The Complexity of Management - Essay Example

?The complexity of management Introduction Complexity exists within an organisation because there is a usual process or activity that needs to be performed. There are varying situations involved on a daily basis and each department in an organisation has to handle them based on their specific tasks or roles. The ability of each department to perform its role brings forward specific actions that at some point may hinder other departments or the entire organisation to perform what is essential. However, the issue of what is essential for the organisation is what makes it more complex for each department to perform their tasks. In this paper, the proponent clearly illustrates situations that identify existing complexities within an organisation. Marketing versus accounting department In most instances, there is always an ongoing clash between the accounting and marketing department. This is because of the meaning of accounting in an organisation seems to be broad (McSweeney, 1995). In order to understand this in detail, there is always a good reason to believe that each department has essential role or function to play in an organisation. In line with this, it is necessary that these specific functions have to be elaborately discussed in detail in order to find out why there is an ongoing complexity that exists within an organisation. A salesperson was having a hated argument with an accounting staff. The problem was actually within the bound of how they tried to handle customer service. The salesperson was so aggressive about creating a sale with the customer and he was always ready to shortcut the process just to be able to close the deal. However, the accounting staff understood her function clearly well. In other words, she was so aggressive about the implementation of what has been agreed within their department. As a result, there was a strong clash of personal interests of each department that went on between the accounting staff and salesperson. In some companies, the management is after of creating revenue that sometimes the process in some departments will be compromised. There are some shortcut processes that need to be undertaken just to be able to hit the bottom line. However, this level of mentality will always determine the complexity involved within an organisation. In other words, some rules employed by the company may be altered just to be able to prioritise what is deemed important for the achievement of the ultimate goal of the company. The ultimate goal is to have excellent financial performance that will enable the company to continue operation. However, there may be always a compromise in the process. The accounting department is such a complex component of an organisation because it primarily involves finances in general. It involves the general role of an organisation to handle every necessary aspect in financial activities that will make the entire flow of the organisation run smoothly. For instance, cash flow is important and even return of investment is necessary in order that the operation will continue to have healthy performance. These activities are necessary and they are handled by the accounting department in general. However, their tasks have specific goals and objectives that in the process will run against the objectives of other departments. For instance, the sales department is there to help the accounting department reach the objective in obtaining healthy cash flow. The sales department is there in order to help the company reach its full potential in obtaining high return of investment that the bottom line is to have a positive healthy cash flow. However, this does not run smoothly as always as it might be expected. There are some specific concerns. For instance, the company may declare terms and conditions of payments. Some customers may ask about longer terms especially when they are trying to place high orders that are far from what is expected. Some companies may not have looked on this in advance but the accounting department may be strict about its implementation of what has been clearly defined by the company. In other words, the accounting department is The management versus human resource Each individual has specific desires. This in particular defines the kind of activities that he or she will substantially do with purpose. The management therefore must be able to determine this in specific ways in order that its effort will pay off in the process. On the contrary, there are some organisations that are clear about their punishment but have little emphasis placed on reward system. In general, this does not motivate the human resource. People may have retaliation in discreet manner that at some point may also trigger rebellion. Thus, social movement within an organisation determines complexity (Schneider and Somers, 2006). For instance, there is this employee who was very influential. The usual trend in his company will be to have ‘meeting after the meeting’. This person is very influential in the group that he will initiate ‘meeting after the meeting.’ There are five of them in his group. They will not eventually react during the meeting and will always go with the flow and vote for something which has consensus opinion. However, the management has no idea that there is a usual meeting that has to be conducted after that formal meeting. That meeting is informal. That person will start the conversation with his informal group by asking his team, ‘so what do you think about their plans, decisions, ideas and so on?’ He will usually start to open up his point by simply saying, ‘I totally disagree with that.’ Then the conversation will go on and until they finally would come up a unified stand. What has happened here is just a proof that informal groups in an organisation are totally devastating forces that work against the direction of the company. The mentioned person who would initiate the ‘meeting after the meeting’ is very influential in the group that he has even authority that is stronger than the management. It is therefore important to understand it how he exactly achieved such influence. At some point, it might be good to think about it that this person has the exact understanding about the actual needs of his subordinates or members of his informal group that the management may have deficient understanding about. In an organisation, it cannot be denied that there are formal and informal groups. The formal groups are designated by the management. However, the informal groups are created by the people themselves and they are unified because of their specific stand or opinion about the moves employed by the management. In particular, the informal groups are very influential when it comes to creating criticisms and negative feedbacks against the company. These groups are trying to suit the needs or desires of their members to the fullest. They understand their needs more than the company does. However, considering that they are informal, mostly they are not recognised by the company. They work unanimously in silence. This specifically brings peril to the management because it is oblivious about the contradictory forces that try to pull it back. Thus, the management must be aware if the people’s needs are actually catered in the process and not just on one-sided view. The one-side view is that there is a strong emphasis placed on what benefits the company and less on what it can bring for the people. In other words, considering that there is maximisation of financial gain, the employees sometimes may suffer by asking more from them even if they are not actually compensated the right way with what they provide for the company. As a result, the company’s move to evaluate its people based on its set standards may not work out to the fullest. For instance, if it is not clear for the people why they have to perform as they expected but their specific needs are not met, then there is always an ongoing question of fairness and equality in their minds. As a result, the entire process will always not turn out smoothly. People may not understand why they are evaluated or assessed in a way they have less expectation about it. For example, there is a case when a certain employee thinks about that he already performs its best and is looking forward for recognition about it. Unfortunately, the management still has discontentment about his performance. It resulted to giving a slightly negative feedback about his performance. This resulted to resentment on the part of the employee. The resentment was caused by misunderstanding about what is the specific standard that has to be understood by the employee. There are some cases when companies are expecting too much from their employees without knowing it if their expectations have been widely understood by them. This usually creates problem and will usually results to resentment. The eventual problem will be the loss of employee’s efficiency in particular due to lack of motivating factors that will help them perform their best. It is complicated to know about what exactly motivates employees. As a result, there are various theories about motivation because in particular, each individual has different needs or desires. Some may not be motivated about monetary aspects, but on things that will give them other sort of satisfaction. It is hard to define this in detail knowing that in an organisation is composed of diverse people with different sets of personalities, needs, wants and motivation. Thus, the human resource department always has to be dynamic about its strategic move to define the complex process involved in understanding the people (Spector, 1982). Some people may not be open about their needs or desires due to some factors. Others may be vocal about them. This does not always guarantee that the best is always given to everyone. The role of the human resource department may be overlooked at some point that will eventually limit its capacity to perform the right and specific tasks for the people. The issue of control Control is specifically important in an organisation (Spector, 1982). There is a need to control everything so as it will run smoothly as possible. However, it is also important to know that control does not just come right when it is needed. It has to be created with purpose and the moment an organisation is built, it has already come into its existence. In particular, control is a necessary activity for the management. For instance, in a manufacturing company, the value chain management is a perfect venue to implement control. A certain product or service for instance has to undergo different processes which the bottom line is to place it in areas where it can be perfectly worked out. For example, a chocolate product from the point of view of production department has to be specifically produced with complete ingredients, manpower and equipments. However, prior to that, the production department has to coordinate with the logistic department, research department, marketing department and accounting department in order to come up with products that are not just only perfect in quality and quantity but would be in line with other considerations. It is important to know what the market actually wants prior to creating a product. This is because the modern trend is not on production-oriented approach but more on marketing-oriented application. In line with this, it is important to know the market and its capacity and motivation to buy products if ever they are produced. The marketing department has to coordinate with the production department in order to create product that will be eventually appreciated by the market. The marketing department has to be specific about its move to create a need for its product, but this cannot be done by itself without the aid of production department. Correspondingly, the research department has to also coordinate with other departments for its financial, information and productivity concerns. It has to coordinate with production department in particular in order to inform the latter about significant information in order to improve production and its quality of output. As noticed, all departments have to work together for the good of the entire organisation. They have to coordinate from time to time in order to always come up with the best decision and move for the company. However, this will not usually run as smoothly from time to time. There is a need to usually come up with control activity. Within a certain department, there is a need to enhance control. For instance, in the accounting department, there has to be a strong internal control by providing specific segment for audit and other related concerns. Thus, it is necessary that the person involved in control activity does not have complex tasks that may turn out conflicting. This will eventually minimise the efficiency of control. In other words, in order for each department to be effective prior to its interaction with other departments, it has also to specifically conduct internal control. However, the goal of the management is to conduct general control that will help check and evaluate each specific department. The control process in this case is to know how exactly each department is able to maximise their function in the company’s goal to provide value to its customers through its products or service offerings. This is very complicated knowing that each department has to be ensured to work in harmony. As a result, this calls for having the right leaders with the right leadership process so as not to only control the future but will perform what is best for the company (Plowman et al., 2007). Eventually, the right leadership process will come up with creating a vision that will work from top down to low level of management. It is therefore the goal of the management to impart the vision to everyone in order to achieve its corporate goals. However, this is the most complex part because not everyone will right away embrace the vision. The right leaders within the management have to be certified leaders and embrace the vision among them. In this way, the entire vision will be easily spread within an organisation. The complex part of this is how the management will create leaders and followers that totally have embraced its vision. Knowing the interconnectivity of operations within an organisation, it is not hard to imagine that the vision will eventually be imparted to everyone. However, the entire process may depend on an individual’s response to that vision and here where complexities will start to arise. Conclusion It is important to understand that the complexity of the management boils down to the fact that an organisation has to specifically achieve specific goals. It is not easy to achieve these goals because there are some processes involved along the way of achieving them. The management has to face significant issues that if have to be considered appropriately will become as stepping stones towards the achievement of its goals. In other words, the complexities involved should not stand as hindrances in achieving the ultimate goals of the management but will certainly become the reason to find for ultimate ways in order to ensure achievement of corporate goals. The complexity of management should be treated normal in every organisation for as long as there is always an issue about diversity, personal interests or desires and so on. The management has to look at it carefully that the interconnectedness of each department in organisation will work together for good including those complexities if handled the right way. References McSweeney, L. B. (1995) ‘Accounting in organizational action: A subsuming explanation or situated explanation?’ Accounting Management and Information Technologies, Vol. 5 (3-4): 245-282. Plowman, D. A., Solansky, S., Beck, T. E., Baker, L., Kulkarni, M., and Travis, D. V. (2007) ‘The role of leadership in emergent, self-organization.’ The Leadership Quarterly, Vol. 18 (4): 341-356. Schneider, M. and Somers, M. (2006) ‘Organizations as complex adaptive systems: Implications of Complexity Theory for leadership research.’ The Leadership Quarterly, Vol. 17 (4): 351-365. Spector, P. E. (1982) ‘Behavior in organizations as a function of employee’s locus of control.’ Psychological Bulletin, Vol. 91 (3): 482-497. Read More