Notesale: Turn your study into money

Document Preview

Extracts from the notes are below, to see the PDF you'll receive please use the links above

---

THE MANAGEMENT PROCESS AND ITS NATURE
THE MANAGEMENT PROCESS AND THE NATURE OF
MANAGERIAL WORK
Management is composed of four basic functions that help managers achieve
organizational goals
...


Management Functions
The management process consists of four functions: planning, organizing, leading, and
controlling
...
Although society and business have both changed dramatically since these
basic functions were first proposed in 1916, with updated interpretations, they remain
the most popular approach to studying management
...
When
planning, management looks at where the organization should be in the future,
considers alternative strategies for getting there, and then select and implement the
best set of actions
...


Organizing: The second management function is organizing, which involves
establishing maintaining or changing a structure to accomplish the organization’s
goals, to define and assign tasks, and to coordinate people and resources
...


Leading: The third management function is leading, the process of influencing and
motivating others to work together to achieve organizational goals
...


Controlling: The fourth management function is controlling, which involves setting
the standards, monitoring the progress, and making the adjustment needed to keep
the organization focused on its goals
...


THE MANAGEMENT PROCESS AND ITS NATURE
The Nature of Managerial Work
Whether they are presidents, deans, or supervisors, all managers perform tasks that
can be described and analyzed to one degree or another
...
During the past two
decades, researchers have developed additional frameworks to supplement the
traditional four-pronged management model and to clarify the nature of managerial
activities
...

 Fast pace, long hours: Managers, especially top managers, work at an
unrelenting pace
...

 Brevity, variety, and discontinuity: In contrast to the image of managers
concentrating on a few key problems
...

Although additional research has shown that not all managerial jobs fall into
this pattern, Mintzberg’s description fits the workday of many managers
...
Managers favor spoken
communication because they can obtain up-to-date information and because
many of their contacts do not put all the details on paper
...
He argued that all managers take on
these behavior patterns, or roles, in order to be effective in their jobs
...


Category

Role
Figurehead

Interpersonal roles

Leader
Liason

Types of activities
Cermonial and symbolic duties
Hire, train, motivate and coordinate
others
Develop relatiops with other outside
work unit

THE MANAGEMENT PROCESS AND ITS NATURE

Interpersonal Roles: Three management roles flow directly from the authority of
the manager’s position in the organization
...
Interpersonal roles include the
manager as figurehead, the manager as leader and the manager as liaison
...

Serving as a figurehead, the manager may present awards or entertain
important customers
...

Liaison: The third interpersonal role a manager performs is a role of liaison,
building relationship with people outside the manager’s own unit
...


So important are interpersonal roles that some managers devote a large portion of
their working days to these roles
...
Mintzberg observed that a large part of
managers’ job is devoted to informational roles in which the manager acquires,
processes, and communicates information
...
They also talk with people they meet in their liaison roles, and they
interact with the people who work in their own units
...


THE MANAGEMENT PROCESS AND ITS NATURE




Disseminator: In the role of disseminator, managers share and distribute the
information they have acquired
...

Spokesperson: The third informational role is the role of spokesperson, in
which the manager provides information to people outside the organization
...


Decisional Roles: Some of the most important roles that managers play are
decisional roles, in which they examine alternatives and then make choices and
commitments
...
Mintzberg identified
four decisional roles: entrepreneur, disturbance handler, resource allocator, and
negotiator
...

These changes may involve new products, new processes, or solution to
problems
...
In this role, managers make changes to solve
unanticipated that result from forces beyond their control
...
In the role of resource allocator, managers
make choices about how many people, how much money and how much of the
available materials will be used to achieve the organization’s goals
...

Negotiator: The negotiator role involves bargaining with others to support the
organization’s goals
...


Managerial Agendas and Networks
Another well-known study of managerial work, by Harvard professor John Kotter,
confirmed Mintzberg’s findings that sending and receiving information takes up a
considerable share of the manager’s day
...
Early in their tenure in each management
position, these manager devoted considerable time to network building, activities that
put them into contact with people inside and outside the organization, mirroring what
Mintzberg observed
...


Managerial Demands, Constraints and Choice
British researcher Rosemary Stewart also studies the nature of managerial work and
she concluded that managers have some flexibility in both what they do and how they
do it
...







Demands: Demands are the activities a manager is required to do and the
results that must be achieved
...
For instance, a specific goal
might be to decrease product failure by 10 percent, whereas a moral general
goal might be to improve employee morale
...
Constraints may include scarcity of resources, legal limits,
contractual restrictions on labor, technological limitations, and boundaries set
by the definition of manager’s work unit
...
Although all managers operate under demands and constraints, they
also have some leeway in deciding how much time to spend on specific tasks,
which tasks to delegate, how to do the work, and whether to share work with
claims
...
Once they understand the nature of their roles, managers can identify any roles
they used to develop further, and they can arrange their workdays to emphasize more
of the roles they wish to assume
...
Stewart’s research on what must be done (demands), the
environmental limits (constraints), and the various ways that managers can approach
their work (choices) provides inside into management decisions about specific tasks
and work assignments
...
Students of management and
managers already on the job can apply these observations in order to become more
skillful managers

---