Summary book: Fundamentals of Management - Stephen P. Robbins, David A.
Decenzo, Mary Coulter
Chapter 1: Managers and Management
1. Tell who managers are and where they work
Managers work in organizations
An organization = a deliberate arrangement of people brought together to accomplish some
specific purpose.
3 characteristics all organizations share:
1. Goals: that purpose/goal can only be achieved with people
2. People: make decisions and engage in work activities to make the goal(s) reality
3. Structure: develop a deliberate and systematic structure that defines and limits the
behavior of its members rules and regulations might guide what people ca nor
cannot do
Organizational members:
- Nonmanagerial employees = people who work directly on a job or task and have no
responsibility for overseeing the work of others.
- Managers = individuals in an organization who direct and oversee the activities of
other people in the organization. managers don’t ever work directly on tasks
Manager titles:
- Top managers = are those at or near the top of an organization
- Middle managers = managers found between the lowest and top levens of the
organization: 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 = responsible for directing the day-to-day activities of
nonmanagerial employees.
2. Define management
Management = the process of getting things done, effectively and efficiently, with and
through other people.
- Efficiency = doing a task correctly and getting the most output from the least amount
of inputs.
- Effective = ‘doing the right things’ by doing those work tasks that help the
organization reach its goals.
Scientific management = the use of scientific methods to define the ‘one best way’ for a job
to be done.
3. Describe what managers do
Henri Fayol five management functions:
- Plan
- Organize
- Command
, - Coordinate
- Control
Nowadays:
- Planning = defining goals, establishing strategy, and developing plans to coordinate
activities. Setting goals, establishing strategy, developing plans ensures it’s kept in
proper focus and it helps to keep attention
- Organizing = ldetermining what tasks are to be done and by whom, how tasks are to
be grouped, who reports to whom and who will make decisions.
- Leading = motivate employees, direct the activities of others, select the most
effective communication channel, resolve conflicts among members
- Controlling = monitoring, comparing and correcting work performance. see if
things are going as planned
Mintzberg’s Managerial Roles
Managerial roles = specific categories of managerial behavior, often grouped around
interpersonal relationships, information transfer, and decision making
- Interpersonal roles = involving people (subordinates and persons outside the
organization) and other duties that are ceremonial and symbolic in nature.
(figurehead, leader, liaison)
- Informational roles = collecting, receiving and disseminating information (monitor,
disseminator = verspreider, spokesperson = woordvoerder)
- Decisional roles = making decisions or choices (entrepreneur, disturbance handler,
resource allocator, negotiator)
Basically, managing is about influencing action.
1. By managing actions directly
2. By managing people who take action (motivating them, building teams, enhancing =
verbeteren the organizations’s culture enz.)
3. By managing information that propels people to take action (using budgets, goals,
task delegation enz.)
What skills and competencies do managers need?
- Conceptual skills = a manager’s ability to analyze and diagnose complex situations
see how things fit together
- Interpersonal skills = a manager’s ability to work with, understand, mentor and
motivate others, both individually and in groups communicate, motivate, mentor
and delegate
- Technical skills = job-specific knowledge and techniques needed to perform work
tasks
- Political skills = a manager’s ability to build a power base and establish the right
connections
Managerial competencies:
- Traditional functions (decision making, short-term planning, goal setting, monitoring,
team building)
- Task orientation (urgency, decisiveness = besluitvaardigheid, initiative)
- Personel orientation (compassion = medelevend, assertiveness = jezelf durven zijn,
politeness, customer focus)
, - Dependability = betrouwbaarheid (personal responsibility, trustworthiness, loyalty,
professionalism)
- Open-mindedness (tolerance, adaptability = jezelf kunnen aanpassen, creative
thinking)
- Emotional control (resilience = veerkracht, stress management)
- Communication (listening, oral communication, public presentation)
- Developing self and others (performance assessment, self-development, providing =
verstrekken developmental feedback)
- Occupational acumen and concerns (technical proficiency, being concerned with
quality and quantitity, Financial concern)
What a manager does is quite broad and varied
Competencies kan also put into categories: conceptual, interpersonal and
technical/administrative
There is no big difference between managers of profit organisations and managers of non-
profit organisations
Small business = an independaent business having fewer than 500 employees that doesn’t
necessarily engage in any new or innovative practices and has relatively little impact on its
industry.
Most important role of a manager: spokesperson
Most important role of a manager in a large organization: resource allocator
As with organizational level, we see differences in degree and emphasis (mate en nadruk
van de activiteiten) but not in the activities that managers do.
4. Why study management?
- You can begin to recognize poor management and know what good managers should
be doing by studying management
- In the begin of your career, you will either manage or be managed.
5. What factors are reshaping and redefining management?
Why are customers important to the manager’s job?
Employee attitudes and behaviors play a big role in customer satisfaction
Why is innovation important to the manager’s job?
- The most important variable in employee productivity and loyalty isn’t pay or benefits
or workplace environment: it’s the quality of the relationship between employees and
their direct supervisors.
- Employees relationship with their manager is the largest factor in employee
engagement.
Employee engagement = when employees are connected to, satisfied (tevreden)
with, and enthusiastic about their jobs.
, History module: a brief history of management’s roots
3000- 2500 v.Chr.: building of pyramids anybody was needed to plan, organize, lead and
control, because of the fact that this is a longterm and big project the first managers.
1780 – 1800: industrial revolution = the advent of machine power, mass production and
efficiënt transportation begun in the late eighteenth century in GB.
1776: division of labor / job specialization by Adam Smith (book: Wealth of Nations)
breaking down jobs into narrow, repetitive tasks.
Classical Approaches (1911- 1947)
1911: scientific management (Frederick W. Taylor, Principles of Scientific Management) =
the use of scientific methods to determine the ‘one best way’ for a job to be done.
1916 – 1947: general administrative theory (Henri Fayol and Max Weber) = descriptions of
what managers do and what constritues good management practice.
Principles of management = Fayol’s fundamental or Universal principles of management
practice
Behavioral Approach
Late 1700 – early 1900: managers get things done by working with people several early
management writers recognized how important people are to an organization’s success.
1924 – 1930: Hawthore studies = a series of studies that provided new insights into
individual and Group behavior, were without question the most important contribution to the
behavioral approach to management turning point classical approach to behavioural
approach: spend more attention to people, so they will produce more.
1930 – 1950: a satisfied worker was believed to be a productive worker
1960 – today: organizational behavior (OB) = the field of study that researches the actions
(behaviors) of people at work
Quantitative approach
1940: quantitative approach = the use of quantitative techniques to improve decision
making application of statistics, optimization models, information models, computer
simulations and other quantitative techniques to management activities.
1950: Total quality management (TQM) = a managerial philosophy devoted to continual
improvement and responding to customer needs and expectations.
Contemporary approaches focus on manager’s concerns inside the organization.
1960: the systems approach = an approach to management that views an organization as
an open system, which is a set of interrelated and interdependent parts arranged in a
manner that produces a unified whole an organization is an open system, a set of
coherent and dependent parts that form a whole.