Management Competencies and Business Strategies

Posted on Sep 6, 2024 in Other subjects

Managerial Competencies

Definition and Importance

Managerial competencies are the set of knowledge, skills, behaviors, and attitudes that a person needs to be effective in a wide range of positions and various types of organizations. These competencies are essential for success in today’s rapidly changing business environment.

Key Managerial Competencies

  • Communication competency: Includes informal and formal communication and negotiation.
  • Strategic action competency: Involves understanding the industry, understanding the organization, and taking strategic action.
  • Teamwork competency: Includes designing teams, creating a supportive environment, and managing team dynamics.
  • Planning and administration competency: Includes information gathering, analysis, problem-solving, organizing, time management, budgeting, and financial management.
  • Multicultural competency: The ability to work effectively with people from different cultures.
  • Self-management competency: The ability to manage one’s own time, emotions, and behavior.

Management Theories and Approaches

Traditional Viewpoint

The traditional viewpoint suggests that there is one best way to manage. Types of traditional viewpoints include:

  • Bureaucratic Management: Use of rules, a set hierarchy, clear division of labor, and detailed procedures. Examples include McDonald’s and the IRS.
  • Scientific Management: Focuses on efficiency and productivity through scientific analysis of work processes.
  • Administrative Management: Focuses on the manager and basic managerial functions: Planning, Organizing, Controlling, and Leading.

Systems Viewpoint

The systems viewpoint involves diagnosing problems within a framework of inputs, transformation processes, outputs, and feedback loops. It includes:

  • Closed system: Limits interaction with the environment.
  • Open system: Interacts with the external environment.

Contingency Viewpoint

The contingency viewpoint advocates using the behavioral, system, and traditional viewpoints independently or combined, as necessary to deal with various situations.

Strategic Management

Planning

Planning should assist leaders and managers to discover new opportunities, avoid problems, develop effective courses of action, and so on. Tactical planning involves making decisions regarding what to do, who will do it, and how to do it (short-term).

SWOT Analysis

A SWOT analysis involves analyzing Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. This is the first step in the business-level strategic planning process.

Strategic Planning Process

The strategic planning process involves developing market penetration strategies, market development strategies, and product development strategies to achieve goals (SBU).

Decision Making

Decision-making involves defining the problem, gathering information, generating alternatives, and choosing a course of action. Routine decisions involve common problems and little risk.

Growth Strategies

  • Penetration strategy: Seeking growth in current markets.
  • Market development strategy: Seeking new markets for current goods.
  • Diversification: The variety of goods and/or services produced by organizations and the number of different markets it serves.

Ethics and Corporate Social Responsibility

Ethical Approaches to Decision Making

  • Utilitarian approach: Focuses on the greatest good for the greatest number.
  • Justice approach: Focuses on fairness and equity.
  • Moral rights approach: Focuses on fundamental rights and principles.

Code of Ethics

A code of ethics states principles that employees are expected to follow.

Stakeholders

Common stakeholders include customers, suppliers, employees, and shareholders.

International Business

International Business Resource Commitment Strategies

  • Exporting: Selling goods or services to foreign markets.
  • Licensing: Granting the right to use intellectual property to foreign companies.
  • Franchising: Granting the right to operate a business using a company’s brand and business model.
  • Alliances: Forming partnerships with foreign companies.
  • Multi-domestic and global strategies: Adapting products and services to local markets or offering standardized products and services globally.

Human Resources Management

Human Resources Management (HRM)

Human Resources Management encompasses the philosophies, policies, and practices that an organization uses to affect the behaviors of people who work for the organization.

HR Professionals

HR Professionals are people with substantial specialized technical knowledge of human resources issues, laws, policies, and practices.

Equal Employment Opportunity

Equal Employment Opportunity states that job applicants and employees should be judged on characteristics that are related to the work they are being hired to do. They are protected from discrimination.

Key Legislation

  • Title VII Civil Rights Act: Prohibits employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin.
  • Labor Standards Act: Establishes a national minimum wage and payment for overtime.
  • Equal Pay Act: Requires men and women to be paid equally for doing equal work.

HR Planning

HR Planning involves forecasting the organization’s HR needs and developing the steps to be taken to meet them.

Hiring Process

The hiring process includes activities related to the recruitment of applicants to fill open positions in the organization and the selection of the best applicants for the position.

Training and Development

  • Training: Activities that help employees overcome limitations and improve performance in their current jobs.
  • Development: Practices that help employees gain the competencies they will need in the future to advance their careers.

Performance Appraisal

Performance appraisal is a formal, structured system for evaluating an employee’s job performance.

Compensation and Benefits

  • Monetary compensation: Direct payment, such as salary, wages, and bonuses, as well as benefits covered.
  • Non-monetary compensation: Many forms of social and psychological rewards, not money.

Motivation and Leadership

Motivation Theories

  • Reinforcement theory: Behavior is a function of its consequences.
  • Expectancy theory: People tend to choose behaviors that they believe will help them achieve their personal goals and avoid behaviors that will lead to undesirable consequences.
  • Job characteristics theory: Employees are more satisfied and motivated when their jobs are meaningful.
  • Two-factor theory: Two separate and distinct aspects of the work context are responsible for motivating and satisfying employees, i.e., hygiene factors and motivator factors.
  • Equity theory: Employees judge whether they have been treated fairly by comparing the ratio of their outcomes and inputs to the ratio of others doing similar work.
  • Hierarchy of needs: Describes the order in which people seek to satisfy their desires.

Leadership Styles and Theories

  • Behavioral models of leadership: Focus on describing differences in the actions of effective leaders and ineffective leaders.
  • Contingency models of leadership: Situational factors determine the best style of leadership.
  • Transformational leadership: Leaders who inspire others with their visions.
  • Charismatic leadership: Leaders who have the ability to influence others because of their inspirational qualities.

Teamwork and Communication

Types of Teams

  • Functional work team: Members from a single department who have the common goal of considering issues and solving problems within their area of responsibility.
  • Multidisciplinary team: Employees from various functional areas and sometimes several organizational levels who collectively work on specific tasks.
  • Self-managing work team: Employees who have nearly complete responsibility and authority for working together to make an entire product or deliver an entire service.
  • Virtual work team: Meets and does its tasks without everyone being physically present.

Stages of Team Development

  • Forming stage: The work team focuses on orientation to its goals and procedures.
  • Storming stage: Begins when competitive or strained behaviors emerge.
  • Norming stage: Team members become increasingly positive.
  • Performing stage: Members usually have come to trust and accept each other and are focused on accomplishing their goals.
  • Adjourning stage: Terminating task behaviors and disengaging from relationships.

Effective Communication

Effective communication involves encoding, channel selection, and decoding. Barriers to communication include selective perception, status differences, and semantics.

Conclusion

This comprehensive overview of management competencies and business strategies provides a solid foundation for understanding the key concepts and principles involved in effective management. By developing these competencies and applying appropriate strategies, individuals and organizations can achieve success in today’s dynamic business environment.