Understanding the Manager's Job

• Organization — a group of people working together in a structured and coordinated fashion to achieve a set of goals.
• Management — a set of activities (planning & decision makingorganizingleadingcontrolling) directed at an organization's resources (human, financial, physical, information) to achieve goals efficiently and effectively.
• Efficiently = using resources wisely and cost-effectively. Effectively = making the right decisions and successfully implementing them.
• Manager — someone whose primary responsibility is to carry out the management process.

The four functions (Figure 1.2):

• Planning & decision making — setting goals and deciding how best to achieve them.
• Organizing — determining how best to group activities and resources.
• Leading — motivating members to work in the best interests of the organization.
• Controlling — monitoring and correcting ongoing activities to facilitate goal attainment.

Managers by level:

• Top — executives; overall goals, strategy, operating policies.
• Middle — largest group; implement top management's plans, supervise lower managers.
• First-line — supervise & coordinate operating employees.

Managers by area: marketing, financial, operations, human resources, administrative, specialist.

• Technical — skills required for the work done in the organization.
• Interpersonal — ability to communicate with, understand, and motivate individuals and groups.
• Conceptual — ability to think in the abstract.
• Diagnostic — ability to visualize the appropriate response to a situation.
• Communication — ability to convey and receive ideas/information effectively.
• Decision-making — recognize/define problems & opportunities and select a course of action.
• Time-management — prioritize work, work efficiently, delegate appropriately.

Management is both science and art:

• Science — rational, logical, objective, systematic. Uses technicaldiagnosticdecision-making skills.
• Art — intuition, experience, instinct, personal insight. Uses conceptualcommunicationinterpersonaltime-management skills.

Why theory? Provides a conceptual framework / blueprint for action. Why history? Furthers practice and helps avoid past mistakes.

• Sumerians — written rules for governance · Egyptians — pyramids · Babylonians — laws · Romans — communication & control · Venetians — controlling the seas.
• Robert Owen — importance of human resources & worker welfare.
• Charles Babbage — production efficiency via division of labor + math applied to management.

Classical perspective has two branches:

• Scientific management — improving the performance of individual workers (efficiency in output).
• Administrative management — managing the total organization rather than individuals.
• Frederick Taylor — father of scientific mgmt; replaced rule-of-thumb with scientific methods; ended "soldiering" (deliberately working below capability).
• Frank Gilbreth — cut bricklaying motions, +200% output. Lillian Gilbreth — industrial psychology & personnel.
• Henri Fayol — identified the functions (plan, organize, lead, control). Lyndall Urwick — integrated prior theorists. Max Weber — theory of bureaucracy.

Limitation: employees viewed as tools, not resources; best for stable, simple organizations.

Emphasizes individual attitudes/behaviors and group processes.

• Hugo Munsterberg — apply psychological concepts to employee selection & motivation.
• Mary Parker Follett — importance of human behavior in the workplace.
• Hawthorne studies (1927–32, Western Electric) — illumination study (lighting affected both groups), group study ("rate busters" = over-producers, "chiselers" = under-producers), interview program.
• Human Relations Movement — grew from Hawthorne; workers respond to the social context; manager's concern → satisfaction → performance.
• Abraham Maslow — hierarchy of needs. Douglas McGregor — Theory X & Theory Y.
• Organizational Behavior (OB) — draws on psychology, sociology, anthropology, economics, medicine; contingency orientation.

The three managerial role categories (memorize the buckets):

• Interpersonal — figurehead, leader, liaison.
• Informational — monitor, disseminator, spokesperson.
• Decisional — entrepreneur, disturbance handler, negotiator.

Theory X vs Theory Y — the part your prof flagged:

• THEORY X
  People dislike work & avoid it · must be controlled, directed, coerced, threatened · prefer to be directed · avoid responsibility · want security · little ambition. (Pessimistic, controlling manager.)
• THEORY Y
  Work is natural · people are internally motivated · seek & accept responsibility · are committed when rewarded · are innovative · their potential is underutilized. (Optimistic, enabling manager.)

Quantitative perspective — born from WWII Allied logistics; focuses on decision making, math models, computers.

• Management science — develops mathematical models to assist decisions.
• Operations management — practical application of management science to production/distribution.
• Limitation — can't fully predict human behavior; may rely on unrealistic assumptions.

Systems perspective (inputs → transformation → outputs, with feedback):

• Open system interacts with its environment; closed system does not.
• Subsystem — a system within a system (interdependent).
• Synergy — the whole is more productive than the sum of its parts.
• Entropy — decline from failing to adjust to environmental change (avoided by change/renewal).

Contingency perspective — rejects the "one best way" of the universal approaches (classical, behavioral, quantitative); each organization is unique, so appropriate behavior depends on the situation.

Contemporary challenges — globalization, diverse/global workforce, ethics & social responsibility, quality as competition, service economy, recovering economy, new structures, information technology.