Managing People and Organizations and Changing Business Scenario and Management Practices - Coursework Example

?INTRODUCTION: Increasing globalization and changing workplace environment have resulted in imposing additional pressures on the organization to comeup with different management techniques and methods in order to survive in the competitive environment. More emphasis is being given to the human resource management, as human resources are being perceived as the most important asset of the organization. From the very start there different management theories have been presented in order to understand the process of management in the organization (Judy and D’Amico, 1997). As the businesses have become more complex, the art of management has been in more demand. There are different approaches and perspective of management however management is about planning, organizing, leading and controlling to ensure that the organizational objectives are achieved. The task of managers is not only to ensure that organizational objectives are achieved, but it is the responsibility of the management to make sure that the motivation level of employees are high (Glueck , 1980). There is vast scholarly evidence suggesting that the theory of management came after the second World War.; and its basic in-depth study has begun ever since. But the concept in essence started after the Industrial revolution which brought upon mass production, specialization and seeing people a critical resource all paved way for management to viewed as a critical area of discourse. Principles of management are basic truths and the clarification between a dependent variable and an independent variable. Principles shall have a predictive or explanatory effect into it and it is much more deeply related to the dependent and independent variable as to whether these principles are applicable in given situation or not The rapidly changing environment along with different technological advancements, have been raising questions that the theories related to management are applicable in the current environment or not. Different researches and studies have been carried in this regard. In this report an attempt has been made in order to understand the different management theories and their implications in the changing workplace. IMPORTANCE OF MANAGEMENT: Managers are important for any modern organization i.e. plant managers look after machinery working properly, sales manager’s task is to build a effective sales team and formulate an effective sales strategy and a personnel manager’s job is to provide a enthusiastic, effective task, accomplishing and productive workforce (Rogg, Schmidt, Shull, & Schmitt, 2001). Managers are responsible in the organization to ensure that all the tasks are accomplished within the deadline and to complete the tasks in the most appropriate manner, they assign the tasks and manage people with the intention that the organizational objectives are accomplished properly. If the organization wants to complete all the tasks then it is important for the management to make the most of every individual and every individual must work in harmony with other and work as a team rather than collection of individuals. The main aim of every individual should be to achieve the organizational goal and contribute as much to the organizational objectives as they could. The management needs to encourage and support individuals so that they give their best which would in turn help the organization to achieve organizational goals (Kramar, Mcgrew, & Schuler, 1997). Management is an important functions of everyone’s life, whether it is about professional life or casual routine life, everyone has to manage his work, activities, resources, health, lifestyle, family, interests etc. Because no one’s has never ending wherewithal, therefore, one has to manage his limited resources effectively to attain his desired goals efficiently. Professionally, learning management is important because time, finance, employees, machinery and systems etc, are all crucial to organization’s success, a firm may not accomplish its targets unless it does not devise a smart plan; allocate resources efficiently ensuring minimum wastage, deliver and execute the plan in a way that the people own it; and supervise it so that the deficiencies may be overcome and the ultimate desired outcome can be achieved. Management is the requirement of all types of the organizations; for profit and not-for-profit, public or private, manufacturing or service. All civil society organizations, NGOs, hospitals, schools and colleges, drama and entertainment organizations, services’ organizations ( saloons, restaurants, hotels etc), product oriented firms; each and every organization necessitate management as a function of survival. It inculcates decision making, problem solving, negotiating, networking and spontaneously responding skills in a manager which enables him to tackle impulsive situations (Miner & Crane, 1995). There are so many learning disciplines that management has gifted us so far, so that we could make the most out of them to gauge the company’s performance and cope with the environmental challenges effectively. To fulfill the goals and the objective of an organization is the ultimate priority of any management of the organization. The meaning of management if managed by its goals and objectives and all managers sole point of attention is if the fulfillment of organizational goals (Koontz and Weihrich, 2006). MANAGING PEOPLE AND ORGANIZATIONS: Management has given birth to different concepts of working with and through people. There are two broad categories of people organizations deal with; internal and external. First are employees which are internal to the firm these serve as input to the organizations to generate outcome which could be services or products. Second are suppliers and vendors which are external to the organization but they are responsible for providing inputs (material, machinery etc) to the firm. Third are customers that are external to the companies and are end users for whom all the inputs are transformed to generate products and services. People and organizations are closely related because a firm’s existence primarily relies with the reputation, capabilities, strength and productivity of its workers. Therefore, managers must develop the ability to deal with its employees in a decent manner. For this purpose management has come up with Human Resource Management, HRM; which deals with all areas of managing workforce. It includes finding, developing, supporting and retaining personnel to attain the organizational goals. Managers should devise certain plans and means that drive motivation in his employees (Koontz and Weihrich, 2006). HRM entails 6 important steps for managing workforce efficiently. It begins wit: 1. Human Resource Planning Step: It begins by doing a meticulous analysis of the job, and then it stretches to the effort of attracting right applicants required for the job. It involves writing of job description and job skills. 2. Staffing: At this step, the manager has to make sure that the right person to be recruited for the right job. There are different recruiting techniques and tools that managers may use for successful selection of candidates. A pool of application, interview, and reference checks can be used as selection tools (Compton & Nankervis, 1998). 3. Training & Development: Once selected, the fresh employees are welcomed for training & development. This involves socializing with former employees; awareness about organization culture, norms ethics etc; skills and career development sessions, on job and off job training etc. 4. Compensation Management: The managers have to decide on the remuneration of new comers. This also acts as individuals’ performance appraisal. 5. Employee Evaluation: A manager’s job is not finished with selection and compensation; rather he has to further evaluate performance of all the employees and has to provide feedback to them. In case any employee’s performance fell short of standards or expectations; the managers should then propose relevant adjustments to overcome the performance (Koontz and Weihrich, 2006). 6. Employee Movement And Replacement: If the performance of the employees is up to the mark and standard then the manager has to promote them to senior levels of management to maintain enthusiasm and ensure motivation in his employees. When the performance lies far below the standards then employees are even demoted to junior levels of management (Bratton and Gold, 2006). DIFFERENT APPROACHES TO MANAGEMENT: a. Human Relations Organizations today have identified that humans are the most important assets of the organization and therefore it is important for the organization to keep good relations with the employees or humans. Keeping good relationship with employees would be helpful in improving the motivation level and to manage human relations there have been different theories presented by different scholars. Human relations approach is basically based on the idea that emotions of individual to improve productivity of employees in contrast to classical management approach which has been more focused on the rationalization of work routines. Therefore it can be said that human relations theory has been presented to oppose the classical management theory as classical management theory is inflexible in improving the productivity of human resource (Koontz and Weihrich, 2006). The human relation idea was developed in a polarized environment where the management and the union were rivals to one another and fundamentally opposed each other every step of the way. Even though both looked towards increasing productivity but both were at logger heads with each other as how to do it. And in this environment, communism was gaining grounds as an ideology that looks towards the rights of the workers and was threatening the social order; the class struggle was propounded by Marxist theorists. By highlighting the point at which both the management and the union are united for the benefit and productivity of the organization of the human resource moved passed the discussion of class struggle (Koontz and Weihrich, 2006). To sum up, the human relations approach sees the organization increasing its productivity only if it maintains a co-operative enterprise, where the primary contributor to boost productivity is worker morale and it solely focuses on improving working conditions it seeks to increase morale in developing a more skilled and capable worker (Koontz and Weihrich, 2006). b. Scientific Management Frederick Taylor was the first person that came up with the management theory. Frederick Taylor analyzed the situation and identified that in the late 19th and 20th century that by being more organized, the productivity of the labor can be improved and therefore the national loss can be reduced. He was a fervent supporter of the overthrow of management by “by the rule of thumb” and substituted it with better or more productive actual time based observations leading to “the one best practice”. He advocated training of the workers instead of allowing them to take personal judgment in their tasks. He also championed the cause of work being equally distributed among the workers and theorized the idea that management within management perform the science and the instruction and labor taking care of the practical work of the task, each group assigned to the work for which they were best suited for Witzel, M. 2003. Taylor most successful points was to break big tasks into a number of small task sub-tasks and working toward optimizing the performance of the subtask; hence, he used to measure the duration of task through his stop watch. Many critics of his postulates noted that his theory was heavily influenced by the historical/social period in which Taylor lived his life i.e. Industrial Revolution (1856-1917). It was during this period of autocracy that witnessed the return of Taylor more in-depth into the sciences of management. His principles were a solution to the workers injustices and less productivity of the time. It could be said that Taylor Scientific management was met triumph at factories where sciences of cutting metal was practiced, coal shovel designs) Reducing the workers needed by task of 500 people to 140 people which was big success story of his theory as well as organization influence in the development of fields such as quality control and personnel control Witzel, M. 2003. It has to accepted from an economic view point that Taylor hypothesis was remarkable accomplishment in his own right i.e. His postulates resulted in an increase productivity on a massive scale i.e. Shovel work at Bethlehem Works, which was increased despite reduction of workers to 140 from 500. Henceforth, Taylor devised four underlying principles management. First there is to develop a “science of work” and link rewards and pay to achievement of optimum goals i.e. measure of input versus output (input mean time and work force), failure would mean a constant loss in of earnings. Second, he proceeded with making the people work at a particular task and giving them before hand training at it. Third, he believed that people shall be scientifically selected as to whether or not they are fit for a job or not if they up the aptitude of the job they will be given adequate training and then assigned for a task of same magnitude and style to be completed by him. Finally work and responsibility shall be equally divided among the people to make sure that the environment is well maintained as well as increasing the productivity (Witzel, 2003). CHANGING BUSINESS SCENARIO AND MANAGEMENT PRACTICES: It is important to acknowledge that the overall landscape and scenario of the business world is being changed. Increasing globalization and the concept of free trade among the countries have resulted in increasing the diversity in the workforce. This in turn has imposed additional pressure on the organizations to combat with the diverse workforce. This diversity in the workforce results in directly influencing the culture of the organization along with the management practices (Reich, 1991). Also, the increasing integration among different economies and growing international businesses, it has become important for the organizations to adopt the policy of convergence i.e. different management practices should be integrated together. The large Multi National Corporations (MNC) and Trans National Corporations (TNC) are facing different issues and challenges with regard to adjustment in different local economies. In order to be able to succeed in various countries and capture large market share, these organizations have adopted different modern management approaches. Another major challenge in this regard has been imposed by the continuous technological advancements and changes. These technological changes and advancements force the management of organization to integrate these technologies with the new management practices activities in order to reap maximum benefits out of these technologies. COMPARING DIFFERENT APPROACHES TO MANAGEMENT WITH MODERN MANAGEMENT PRACTICES: Four different approaches of management have been introduced with modern management practices and these four approaches are as follows (Koontz and Weihrich, 2006): Systems approach Situational or contingency theory Chaos Theory Team building theory The system theory views eth whole organization as a collection of different parts who are working in order to fulfill collective goals and targets. According to this theory if one component is eliminated from the whole system, then the complete system is totally changed. The organization works as a system, this means that some input are taken which undergo different processes and finally output is generated. System share feedback among these three different steps and transfers information back and forth to make sure that the organization is working smoothly and without hurdle. The systems theory might look simple and easy but decades of management training and practices and leading theorists have discouraged the use of this theory. Very recently, with the tremendous of amount IT changes evolving in the organization that theorists and managers have started taken an approach from this particular way management style. One of the benefits of systems theory of management is that it assists managers in looking at the system more broadly. It also help the managers in comprehending the events and its patterns that happens within an organization i.e. make the managers understand how different events are interconnected and how they affect the productivity of the system. The situational or contingency theory contends that when manager takes a decision it should be made keeping in mind all aspects of current situation as well as how it is going to affect the future. This approach is based on situation at the time of decision making i.e. if a person is running a hospital then he must take a leadership style that is flexible and participative but if a person is running an ER then he or she must run an autocratic style of leadership. Chaos Theory has been advocated by Tom Peteres in the year 1942 (Voga, 1994). As the events globally are chaotic and random, an organization works on similar patterns. Even though throughout years many manager have advocated that organizations can be managed and controlled in sustained way. To counter this hypothesis, a new theory emerged, which said that events in an organization are rarely controlled. Chaos theory suggests that management shall always be ready to invest more and more energy into the organization to make sure as systems to make it stable because they are naturally inclined towards more complexity and volatility. Another theory of management is team building performance or theory. This theory is all about emphasizing quality circles, best practices and uninterrupted enhancement. This theory emphasizes on enhancing dependency on team work. It emphasizes reducing levels of hierarchy within a team and flattening of management pyramid. Last but not the least; it is about management with consensus – i.e. involving more and more people at different levels in decision making. CONCLUSION: One must comprehend that management is the process keeping the environment maintained and sustained to make sure the tasks are accomplished effectively. Management acts like an open system that while operates from within, it also interacts with the environment. The management’s approach as a system includes feedback from external environment, the communication system, and the transformation system to find a way to reenergize the system. No doubt a manager who tries to transform this theory into practical reality increases productivity with reason and efficiency instead of a manager who instead goes for “fire brigade” or trial and error approach. Even today, not every theory fits perfectly in the environment in which the world currently is in. With recession taking a grip on job tolls, the neither Chaos Theory nor the Human resource Theory nor the Scientific Management theory comes to the aid of the organization but instead the organization should bend itself into incorporating the best postulates from each of the following systems of management. List of References Bratton, J. and Gold, J. 2006 Human resource management: theory and practice. Taylor & Francis Group, London Compton, F, & Nankervis, A 1998, Effective Recruitment & Selection Practices. Australian Print Group: Australia. Glueck , W 1980, Business Policy and Strategic Management, McGraw-Hill, New York. Judy, R, and D’Amico, C 1997, Workforce 2020: Work And Workers In The Twenty-First Century. Indianapolis, IN: Hudson Institute, Inc. Koontz, H. and Weihrich, H. 2006 Essentials Of Management.: Tata McGraw-Hill Education. New Delhi Kramar, R, Mcgrew, P, & Schuler. R 1997, Human Resource Management in Australia. Longman: Australia Miner, J, & Crane, D 1995, Human Resource Management : The Strategic Perspective. Harper Collins College Publishers: New York. Reich, R 1991, The work of nations: Preparing ourselves for 21st-century capitalism. Knop: New York. Rogg, K, Schmidt, D, Shull, C, & Schmitt, N 2001, ‘Human resource practices, organizational climate, and customer satisfaction’, Journal of Management, vol. 27, pp. 431-449. Voga, T. 1994, Profiting from chaos: using chaos theory for market timing, stock selection and option valuation. Routledge: Taylor & Francis Group. London Witzel, M. 2003, Fifty key figures in management. Taylor & Francis Group, London Read More