Transcript The Importance of Business Management

“Companies fail when they
become complacent and imagine
that they will always be
successful. So we are always
challenging ourselves. Even the
most successful companies must
constantly reinvent themselves.
--Bill Gates
Chairman and Chief Software Architect
Microsoft
The Importance of Business
Management
1.1
The Business World Today
• Constant change!
– Technology
– Society
– Environment
– Competition
– Diversity
What is Management?
• The process of deciding how best to use a
business’s resources to produce good or
provide services
– Employees
– Equipment
– Money
What is Management?
• Auto industry managers
– Assembly line: schedule
work shifts, supervise
assembly of vehicles
– Engineering: develop new
product features, enforce
safety standards
– General: plan for the future
– All organizations need
managers!
Levels of Management
• Senior management
– Establishes the goal/objectives of the
business
– Decides how to use the company’s resources
– Not involved in the day-to-day problems
– Set the direction the company will follow
– Chairperson of the company’s board of
directors, CEO, COO, senior vice presidents
Levels of Management
• Middle management
– Responsible for meeting the goals that senior
management sets
– Sets goals for specific areas of the business
– Decides which employees in each area must
do to meet goals
– Department heads, district sales managers
Levels of Management
• Supervisory management
– Make sure the day-to-day
operations of the business
run smoothly
– Responsible for the people
who physically produce the
company's products or
services
– Forepersons, crew leaders,
store managers
The Management Pyramid
The Management Process
• Three ways to examine how management
works:
– Tasks performed
• Planning, organizing, staffing, leading, controlling
– Roles played (set of behaviors associated
with a particular job)
• Interpersonal, information-based, decision-making
– Skills needed
• Conceptual, human relations, technical
The Management Process
• Planning
– Decides company
goals and the actions
to meet them
– CEO sets a goal of
increasing sales by
10% in the next year
by developing a new
software program
The Management Process
• Organizing
– Groups related
activities together and
assigns employees to
perform them
– A manager sets up a
team of employees to
restock an aisle in a
supermarket
The Management Process
• Staffing
– Decides how many and what kind of people a
business needs to meet its goals and then
recruits, selects, and trains the right people
– A restaurant manager interviews and trains
servers
The Management Process
• Leading
– Provides guidance
employees need to
perform their tasks
– Keeping the lines of
communication open
• Holding regular staff
meetings
The Management Process
• Controlling
– Measures how the
business performs to
ensure that financial
goals are being met
– Analyzing accounting
records
– Make changes if
financial standards not
being met
Relative Amount of Emphasis
Placed on Each Function of
Management
Management Roles
• Managers have authority within
organizations
– Managers take on different roles to best use
their authority
• Interpersonal roles
• Information-related roles
• Decision-making roles
Management Roles
• Interpersonal roles
– A manager’s relationships with people
• Providing leadership with the company
• Interacting with others outside the organization
• Senior managers spend much of their time on
interpersonal roles
– Represent the company in its relations with people
outside the company, interacting with those people, and
providing guidance and leadership to the organization
– Determine a company’s culture
» Sears, Roebuck and Co.
Management Roles
• Information-related roles
– Provide knowledge, news or advice to employees
• Holding meetings
• Finding ways of letting employees know about important
business activities
• Decision-making roles
– Makes changes in policies, resolves conflicts, decides
how to best use resources
• Middle and supervisory managers spend more time resolving
conflicts than senior managers
Management Skills
• Conceptual skills
– Skills that help managers understand how different
parts of a business relate to one another and to the
business as a whole
– Decision making, planning, and organizing
Management Skills
• Human relations skills
– Skills managers need to understand and work well
with people
– Interviewing job applicants, forming partnerships with
other businesses, resolving conflicts
Management Skills
• Technical skills
– The specific abilities that people use to perform their
jobs
– Operating a word processing program, designing a
brochure, training people to use a new budgeting
system
Management Skills
• All levels of management require a
combination of conceptual, human
relations, and technical skills
– Conceptual skills most important at senior
management level
– Technical skills most important at lower levels
– Human relations skills important at all levels
Principles of Management
• A principle is a basic truth or law
• Managers often use certain rules when
deciding how to run their business
• Most management principles are
developed through observation and
deduction
Principles of Management
• Deduction is the process of drawing a
general conclusion from specific examples
– Observe that employees in 15 companies
work more efficiently when their supervisors
threat them well
– Deduce/conclude that a pleasant work
environment contributes to productivity
– Conclusion becomes a management principle
Principles of Management
• Management principles are best viewed as
guides to action rather than rigid laws
• If a principle does not apply to a specific
situation, an experienced manager will not
use it
– Important to recognize when a principle
shouldn’t be followed
– Being able to change and adapt is an
important management skill
Principles of Management
• Do all employees
need to arrive at work
at the same time?
• Do people who work
in offices need to
dress in a certain
way?
Women and Minorities
in Management
• In the last three decades, an increased
number of women and minorities have
joined the workforce
– They’ve attained positions as managers in
companies of all sizes
• Women and minorities now serve as the
CEOs of prestigious businesses
– Avon, eBay, Lucent
Women and Minorities
in Management
• White men still hold most
senior management
positions
• Glass ceiling: the
invisible barrier that
prevents women and
minorities from moving
up in the world of
business
– Steadily becoming a
window of opportunity!
Women and Minorities
in Management
• Workers and managers
must be sensitive to
challenges presented by
a multicultural workplace
– Religious holidays that are
celebrated at different
times throughout the year
by Muslims, Christians,
Jews and other religious
groups