MANAGEMENT OF ORGANISATIONS
CHAPTER 1 “Managers and Managing”
Management is the planning, organizing, leading and controlling of human and other
resources to achieve organizational goals efficiently and effectively.
A Manager is a person responsible for supervising the use of an organization’s
resources to meet its goals.
An Organization is a collection of people who work together and coordinate their actions
to achieve a wide variety of goals. An organization's resources include assets, such as people
and their skills, patents, machinery,...
One of the key goals that organizations try to achieve is to provide goods and services that
customers valuer and desire
Organizational performance is a measure of how efficiently and effectively managers use
available resources to satisfy customers and achieve goals. It increases in direct proportion to
increases in efficiency and effectiveness.
- Efficiency is a measure of how productively resources are used to achieve a goal. An
organization is efficient when managers minimize the amount of input resources or the
time needed to produce an output.
- Effectiveness is a measure of the appropriateness of the goals that managers have
selected for the organization to pursue and the degree to which the organization
achieves those goals. An organization is effective when managers choose appropriate
goals and then achieve them.
There are four essential managerial tasks and managers at all levels are responsible for
performing these tasks.
● Planning: managers identify and select appropriate organizational goals and courses of
action. They develop strategies for how to achieve high performance.
- Deciding which goals to pursue
- Deciding what strategies to adopt
- Deciding how to allocate organizational resources to pursue the strategies.
How well managers plan and develop strategies determines the organization’s performance
level.
● Organizing: is structuring working relationships so organizational members interact and
cooperate to achieve organizational goals. The outcome is the creation of an
organizational structure, a formal system of task and reporting relationships that
coordinates/motivates members. It determines how an organization’s resources can be
best used to create goods/services.
● Leading: managers articulate a clear organizational vision for the organization’s
members to accomplish. A vision is a short and inspiring statement of the organization’s
future state. In leadership managers use their skills.
● Controlling: the task is to evaluate how well an organization has achieved its goals and
to take corrective actions to improve performance. The outcome of this process is the
ability to measure performance and regulate organizational efficiency and effectiveness.
,To perform these tasks efficiently and effectively, organizations group or differentiate their
managers in two ways, by:
- Level in hierarchy
- Type of skill
A department: a group of managers and employees who work together since they possess
similar skills. In each department there are all three levels of management.
The CEO is a company’s most senior manager;
one of his concerns is to create a functioning
top management team.
Top Managers are responsible for the
performance of all departments,
cross-departmental responsibility.
Middle Managers have to find the best way to
organize human and other resources to
achieve goals.
First-Line Managers, or supervisors, are
responsible for daily supervision of
nonmanagerial employees, they work in all departments or functions of the organization.
Types of managerial skills
● Conceptual Skills are in general the ability to analyze and diagnose a situation and to
distinguish between cause and effect. Top managers require the best conceptual skills
because their primary responsibilities are planning and organizing.
● Human Skills include the general ability to understand, alter, lead, and control the
behavior of other individuals/groups. Ability to communicate, motivate, and mold
individuals into a cohesive team.
● Technical Skills are job-specific skills required to perform a particular type of work or
occupation at a high level.
Stiff competition has put increased pressure on all managers to improve efficiency and
effectiveness; and technology gives managers at all levels in all areas access to more and
better information. It has also expanded the use of self-managed work teams.
Restructuring→ simplifying, shrinking, downsizing an organization’s operations to low operating
costs. Technology has increased the amount of downsizing because fewer employees can
perform a given task.
Outsourcing→ contracting with another company, to have it perform a work activity; it increases
efficiency because it lowers operating costs.
Another way to increase efficiency and effectiveness is by empowering lower-level employees
The rise of global organizations has pressured many organizations to identify better ways to use
their resources and improve their performance.
,There are five challenges for managers:
- Building a competitive advantage: the ability to outperform others with superior
efficiency, quality, innovation, responsiveness to customers and flexibility.
- Maintaining ethical and socially responsible standards
- Managing a diverse workforce
- Utilizing new technologies
- Practicing global crisis management
CHAPTER 3 “Values, emotions, and culture: the manager as a person”
Managers have certain personality traits and it’s important to understand them since they
influence their behavior and their approach to managing people and resources.
An individual’s personality is composed of five general traits→ Big Five personality traits.
Extraversion is the tendency to experience positive
emotions and moods.
Negative Affectivity is the tendency to experience
negative emotions and moods, and be critical of oneself
and others.
Agreeableness is the tendency to get along well with
others.
Conscientiousness is the tendency to be careful and
persevering.
Openness to Experience is the tendency to be original,
have broad interests and take risks.
Many other traits influence managerial effectiveness
- Locus of control
Internal locus of control is the belief that they are responsible for their own fate.
External locus of control is the belief that outside forces are responsible for what
happens; their own behavior has little to no impact.
Managers need an internal locus of control.
- Self-Esteem is the degree to which individuals feel good about themselves and their
capabilities. High self-esteem is desirable for managers.
- Need for achievement is the extent to which an individual has a strong desire to perform
challenging tasks as well as meeting personal standards for excellence.
- Need for affiliation is the extent to which an individual is concerned about establishing
and maintaining good interpersonal relations.
- Need for power is the extent to which an individual desires to control or influence others.
Values, attitudes, moods and emotions capture how managers experience their jobs as
individuals.
, Values describe what managers are trying to achieve through work and how they think they
should behave. There are two kind of values:
- Terminal value is a personal conviction about lifelong goals or objectives. These often
lead to the formation of norms, informal codes of conduct that prescribe how people
should act in particular situations.
- Instrumental value is a personal conviction about desired modes of conduct or ways of
behaving.
Attitudes capture their thoughts and feelings about their specific jobs and organizations. There
are two important attitudes:
- Job satisfaction which is the collection of feelings and beliefs that managers have about
their current job.
- Organizational commitment is the collection of feelings and beliefs that managers have
about their organization as a whole.
Moods and Emotions encompass how managers actually feel when they are managing.
- Mood is a feeling or state of mind.
- Emotions are more intense feelings, often directly linked to tìwhatever caused the
emotion, and are more short-lived.
Emotional intelligence is the ability to understand and manage one’s own moods and emotions
and the moods and emotions of other people. It helps managers to relate well to other people.
Organizational culture comprises the shared set of beliefs,
expectations, values or norms that influence how
individuals, groups and teams interact with one another
and cooperate to achieve organizational goals.
CHAPTER 5 “Managing Diverse Employees in a Multicultural Environment”
→We focus on the effective management of diversity in an
environment that is becoming increasingly diverse. Diversity
and integration are increasing both in the global workforce,
but also suppliers and customers are becoming increasingly
diverse.
One of the most important management issues has been
increasing diversity of the workforce.
Diversity: dissimilarities among people. It raises
important ethical issues and social responsibility issues.