The Role of the Manager in a Company - Research Paper Example

Answer 1 The functions of management in the business world include planning, staffing, organizing, coordinating and controlling. The modern business environment calls for many more added functionalities of the managers because this environment is experiencing rapid shifts. Effective managers in today’s' business world have to focus on planning, leading, organizing and controlling in order to support the employees to perform better. This in turn leads to the enhancement of the overall organizational performance. The managers perform three main types of functions which are interpersonal functions, informational functions and decisional functions. The managers are expected to be agile and adaptive and perform in a more involved manner. The functions of the managers are also extended to participation in the implementation of strategies rather than only formulating the strategies. To perform their functions effectively in the modern day businesses, managers have to achieve three main managerial skills which are communication and interpersonal skills, technical skills, decision making and conceptual skills. (Source: Bateman and Snell, 2012). Answer 2 The managers are significant influencers of the macro environment within an organization. Therefore, they also actively influence the ethical environment within an organization. The managers in modern businesses have to be ethical leaders who would lead the employees in an ethically compliant and value adding manner. The thinking and behavior of a manager directly influences the work environment. An ethical manager helps to build ethically sensitive employees. On the other hand, a manager following unethical disciplines will create a workforce that would be insensitive to ethical factors. Demonstrating self-controlled decision making on the part of the mangers may lead to loss of trust and compliance among the employees and significantly impact the ethical environment. Managers need to have key competencies and skills in order to steer the organization in the right direction. Performing in an ethical manner is one of the pre requisites in the global business environment. The three roles of managers which are interpersonal roles, decisional roles and informational roles should be performed in an ethical manner to ensure that an ethical environment is created within the organization. Answer 3 Strategic planning involves a set of processes that are devised to make key decisions regarding the long term strategies and goals of an organization. Tactical and operational planning includes a set of processes that are devised for translating the macro strategic plans into narrowed down plans that are implementable in specific functional areas of the organization. In order to integrate the strategic planning with the tactical and operational planning, a holistic view of the organization should be taken with adequate consideration given to an evaluation of the available resources and their allocation in different functional areas of the business. To achieve the strategic goals of the organization, an Integrated Planning System (IPS) is considered to be most effective for combining the strategic planning processes and the tactical and operational planning processes. This includes the creation of strategic excellence starting from development of strategic visions to tactical execution of the plans. The integration of strategic planning and tactical and operation planning require effective organizational management and leadership. Answer 4 Effective decisions can be taken by a manager after following certain steps such as know yourself at first, identify the goals and interest, clearly identify the right issues and problems, consider the barriers for effective decision making, gather the relevant facts and frame the decision in a clear way and last but not the least verify the results. At first manager should know about his own traits which will be helpful for making decisions in the business field. After that he should identify obvious problems that may arise during the business activities. The manager will take corrective steps to protect the goals and interest of the organization. Decision should be framed in a clear way so that sub ordinates can easily understand the instructions of work. Reviewing outcome is an important step which focuses on the lack of efficiency in the performance level of employees. Answer 5 Functional, divisional and matrix these are few famous organizational structures in the business environment. Functional organizational structure classifies people according to their performance and their function in any particular organization. The strengths of this structure are high degree of specialization, easy accountability for work, accords high level of accuracy & speed, duplication of work can be eliminated by this type of organizational structure. Divisional structure is based on the different division of an organization. It is useful for east decision making procedure. Again, the structure treats each division as separate profit making units which will help to increase overall profitability of the organization. Matrix structure is the combination of the two above mentioned structures. In this case functional manager is responsible for any kind of wrong practices and he controls the entire project. Employees are not attached in any kind of temporary work in this organizational structure. Answer 6 Leaders should create such a culture which values real people relationships in the workplace. This will eliminate work group conflicts and workers become more loyal towards the organization. Leaders should be open and fair by nature so that employees can share all the problems which they are facing in the field of work. Leaders should communicate the roles and responsibilities of the employees with themselves. Otherwise employees will remain confused about what to do and what not to do in the business operation. Again in case of any changes how the employees will tackle such kind of situation that was also guided by the leaders. Hence strong communication system is required from the end of the leaders. Answer 7 A manager should not make any controversial announcement without doing proper ground work. Controversial decision always makes the employees confused who are actually engaged in the field work. Implementation of work will become impossible after following such decisions and as a result productivity will be reduced. Manager should listen about the problems and any provided suggestion from the end of the employees including lower level staffs of the organization. Then only he can understand the actual problem and after can take corrective decision to solve that problem. Language barrier also another source of communication problem that may arise due to the cultural diversity within organization and manager should be alert in this fact. Answer 8 Bureaucratic control is stated as usage of rules, formal authority and regulations so as to guide overall performance of an organization. There are some basic steps that are used in order to design a bureaucratic control system. The first step of designing is to set performance standards on basis of which rules and regulations would be employed in the organization. After setting such standards the overall performance of the system is measured with the support of appropriate methods and techniques. The next phase in designing control system is to compare the measured performance in relation to the set standard and then identifying any possible deviations amongst the two. Final step of designing the system is to make corrective actions in order to eliminate flaws and enhance overall performance of the organization. Figure 1 denotes the entire flow in designing of bureaucratic control system. Figure 1: Control System There are three major bureaucratic approaches and design of control system depends on such approaches – feed forward control, concurrent control and feedback control. The basic steps remain the same in all the three approaches with slight modification in relation to objectives of the approach. Answer 9 The real world management principles are inclined towards working as a team and to give more importance to common goals then to personal interests. Team work forms the basis of such principles as an organization can only be productive if tasks are done in collaborative fashion. The other most common principle states that goals need to be specific and realistic. Though managers have the liberty to dream but they need to incorporate practical measures in order to succeed towards the goal. In real world the principle of driving all the team members towards the common vision is the major role of the manager (Capodagli & Jackson, 2007). This even influences my role as a manager as I would need to consider my entire team and work along with them in order to reach my set targets. In order to become a productive organization all these management principles are needed as they guide overall functioning of an organization. These principles state that team members are the most productive resource and they need to be nourished by managers so as to yield productive results. Answer 10 There were some exceptional qualities present in Nehemiah. He knew it well how to manage his people and came forward with innovative solutions so as to resolve their problems. The most essential managerial quality that Nehemiah possessed was he was visionary; he had clear goals and objectives and knew which path he needs to take in order to achieve those set goals. He did not only enhance his own strength but always appreciated strength of his team members. He possessed integrity and was compassionate. Nehemiah was an organized individual and preferred to complete task within the specified time. These qualities need to be present in every manager in present world. The styles and qualities of Nehemiah can be incorporated through having a common vision, considering team members to be the root cause of organizational growth, being passionate towards job and setting high performance standards in the industry. References Bateman, T. & Snell, S. (2012). M: Management (3rd Ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill. Capodagli, B. & Jackson, L. (2007). The Disney Way: Harnessing the Management Secrets of Disney in Your Company. New York: Mcgraw Hill. Read More