evaluate an organization's goal achievement and take corrective actions to improve performance.
• Managers monitor the organization, individuals, and departments determining if desired performance has been reached.
• Managers enhance action to increase performance as required.
• Accurate performance measurement and regulation of efficiency/effectiveness are outcomes of the controlling function.

Management Levels

• Organizations typically have three management levels:
  • First-line Managers: Responsible for day-to-day operations and supervising activities for goods or services.
  • Middle Managers: Supervise first-line managers, finding the best use of departmental resources to achieve goals.
  • Top Managers: Responsible for all departments' performance, have cross-departmental responsibility, and establish/monitor organizational goals and middle managers.

Restructuring

• Top management has sought methods to restructure organizations and save costs
• Downsizing involves eliminating jobs at all management levels.
  • Downsizing may lead to higher efficiency but can result in low morale and customer service complaints.

Management Trends

• Empowerment: Expanding worker tasks and responsibilities; supervisors may be empowered to make some resource decisions.
• Self-managed teams: Give an employee group responsibility for monitoring/supervising its own actions.
  • Teams can monitor members and work quality.

Managerial Roles (Mintzberg)

• A role is a set of specific tasks a person performs based on their position.
• Roles can be directed inside and outside the organization.
• Three broad role categories:
  • Interpersonal
  • Informational
  • Decisional

Interpersonal Roles

• Managers assume roles to coordinate and interact with employees and provide direction to the organization.
  • Figurehead: Symbolizes the organization.
  • Leader: Train, counsel, mentor, and encourage high performance of employees.
  • Liaison: Link and coordinate people inside and outside organization.

Informational Roles

• Informational roles are associated with tasks needed to obtain and transmit information for the management of the organization.
  • Monitor: Analyzes internal/external information.
  • Disseminator: Transmits information to influence employee attitudes.
  • Spokesperson: Uses information to positively influence others.

Decisional Roles

• Decisional roles are associated with methods managers use to plan strategy and utilize resources.
  • Entrepreneur: Decides on new projects or programs for investment.
  • Disturbance Handler: Assumes responsibility handling an event or crisis.
  • Resource Allocator: Assigns resources, sets budgets for lower managers.
  • Negotiator: Seeks solutions between managers, unions, and customers.

Managerial Skills

• Three skill sets managers need to perform effectively:
  • Conceptual: Ability to analyze a situation and find cause/effect.
  • Human: Ability to understand, alter, lead, and control people's behavior.
  • Technical: Job-specific knowledge to perform a task (e.g., marketing, accounting, manufacturing).
• All skills are enhanced through training, reading, and practice.

Management Challenges

• Increasing number of global organizations.
• Building a competitive advantage through efficiency, quality, innovation, and responsiveness.
• Increasing performance while remaining ethical.
• Managing an increasingly diverse workforce.
• Using new technologies.