Management Essentials: Ethics, Strategy, and Operations
Chapter 1: An Overview of Management
Management: A set of activities designed to achieve an organization’s objectives by using its resources effectively in a changing environment.
Organizations: Groups of individuals who work together to achieve goals or objectives that are important to those individuals.
Resources: People, equipment, finances, and data used by an organization to reach its objectives.
Stakeholders: A person or group that can affect or is affected by an organization’s actions, goals, or the means to achieve those goals.
Major Functions of Managers: Planning, Organizing, Leading, and Controlling.
Management Roles
- Interpersonal: Figurehead, liaison, leadership (deals with internal and external matters).
- Informational: Monitor, disseminator, spokesperson (focuses on data).
- Decisional: Entrepreneur, disturbance handler, resource allocator (deals with allocating resources).
Management Skills
- Interpersonal skills: Communicating, listening, conflict resolution (e.g., oral communication, negotiation, and assertiveness).
- Technical skills: Knowledge and ability to accomplish specialized activities.
- Conceptual skills: Intellectual abilities to process information and make accurate decisions about workgroups.
Functional Areas of Management
HR managers, Marketing managers, Finance Managers, Production/Operations managers, Information and Technology managers, Sales managers, Administrative managers, Legal Managers, Ethics Managers, and CSR Managers.
Article: Building Partnerships with College Campuses
Community Assets, Deficits, and Needs
Assets: Anything that benefits the community.
Deficits: Issues that hinder communication.
Needs: Requirements of citizens, agencies, and organizations.
Structural Factors vs. Individual Behaviors
Structural factors: Resource divestment, policies, or other unfair tangible things that damage a community.
Structural factors should be considered when helping a community, not individual behaviors.
Management Issues in Campus/Community Relationships
Power, racism, classism, oppression, privilege, and assumptions. These issues should be addressed by an effective relationship.
Chapter 4: Business Ethics and Social Responsibility
The Role of Ethics in Business: Refers to principles, values, and codes of conduct that are deemed acceptable behavior in business.
Main Ethical Issues in Business
Misuse of company time, abusive behavior, misuse of company resources, manipulation, conflicts of interest, dishonesty, unfairness, lying to stakeholders, sexual harassment/misconduct, discrimination/prejudice, bribes, business communication, and business relationships.
What Affects Ethical Behavior
- Individual Factors: A person’s values and moral philosophies that determine the right way to behave.
- Organizational Factors: Pressure to compromise standards, exposure to unethical behavior. Power over employees by upper-level managers.
- Opportunities: The conditions that limit unfavorable outcomes and reward favorable ones (e.g., reprimanding unethical employee decisions).
Effective Ethics and Compliance Programs
Reward ethical behavior and condemn unethical behavior. These programs require employees to adhere to specific types of conduct, laying out rules and consequences for non-compliance, thus reducing guesswork on ethical behavior.
Compliance Programs
- Standards and procedures.
- High-level personnel.
- No authority given to unethical employees.
- Communication of standards and programs.
- Systems to monitor and report misconduct.
- Consistent enforcement.
- Continuous improvement.
Corporate Responsibility Issues: Economic, legal, ethical, and voluntary philanthropy.
Social Responsibility Issues: Relationships with stakeholders, owners, workers, the environment, and the community.
Chapter 6: Planning and Strategic Management
Nature and Steps of Planning
- Create a mission statement: A formal written declaration of the organization’s purpose, containing the firm’s philosophy, products/markets, geographic scope, nature of relationships, stakeholders, and society.
- Assess the current situation.
- State goals.
- Evaluate the gap between the current position and goals.
- Specify assumptions about the future.
- Make a plan.
- Implement the plan.
- Evaluate results.
Types of Goals and Setting Them
Strategic Goals: Goals set by higher managers that deal with general topics such as the firm’s growth, new markets, or new goods/services.
Long-Term Goals: Goals that extend over a long period.
Tactical Goals: Intermediate goals designed to stimulate actions necessary for achieving strategic goals.
Operational Goals: Specific goals that address activities that must be performed before tactical goals are fulfilled.
Implementations: Affected by stakeholders, the environment, and rewards.
Strategic Management Process
A comprehensive process that involves an organization’s owners developing and implementing a strategic plan.
Strategy: A course of action for implementing a strategic plan and achieving strategic goals; a general statement of actions an organization intends to take based on its fit with the environment.
SWOT Analysis: A study undertaken by an organization to identify its internal strengths and weaknesses, as well as its external opportunities and threats.
Chapter 8: Designing Jobs, Departments, and the Overall Organization
Organizational Culture: The shared beliefs, values, norms, rules, and behaviors adopted by a company, consisting of formal and informal expressions.
Organizational Structure: How a company groups tasks into jobs, groups jobs into departments, and determines channels of communication.
Span of Control
Span of Control: The number of subordinates over which a position has authority.
Delegation (aka Empowerment): The assignment of work activities and authority to a subordinate.
Decentralization: When authority is dispersed to several positions at various levels in the organization.
Centralization: The pattern of concentrating authority in relatively high-level positions.
Formalization: Standardizing behavior through rules, procedures, and training.
Departmentalization
Functional: Grouping jobs according to similar economic activities, such as finance, production, operations, and marketing.
Multidivisional: Organizing departments into larger groups called divisions.
Divisional: A multidivisional structure or hybrid, common in very large corporations that organize departments into divisions (production, geographical, or customer).
Matrix: A structure in which members of different departments are chosen to work together temporarily on a specific project. Outsourcing involves having another company or person perform tasks.
Chapter 9: Human Resource Management
Job Analysis, KSA
Job Analysis: The systematic process of gathering information about important work-related aspects of a job.
Planning for HR Needs
HR Planning: Involves forecasting the organization’s future demand for employees and the supply of employees within the organization, and designing programs to correct the discrepancy between the two.
HR planning uses job analysis and job specification.
Recruiting: The process of attracting potential employees to the organization. This is done internally and externally through applications, interviews, testing, and references.
Selecting: The process of collecting systematic information about applicants and using that information to decide which applicants to hire.
Legal Issues in Recruiting
- Discrimination.
- Unreasonably restrictive practices.
- Invasion of privacy.
Developing the Workforce
Orientation: The process of inducting employees into their jobs and socializing them into the organization.
Training.
Professional development.
Assessing Performance
Performance Appraisal: A formal measurement of the quantity and quality of an employee’s work within a specific period.
Objective Performance: Measures tangible products and work performance.
Subjective Performance: Judges how the employee is doing, using 360-degree feedback.
Compensating the Workforce
Compensation System: The basis on which an organization gives money or services to its employees in exchange for their work.
Depends on:
- Wage/salary survey.
- Job evaluation methods.
Agreements through:
- Benefits.
- Bonuses.
Chapter 11: Leadership Vs. Management
Management is a broad concept that encompasses activities such as planning, organizing, staffing, and leading. Leadership focuses almost exclusively on the people aspect of getting the job done and includes Autocratic Leaders, Democratic Leaders, and Free Rein leaders.
Sources of Power
Organizational Power: Legitimate power, coercive power, and reward power.
Personal Power: Charisma, referent power, informational power, expert power, and affiliated power.
Transactional vs. Transformational Leadership
Transactional: Focuses on supervision, organization, and group performance.
Transformational: Enhances the motivation and engagement of followers by directing behavior toward a shared vision.
Trait Approach to Leadership
- Drive.
- Motivation.
- Honesty/integrity.
- Self-confidence.
- Cognitive ability.
- Business knowledge.
Chapter 12: Motivating People
Motivation: An inner drive that directs behavior toward goals.
Morale: The sum total of employees’ attitudes toward their jobs, employers, and colleagues.
Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic Motivation and Rewards
Intrinsic: Motivated by an individual’s own sake and personal rewards.
Extrinsic: Motivated by rewards and avoiding punishment.
Categories of Motivation Theories
Context Theories: A group of theories that assume workers are driven by the desire to satisfy needs and seek to identify those needs.
Process Theories: A set of theories that determine how and why individuals are motivated to perform.
Expectancy Theory: A theory stating that motivation depends not only on how much a person wants something but also on how likely they are to get it.
Theories
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs: The order in which people strive to satisfy their basic needs, as theorized by Maslow: physiological → security → social → esteem → self-actualization.
Learned Needs-McClelland Achievement Theory: Similar to Maslow, but with achievement → affiliation → power.
Equity Theory: A theory stating that the extent to which people are willing to contribute to an organization depends on their assessment of the fairness of the rewards they are receiving in return.
Reinforcement Theory: Assumes that behavior may be reinforced by relating it to its consequences.
Job Characteristic Model: A theory based on the idea that the task itself is the key to employee motivation.
Strategies for Motivating Employees
Job sharing, teleworking, or flexible time.
Fun Time
Groups vs. Teams
Groups: Two or more individuals who communicate with each other and have a common collective goal.
Teams: A small number of people with complementary skills who are committed to a common purpose, set of performance goals, and approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable.
Conflict Management
Competing, Avoiding, Accommodating, Compromising, and Collaborating (Assertiveness and Cooperation).
Chapter 15: Management Control Systems
Management Control: All activities an organization undertakes to ensure that its actions lead to the achievement of its objectives.
Control Process: Establishing performance standards, measuring performance, comparing performance against standards, and evaluation and corrective action.
Forms of Management Control
Organizational Control: A broad-based form of control that guides all organizational activities and oversees the overall functioning of the whole firm.
Operational Control: Regulates one or more individual operating systems within an organization.
Strategic Control: Ensures that the organization effectively understands and responds to the realities of its environment.
Financial Control: The means by which an organization’s resources are directed, monitored, and measured.
Non-financial Control: Provides a company with a method to measure non-financial performance, such as ethics and compliance activities, as well as those related to sustainability.
Overcoming Resistance to Control
Create effective controls, encourage employee participation, manage by objectives, and use checks and balances.
Chapter 16: Operations and Increasing Productivity
Operations Management: The development and administration of the activities involved in transforming resources into goods and services.
Inputs: Land, labor, capital, time, knowledge, raw materials, energy, information.
Transformations/Conversion: Procedures, equipment, facilities, and technology.
Outputs: Goods, services, ideas.
Types of Products: Goods and services, tangible and intangible.
Planning Operations: Plan the product, design operations processes, plan capacity, plan facilities, and plan technology.
Supply Chain Management: Purchasing → inventory control → outsourcing → routing → scheduling management.
Productivity: Measures the relationship between outputs produced and the inputs used to produce them. Productivity = Outputs / Inputs.