Summary Fundamentals of Management: Essential concepts and applications (Robbins, DeCenzo & Coulter, 2014) Ninth edition.
Useful summary of the most important chapters (including pictures of important schemes from the book).
Chapters: 1, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 14 & 15
1 Managers and Management
“Anyone who works in an organisation – not just managers – can gain insight into how
organizations work and their boss’s behaviour by taking a course in management”.
1 Who are managers and where do they work?
There’s no pattern or prototype or standard criteria as to who can be a manager.
However, all managers share one common element: They work in an organizational setting.
An organisation is a systematic/deliberate arrangement of people brought together to
accomplish some specific purpose.
Three characteristics of organisations:
Goals: an organization has a distinct purpose, which is typically expressed as a goal or
set of goals.
People: Achieving this goals is done by the people in an organization.
Structure: an organization is structured in some way that defines and limits the behaviour
of its members. The structure is the setting within which managers manage.
How are managers different from nonmanagerial employees?
Simple we’ll divide organizational members into two categories:
Nonmanagerial members are people who work directly on a job or task and have no
responsibility for overseeing the work of others.
Managers are individuals in an organization who direct and oversee the activities of other
people in the organization so organizational goals can be accomplished. A manager’s job
isn’t about personal achievement – it’s about helping others do their work.
This distinction doesn’t mean, however, that managers don’t ever work directly on tasks.
What titles do managers have?
Managers are usually classified as top, middle, first-line, or team leaders.
Top managers are those at or near the top of an organization. They’re usually responsible
for making decisions about the direction of the organization and establishing policies and
philosophies that affect all organizational members.
Middle managers are those managers found between the lowest and top levels of the
organization. These individuals often manage other managers and maybe some
nonmanagerial employees and are typically responsible for translating the goals set by top
managers into specific details that lower-level managers will see get done.
First-line managers are those individuals responsible for directing the day-to-day activities
of nonmanagerial employees (supervisors).
Team leaders are individuals who are responsible for managing and facilitating the activities
of a work team. They will typically report to a first-line manager.
1
, 2 What is management?
Management is the process of getting things done, effectively and efficiently, with and
through other people.
Efficiency and effectiveness have to do with the work being done and how it’s being done.
Efficiency means doing a task correctly (“doing things right”) and getting the most output
from the least amount of inputs. Efficiency is concerned with the means resource usage.
Effectiveness means “doing the right things”, or completing activities so that organizational
goals are attained. Effectiveness is concerned with the ends goal attainment.
3 Ways to look at what managers do
What managers do can be described using three approaches: functions, roles and
skills/competencies.
1 Functions Approach
The functions approach says that managers perform four functions:
Planning: defining goals, establishing strategy, and developing plans to coordinate
activities.
Organizing: determining what tasks are to be done, who is to do them, how the tasks are
to be grouped, who reports to whom, and who will make decisions.
Leading: motivating employees, directing the activities of others, selecting the most
effective communication channel, and resolving conflicts.
Controlling: monitoring performance comparing it with goals, and correcting any
significant deviations.
2 Management Roles Approach
Mintzberg’s categorization approach defines what managers do is based on managerial
roles – specific categories of managerial actions or behaviors expected of a manager.
3 Skills and Competencies
The skills/competencies approach looks at what managers do in terms of the skills and
competencies they need and use. Four critical management skills are:
Conceptual skills: analysing and diagnosing complex situations to see how things fit
together and to facilitate making good decisions.
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