The 21st Century Management Practice - Essay Example

The 21st Century Management Practice Systems Approach to Business Models and Management provides knowledge on the 21st Century management practice. This system approach, as observed by Pojasek (2005), provides quality management tools that have found wide application in business organizations. It includes holistic thinking as borrowed from disciplines such as sociology, biology, natural sciences and control engineering. Therefore, this was an important course in providing critical systems thinking that brings coherence to varied system approaches, advising managers on their use in organizational setting. One of the most crucial aspects of management I have learnt from this course is that management is political and organizations are political fields. As indicated by Bolman and Deal (2013), managers do not have all the powers they would wish to and as such would have to deal with organizations’ political issues. Successful leaders would use politics for the benefit of the organization. They set the agenda that would address concerns of all stakeholders, map the political terrain to identify power resources, interests and major players and network and build coalitions to influence and facilitate negotiations. Additionally, the political aspects of managers would enable them to make ethical and effective choices and bargain and negotiate to ensure win-win situations (Ferris & Treadway, 2012). I now appreciate political skills as critical skills for successful managers. This is what gets them the desired performance. This acknowledgement of managers as being political further made me to understand the perception of organizations as political fields. This is because of the contest among various agendas and interests, with each aimed at a given purpose. Managers have their own agendas which could be to lead the employees successfully and impress the shareholders with better returns on their investments. Shareholders look at an opportunity to make wealth from the organization while employees look at earning a living. Other stakeholders, including debtors, creditors and advertisers among others, also have their interests in their organizations. With these interests interacting, there tends to be contests, thus the political nature of organizations. Thus, Bolman and Deal (2013) encourage managers to appreciate their role in shaping this political field, the contestants and the way the game would be played. To do so, managers need to be firm and accept conflicts, while attending to ethics and values. Furthermore, I learnt that management requires creativity in viewing problems in management and finding ways to resolve them. Through creativity, problems in management would be perceived as being interdependent hence a more wholesome approach to the problem. This allows for a combination of various approaches in solving management problems. It provides a divergent approach of thinking of an organization from that of the hierarchical structure to adoption of various images representing the organization. These metaphors include organizations as psychic prisons, machines and flux and transformation (Jackson, 2003). Other metaphors include organism, culture, carnivals, instruments of domination and brains. This course provided insightful understanding of the importance of human resource in an organization. It provided the knowledge of investing in people in an organization through empowering and constantly developing employees. This course also made me appreciate the importance of participation and autonomy of employees in their roles and responsibilities (Bolman & Deal, 2013). While working for the plastic manufacturing company, I observed that whenever employees were under tight supervision, they tended to be demoralized. It makes them reduce their production and show rebellion. However, when left to carry out tasks autonomously, it led to great creativity and innovation which boosts production. On the other hand, my supervisor, just like many other managers, did not believe in giving employees the freedom to work autonomously. According to him, since employees are not owners of the organization, they could fail to take action that promotes organizational goals. Such principles are false because from this course, giving employees autonomy is one way of investing in an organization’s human resource. This rewards through increased productivity. Workplace Application Therefore, the lessons learnt from this course would be implemented in the practical sense so as to realize positive gains in managing organizations. As a manager, it would be critical to use politics to influence employees to undertake the expected objectives. This would involve the use of power to influence some key decisions and also use of negotiation skills to cause employees to own major decisions and act on them appropriately. When undertaking changes in an organization, negotiation would serve as the most appropriate political tool to use. Employees are known to resist change, but with negotiations, they feel part of the change process and therefore adopt and adapt to the changes. Such was the strategy used by the quality control manager at the plastic manufacturing firm I worked for who sought to introduce new quality testing process. The manager had to negotiate with the Quality Control Department staff to make them appreciate that the new procedure would save the company a lot of expenses on returned goods. Through negotiations, both the manager and the workers in the department had their needs met. Even though political power could provide the manager with the ability to effect decisions at will, it would be important to appreciate that this kind of power entails observing ethical guidelines. Appreciating that organizations are political, it would be important to accept varied views from various stakeholders in the organization. I will consider the activities at the workplace as meant to serve individual interests. Therefore, each stakeholder would work towards having their interests served. This understanding will enable me solve conflicts effectively. It will help appreciate that during conflicts, people will seek to promote their interests and therefore as a manager, it would be important to be firm on decisions based on facts, because pleasing one party could mean hurting another, in most cases. Organization metaphors provide an appropriate approach to look at an organization. For instance, I observed while working at the plastic manufacturing industry that the quality of plastic produced would depend on the changes in the market. There are times when the market would demand a specific color more than others and the firm would work towards producing more of those colors. In markets where tougher plastics were required, the systems would be adjusted to produce tougher plastics. This clearly indicates that organizations are organisms which change with changes in the environment for their survival. They are open systems and respond appropriately to environmental disturbances so as to find a favorable setting. The lesson on investment on human resources provides crucial knowledge to managers. It makes them appreciate that motivated employees promote the goals of the organization. Therefore, they would develop their employees appropriately. They would also empower them to participate in key decision making in the organization. This way, the organization’s production rises. Future Study In this course, I learnt about being effective in organizations. This requires a worker to have the required knowledge. Indeed, while working at the plastic manufacturing firm, I realized that a majority of those workers considered to be effective had vast knowledge in the processes, be it molding, injection or even basic storage. A majority of the workers had their knowledge in these processes improve with time due to experience. Thus, jobs involving high knowledge should have highly effective workers. On the contrary, Drucker (2009) observes that highly effective people are rare in knowledge jobs. The scholar further finds no correlation between the effectiveness of employees and their intelligence, imagination or knowledge. To my understanding, this amounts to discrediting the knowledge gained from learning institutions in producing effective workers. Therefore, it would be important to undertake a study to determine the relationship between the knowledge of workers and their effectiveness at their workplaces. A primary research conducted in various organizations across various industries would perhaps provide reliable data to prove Drucker’s arguments on worker’s effectiveness. References Bolman, L. G. & Deal, T. E. (2013). Reframing organizations: Artistry, choice, and leadership. (3rd ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Drucker, P. F. (2009). The essential Drucker. New York, NY: HarperCollins. Ferris, G. R. & Treadway, D. C. (Eds.). (2012). Politics in organizations: Theory and research considerations. New York, NY: Routledge. Jackson, M. C. (2003). Systems thinking: Creative holism for managers. West Sussex: John Wiley & Sons. Pojasek, R. B. (2005). Improving processes: The traditional approach versus the systems approach. Environmental Quality Management. 91 – 100. 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