The Economic Life of My Community - Personal Statement Example

?My ambition is to be an entrepreneur. I believe I have a responsibility to do what I can for the economic life of my community. I am confident that I can foster enterprise and thereby create employment, and also improve the standard of living by generating the income to purchase goods and services. But while I may have ambition and good intentions I have realized that I need to study business management to increase my chances of success. I started to search for a preparatory course to before attending a degree in business management and came across this Foundation course from MMU. My purpose in attending this course was to prepare myself to study business management. My expectations of the course included: exposure to business management concepts, the development of an aptitude for business management learning, and an environment which would be both exciting and challenging. This foundation course has lived up to my expectations. The subjects in Terms 1 and 2 have stimulated me to think as a business manager, and now I can see how apparently irrelevant news items can have an economic or business impact. Charles Handy’s book, “Understanding organizations” introduces concepts key to business management: motivation, role, power and influence, group dynamics, leadership, organizational structure etc. He explains the necessity of thinking in terms of organizational context. Before attending this course though I had seen lot of organizations like my school, my father’s company etc. But I had never considered how they are structured and organized. This course has trained me to look at organisations analytically, to consider questions like: “How should a company be structured?”; “How is authority delegated?”, “How can staff be motivated?”, “How salaries are to be decided ?” I am nowhere near to be answering these questions and that’s where I believe my final degree in business management will help. But this foundation course has provided me with a good introduction. Reading Robert Heilbroner’s “The Wordly Philosophers” has opened my eyes to various issues and concepts which I had never considered, but which I must now study in relation to the business I want to follow. The recent financial crisis has also proved of phenomenal learning potential about business, regulation, saving etc. My course was just at the right time to benifit from these events. Understanding how an organization works is very important to understand how businesses operate, as I want to start my own business this learning was very crucial for me when I had joined this course. Has the course lived up to my needs? This is something I may not be able to answer but I can certainly mention that what I have learned is what I will surely need in my career. The course has certainly surpassed my expectations. Here are a few things that I have learned about how an organization works. Learning from specific seminars: Roles and interaction – In 1970 Dr Meredith Belbin, working at Henley Management College defined the concept Team Role as “A tendency to behave, contribute and interrelate with others in a particular way.” He also suggested nine different roles played by team members. I believe my role is that of a resource investigator; while my ambition to be an entrepreneur. Before understanding these concepts I had problems working as a group member, due to differing expectations of my role within the group. I believed my role to be that of a networker with outsiders, and a mobilizer of resources. However having studied these concepts and applying them during my foundation course I have improved my ability to work as a team member, and I now ensure to spell out clearly from the start what role I expect to play. Handy’s explanation of Role theory explains the concepts of “stereotyping” and “halo effect” which will also help me to work better in team endeavours. Motivation Robbins and Judge define motivation “as the processes that account for an individual’s intensity, direction, and persistence of effort toward attaining goal”. The concepts of psychological contract between the employee and the organization and Self concept (I) which are central to Charles Handy’s (2003) Motivation theory explain a great deal about motivation process. Motivation is one of the most crucial aspects of any organizational leadership role, and understanding it can help one both personally and professionally. The knowledge of different types of psychological contracts like “coercive”, “calculative” and “cooperative” (Handy, C 1993) are crucial in determining ones leadership style. During this section of the course, the “self concept” has been clearly defined, and this will help me in future decision-making, both personally and professionally. I have a clearer idea of my own “Self concept” and how over time it changes to reflect the changes in my life. The concept of power and influence This is one of the most important aspects of leadership. One of the issues facing a leader is how to change the attitude or behavior of others. Prior to attending the course I had believed that was I able to influence others, but there were occasions when I realized that my approach didn’t work. In hindsight I now realize that the problem was with the way I tried to use power. I realize it is very important to organize power structures within any organization: to plan carefully how power will be administered, and delegated to second-in-command in a way that they can exercise it over those reporting to them. The concept of power is also important in relation to customers. Knowing which powers to use with them influences their relationship with me as opposed to my competitors. Having attended this the course I have come to appreciate that there may different powers to influence different people or the same people but in different situations On Being a Manager Henry Mintzberg (1980) explains the different roles played by a manager, which include sourcing and distributing information, managing interpersonal relations, and decision making. A manager’s job within any organization is to minimize role ambiguity, role conflict and thus keep role stress in check. Charles Handy (1999) proposes the notion of the manager as a general practitioner: that actually his role is too wide and varied to be described in a single word. The role involves a systematic approach to problem solving by identifying symptoms, diagnosing causes, formulating strategy and implementing the decision like a general practitioner does. And any business facing global competition and/or environmental concerns needs to be sensitized towards changing expectations as labor markets undergo changes like increasing female participation in the workforce, workforce diversity, and demand for affirmative action. As a future manager I need to appreciate the dilemmas to be faced, and to prepare strategies, as suggested by Handy (1999) to deal with management stress. Group Working The way people work within a group may be quite different from the way they work individually. And an organization is basically a conglomerate of diverse groups working to achieve goals at different levels. If people working in a group do not agree on certain issues there may be a danger of conflict, which is potentially a good thing for an organization’s overall development, but if not managed properly, may prove to be disruptive leading to wastage and problems in an organization. Thus how people behave differently within a group is an important factor for any manager to ensure maximum productivity and efficiency in the organization. I have learned the concepts that determine the effectiveness of a group, which I will find very useful in my work setting. Concepts like “Group think”, “Group cohesiveness” and “Social Loafing” are all are very practical and applicable in the work setting. In the short term my understanding the concept of group work will also help me to improve my effectiveness as a good team player during my studies. People Development in organization “People Development” covers concepts like career planning, individual learning, group learning and human resource management. The performance appraisal systems and compensation planning are very important these days because the work environment changes very fast and employees must keep on updating themselves on changing technology, management practices and changing consumer behavior. The assignment for this chapter mandated me to prepare my own skill inventory in light of current skills I posses and my future goals, which led me to do a lot of self awareness analysis and has helped me a lot in deciding on the right career choice and charting a plan for my development. Organizational Design Handy (1999) describes an organization as a community of people, not a structure of machine, which means that an organization is more than the sum total of all the individual working in it. People don’t always act very rationally, so the issues like power, conflict, jealousy, ego clashes have to be kept in mind while designing an organization, along with other operational issues like task structuring etc. The organizational design process has to deal with challenges like striking the right balance between uniformity and diversity. Some of the specific things that I learned from economic lectures (Heilbroner) The science of economics has evolved over the period from 1700. The earliest theories were characterized by the optimism of Adam Smith and his concept of “An invisible hand” which guided the market and ensured the welfare of both rich and poor. The concept of the “Law of Market”, the system of supply and demand, determines how prices are arrived at in the market which has to be understood by anybody running a business. The pessimism of Malthus and Ricardo about the overall damage towards which societies are headed; or society’s dependence on unfortunate events like famine or drought for its survival were quite a paradoxical ideas at first but they have forced me to think critically. I have learned that we need to keep challenging our own ideas or we will simply blind ourselves with our own beliefs. On a more formal note this also gave me an idea how it’s the economics which determines politics etc. So as a businessman or even as a citizen economics is not something which economists have to care about even we businesses have a great deal to do with what economics teaches us. I learned to see how various economic or political events can impact of on a particular industry or business which can be crucial to business planning and forecasting. The ideas of utopian socialists suggested that an alternative system may also exist to support society. Mill’s concept of separation of distribution from production with more emphasis on distribution challenged my own thinking. On reading about Mill’s ideas, or great contributions as it was called, about the need to educate society to reduce the birth rate, I was surprised that I hadn’t thought of it while reading about Malthus and Ricardo and their pessimistic views. As an aspiring future businessman, the concept of pressure did not frighten me at all, despite studying two companies which challenged by pressure groups. Knowing and reading about Bill Gates and Warren Buffet provided the moral support. Reading about Marx and his philosophy no longer seems so disturbing in the light of the recent financial turmoil and near collapse of capitalism. I don’t think that I have gained the knowledge to be able to decipher all that is going on in the world of economics but I have been sensitized enough towards understanding them all. Seven skills required in business management that I have improved after attending the course: 1) Interpersonal skills – Team work and assignments. 2) Communication skills – Writing and speaking English. 3) Reading skills - Reading diverse topics. 4) Internet searching – Required for all assignments 5) Conceptual skills – Undertanding philosophical views of Karl Marx, Adam Smith , Charles Handy etc. 6) Business environment awareness. 7) Cross cultural sensitivity - studying in different country with diverse group Overall this foundation course has taught me how to generate ideas and then challenge them. It has reinforced my earlier decision to study for a degree in Human Resources. Both my individual and group learning experiences have been very satisfactory. In relation to individual learning all the determining factors like desire to learn, awareness of culture and time and space allocation, have been favorable dealt with, as have the factors for group learning, thanks to the culture, environment and infrastructure of the university. And finally, the exercises and assignments have really taught me how to stretch myself beyond my self - defined limits. Bibliography: Handy, Charles, 1993, “Understanding Organizations”, OUP, Oxford & New York 1999 “The Hungry Spirit. Beyond Capitalism: A Quest for Purpose in the Modern World”, Random House, London 2003 "The Elephant and the Flea. Reflections of a Reluctant Capitalist", Harvard Business School Press, Cambridge Heilbroner, Robert, 1953 “The Wordly Philosophers” Simon & Schuster, New York Mintzberg, Henry (1980) “The Nature of Managerial Work”, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J Robbins, Stephen Judge, Timothy (2010) “Organizational Behavior” Prentice –Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J www.belbin.com/rte.asp?id=8 Read More