Management and Organizations - Essay Example

Personal Reflective Journal s 2nd November, JOURNAL: management and organizations ORGANIZATIONS AS ORGANISMS During my work period in various organizations, I observed that; organizations normally work like organisms. That is, they have to change with time and situations (evolve), they have to adapt to the current environment, they are affected by the internal as well as external environment. The organizations are very much affected by the changes around them especially technology. Each and every time they need to keep up with the current technology so as to maintain clients and marketability. The employees will need to be motivated to achieve maximum utilization of their abilities. I also noted that every organization will need to have a very strong research and development team to assist in choosing the appropriate strategies of treating their employees. This may include human relations or scientific management methods. Organizations, just like organisms, they need to keep changing due to the changing environments. For example, the organizations I worked with had to keep reviewing their pricing strategy to take care of the risk posed by their competitors. Organizations had to monitor the social impacts they make to the community and the level of perception they have from the general public. Another important fact I realized is that organizations need to satisfy the internal forces as well as the external forces just like organisms. They need a balance especially with the conflicting interests of the external and internal forces. Examples include; the profit objectives and the quality & fair pricing commitment to the society (lecture notes week 3). THEORIES OF THE FIRM, AGENCY, ETHICS, STAKEHOLDERS, IMAGE PERCEPTION According to Coase’s classical theory of the firm, organizations are interlocked between several forces that influence their decisions. This includes the employees, the shareholders, the suppliers and the customers. The organizations try to achieve a balance between these four at the same time. This poses a challenge to managers since the interests of the parties are varied and sometimes conflicting. I being a manager, I understood that there is need for further study in how organizations work I criticized the theory of lacking connection between management and control. Separation between this two brings about different interests thus, varied performance of an organization. Managers therefore remain undecided that in whose interest should they manage? Is it the owners or the customers or the employees or the organization itself? This gave me a really hard challenge. Corporate social responsibility is another question that faced me as a manager. If we contribute to social projects like charities, who is to pay for that? Is it the employees, the owners or the customers? This is necessary for the business survival but it has to be paid for by the right party. Most organizations will take the share from the owners since they are the ones receiving much benefit from the social aspect of the environment (lecture notes week 4). This made me to indifferent on some of my duties. ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURES IMBUE AND CONTROL CREATION OF POSITIVE CULTURE? The culture of an organization has been argued by many as the alignment of some ethical values and interests that contribute to the attainment of the organizations goals. This includes modeling of employees to take the organizational goals as theirs and thus contributing towards the achievement with a more positive attitude. I did a study and found that this culture includes the empowerment of employees to enable them to influence a particular level of performance of a company towards the company’s goals and objectives. Another big challenge was to mix the output of different employees from different cultures into the company’s culture i.e. of excellence. This means that the employees have to be taught the values, ethics, standards and norms of the organization and assisted on how to apply them towards attainment of the company’s goals and objectives. According to Scheins model of organizational culture, an organization’s culture is derived from that of its employees. These are thing s that are often ignored since they seem invisible though they are very influential. They represent an organization’s relationship to its environment. This means that I had to be very keen on the employees contact edges with the environment in order to control the company’s culture (lecture notes week 5). ORGANIZING PROCESS, THROUGH STRUCTURE (RULES, AUTHORITY, RESPONSIBILITY) It is obvious that every organization must have a structure. This represents one of its strategies of achieving its set goals and objectives. The structure is taken as an element of corporate strategy adopted by the company to align the various processes of attaining the company’s goals. This strategy is usually achieved through grouping of activities together. The best way to understand this is from the bottom up. One needs to critically observe the individual works of employees, their departments, branches that way up to the whole organization. So far, I can say that managers have been performing very well in creating such structures and aligning them with the organizations objectives. The only piece that has been left behind is the idea of control of resources versus decision making. I could make a decision but the resources required are in control of another party (owners). This hindered the implementation of potentially profitable ideas. we as managers has been left with the difficult task of setting authority chains, control chains and activity schemes that have a common goal of attaining the company’s goals and objectives (lecture notes week 6). POWER AND POLITICS, PERVASIVE (AT LEAST ACKNOWLEDGE IF NOT ACTIVELY USE). Power and politics represents an external context of the organization. As we said earlier, an organization has to balance between the two (internal and external forces). We as managers often ignore the political influence and power they possess yet they compete for it. They have the legitimate power to influence decisions especially when they have control and good record in their careers. Organizational power and politics normally arise due to the different levels of hierarchy. A manager high up the hierarchy can influence change and administer pressure on his subordinates. This is for the overall good of the company. This power is often seen as a resource especially in terms of; rewards, coercion, legitimacy and expertise. This helped me to control situations to align activities with the common interests of the company. I realized that organizations represent an interdependent team and they need someone to influence their decisions. This brings about power and politics in the management. I also noted that organizations need someone to resolve the internal and external conflicts; the conflicts may pose a big challenge to managers especially when they involve critical people/parties like competitors and the social political representatives. This brings necessity for political power in the organizations. In the modern world, the high rank managers are usually the politicians and if not, they usually turn into politicians after promotion. This is a vacuum that have to be filled in every other organization. Sometimes, I had to use illegitimate means to achieve legitimate outcomes. Others will fail and misuse the power for their own benefit. In my own opinion, the managers’ political power needs to be carefully controlled since it is tempting and challenging (lecture notes week 7). CONTROL SYSTEMS, CENTRAL ISSUE, MULTIPLE FORMS, ENDLESSLY REINCARNATED This topic ringed in my mind after several challenges faced me in one of the organizations I worked with. I found out that management control systems comprise of mechanisms used by managers such as authority to influence and control the activities of the organization towards the achievement of the set goals and objectives of the company. The use of contemporary management theory and practice helped me to set work groups that were self managing and self motivated. This included the use of promotions, contracts, performance appraisal among other techniques. Due to the changing business world, managers are encouraging the use of such techniques to maximize the output of employees. Control and coordination of activities in an organization required differentiation and integration of different interests and motives and aligning them towards achievement of set goals. This means that I was left with the hard task of monitoring performance, visualizing the difference between the actual and the forecasted results and controlling the production activities. This normally put me in conflict with employees (lecture notes week 8). LEADERSHIP HARD TO FIND, SEEMS MORE TO DO WITH CONTEXT THAN LEADER Management practice taught me that leadership in organizations is an aspect of art and not science. It is a wide subject that includes personal skills as well as ability to adopt to different situations with speed and accuracy. To be a leader in an organization is required you have the interpersonal skills that help you drive the employees towards the required direction. The only difference between the various you (leader) and other managers in the organization was tactics though there was a lot of overlapping. Leaders are usually people who influence change in an organization while managers are sort of tactical teams responsible for efficient flow of business in an organization. Leaders are hard to select since innate versus acquired traits are hardly separable. Managers with leadership skills need to be selected since they can control situations as well as influence change within an organization. However, leadership involves skills and styles like, democratic leadership, Laissez-faire leadership and autocratic leadership. I realized that different approaches are applied to different situations. In my own opinion, leadership skills can be taught to managers and inspiration sought from performing ones. This could help the managers to attain the required standards rather than risking hiring leaders without management skills (lecture notes week 9). PLANNING AND DECISION MAKING AS A SEARCH FOR PURITY INSTEAD OF EFFECT My studies helped me realize that planning entails making different choices at different stages given some obstacles from the different available alternative courses of action. Decision making could take a scientific, statistic or any other approach. Scholars have developed different decision models that are sometimes challenged very much. The solutions may be long term or short term. This involves creation of a problem in another sector to solve a current problem or simply creating a smaller problem to solve a bigger problem. This has made decision making difficult, challenging and wide. Nutt argues that most organizations fail in decision making due to lack of proper implementation plans. Organizations will often generate good diagnostic measures but the implementation becomes a problem and creates more problems. Traditional decision making strategies have been overtaken by time since organizations are now involving the employees and clients more than experts. This was evident through the Crowdsourcing techniques used by one of the companies when making decisions. This makes the clients a part of the solution for optimum satisfaction (lecture notes week 10). UNTANGLING FINANCE, CORPORATE GOVERNANCE AND LABOR MANAGEMENT Corporate governance mainly focuses on the equity holders and the management team. It revolves about three main things. That is: financing and financiers, financing motives and intervention practices of the different forms of management. This puts corporate governance in a critical part of every organization’s performance. As a manager, it was a matter of observation that the employees form a major concern in the finance of the company. They have to be paid and at the same time utilized for maximum contribution. Job security, skill formation, share options for senior executives and cooperation of skilled workers are the main players among the interlocking factors between workforce and the finance department of any organization. The new generation technology enhances the utilization and monitoring of the employees. This helps the organizations to get the maximum out of their employees. It also helps employees get more motivated and have a sense of belonging. This puts managers under pressure of balancing between the various options (lecture notes week 11). FADS AS SYMPTOMS OF THE CONTEST OVER MANAGEMENT KNOWLEDGE This represents the different styles and fashions adopted by managers in management practice. This arises from time to time. Late adoptions could cost company losses. They may be short-lived but have a great impact on practice. The companies I worked with did not put much emphasis on this. I developed self interest in the study. I learnt that Fads are of different types and may be achieved in different ways. They may arise due to a particular change in management practice, a competition method, a current trend in the industry, repackaging old values among other ways. They present a rapid revolution of management of an organization. Due to the radically moving business world and evolving technology, organizational practices are meant to change frequently and towards different results. I came to understand why I should keep on toes with the current trends to ensure competitiveness of their organizations and client satisfaction. This was a very big challenge to me since any failures would always have fingers on me. We should adopt strategies to recognize fads and fashions in the market, in the industry and in the economy. This includes involving the public in raising new ideas as well as employees. The use of fads in an organization requires that we as managers use our power, knowledge, discretion and authority (lecture notes week 12). References Lecture notes (week 2-12) Read More