Mgmt 1001 Study Notes - Organisations and Management

MGMT1001 Study Notes

TOPICS 1 AND 2: Organisations and Management

Organisations

Definitions

• Social entities that are:

• Goal-directed
• Designed as deliberately structures & coordinated activity systems
• Linked to the external environment.

Has:

• Purpose, objective, goals
• Structure, rules & boundaries
• People
• Action designed to achieve the goals.

Is:

• Future oriented
• Part of an open system.

Exists:

• Independently of the people within them – they ‘go on’ while members change.
• It is an open system that cannot ignore its relevance to internal/external stakeholders.

Characteristics

• Size

• Small (<20)
• Medium (20-199)
• Large (>200)

• Industry (e.g. telecomm, mining, finance)
• Ownership type (e.g. sole trader, company, not-for-profit)
• Owner domicile (e.g. local biz, Aus, Multi-national)
• Location (e.g. city, suburban, regional)
• Physical environment (e.g. open plan, personal office)
• Remuneration & benefits (yearly bonus, share options, employee discount, other benefits).

Context of Organisations and Management Today

• Technological change – new products, new ways of doing things, outsourcing and off-shoring.
• International division of labour
• Changing conception of time and space
• Changing demographics.

Manager: someone who coordinates and oversees the work of other people so that organizational goals can be accomplished

• First-line managers: lowest level → non-managerial employees → directly involved with the production or creation of the organization’s products eg. Supervisors
• Middle managers: btwn 1st line and top level of organisations → regional manager, department head, project leader, store manager
• Top managers: who are responsible for making organization-wide decisions and establishing the goals and plans that affect the entire organization eg. Managing director, chief executive officer, chairman of the board

Aims of management:

1. Efficiency: doing things right → getting most output from the least amount of inputs (means)

2. Effectiveness: doing the right things, or completing activities so that organizational goals are attained (ends)

Management functions:

Principles – Henri Fayol (1841-1925)

• Fayol developed 14 principles he believed were essential to increasing efficiency in mgmt. process.
• Also well-known for articulating the 5 (now 4) managerial functions (what managers must do to create a high-performing organisation)

• Planning: choosing appropriate goals for the org.
• Organising: designing processes & systems to achieve those goals
• Command/leading: selecting the right employees for the job, evaluating work performance, motivating individual employees etc.
• Coordinating: putting together relos/work teams to ensure that production runs smoothly.

Controlling: measuring & monitoring to evaluate how the system is working

Management roles: specific categories of managerial behavior expected of and exhibited by a manager

Mintzberg’s managerial roles – what they actually do:

• Decisional

• Entreprenuer
• Disturbance handler
• Resource allocator
• Negotiator.

• Informational

• Monitor → seeks and receives internal and external info to develop understanding of organization (reports)
• Disseminator → transmits info received from outsiders or from subordinates to members of the organization (holding informational meetings)
• Spokesperson → transmits info to outsiders on organization’s plans (holding board meetings, info to media)

• Interpersonal

• Figurehead → routine duties of a legal or social nature (greeting ppl, signing documents)
• Leader → motivation of subordinates
• Liaison → maintains self developed network of outside contacts and informers who provide favours and info (mail)

Managing is about influencing action

Management skills: Robert Katz

1. Technical skills – knowledge and proficiency in a certain specialized field
2. Human skills – interpersonal. Ability to work well with other people individually or in a group
3. Conceptual skills – ability to think and conceptualize about abstract and complex situations

Demands on Modern Managers

• Required to work ‘smarter and harder’ – increased working hrs, doing more with less staff/resources, globalisation of biz environment.
• Pressures of conflicting demands – delivering ‘shareholder value’ while being ethically and environmentally responsible/ sustainability (integrating environmental and social opportunities to achieve biz goals)
• Empowerment efforts of 1990s → increased demands for flexibility ‘work life balance’ and ‘learning opportunities’ by staff.
• Importance of social media to the job
• Importance of innovation to the manager’s job

Evolution of management theory

• Importance came about due to division of labour/ job specialization and Industrial Revolution
• Rise of factory system of production

• Growth in no. of employees
• Increasing use of technology in production
• Rise of ‘corporation’ meaning owners did not necessarily work in the org.

• Key features/developments

• Specialization of labour & the ‘production line’
• Systematic study of work tasks to create rules or ‘one best way’ of performing each task.

1. Classical approach → first studies of management which emphasized rationality and making organisations and workers as efficient as possible

Frederick W. Taylor (1856-1915) – 4 Principles of Scientific Management

1. Develop a science for each element of the job, which replaces the old ‘rule of thumb’ method.
2. Managers should scientifically select, train, teach & develop workers.
3. Managers should actively cooperate with workers to ensure all work is completed in accordance with principles of the science developed.
4. An almost equal division of work & responsibility should be between mgmt. & workers.

Frank & Lillian Gilbreth – Time & Motion Studies

• Used film & stop watches to determine new ‘quicker’ ways to produce tasks.

1. General administrative theory → focuses on describing what managers do and what constituted good management practice

Henry Ford – Production Line

• Took idea of production line from abattoirs – where carcasses were moved through factory on chain/pulley systems, then introduced it into his car manufacturing plants.

Innovations in Administrative Management  

Bureaucracy – Max Weber (1864-1920)

• Specialisation of labour
• Formal rules & procedures
• Impersonality
• Well-defined hierarchy
• Career advancement based on merit

1. Quantitative approach → use of quantitative techniques to improve decision making eg. Modern day budgeting

1. Organisational behavior approach → 

• Developed in response to Scientific mgmt. approaches.
• Focuses on motivation & behaviour as a mechanism to improve organisational performance.
• Includes:

• Hawthorne Studies of the 1920s: workers increase productivity when they know they’re being watched
• Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs: once basic needs are met, people will look for ego status role
• McGregor’s Theory X & Theory Y.

McGregor’s Theory X & Theory Y

Theory X

•  employee is lazy, dislikes work & will try to do as little as possible.
• Managers must closely supervise employees for them to work hard.
• Managers should be strict & implement well-defined system of rewards & punishment to control employees.

Theory Y

• Employees are not inherently lazy – they will do what’s good for the org.
• Managers must create work setting that provides opportunities for workers to exercise initiative & self-direction.
• Managers should decentralise authority & make sure they have the resources necessary to achieve org. goals.

1. Contemporary approaches

• Systems theory: actions taken in one organizational area will affect others  → are not self-contained and rely on environments for essential inputs
• Contingency theory: organizations are diff and face diff situations that require diff ways of managing ie. Organizational size (increase size = increase problems), routineness of task theory, environmental uncertainty, individual differences

21st Century Understandings of Management

• Globalisation!
• Ethics
• Workforce diversity
• Entrepreneurship
• Learning organisations: developed capacity to learn, adapt and change continuously
• knowledge management: org members systematically gather knowledge and share it with others in the organization so as to achieve better performance
• Sustainable management: ensure that their operations  and capital required by future generations is maintained
• Increasing emphasis on motivation, leadership and relos.
• Key skill is communication – both oral/verbal, but also the ability to develop & effectively communicate a vision/position to different audiences – the mgmt. of ‘meaning’.
• Less ‘overt control’ as orgs take adv of technology e.g. swipe cards for building access, PC login, keystroke monitoring.

• Access to covert control is extremely important.

TOPIC 3: Attitudes, perceptions and personality: Individual behavior

Individuals in Organisations

Understanding Individual Behaviour

Organisational Behaviour (OB)