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Functions of Managers
Managers just don't go out and haphazardly perform their responsibilities. Good managers discover how to master five basic functions: planning, organizing, staffing, leading, and controlling. Planning: This step involves mapping out exactly how to achieve a particular goal. Say, for example, that the organization's goal is to improve company sales. The manager first needs to decide which steps are necessary to accomplish that goal. These steps may include increasing advertising, inventory, and sales staff. These necessary steps are developed into a plan. When the plan is in place, the manager can follow it to accomplish the goal of improving company sales. Organizing: After a plan is in place, a manager needs to organize her team and materials according to her plan. Assigning work and granting authority are two important elements of organizing. Staffing: After a manager discerns his area's needs, he may decide to beef up his staffing by recruiting, selecting, training, and developing employees. A manager in a large organization often works with the company's human resources department to accomplish this goal. Leading: A manager needs to do more than just plan, organize, and staff her team to achieve a goal. She must also lead. Leading involves motivating, communicating, guiding, and encouraging. It requires the manager to coach, assist, and problem solve with employees. Controlling: After the other elements are in place, a manager's job is not finished. He needs to continuously check results against goals and take any corrective actions necessary to make sure that his area's plans remain on track. All managers at all levels of every organization perform these functions, but the amount of time a manager spends on each one depends on both the level of management and the specific organization. Roles performed by managers A manager wears many hats. Not only is a manager a team leader, but he or she is also a planner, organizer, cheerleader, coach, problem solver, and decision maker — all rolled into one. And these are just a few of a manager's roles.
In addition, managers' schedules are usually jam‐packed. Whether they're busy with employee meetings, unexpected problems, or strategy sessions, managers often find little spare time on their calendars. (And that doesn't even include responding to e‐mail!) In his classic book, The Nature of Managerial Work, Henry Mintzberg describes a set of ten roles that a manager fills. These roles fall into three categories: Interpersonal: This role involves human interaction. Informational: This role involves the sharing and analyzing of information. Decisional: This role involves decision making. Not everyone can be a manager. Certain skills, or abilities to translate knowledge into action that results in desired performance, are required to help other employees become more productive. These skills fall under the following categories: Technical: This skill requires the ability to use a special proficiency or expertise to perform particular tasks. Accountants, engineers, market researchers, and computer scientists, as examples, possess technical skills. Managers acquire these skills initially through formal education and then further develop them through training and job experience. Technical skills are most important at lower levels of management. Human: This skill demonstrates the ability to work well in cooperation with others. Human skills emerge in the workplace as a spirit of trust, enthusiasm, and genuine involvement in interpersonal relationships. A manager with good human skills has a high degree of self‐awareness and a capacity to understand or empathize with the feelings of others. Some managers are naturally born with great human skills, while others improve their skills through classes or experience. No matter how human skills are acquired, they're critical for all managers because of the highly interpersonal nature of managerial work. Conceptual: This skill calls for the ability to think analytically. Analytical skills enable managers to break down problems into smaller parts, to see the relations among the parts, and to recognize the implications of any one problem for others. As managers assume ever‐higher responsibilities in organizations,
Myth: The manager is a reflective, methodical planner. Reality: The average manager is swamped by trivialities and crises and spends only nine minutes or so on any activity. Myth: The effective manager has no regular duties to perform. Reality: Managers attend upper management meetings, meet regularly with employees, coworkers, and potential clients, and absorb and process information on a continued basis. Myth: The manager's job is a science. Reality: Managers rely heavily on interaction and judgment. Myth: Managers are self‐starters, self‐directed, and autonomous. Reality: Good managers are self‐managing: They accept autonomy, while seeking input from supervisors. Myth: Good managers seek out the information they require. Reality: Managers don't always have access to information they need. Myth: Competition among managers is good for business. Reality: Collaboration (the pooling of resources) and cooperation (working together) among managers creates a better business. Today, the concepts of TQM indicate that organizations function better if resources and knowledge are shared and individuals work together as a team. Uncovering your own beliefs of management is important as you develop an awareness of “true” daily management duties.
Management and Organizations
In today's tough and uncertain economy, a company needs strong managers to lead its staff toward accomplishing business goals. But managers are more than just leaders — they're problem solvers, cheerleaders, and planners as well. And managers don't come in one‐size‐fits‐all shapes or forms. Managers fulfill many roles and have many different responsibilities at each level of management within an organization. Organizations abound in today's society. Groups of individuals constantly join forces to accomplish common goals. Sometimes the goals of these organizations are for profit, such as franchise restaurant chains or clothing retailers. Other times, the goals are more altruistic, such as nonprofit churches or public schools. But no matter what their aims, all these organizations share two things in common: They're made up of people, and certain individuals are in charge of these people.
Enter managers. Managers appear in every organization — at least in organizations that want to succeed. These individuals have the sometimes‐unenviable task of making decisions, solving difficult problems, setting goals, planning strategies, and rallying individuals. And those are just a few of their responsibilities! To be exact, managers administer and coordinate resources effectively and efficiently to achieve the goals of an organization. In essence, managers get the job done through other people. No matter what type of organization they work in, managers are generally responsible for a group of individuals' performance. As leaders, managers must encourage this group to reach common business goals, such as bringing a new product to market in a timely fashion. To accomplish these goals, managers not only use their human resources, but they also take advantage of various material resources as well, such as technology. Think of a team, for example. A manager may be in charge of a certain department whose task it is to develop a new product. The manager needs to coordinate the efforts of his department's team members, as well as give them the material tools they need to accomplish the job well. If the team fails, ultimately it is the manager who shoulders the responsibility. Two leaders may serve as managers within the same company but have very different titles and purposes. Large organizations, in particular, may break down management into different levels because so many more people need to be managed. Typical management levels fall into the following categories: o Top level: Managers at this level ensure that major performance objectives are established and accomplished. Common job titles for top managers include chief executive officer (CEO), chief operating officer (COO), president, and vice president. These senior managers are considered executives, responsible for the performance of an organization as a whole or for one of its significant parts. When you think of a top‐level manager, think of someone like Dave Thomas of the fast‐food franchise Wendy's. Although John T. Schuessler was elected CEO in 2000, Dave Thomas was the founder and served as the chairman of the board. He was the well‐known spokesperson for the chain, until his death in 2002.
consisted of two studies conducted at the Hawthorne Works of the Western Electric Company in Chicago from 1924 to 1932. The first study was conducted by a group of engineers seeking to determine the relationship of lighting levels to worker productivity. Surprisingly enough, they discovered that worker productivity increased as the lighting levels decreased — that is, until the employees were unable to see what they were doing, after which performance naturally declined. A few years later, a second group of experiments began. Harvard researchers Mayo and F. J. Roethlisberger supervised a group of five women in a bank wiring room. They gave the women special privileges, such as the right to leave their workstations without permission, take rest periods, enjoy free lunches, and have variations in pay levels and workdays. This experiment also resulted in significantly increased rates of productivity. In this case, Mayo and Roethlisberger concluded that the increase in productivity resulted from the supervisory arrangement rather than the changes in lighting or other associated worker benefits. Because the experimenters became the primary supervisors of the employees, the intense interest they displayed for the workers was the basis for the increased motivation and resulting productivity. Essentially, the experimenters became a part of the study and influenced its outcome. This is the origin of the term Hawthorne effect, which describes the special attention researchers give to a study's subjects and the impact that attention has on the study's findings. The general conclusion from the Hawthorne studies was that human relations and the social needs of workers are crucial aspects of business management. This principle of human motivation helped revolutionize theories and practices of management. Abraham Maslow, a practicing psychologist, developed one of the most widely recognized need theories, a theory of motivation based upon a consideration of human needs_._ His theory of human needs had three assumptions: Human needs are never completely satisfied. Human behavior is purposeful and is motivated by the need for satisfaction. Needs can be classified according to a hierarchical structure of importance, from the lowest to highest.
Maslow broke down the needs hierarchy into five specific areas: Physiological needs. Maslow grouped all physical needs necessary for maintaining basic human well‐being, such as food and drink, into this category. After the need is satisfied, however, it is no longer is a motivator. Safety needs. These needs include the need for basic security, stability, protection, and freedom from fear. A normal state exists for an individual to have all these needs generally satisfied. Otherwise, they become primary motivators. Belonging and love needs. After the physical and safety needs are satisfied and are no longer motivators, the need for belonging and love emerges as a primary motivator. The individual strives to establish meaningful relationships with significant others. Esteem needs. An individual must develop self‐confidence and wants to achieve status, reputation, fame, and glory. Self ‐ actualization needs. Assuming that all the previous needs in the hierarchy are satisfied, an individual feels a need to find himself. Maslow's hierarchy of needs theory helped managers visualize employee motivation. Douglas McGregor was heavily influenced by both the Hawthorne studies and Maslow. He believed that two basic kinds of managers exist. One type, the Theory X manager, has a negative view of employees and assumes that they are lazy, untrustworthy, and incapable of assuming responsibility. On the other hand, the Theory Y manager assumes that employees are not only trustworthy and capable of assuming responsibility, but also have high levels of motivation. An important aspect of McGregor's idea was his belief that managers who hold either set of assumptions can create self ‐ fulfilling prophecies — that through their behavior, these managers create situations where subordinates act in ways that confirm the manager's original expectations. As a group, these theorists discovered that people worked for inner satisfaction and not materialistic rewards, shifting the focus to the role of individuals in an organization's performance.
Quantitative School of Management
Management information systems (MIS) is the most recent subfield of the quantitative school. A management information system organizes past, present, and projected data from both internal and external sources and processes it into usable information, which it then makes available to managers at all organizational levels. The information systems are also able to organize data into usable and accessible formats. As a result, managers can identify alternatives quickly, evaluate alternatives by using a spreadsheet program, pose a series of “what‐if” questions, and finally, select the best alternatives based on the answers to these questions. Systems management theory The systems management theory has had a significant effect on management science. A system is an interrelated set of elements functioning as a whole. An organization as a system is composed of four elements: Inputs — material or human resources Transformation processes — technological and managerial processes Outputs — products or services Feedback — reactions from the environment In relationship to an organization, inputs include resources such as raw materials, money, technologies, and people. These inputs go through a transformation process where they're planned, organized, motivated, and controlled to ultimately meet the organization's goals. The outputs are the products or services designed to enhance the quality of life or productivity for customers/clients. Feedback includes comments from customers or clients using the products. This overall systems framework applies to any department or program in the overall organization. Systems theory may seem quite basic. Yet decades of management training and practices in the workplace have not followed this theory. Only recently, with tremendous changes facing organizations and how they operate, have educators and managers come to face this new way of looking at things. This interpretation has brought about a significant change in the way management studies and approaches organizations. The systems theory encourages managers to look at the organization from a broader perspective. Managers are beginning to recognize the
various parts of the organization, and, in particular, the interrelations of the parts. Contemporary system theorists find it helpful to analyze the effectiveness of organizations according to the degree that they are open or closed. The following terminology is important to your understanding of the systems approach: An organization that interacts little with its external environment (outside environment) and therefore receives little feedback from it is called a closed system. An open system, in contrast, interacts continually with its environment. Therefore, it is well informed about changes within its surroundings and its position relative to these changes. A subsystem is any system that is part of a larger one. Entropy is the tendency of systems to deteriorate or break down over time. Synergy is the ability of the whole system to equal more than the sum of its parts.
Contingency School of Management
The contingency school of management can be summarized as an “it all depends” approach. The appropriate management actions and approaches depend on the situation. Managers with a contingency view use a flexible approach, draw on a variety of theories and experiences, and evaluate many options as they solve problems. Contingency management recognizes that there is no one best way to manage. In the contingency perspective, managers are faced with the task of determining which managerial approach is likely to be most effective in a given situation. For example, the approach used to manage a group of teenagers working in a fast‐food restaurant would be very different from the approach used to manage a medical research team trying to find a cure for a disease. Contingency thinking avoids the classical “one best way” arguments and recognizes the need to understand situational differences and respond appropriately to them. It does not apply certain management principles to any situation. Contingency theory is a recognition of the extreme importance of individual manager performance in any given situation. The contingency approach is highly dependent on the experience and judgment of the manager in a given organizational environment.
Kaizen is the commitment to work toward steady, continual improvement. The best support for continuous improvement is an organization of people who give a high priority to learning. In this process, everyone in the organization participates by identifying opportunities for improvement, testing new approaches, recording the results, and recommending changes. The reengineering approach to management focuses on creating change — big change — and fast. It centers on sensing the need to change, seeing change coming, and reacting effectively to change when it comes. Reengineering — the radical redesign of business processes to achieve dramatic improvements in cost, quality, service, and speed — requires that every employee and manager look at all aspects of the company's operation and find ways to rebuild the organizational systems to improve efficiency, identify redundancies, and eliminate waste in every possible way. Reengineering is neither easy nor cheap, but companies that adopt this plan have reaped remarkable results. Reengineering efforts look at how jobs are designed, and raise critical questions about how much work and work processes can be optimally configured. Although many people believe that reengineering is a euphemism for downsizing or outsourcing, this is not true. Yes, downsizing or outsourcing may be a byproduct of reengineering. However, the goal of reengineering is to bring about a tight fit between market opportunities and corporate abilities. After organizations are able to find this fit, new jobs should be created.
Classical Schools of Management
One of the first schools of management thought, the classical management theory, developed during the Industrial Revolution when new problems related to the factory system began to appear. Managers were unsure of how to train employees (many of them non‐English speaking immigrants) or deal with increased labor dissatisfaction, so they began to test solutions. As a result, the classical management theory developed from efforts to find the “one best way” to perform and manage tasks. This school of thought is made up of two branches: classical scientific and classical administrative, described in the following sections. The classical scientific branch arose because of the need to increase productivity and efficiency. The emphasis was on trying to find the best
way to get the most work done by examining how the work process was actually accomplished and by scrutinizing the skills of the workforce. The classical scientific school owes its roots to several major contributors, including Frederick Taylor, Henry Gantt, and Frank and Lillian Gilbreth. Frederick Taylor is often called the “father^ of scientific management.” Taylor believed that organizations should study tasks and develop precise procedures. As an example, in 1898, Taylor calculated how much iron from rail cars Bethlehem Steel plant workers could be unloading if they were using the correct movements, tools, and steps. The result was an amazing 47.5 tons per day instead of the mere 12. tons each worker had been averaging. In addition, by redesigning the shovels the workers used, Taylor was able to increase the length of work time and therefore decrease the number of people shoveling from 500 to 140. Lastly, he developed an incentive system that paid workers more money for meeting the new standard. Productivity at Bethlehem Steel shot up overnight. As a result, many theorists followed Taylor's philosophy when developing their own principles of management. Henry Gantt, an associate of Taylor's, developed the Gantt chart, a bar graph that measures planned and completed work along each stage of production. Based on time instead of quantity, volume, or weight, this visual display chart has been a widely used planning and control tool since its development in 1910. Frank and Lillian Gilbreth, a husband‐and‐wife team, studied job motions. In Frank's early career as an apprentice bricklayer, he was interested in standardization and method study. He watched bricklayers and saw that some workers were slow and inefficient, while others were very productive. He discovered that each bricklayer used a different set of motions to lay bricks. From his observations, Frank isolated the basic movements necessary to do the job and eliminated unnecessary motions. Workers using these movements raised their output from 1, to 2,700 bricks per day. This was the first motion study designed to isolate the best possible method of performing a given job. Later, Frank and his wife Lillian studied job motions using a motion‐picture camera and a split‐second clock. When her husband died at the age of 56, Lillian continued their work. Thanks to these contributors and others, the basic ideas regarding scientific management developed. They include the following: Developing new standard methods for doing each job Selecting, training, and developing workers instead of allowing them to choose their own tasks and train themselves
with employees so that favoritism and personal prejudice do not influence decisions. Competence. Competence, not “who you know,” should be the basis for all decisions made in hiring, job assignments, and promotions in order to foster ability and merit as the primary characteristics of a bureaucratic organization. Records. A bureaucracy needs to maintain complete files regarding all its activities. Henri Fayol, a French mining engineer, developed 14 principles of management based on his management experiences. These principles provide modern‐day managers with general guidelines on how a supervisor should organize her department and manage her staff. Although later research has created controversy over many of the following principles, they are still widely used in management theories. Division of work: Division of work and specialization produces more and better work with the same effort. Authority and responsibility: Authority is the right to give orders and the power to exact obedience. A manager has official authority because of her position, as well as personal authority based on individual personality, intelligence, and experience. Authority creates responsibility. Discipline: Obedience and respect within an organization are absolutely essential. Good discipline requires managers to apply sanctions whenever violations become apparent. Unity of command: An employee should receive orders from only one superior. Unity of direction: Organizational activities must have one central authority and one plan of action. Subordination of individual interest to general interest: The interests of one employee or group of employees are subordinate to the interests and goals of the organization. Remuneration of personnel: Salaries — the price of services rendered by employees — should be fair and provide satisfaction both to the employee and employer. Centralization: The objective of centralization is the best utilization of personnel. The degree of centralization varies according to the dynamics of each organization. Scalar chain: A chain of authority exists from the highest organizational authority to the lowest ranks.
Order: Organizational order for materials and personnel is essential. The right materials and the right employees are necessary for each organizational function and activity. Equity: In organizations, equity is a combination of kindliness and justice. Both equity and equality of treatment should be considered when dealing with employees. Stability of tenure of personnel: To attain the maximum productivity of personnel, a stable work force is needed. Initiative: Thinking out a plan and ensuring its success is an extremely strong motivator. Zeal, energy, and initiative are desired at all levels of the organizational ladder. Esprit de corps: Teamwork is fundamentally important to an organization. Work teams and extensive face‐to‐face verbal communication encourages teamwork. Mary Parker Follett stressed the importance of an organization establishing common goals for its employees. However, she also began to think somewhat differently than the other theorists of her day, discarding command‐style hierarchical organizations where employees were treated like robots. She began to talk about such things as ethics, power, and leadership. She encouraged managers to allow employees to participate in decision making. She stressed the importance of people rather than techniques — a concept very much before her time. As a result, she was a pioneer and often not taken seriously by management scholars of her time. But times change, and innovative ideas from the past suddenly take on new meanings. Much of what managers do today is based on the fundamentals that Follett established more than 80 years ago. Chester Barnard, who was president of New Jersey Bell Telephone Company, introduced the idea of the informal organization — cliques (exclusive groups of people) that naturally form within a company. He felt that these informal organizations provided necessary and vital communication functions for the overall organization and that they could help the organization accomplish its goals. Barnard felt that it was particularly important for managers to develop a sense of common purpose where a willingness to cooperate is strongly encouraged. He is credited with developing the acceptance theory of management, which emphasizes the willingness of employees to accept that managers have legitimate authority to act. Barnard felt that four factors affected the willingness of employees to accept authority:
Directly interactive forces include owners, customers, suppliers, competitors, employees, and employee unions. Management has a responsibility to each of these groups. Here are some examples: Owners expect managers to watch over their interests and provide a return on investments. Customers demand satisfaction with the products and services they purchase and use. Suppliers require attentive communication, payment, and a strong working relationship to provide needed resources. Competitors present challenges as they vie for customers in a marketplace with similar products or services. Employees and employee unions provide both the people to do the jobs and the representation of work force concerns to management. The second type of external environment is the indirectly interactive forces. These forces include sociocultural, political and legal, technological, economic, and global influences. Indirectly interactive forces may impact one organization more than another simply because of the nature of a particular business. For example, a company that relies heavily on technology will be more affected by software updates than a company that uses just one computer. Although somewhat removed, indirect forces are still important to the interactive nature of an organization. The sociocultural dimension is especially important because it determines the goods, services, and standards that society values. The sociocultural force includes the demographics and values of a particular customer base. Demographics are measures of the various characteristics of the people and social groups who make up a society. Age, gender, and income are examples of commonly used demographic characteristics. Values refer to certain beliefs that people have about different forms of behavior or products. Changes in how a society values an item or a behavior can greatly affect a business. (Think of all the fads that have come and gone!)
The political and legal dimensions of the external environment include regulatory parameters within which an organization must operate. Political parties create or influence laws, and business owners must abide by these laws. Tax policies, trade regulations, and minimum wage legislation are just a few examples of political and legal issues that may affect the way an organization operates. The technological dimension of the external environment impacts the scientific processes used in changing inputs (resources, labor, money) to outputs (goods and services). The success of many organizations depends on how well they identify and respond to external technological changes. For example, one of the most significant technological dimensions of the last several decades has been the increasing availability and affordability of management information systems (also known as MIS). Through these systems, managers have access to information that can improve the way they operate and manage their businesses. The economic dimension reflects worldwide financial conditions. Certain economic conditions of special concern to organizations include interest rates, inflation, unemployment rates, gross national product, and the value of the U.S. dollar against other currencies. A favorable economic climate generally represents opportunities for growth in many industries, such as sales of clothing, jewelry, and new cars. But some businesses traditionally benefit in poor economic conditions. The alcoholic beverage industry, for example, traditionally fares well during times of economic downturn. The global dimension of the environment refers to factors in other countries that affect U.S. organizations. Although the basic management functions of planning, organizing, staffing, leading, and controlling are the same whether a company operates domestically or internationally, managers encounter difficulties and risks on an international scale. Whether it be unfamiliarity with language or customs or a problem within the country itself (think mad cow disease), managers encounter global risks that they probably wouldn't have encountered if they had stayed on their own shores.
The Internal Environment
