Understanding the

Manager’s Job
 Chapter Outline
• An Introduction to Management
– Kinds of Managers
– Basic Management Functions
– Fundamental Management Skills
– The Science and the Art of Management
• The Evolution of Management
– The Importance of History and Theory
– The Historical Context of Management
– The Classical Management Perspective
 Chapter Outline (cont’d)
• The Evolution of Management (cont’d)
– The Behavioral Management Perspective
– The Quantitative Management Perspective
• Contemporary Management Thought
– The Systems Perspective
– The Contingency Perspective
– Contemporary Management Challenges and
Opportunities
 Learning Objectives
• After studying this chapter, you should be able
to:
– Define management, describe the kinds of managers
found in organizations, and briefly explain the four
basic management functions.
– Justify the importance of history and theory to
managers and explain the evolution of management
thought.
– Discuss contemporary management issues and
challenges.
 What is Management?
A set of activities
planning and decision making, organizing,
leading, and controlling
directed at an organization’s resources
human, financial, physical, and information
with the aim of achieving organizational goals
in an efficient and effective
manner.
Basic Purpose of Management

EFFICIENTLY
Using resources wisely and
in a cost-effective way
And

EFFECTIVELY
Making the right decisions and
successfully implementing them
 What is a Manager?
• Someone whose primary responsibility is to
carry out the management process.
• Someone who plans and makes decisions,
organizes, leads, and controls
human, financial, physical,
and information resources.
 Figure 1.1
Kinds of Managers by Level and Area
 Kinds of Managers by Level
• Top Managers
– The relatively small group of executives who manage
the organization’s overall goals, strategy, and
operating policies.
• Middle Managers
– Largest group of managers in organizations
• Implement top management’s policies and plans.
• Supervise and coordinate lower-level managers’ activities.
• First-Line Managers
– Managers who supervise and coordinate the activities
of operating employees.
 Kinds of Managers by Area
• Marketing Managers
– Work in areas related to getting consumers and clients
to buy the organization’s products or services.
• Financial Managers
– Deal primarily with an organization’s financial
resources.
• Operations Managers
– Concerned with creating and managing the systems
that create organization’s products and services.
 Kinds of Managers by Area (cont’d)
• Human Resource Managers
– Involved in human resource processes
• Planning, recruiting and selection, training and development,
designing compensation and benefit systems, formulating
performance appraisal systems.
• Administrative Managers
– Serve as generalists in functional areas and are not
associated with any particular management specialty.
• Other Kinds of Managers
– Assigned as specialists in positions directly related to
the needs of the organization.
 Management in Organizations

Planning
and decision Organizing
making
Inputs from the environment
• Human resources Goals attained
• Financial resources • Efficiently
• Physical resources • Effectively
• Information resources

Controlling Leading
 Figure 1.2
The Management Process
 The Management Process (cont’d)
• Planning and Decision Making
– Setting an organization’s goals and selecting a course
of action from a set of alternatives to achieve them.
• Organizing
– Determining how activities and resources are grouped.
• Leading
– Getting organizational members to work together to
advance the interests of the organization.
• Controlling
– Monitoring organizational progress towards goals.
Skills and the
Manager Technical Skills

Interpersonal Skills

Conceptual Skills
Fundamental
Management Diagnostic Skills
Skills
Communication Skills

Decision-Making Skills

Time-Management Skills
 Fundamental Management Skills
• Technical
– Skills necessary to accomplish or understand the
specific kind of work being done in an organization.
• Interpersonal
– The ability to communicate with, understand, and
motivate both individuals and groups.
• Conceptual
– The manager’s ability to think in the abstract.
• Diagnostic
– The manager’s ability to visualize the most appropriate
response to a situation.
 Fundamental Management Skills (cont’d)
• Communication
– The manager’s abilities both to convey ideas and
information effectively to others and to receive ideas
and information effectively from others.
• Decision-Making
– The manager’s ability to recognize and define
problems and opportunities correctly and then to
select an appropriate course of action to solve the
problems and capitalize on opportunities.
• Time-Management
– The manager’s ability to prioritize work, to work
efficiently, and to delegate appropriately.
 Management: Science or Art?
• The Science of Management
– Assumes that problems can be approached using
rational, logical, objective, and systematic ways.
– Requires technical, diagnostic, and decision-making
skills and techniques to solve problems.
• The Art of Management
– Decisions are made and problems solved using a
blend of intuition, experience, instinct, and personal
insights.
– Requires conceptual, communication, interpersonal,
and time-management skills to accomplish the tasks
associated with managerial activities.
Sources of Management Skills
 The Importance of Theory and History
• Why Theory?
– Provides a conceptual framework for organizing
knowledge and providing a blueprint for action.
• Management theories, used to build organizations, are
grounded in reality.
• Most managers develop their own theories about how they
should run their organizations.
• Why History?
– An awareness and understanding of historical
developments in management are important.
• Furthers the development of management practices.
• Avoiding the mistakes of others in the past.
Sources of Management Skills
 Early Management Pioneers
• Robert Owen (1771–1858)
– British industrialist who was one of the first managers
to recognize the importance of human resources and
the welfare of workers.
• Charles Babbage (1792–1871)
– English mathematician who focused on creating
efficiencies of production through the division of labor,
and the application of mathematics
to management problems.
 Classical Management Perspective
• Scientific Management
– Concerned with improving the performance of
individual workers (i.e., efficiency).
– Grew out of the industrial revolution’s labor shortage
at the beginning of the twentieth century.
• Administrative Management
– A theory that focuses on
managing the total organization
rather than individuals.
 Scientific Management
• Frederick Taylor (1856–1915)
– Replaced old methods of how to work with
scientifically-based work methods.
• Eliminated “soldiering,” where employees deliberately worked
at a pace slower than their capabilities.
– Believed in selecting, training, coaching, and
developing workers.
– Used time studies of jobs, standards planning,
exception rule of management, slide-rules, instruction
cards, and piece-work pay systems to control and
motivate employees.
 Figure 1.3
Steps in Scientific Management
 Scientific Management Pioneers
• Frank and Lillian Gilbreth
– Both developed techniques and strategies for
eliminating inefficiency.
• Frank reduced the number of
movements in bricklaying, resulting
in increased output of 200%.
• Lillian made substantive contributions
to the fields of industrial psychology
and personnel management.
Classical Management Perspective (cont’d)
• Administrative Management Theory
– Focuses on managing the whole organization rather
than individuals.
– Henri Fayol (1841–1925)
• Was first to identify the specific management functions of
planning, organizing, leading, and controlling.
– Lyndall Urwick (1891–1983)
• Integrated the work of previous management theorists.
– Max Weber (1864–1920)
• His theory of bureaucracy is based on a rational set of
guidelines for structuring organizations.
 Classical Management Perspective…
Today
• Contributions • Limitations
– Laid the foundation for – More appropriate
later developments. approach for use in
– Identified important traditional, stable,
management simple organizations.
processes, functions, – Prescribed universal
and skills. procedures that are not
– Focused attention on appropriate in some
management as a valid settings.
subject of scientific – Employees are viewed
inquiry. as tools rather than as
resources.
 Behavioral Management Perspective
• Behavioral Management
– Emphasized individual attitudes and behaviors, and
group processes, and recognized the importance of
behavioral processes in the workplace.
– Hugo Munsterberg (1863–1916)
• A German psychologist, “the father of industrial psychology”,
who advocated applying psychological concepts to
employees selection and motivation industrial settings.
– Mary Parker Follett (1868–1933)
• Recognized the importance of the role of human behavior in
the workplace.
 Key Managerial Roles (Munsterberg)

Key Management
Roles

Interpersonal Informational Decisional

Roles Roles Roles
1. Figurehead 1. Monitor 1. Entrepreneur
2. Leader 2. Disseminator 2. Disturbance
3. Liaison 3. Spokesperson handler
3. Negotiator

Source: Van Fleet, David D., Contemporary Management, Second Edition.

Copyright © 1991 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Used with permission.
 The Hawthorne Studies (1927–1932)
• Conducted by Elton Mayo and associates at
Western Electric
– Illumination study—workplace lighting adjustments
affected both the control and the experimental groups
of production employees.
– Group study—implementation of piecework incentive
plan caused production workers to establish informal
levels of acceptable individual output.
• Over-producing workers were labeled “rate busters” and
under-producing workers were considered “chiselers.”
– Interview program—confirmed the importance of
human behavior in the workplace.
 Behavioral Management Perspective
(cont’d)
• Human Relations Movement
– Grew out of the Hawthorne studies.
– Proposed that workers respond primarily
to the social context of work, including
social conditioning, group norms,
and interpersonal dynamics.
– Assumed that the manager’s
concern for workers would lead to
increased worker satisfaction and
improved worker performance.
 Behavioral Management Perspective
(cont’d)

• Abraham Maslow (1908-1970)

– Advanced a theory that employees are motivated by a
hierarchy of needs that they seek to satisfy.
• Douglas McGregor (1906-1964)
– Proposed Theory X and Theory Y concepts
of managerial beliefs about people
and work.
 Table 1.1
Theory X and Theory Y
• Theory X Assumptions
– People do not like work and try to avoid it.
– People do not like work, so managers have to control,
direct, coerce, and threaten employees to get them to
work toward organizational goals.
– People prefer to be directed,
to avoid responsibility, and
to want security; they have
little ambition.

Source: Douglas McGregor, The Human Side of Enterprise, Copyright © 1960 by McGraw-Hill.
Reprinted by permission of The McGraw-Hill Companies.
 Table 1.1 (cont’d)
Theory X and Theory Y (cont’d)
• Theory Y Assumptions
– People do not dislike work; work is a natural part of their lives.
– People are internally motivated to reach objectives to which they
are committed.
– People are committed to goals to the degree that they receive
rewards when they reach their objectives.
– People seek both seek and accept responsibility under favorable
conditions.
– People can be innovative in solving problems.
– People are bright, but under most organizational conditions their
potentials are underutilized.

Source: Douglas McGregor, The Human Side of Enterprise, Copyright © 1960 by McGraw-Hill. Reprinted by permission of The McGraw-Hill Companies.
 Organizational Behavior
• A contemporary field focusing on behavioral
perspectives on management.
– Draws on psychology, sociology, anthropology,
economics, and medicine.
• Important topics in organizational behavior
research:
– Job satisfaction and job stress
– Motivation and leadership
– Group dynamics and organizational politics
– Interpersonal conflict
– The structure and design of organizations
 Behavioral Management Perspective…
Today
• Contributions
– Provided important insights into motivation, group
dynamics, and other interpersonal processes.
– Focused managerial attention on these critical
processes.
– Challenged the view that employees are tools and
furthered the belief that employees are valuable
resources.
 Behavioral Management Perspective…
Today (cont’d)
• Limitations
– Complexity of individuals makes behavior difficult to
predict.
– Many concepts not put to use because managers are
reluctant to adopt them.
– Contemporary research findings are not often
communicated to practicing managers in an
understandable form.
 Quantitative Management Perspective
• Quantitative Management
– Emerged during World War II to help the Allied forces
manage logistical problems.
– Focuses on decision making, economic effectiveness,
mathematical models, and the use of computers to
solve quantitative problems.
 Quantitative Management Perspective
(cont’d)

• Management Science
– Focuses on the development of representative
mathematical models to assist with decisions.
• Operations Management
– Practical application of management
science to efficiently manage the
production and distribution
of products and services.
 Quantitative Management Perspective…
Today
• Contributions
– Developed sophisticated quantitative techniques to
assist in decision making.
– Application of models has
increased our awareness
and understanding of
complex processes and
situations.
– Has been useful in the
planning and controlling
processes.
 Quantitative Management Perspective…
Today (cont’d)
• Limitations
– Quantitative management cannot fully explain or
predict the behavior of people in organizations.
– Mathematical sophistication may come at
the expense of other managerial skills.
– Quantitative models may require
unrealistic or unfounded assumptions,
limiting their general applicability.
 Figure 1.4
The Systems Perspective of Organizations
 Integrating Perspectives for Managers
• Systems Perspective
– A system is an interrelated set of elements functioning
as a whole.
• Open system
– An organizational system that interacts with its
environment.
 Integrating Perspectives for Managers
(cont’d)
• Closed system
– An organizational system that does not interact with its
environment.
• Subsystems
– A system within another system.
Their importance is due to their
interdependence on each other
within the organization.
 The Systems Perspective
• Synergy
– Subsystems are more successful working together in
a cooperative and coordinated fashion than working
alone.
– The whole system (subsystems working together as
one system) is more productive and efficient than the
sum of its parts.
 The Systems Perspective
(cont’d)
• Entropy
– A normal process in which an organizational system
declines due to failing to adjust to change in its
environment
– Entropy can be avoided and
the organization re-energized
through organizational change
and renewal.
 The Contingency Perspective
• Universal Perspectives
– Include the classical, behavioral, and quantitative
approaches.
– An attempt to identify the “one best way” to manage
organizations.
• The Contingency Perspective
– Suggests that each organization is unique.
– The appropriate managerial behavior for
managing an organization depends
(is contingent) on the current
situation in the organization.
The Contingency Perspective (cont’d)

Problem or Situation

Important
Contingencies

Solution or Solution or Solution or

Action A Action B Action C

Source: Van Fleet, David D., Contemporary Management, Second Edition.

Copyright © 1991 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Used with permission.
 Contemporary Management Issues
and Challenges
• Acute labor shortages in high-technology job
sectors and an oversupply of less skilled labor
• An increasingly diverse and globalized
workforce
• The need to create challenging, motivating, and
flexible work environments
• The effects of information technology on how
people work
• The complex array of new ways of structuring
organizations
 Contemporary Management Issues
and Challenges (cont’d)
• Increasing globalization of product and service
markets
• The renewed importance of ethics and social
responsibility
• The use of quality as the basis for competition
• The shift to a predominately service-based
economy