principles and practices of managementetpwww/oustyle/b240.pdf · b240 principles and practices of...

B240

Sample materials

Principles and Practices of Management

2 Learning OU Style • Sample Materials

What is management and what domanagers do?Let’s begin by thinking about what management is. We’ll then look atwhat managers do from various perspectives: functions, roles, skills,systems, and different and changing situations.

Defining management

Now let’s examine the definition of management. Complete thefollowing reading, then return to this unit.

Reading

Pages 8-10 of the textbook excerpt that follows this section.

In these pages, and throughout the book, Robbins and Coulter followwhat has become the dominant approach to studying management —that is, to consider it as a process: a systematic way of carrying out thefunctions necessary to achieve an organization’s goals or objectives.Managers are defined as persons who are responsible for achievingthese goals effectively and efficiently, by getting things done with andthrough other people.

Note the distinction between efficiency and effectiveness. The authors’treatment of efficiency is clear and concise. However, their discussionof effectiveness is inadequate. They define it as goal attainment. Thatis, effectiveness is measured by the extent to which we obtain intendedtargets. This is a rather simplistic and self-evident definition.Immediately a question arises — is the goal realistic?

Let us consider this question. It is clearly unreasonable to set goals thatcannot be achieved with the available resources, and then to measure amanager’s effectiveness against them. This seems obvious, yet it doeshappen. If a manager is to be effective, the goal must be realistic andobtainable. One way of achieving this is for the manager concernedand his/her superior to jointly determine, or at least discuss, the goal.In this way, unreasonable demands can be identified at the start. Thepoint is, effectiveness is not absolute, but relative. It must be measuredagainst the reasonableness of the objectives and take into account thecircumstances in which you are seeking to achieve your objectives.

B240 Principles and Practices of Management 3

Activity

Identify the main constraints which limit your effectiveness in yourpresent job. Write short notes on how these could be removed.

Spend about 20 minutes on this task.

Comment

Because this task is based on your workplace, we do not haveenough knowledge to make specific suggestions. However, we canmake some general comments that may be helpful.

One way of tackling this task is to identify where the constraintscome from. For example, they may arise from:

• your supervisor or manager

• the people you work with

• people in other departments

• the collection of tasks which make up your job

• the machinery, if any

• the structure and culture of your organization

• pressures from outside your organization such as customers,suppliers or the government

• yourself (your attitudes, beliefs, values and past experiences).

In analysing your effectiveness, you need to pay attention to each ofthese constraints.

Look again at your notes. How many of your ideas for removal ofthe constraints require other people to do things or to change theirbehaviour? How many require you to change? The easy way out isto blame other people, or things which are outside our control, forour ineffectiveness. Certainly, take these into account, but do notneglect to analyse your own contribution. After all, this is the areaover which you have most control and therefore the one in whichyou can effect most improvement!

To sum up then, management is getting objectives accomplishedefficiently and effectively with and through other people. Now youcan take a step forward and examine what managers actually do.We will approach this question from three different viewpoints —management functions, managerial roles and managerial skills.

Management functions

The term ‘function’ is something of a problem. Management booksoften refer to an organization as being divided along functional lines

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when they discuss the specialist departments within the organization —for example, production, accounts, marketing, etc. ‘Function’ is notused in this sense by management theorists. It refers to what managersdo and the nature of their work when they are working in anydepartment and speciality. Watch out for this ambiguity, as it can beconfusing. Now read the following pages before going on with thestudy unit.

Reading


Some early management writers defined management as consisting offive functions — planning, organizing, commanding, coordinating andcontrolling. In the 1950s, other writers refined these, substitutingstaffing and leading for commanding and coordinating. In recent years,these functions have been reduced to four — those referred to byRobbins and Coulter. The change is not because the omitted aspects(commanding, coordinating and staffing) are unimportant, but becausethey are subsumed under the other more general categories. Forexample, you cannot organize a company without considering how itwill be staffed and its activities coordinated. Similarly, in leading orcontrolling staff, you may need to command, so there is no need forcommanding or staffing to be separate categories. Peter Drucker (oneof the most influential writers on management) suggests a fifth function— the development of people — since the unique contribution ofmanagers is to give others vision and ability to perform. What do youthink?

It is important you understand that this functional approach offers amodel of the management process, and that a model does notnecessarily include every detail. You should also understand that thefunctions are interactive and occur in all organizations. Furthermore,they are prescriptive — that is, they are what it is thought managersshould do, not necessarily what they actually do. In most cases,individual managers are unlikely to have the freedom to carry out theirfunctions without constraints. Such constraints may be imposed bytheir superiors in the hierarchy, by their subordinates, or byenvironmental influences such as government regulations or marketpressures.

Management roles

Viewing the manager’s job from the perspective of managementfunctions is just one of the possible views of what managers do. Youmay also consider the manager’s job from the viewpoint of managerialroles. In the following reading, Robbins and Coulter discuss the workof Henry Mintzberg, who conducted a study of a handful of Americanexecutives in the 1960s.


Reading


Roles are expected patterns of behaviour associated with a givenposition in a group or organization. Managerial roles are expectedpatterns of behaviour associated with different managerial positions.Mintzberg’s findings (which have been replicated in both America andother countries) suggest that there is much more to managers’ jobs thanthe functional analysis indicates. Without discarding the functionalapproach, it is possible to group the activities performed by managersinto a number of roles which are commonly performed by mostmanagers.

Viewing management by function and role are different ways ofanalysing the same thing — what managers do. They do not contradicteach other, and, in fact, both offer insights into the activities carried outby managers. As Robbins says, functions and roles are reconcilable andcan be smoothly aligned with each other.

Managerial skills

You have examined the manager’s job from the viewpoints ofmanagement functions and management roles. A third way to look atwhat managers do is to consider the skills that they use when they arepursuing their goals. Different types of skills are required for managersworking at different levels of organizations. A specialist inorganizational theory, Robert Katz, suggests three different types ofskill:

• technical

• human relations

• conceptual.

Reading


Technical skill is knowledge and ability in a specialized area ofbusiness, e.g. electrical engineering or accountancy.

Human relations skill is an ability to understand, work with andmotivate other people.

Conceptual skill is an ability to coordinate and integrate anorganization’s activities and interests; to visualize the organization andits needs as a whole and not just as separate parts.


Although every manager needs all three skills, the relative importanceof each varies with the level at which the manager is operating.Generally, it is argued that the higher up the organizational hierarchy,the greater the need to possess conceptual skill. Technical skills, on theother hand, are usually more important at lower levels.

So far, you have examined what functions managers perform, whatroles they play and what skills they use to achieve their organization’sgoals. A simple diagram helps to represent the relationship betweenthem.

Figure 1 What managers do

It is generally believed that effective managers who make a significantcontribution to the organization are in great demand and will moveahead quickly in the management hierarchy.

Managing systems

One approach to looking at a manager's job is the systems approach.The systems approach takes managers' thinking beyond a concentrationon the individual or the group. It gives managers a wider view andmakes them consider not only other groups and departments within theorganization but also other organizations outside of their own. Asociety is a system of organizations. Taken to the extreme, the world isa system of organizations, each interacting with others, but notnecessarily with all the others. The following reading deals with thesystems approach.

Reading


Try the following activity to check your understanding of the systemsconcept.

Perform to achieve

Functions:

• planning• organising• leading• controlling

Roles:

• interpersonal• informational• decisional

Organisationalobjectives

Managerspossessingskills:

• technical• human relations • conceptual


Activity

Draw:

1 a closed system of a manufacturing company

2 an open system of the same company.

This task should take you about 10 minutes. Put in only the main aspects— for example, the production department — but include rather moredetail than Robbins and Coulter do in Figure 1.9 on page 20.

Comment

Our suggestions are as follows:

Systems thinking reminds us to look beyond ourselves and ourimmediate work group and product. We are required to considerhow our activities affect others and how their activities affect us. Ifwe take a closed systems view of an organization, we mightconsider it as represented in Figure 2a.

Figure 2a A closed system

If we adopt an open systems view, we could show an organizationas represented in Figure 2b.

Figure 2b An open system

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Activity

1 Draw an open systems diagram of your own organization or anyorganization you are familiar with, putting in only the mostsignificant parts.

2 Identify some of the significant things that came out of theapplication of systems thinking to management.

Comment

1

Figure 3 Course material production system

This is our attempt at displaying the course material productionsystem in the Open University of Hong Kong. The double linesindicate the more important internal influences on the CourseCoordinator.

2 The systems approach emphasizes the interdependence of factorswithin the organization and the importance of the flow ofcommunications and materials within it.

Students

Associate Director

Dean,School of

Business &Administra-

tion

AcademicAdvisers

Deans ofother

School

AdademicBoard

EducationalTechnology

andPublishing

AcademicAssessor

Other CourseCoordinators

in theSchool of

Business &Administration

InstructionalDesigner

Library

Typistsand

ClericalStaff

Person whoservices

the photocopier

Tutors

Outputs

CourseMaterials

Director of OLI

Human Resources

Unit

Cleaners

Council

Inputs

MaterialIdeasBooks

CourseCoordinator

VicePresident

Senate

President ofOUHK

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It also stresses relationships and flow of information and materialbetween the organization and other organizations that make up itsenvironment.

The task of managers is to coordinate all the factors that arerequired to achieve the organization’s objectives.

One aspect of the systems approach that is not mentioned by Robbinsand Coulter in Chapter 1 is its importance for controlling theproduction process. The importance of good control techniques and,especially, feedback to ensure that the work of an organization ismonitored and, if necessary, corrected is discussed later in this course.

You will have noted that the ideas of the systems approach are notreally new. But the renewed emphasis on them which has resultedfrom the conscious study of management systems has made managersthink more carefully about these ideas. It has also led to thedevelopment of new, more sophisticated tools of management, such asmanagement information systems (MIS). MIS is also discussed later inthis course.

The systems approach is not without its critics. Use of this approachtends to make it difficult to distinguish between important and lessimportant variables. In theory, all could be equally important, but inpractice some are more important than others. Whether or not avariable is important will depend on the individual circumstances oforganizations, and these may vary over time.

A further limitation of the systems approach is that it does not help themanager to decide what to do about an issue or a problem.

Managing in different and changingsituations

Another approach to describing what managers do is the contingencyapproach. It emphasizes the need for organizations to identify thevariables which are significant for them in any particular situation.This approach is known as the contingency approach. The followingreading gives you a brief account of this approach.

Reading


The contingency approach has many supporters, for as Robbins andCoulter point out, it is ‘intuitively logical’. It has several advantages.


The contingency approach specifically identifies the internal andexternal factors which influence the organization at any one time. Itmakes managers realize that because of differences in size, goals,working methods and people, it is difficult to find principles ofmanagement that can be universally applied. The contingencyapproach also helps managers to identify which managerial practice ismost appropriate in a given set of circumstances.

However, like the systems approach, the contingency approach also hasits critics. Some, such as Harold Koontz, point out that the contingencyapproach is not new. Many of the classical theorists warned againstapplying management principles rigidly and thought thatcircumstances need to be taken into account. Also, the approach hasnot been developed to the point where it can be considered a truetheory.

That may be so, but for practising managers, the contingency approachis still useful in that it constantly reminds them of the complexity of theworld in which they are operating. It reminds them that they need totake an active role in assessing which possible solution to a problemwill work best in the specific situation. They need to take intoconsideration the effects of their decisions on other departments as wellas interested parties outside the organization.

Summary

You have examined the definition of management and what managersdo. Management is the process of achieving organizational goalseffectively and efficiently, with and through other people. In thisprocess, managers perform four functions — planning, organizing,leading and controlling. What managers do can also be examined fromthe viewpoint of 10 managerial roles they perform. These roles areexpected patterns of behaviour for people occupying managerialpositions. In order for managers to perform their functions and roles,they need three different kinds of skill: technical, human relations andconceptual. In addition to these skills, managers also need networkingskills which may help them to move ahead in the organizationalhierarchy.

You have also looked at a manager’s job from the perspectives ofmanaging systems, and managing different and changing situations.The systems approach and the contingency approach are used todescribe what managers do. The systems approach views theorganization as being composed of inter-related and interdependentparts that make up a whole. The contingency approach emphasizes theneed to identify the situation variables that determine which of thepossible solutions to a given problem will work best.


Self-test 1

1 Observe the behaviour of your supervisor or any other manager inyour organization. Identify examples of Mintzberg’s 10 roles thathe or she performs in your organization.

2 Summarize in about 100 words the gist of each of the followingapproaches to describing what managers do.

• The systems approach

• The contingency approach.

Spend about 30 minutes on this task.

You can now compare your answers with the suggested answers at theend of this section.

You should now be able to meet the first learning objective for thisstudy unit, i.e. you should be able to explain what management is, andwhat managers do. If you are confident that you have achieved thisobjective, you can go on with your study. If you had trouble with theself-test questions, you should review the major points from this topicand the set textbook readings, and then reevaluate your ability tocomplete the self-test questions and meet this section’s learningobjective before you go on.


Suggested answers to theself-test questions

Self-test 1

1 Compare your examples with the list of roles indicated in Table 1.2(p. 14) of your textbook.

2 • The systems approach

The systems approach views an organization as made up ofinterrelated and interdependent parts. The task of managers isto coordinate these interdependent parts so that the whole canfunction effectively. A closed system is one that does notinteract with its environment. An open system is one thatinteracts with the environment. From an open systemsperspective, an organization is seen as a system that acquiresinputs from the environment which are transformed intooutputs that are returned to the environment. According to thesystems approach, the well-being of an organization isdependent on successful exchange of inputs and outputs withthe environment, as well as effective internal coordinationwhich makes the various parts of the organization function as awhole.

• The contingency approach

The contingency approach emphasizes the importance ofcontingency (situational) variables that affect the applicability ofmanagement principles. The contingency approach maintainsthat it is difficult, if not impossible, to find principles ofmanagement that can be universally applied. Therefore,managers need to identify the contingency (situational)variables that are important for a particular managementsituation. These contingency variables are the conditions underwhich certain principles may apply. In short, the contingencyapproach tries to integrate management concepts and theoriesinto a situational framework. The gist of the contingencyapproach can be graphically represented as follows:

The principle approach

If X Y

Figure 4a

The contingency approach

If X Y

depending onZ

Figure 4b

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