Reflection on management - Term Paper Example

?Reflection Businesses have significant social responsibilities that are not covered by most introductory business s. Although businesses have a role of ensuring their sustainability through profitable operations, they also have a role of maintain social sustainability. However, most business courses emphasize on profit-making and efficient operation strategies. The course provides learners with concrete information about sustainable management and its significance in modern day businesses. Understanding the current trends towards sustainable economies requires considerable reflection on past economies. This provides a concrete background on basic management theories as depicted by the course. The first topic provides the traditional concepts of business and business management. From the topic, I established that the modern profit oriented businesses have their roots on various historical aspects. This includes the competitive nature of humans and the desire to concur nature. Thus, ancient human activities involved exploiting resources from their natural forms or primary level of production. In such economies, people were not concerned with sustainability since they lived in a world with abundant resources. The course considers this as the sources current management trend where businesses are concerned with making of profits. Although this trend is considered as the norm, people are beginning to consider the need for sustainable businesses. Thus, the course is established on modern management trends, which are aimed at sustainable business practices. At the end of the topic, I had acquired sufficient background information on management and managerialism. However, the topic does not provide a basis of fundamental theories that led to the formation of the current economic blocks. I was interested in information that explains the role of politics and government in shaping world’s management strategies. The second topic covers the move towards modern economies. Need for mass production is the basic aspect that characterized classic businesses in the mid twentieth century. According to chapter two of Locke and Spender, businesses in this era were characterized by unbound growth. Unbound growth of population and human wants made people to believe in unbound businesses (Hirschey 132). The industrial revolution provided the foundation for the era since it provided the required element of efficiency. The topic also addresses controversies surrounding modern management practices. This approach provides a foundation for strategic management practices covered in the third topic. The chapter also elaborates the role of modern businesses to the society. Corporate social responsibility is a significant element of modern business. The element of corporate social responsibility signifies the main difference between successful and unsuccessful businesses. The topic illustrates this analogy through case studies covering major global businesses such as Toyota and IBM. However, the businesses have different perspectives on social responsibilities according to the topic. In addition, the companies have experienced a constant transformation in their attitude towards corporate social responsibility. For instance, Toyota has considerably transformed its management practices in relation to its manufacturing systems and marketing structures. The third topic deals with management as a social science. This topic provides essential information concerning people based management system and the role of human capital in modern economies. The topic links theories of organization culture the goals and objectives of an organization. In addition, the atopic covers recent developments in the fields of management that makes the subject an essential science. Management science is based on logical conclusion that results in the satisfaction of all sectors of a business. The topic also covers the evolution of economic concepts and measures that are used to measure economic progress of a country. Although I managed through most of the basic concepts, I had trouble in understanding how basic elements such as the GDP and per capita income indicates the social wellbeing of a country. For instance, GDP index is used to measure a country’s prosperity or living standards of the people. I consider such measures insufficient since they do not incorporate all aspects of sustainable management. For example, the measure does not account for environmental degradation or acts of pollution resulting from economic activities. Despite this misconception, the chapter provides useful information relating to global economies and the role of the US in global political economics. This creates a sufficient platform for the management of global management practices that are covered in the next chapter. The failure of management science as the basic structure of the US business model is the main concept covered in the fifth topic. The topic also covers the moral perspective of modern business. This topic is a subsidiary of the previous topics, which deals with the trends of global economies and modern businesses. The topic provides essential concepts to modern businesses that are faced with dilemma resulting from their global ambitions. Social diversities are common aspects that determine the prosperity of modern business. According to the topic, success of modern business depends on ability of businesses to adopt a multicultural status. This relates to all aspects of management including HR management and strategic management. The role of Hofstede’s cultural dimensions as a tool for strategic management is addressed in the topic. Hofstede’s cultural dimensions provide a significant framework for strategic management. The next topic covers managerialism and the US auto industry. This topic is based on the fundamental assumption of traditional business thinking, which considers businesses to have more similarities than differences. Traditional management practices are established on a one size fits all analogy, whereby business principles can be applied across all businesses. This topic enabled me to establish the difference between American and Chinese businesses. The topic also provides basic concepts concerning the current trends in global economic prosperity. Topics eleven and twelve covers concepts relating to current economic crisis and the role of global oil prices in determining economic prosperity. The recent economic crisis that affected America and other European economies has attracted significant interest from global economies. The topics also provide the role of global financial markets such the London and New York stock exchange in measuring global economic trends. However, it is difficult to establish how the price of the dollar would affect the price of a basic commodity in a country in the developing world (Hirschey 132). This puzzle is adequately covered in the eleventh and twelfth topic. The financial concepts provide a concrete theoretical perspective of a country’s economy. However, they do not provide a realistic approach to daily problems affecting modern societies. This system also fails to capture the concepts of sustainable development since it only focuses on the commercial aspect of businesses. The next topic considers the need to strike a balance between modern and traditional business practices. This also provides the contexts of economic reforms and the role of management as a social science. “A Global System Growing Itself To Death – And What We Can Do about it,” The Systems Thinker, Vol. 23, No. 4 is an interesting read. Although the article focuses on the political economic policies, it provides understanding on the need for businesses to restructure their social responsibility policies. This is the main strategy for modern business according to the article. I concur with the author concerning the needs for sustainable economies as a strategy of solving current economic crisis. The last topic covered the need for economic revolutions. These revolutions would save the global economy from extreme situations experienced in the past. In conclusion, the course provides a foundation for modern schools of thoughts in the business world. The course achieves this target by providing a timeline for global economic progress. In addition, the reading provided in each of the topics has enabled me to build a concrete understanding of basic business practices. This has also broadened my thinking and perspective towards global business and the needs for sustainable development. Works Cited Hirschey, Kalb. Fundamentals of Managerial Economics 9th Ed. Boulevard: Cengage Learning, 2009. Print. Read More