Managing Effectively- Standards and Expectations of Modern Management - Case Study Example

Lecture Management skills 2 Managing Effectively. Effective management is possible only through effective leadership. Leadership is the process ofinfluencing others to follow certain rules, procedures, acts and behaviours in order to achieve desired goals. Although leaders and mangers have the same goals to achieve, their style and attitude determines the approach and success. For example, leaders approach involves inspiring, motivating, involving, empowering, initiating change and listening to others, whereas manages approach involves controlling, organising, compromising, implementing decisions, and being dependent on others. Power is an important privilege possessed by managers who can use it to get things done from others. Subordinates perceive their managers to exercise different powers based on situation. Like, power to recognize someone, ability to punish or reprimand, ability to examine others based on tasks, personal influence through attraction or charisma etc. Different types of leadership styles have been proposed based on their traits, like, autocratic characterised by imposing decisions, instruction-related expectations, disconnected leadership; democratic characterized by great team involvement, empowering others, disciplined, and connected leadership; thirdly, laissez-faire characterised by complete hands-off approach, involvement only if questioned, absolutely disconnected leadership. Goldsmith and Clutterback (1985) assert that leaders should have a great vision, and be able to provide goal clarity to the followers. Hersey and Blanchard’s situational leadership model idealizes leaders as people with the ability to tell, sell, participate and delegate tasks according to the situation. Action-centred leadership by John Adair advocates that leadership activities should be specific to the action pertaining to team, individual and task. Blake and Mouton’s managerial grid model explains the impact of varying balance between concern for people (X-axis) and concern for production (Y-axis). This model encompasses all the leadership styles previous explained by various other scholars. Lastly, Fielder’s contingency model focuses on situation-based style and explains three variables, Leaders-member, Task structure, and position power. This model reinforces the need for striking a balance between relationships, goal and task clarity and power of leader for an ideal leadership. McGregor (1987) asserts that four factors contribute for leaders’ success, namely, characteristics of the leader and followers, nature of the organisation, and the socioeconomic and political environment. Krech (1962) identified 14 functions and responsibilities of a leader. The leader’s styles and functions together define his/her scope of success, with authoritarian leaders providing least empowerment to their people and democratic leaders providing maximum empowerment to their people. Both these situations may not yield the desired results. Hence, appropriate approach according to the characteristics of followers, situation and other external influences has to be adopted in order to derive optimum results. In conclusion, as an inherent quality, leadership cannot yield the desirable results unless it is modified according to the situation, people and environment. Lecture- 2 The Concepts of Modern Management , Standards & Expectations Management has been defined by various people on the basis of different aspects and approaches. For instance, Fayol’s classical management model describes management encompassing planning and forecasting, organising, coordinating and controlling functions. Mintzberg’s (1975) reflection indicates management, a function of the manger including brief and discontinued way of working, as discussions involving negotiations and information gathering, verbally communicating, and programming according to the situation. His postulations have strongly opposed certain management myths formed on the basis of statistical or empirical analyses. Moreover, research excludes examining or measuring behavioural aspects of management versus expectations; this has been exemplified by Stewart’s model (1982) of conception of managers with respect to demands, constraints, and choices. Post this postulation, Drucker (1988) opined that the managers in contemporary management are resistant to change, inclined towards their own sphere of working, and tend to avoid taking up newer challenges. As a response to this, Wilson (1990) proposed that management should be more flexible and incorporate strategic changes whenever required in accordance with customer and market needs; work towards corporate vision, build and work with teams and develop effective communication skills. Earlier, Chell (1984) also pointed change of management focus on similar lines. The main role of a manager is to drive performance through people in the direction of organisational goals and expectations. This requires a systematic approach involving objective setting, succession planning, providing learning and development opportunities for staff and implementing a fair and justifiable performance measurement system. Ideal managerial skills are effective communication, administration, change execution, and mentoring skills. Mentoring skills enable managers to coach, counsel, get connected to people, and facilitate opportunities for learning and development within the organisation. Manager should be able to envisage different alternatives to situations, decisions, and suggestions/proposals from others, and help them in decision making and problem solving processes. In total, managerial key role is being connected to people through positive social behaviour; however, all of these skills or traits may not be found in any one manager because of their administrative responsibilities, insecurities related to their position and role, and even lack of time. The Management Charter Initiative (1988) being developed by the National Forum for Management Education Development, UK (NFMED) focuses on standardization of managerial competencies required for effective management. These competencies are a comprehensive collection of competencies mentioned earlier, and are directed towards managerial corporate visionary, learning and development of workforce, increased empowerment and driving initiatives; driving team-based performance; enhancing all essential managerial skills (Rees, 2003). In conclusion, the contemporary meaning of management extends beyond administrative activities, into nurturing the right leadership, people development, expanding horizons in terms of thinking and action, envisioning generalized perspective, and abilities to change according to the customer market and environmental needs. Lecture-3 Effective Communications Empirical research indicated that major work is accomplished through communication, verbal, written, meta communication and body language (Mintzber, 1973; Stewart 1967); all these are carried out through various media. Effective communication ensures transfer of intended information and appropriate understanding, without which communication remains either incomplete or ineffective. Various models of communication have been proposed, all of which commonly identify the sequence containing encoding, channels, decoding, noise and feedback mechanisms. In this sequence, information or idea in the form of worlds, pictures or actions is transferred through different pathways such as email, telephone, publication etc. This transferred information is interpreted in the form of understanding or decoding which may or may not correspond with the original information or idea. Non-conformity arises due to certain distorting factors such as mindset, time, other disturbing sounds etc. The entire process culminates into knowledge of the receiver based on the impact of the message. Potential barriers to effective communication are style appropriateness, cultural differences impacting perception, accent, language and vocabulary used. Most of the communication at workplace happens either orally or in written forms. Oral communication is more common in informal communication such as expressing ideas, discussing or talking, whereas written communication is sought for formal purposes such as documentation, recording purposes and far-distance communication through electronic or mail systems. According to Daft, Lenger and Trevino (1987), managers preferred oral communication when delivering complicated messages and written communication in case of plain messages. Documentation of orally communicated matter is considered to be more effective (Level, 1972). Although ideal communication process should be two-ways, one-way communication is also effective when the intention is only to give information through specific channels such as newsletters, notice boards, videos, briefings etc. Two-way communication usually happens during appraisals, group discussions, quality circles, surveys and feedbacks. Other important entities to effective communication at workplace are technology, environmental impact, body language and expressions including tone. Townley’s (1989) perspectives of increased commitment to effective communication point towards conformity to moral right to information and other legislation, along with recognition of distinct and significant forces depending on communication process. Effective communication is an absolute requirement for any management or leadership to flourish and succeed in order to ensure the right message is transferred with the right kind of impact that can produce the desired results. All organisations are highly committed to ensure effective communication by adopting all possible and updated technological systems and tools, providing customized facilities like meeting rooms, conference rooms, coffee lounges etc. In conclusion, effective communication is essential for effective management and requires specific skills and appropriate technology and environment depending upon the situation and kind of information being transmitted. Lecture-4 Working in Teams Organisations prefer to work in teams that are aligned towards common goals, and within each team all individuals are also aligned towards a defined team goal. Working in teams has proven to be more efficient in terms of achieving results, learning from each other, and also deriving motivation to work. Teams are always formal and have clearly defined goals, roles, responsibilities, accountabilities, specific skills, support, commitment and trust. On the other hand, groups may be formal or informal, formed in order to share information, establish relationships and oriented towards a common objective; formal groups include task groups, senior management teams, command groups etc. Informal groups include friendship and interest groups. Both, groups and teams can enhance performance and innovation, increase motivation and satisfaction in different ways. Group work can yield diverse results, fosters better decision making and tasks may be divided depending upon the skill set of individuals. On the contrary, efficiency of group work decreases as the size grows and depends on other factors such as their mode of interaction, personalities and skills, and is time-consuming. The concept of groupthink was extended by Janis (1972) indicating a deeper involvement, diverse ideas and expertise, a thoughtful and skilled approach, blend of different personalities, strengths and ways of doing things. The disadvantages of groupthink include possibilities of defective decision making due to lack of complete information, poor evaluation and research, potential of influencing other members towards biased thought process. These could be prevented by asking every group member’s opinion on respective assessment, preventing a directive approach, and by providing ample time to explore all possible positive and negative alternatives to the situation. The 3 major factors determining group effectiveness include environmental factors such as method and approach, physical location, time, type of task, managerial competency and relationships; membership factors that include size of group, values and skills and their motivational levels; group dynamics such as purpose of group, training, goal setting, background of members, leadership and task-orientation. The force or reason behind group formation can have a positive or negative impact on the outcome of the group formation. In order to make groups more cohesive and drive them positive direction, size may be reduced, consensual agreement of goals should be encouraged, inter-group competition may be induced, entire group should be rewarded for all achievements and the group can be physically isolated. Five stages of group formation have been identified as forming, storming, norming, performing and adjourning. Murnighan’s (1981) group decision making strategies provide a comprehensive idea of how type of group influences the criteria of decision making such as number and type of ideas, social pressure, conflicts, commitment and costs based on the four types of groups including interacting, brainstorming, nominal and electronic ideas. Based on this table, no specific group can be termed as most effective in task accomplishment. Therefore, depending on the type of group, strategies to derive the maximum can be formulated. Overall, groups and teams are formed to accomplish common goals and objectives; however, the group dynamics play a significant role in these accomplishments. Most importantly, the type of goal, members’ preferences and psychological status, time and space determine the effectiveness of group working. Lecture-5 Ethics and Management Morality and ethics build trust for the organisation and its people, and for any business or organisation to prosper trust is extremely important as it increases commitment, loyalty and economic value as a whole. These three aspects in turn determine or forecast the achievables and their sustainability within the organisation or business. All these, according to Carroll (2000) form a moral obligation bound by legal, ethical, economic and philanthropic dimensions. Trevino and Nelson (1999) indicated that the ultimate consequences, duties, obligations, principles and morals determine what is ethical and can be done. Challenges involved in determining or anticipating consequences are difficulties in evaluation of consequences and possibility of violation of lawful rights. For this, all possible consequences and alternative actions will have to be considered in order to choose the best possible approach. Both, the organisation and its people are responsible for upholding morality. At the organisational level, it has a moral obligation towards all its stakeholders, in terms of delivering results as committed without violating any of either party’s rights and duties; safety, security and occupational health of its employees; obligation to protect environment. At an individual level, every individual of the organisation has a moral obligation towards all other individuals of the organisation with respect to uphold their integrity, dignity, performance-related commitments, privacy and safety. The organisation is required to ensure all its employees and stakeholders are aware of these moral and ethical obligations. Although organisations spend considerable time and effort to spread moral and ethical awareness among employees and other stakeholders, they still face challenges related, mostly, to fairness, justice, dignity and respect of individuals. These issues are usually confronted at managerial levels in the form of hiring and contractual agreements, dissatisfaction of performance evaluation, non-adherence to compliance and discipline, issues of termination, discrimination based on group, race or ethnicity, violation of personal integrity in the form of sexual harassment or sexual favours, biasness towards specific individuals as a consequence of some form of bribery. In conclusion, conducting business and managing organisations in an ethical manner, by following the right principles, doing the right things, following lawful procedures and having appropriate control measures to prevent any unethical behaviour or business has to be regarded with high priority at all times. Lecture-6 Organisations and cultures Organisational culture depicts the type of beliefs, attitudes, experiences, values and practices or an organisation. It is influenced by external factors such as the location, political setup, type of population, education, customer and labour market, and governing rules and regulations, and by internal factors such as hierarchy, management policies and practices, employees’ psychology, attitudes, expectations, managerial and leadership styles, transparency and confidentiality rules, etc. Organisational culture is a culmination of power culture, task culture, role culture and person culture within different functions and levels. The external and internal influencing factors may also be viewed as formal and informal factors with formal factors comprised of goals, technology, hierarchy, internal and external policies and procedures, products/services and financial resources; informal factors comprised of beliefs, attitudes, customs, values, group norms, commitment etc. As organisational culture is determined by so many factors, different opinions have been proposed on types of organisational cultures found all over the world. The most prominent theory describing employee behaviour at organisations is the theory X and Theory Y by Douglas McGregor. Organisational behaviour is the type of behaviour and attitude expressed by its employees, which determines organisational culture. In order to implement a change, in the form of reorientation of goals or change in management policies requires a change in people’s behaviour and attitude. A great deal of planning and systematic approach would be required in order to bring about these changes. A healthy organisational culture ensures great employee motivation and growing business, and this responsibility rests with both employees and the employer of an organisation. In conclusion, organisational culture matters most for employees to build trust in the organisation. Trust in turn depends on the manner leadership and management moulds people’s expectations to meet organisational goals with appropriate measurement systems, hierarchy, technology, communication, change management, and building employee loyalty and commitment. All these aspects define the organisational management system. Read More