Understanding the Manager's Job

Chapter 1: Understanding the Manager's Job

• An organization is a group of people structured and coordinated to achieve goals.
• Management is a set of activities aimed at using an organization's resources efficiently to achieve its goals.
• Main management activities include planning, decision-making, organizing, leading, and controlling.
• Key resources are human, financial, physical, and information.
• Main areas of management are Administration, Human Resources, Finance, and Marketing.

Kinds of Managers

• Top managers set overall goals.
• Middle managers implement policies.
• First-line managers supervise employees.

Basic Management Functions

• Planning involves setting organizational goals and deciding the best way to achieve them.
• Organizing involves determining how to group activities and resources.
• Leading involves motivating organizational members to work in the best interests of the organization.
• Controlling involves monitoring and correcting ongoing activities to facilitate goal attainment.

Fundamental Management Skills

• Technical Skills involve the ability to accomplish specific tasks
• Interpersonal Skills are used to communicate and motivate others.
• Conceptual Skills involve abstract thinking.
• Diagnostic Skills are used to visualize appropriate responses.
• Communication Skills are used to convey ideas.
• Decision-making Skills involve the ability to recognize and define problems.
• Time Management Skills are used to priortize work.

The Science and Art of Management

• The scientific approach can be used to solve management with a rational and logical approach.
• The art of management uses intuition, experience, and personal insights to solve problems.

The Evolution of Management

• Scientific Management improves worker performance while Administrative Management focuses on the entire organization.
• The Human Relations Movement says workers respond best to social context, group dynamics, and interpersonal relations,
• Theory X is a pessimistic view of workers, while Theory Y is a positive view; the Organizational Behavior is contemporary field focusing on behavioral perspectives in management.
• Management science focuses on development of mathematical models vs operations management focuses on efficient production.
• A system has four elements: inputs, transformation processes, outputs, and feedback.
• Open Systems interact with their environment, Closed Systems do not interact with their environment, and Subsystems are part of a broader system.

Chapter 2: The Environments of Organizations and Managers

• The external environment includes factors outside an organization that can affect it.
• The general environment includes broad dimensions and forces that determine the overall context.
• The task environment includes specific organizations or groups that affect the organization.
• The internal environment includes conditions and forces within the organization.
• The Economic Dimension indicates overall health & vitality
• The Technological Dimension indicates methods for converting resources
• The Political-Legal Dimension indicates goverment regulation of business
• Competitors compete for resources, Customers acquire products and the Supplier provides resources.
• Regulators are regulatory agencies and interest groups that regulate business activities.
• Strategic Partners/Allies are organizations working in a joint venture, and owners claim property rights, and the Board of Directors which is a governing body.
• Owner claims property rights and the Board of Directors are a governing body, with employees and the physical work environment.

Ethical and Social Environment of Management

• Ethical behavior conforms to the generally accepted social norms, whereas unethical behavior does not.
• Managerial ethics are standards of behavior that guide individual managers.
• A code of ethics is a formal statement of values and ethical standards, with Social Responsibility as obligation of an organization.
• Organizations should have formal dimensions like legal compliance and ethical compliance.
• Informal dimensions include whistle-blowing is the disclosure of illegal conduct.
• Levels of International Business Activity include: Exporting, Importing, and Licensing. A strategic alliance is also cooperative arrangements between 2 firms for mutual gains.
• Direct Investment is when a firm builds or purchases operating facilities or subsidiaries in a different country.
• Organizational culture includes a set of values, beliefs, behaviors, customs, and attitudes that help the organization's members.
• Sole Proprietorship is an unincorporated business owned by one person who pays personal income tax on profits earned, with a Partnership as a formal arrangement with two or more parties.
• LLC's Must file articles of incorporations.

Chapter 3: Planning and Strategic Management

• Goals provide guidance, unified direction, affect planning, source of motivation, and offer a mechanism for evaluation.
• SMART goals are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time-Bound.
• A mission statement indicates an organization's fundamental purpose.
• Strategic goals are generally set by orgnizations top management, with Tactical Goals set my middel management, with Operational Goals set by lower level management.
• Strategic plans has been generated to outline decisions about resource allocation, and Tactical plans which implement specific parts of a strategic plan.
• Operational plans is a plan focuses on carrying out tactical plans to achieve operational goals.
• A distinctive competence, scope, and resource deployment are components of strategy.
• Business-level strategy is strategic alternatives from which chosen to conduct a business,
• Corporate-level strategy is strategic alternatives from which chosen to conducts operations across several industries and markets, .
• Strategy formulation is processes involved in creating or determining an organization's strategies, SWOT analysis is used to formulate strategy.
• Different strategies include-
• Differentiation strategy seeks to distinguish itself from competitors through the quality of its products or services.
• Overall cost leadership strategy attempts to gain a competitive advantage by reducing its costs below the costs of competing firms.
• Focus strategy concentrates on a specific regional market, product line, or group of buyers.
• Portfolio management techniques determine which businesses to engage in to maximize corporate performance like the BCG matrix and the GE business screen.
• Tactical planning is a plan aimed at achieving tactical goals with the managers needing to recognize that tactical planning must address a number of tactical goals, tactics must specify resources and time frames, and that requires the use of human resources.
• The manager needs to evaluate every possible course of action in light of the goal it is intended to reach, make sure that each decision-maker has the information/resources necessary, and must monitor ongoing activities.
• Operational planning can be single use for a single activity, or used to execute a wide range of events across a long timeline.
• Contingency planning is the process of creating multiple plans that can be used when an initial plan has failed or there could be unexpected circumstances

Chapter 4: Managing Decision Making

• Decision-making is the process of choosing one alternative from a set of alternatives
• Decision-making process: defining the decision situation, identifying the alternatives, choosing best one. implementing said altenatives.
• A programmed decision is fairly structured or recurs with some frequency, and a non programmed decision is structured and occurs much less often.
• Rational Perspectives helps managers make rational decisions in the organizations best interest.
• Evidence-based management values fact-based decisions and a willingness to explore new or expermental models.
• A behavioral approach helps better reflects subjective considerations administrative models which uses incomplete info.
• There are various advantage and disadvantges to team decision making and it comes in a variety of forms.

Chapter 5: Entrepreneurship and New Venture Management;

• Entrepreneurship is a process that involves with planning, organizing, operating, and assuming the risk of a start-up or new venture
• Entrepreneurships provide innovation & create jobs.
• Strategies for start ups include conducting industry analysis etc.
• There are a variety of options for financing new business.
• Success requires hard work & careful market analysis.
• Organization structure & design refers to elements to configure an organization. Job specialization is breaking the overall task into smaller parts.
• There are four basic benefits to doing this - efficient workers, less transfer time. easlier to develop equipment and training replacements.
• Departmentalization is grouping jobs together based on arrangement.
• Functional Departmentalization involves similar tasks and grouping activities around products or customer needs.
• There must be a chain of command to indicate position and authority and their relationship to another employee.
• Coordination involves interdependence - which requires companies to coordinate.
• Organizational culture is a system of shared assumptions, values, and beliefs.
• Basic forms of org are functional, conglomerate, divisional and matrix.
• Understanding the need to change can be met with resistance and that change needs to be addressed by planned interventions.
• There are multiple areas of organizational change - org structure , technology, change process models and org Development techniques.
• Organization innovation is the managed effort of an organization to develop new products or services or new uses for existing products or services and there is a series of reasons what makes those efforts fail.
• There are multiple organizational development and innovation techniques to explore.