Principles of Management

• Management involves using resources through planning, organizing, leading, and controlling to meet goals effectively and efficiently.

Levels of Management

• Top Managers set the organization's overall direction.
• Middle Managers implement top management's plans and coordinate activities.
• First-Line Managers supervise employees' daily activities.

Management Roles

• Interpersonal roles involve relationships like leadership and liaison duties.
• Informational roles handle receiving and sharing data as a monitor or spokesperson.
• Decisional roles involve choices as an entrepreneur or negotiator.

Skills for Effective Management

• Technical skills include specific field knowledge.
• Human skills involve effective interaction with people.
• Conceptual skills include understanding complex ideas.

The Organizational Environment

• Internal environment includes factors within the organization like culture and resources.
• External environment includes external factors like economic conditions and regulations.

Types of External Environment

• General environment includes broad factors affecting all organizations like political, economic, and technological.
• Task environment includes factors directly affecting an organization like competitors, suppliers, and customers.
• Managers must be adaptable to respond to internal and external challenges.

What is Planning?

• Planning involves setting goals and determining how to achieve them.
• Planning helps define objectives and how to accomplish them.

Benefits of Planning

• Planning provides direction.
• Planning intensifies effort.
• Planning reduces uncertainty.
• Planning facilitates decision-making.

Pitfalls of Planning

• Overcommitment to a plan can lead to failure.
• Plans are based on assumptions that can be incorrect.
• Detachment from implementation can cause plans to fail.

Steps in Making a Plan That Works

• Set Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Timely goals (S.M.A.R.T.).
• Develop Commitment by involving others in goal setting
• Create Action Plans.
• Track Progress regularly.
• Maintain Flexibility.

Planning at Different Management Levels

• Top Management uses Strategic Plans.
• Middle Management uses Tactical Plans.
• First-Line Management uses Operational Plans.

Rational Decision-Making Process

• Step 1: Identify the problem.
• Step 2: Define decision criteria.
• Step 3: Rate the importance of criteria.
• Step 4: Generate alternatives.
• Step 5: Evaluate alternatives.
• Step 6: Choose the optimal alternative.
• Step 7: Implement the decision.
• Step 8: Evaluate the decision.

Pitfalls of Rational Decision-Making

• Limited resources and incomplete information can hinder decision-making.
• Cognitive biases may impact decisions.

Group Decision-Making

• Advantages include diverse perspectives and better solutions.
• Disadvantages include groupthink and slow decisions.

Techniques to Improve Group Decision-Making

• Devil’s Advocacy encourages conflict by challenging ideas.
• Nominal Group Technique uses structured voting and discussion to reduce conflict.

What is Strategy?

• Strategy is the plan to achieve a competitive advantage.
• A sustainable competitive advantage is maintaining an edge over competitors for a long time.

Strategic Management Process

• Step 1: Determine if strategy needs change.
• Step 2: Conduct a situational analysis (SWOT).
• Step 3: Choose a strategy based on the analysis.

Types of Corporate-Level Strategies

• Portfolio Strategy reduces risk through diversification.
• Grand Strategies include growth, stability, retrenchment, and recovery.

Industry-Level Strategies

• Cost Leadership Strategy competes by being the low-cost provider.
• Differentiation Strategy offers unique products or services.
• Focus Strategy targets specific market segments.

Firm-Level Strategies

• Direct competition intensity depends on market commonality and resource similarity.

Why Innovation Matters

• Innovation helps companies stay competitive.
• Innovation follows an S-curve pattern of slow, rapid, then slow improvements.

Managing Innovation

• Discontinuous Innovation involves major breakthroughs.
• Incremental Innovation involves small improvements.

Creativity and Innovation Management

• Support creative work environments.
• Different management approaches exist for discontinuous and incremental innovation.

Managing Change

• The change process involves unfreezing, change, and refreezing.
• Managing resistance to change involves communication, participation, and support.