Stewarts Demands Constraints and Choices Model - Case Study Example

BT3027 - Managing in an IS Environment Mintzberg's Managerial Roles: ALEX Alex as a manager plays various important roles while working in the restaurant. The roles are basically Interpersonal Roles and Informational Roles. Alex plays his interpersonal role by doing paper work for office and dealing with the legal documents. He also does some external work like dealing with the local banks for the money purpose. Alex is also involved in dealing with the customers and listening to their complaints. Alex spent his time on various forms of paperwork: completing weekly trading reports, records of takings, ledgerbook, staff time sheets and stock records, and checking delivery notes, price lists, invoices, and so on. Alex has also engaged in monitoring the daily routine work so as to make sure that all things are done in a standardised way. Alex is also involved in interaction with people in form of scheduled meetings to discuss the daily issues with the regional manager. Alex also communicates through telephone conversations usually with suppliers about orders and deliveries. The unscheduled meetings are mainly either brief exchanges with customers as they pay their bill or they are interruptions from staff - requests for information or assistance. Alex doesn't perform any type of decisional role in his job. Because his job is predominantly one of routine paperwork and helping out' to the staff members. ROSE Rose who is a manager of domestic service unit is responsible for the cleaning and housekeeping of a large National Health hospital plays various managerial roles while on job. Rose is involved in a little bit of office paper work to manage the hospitals legal documents and other important documents. She is involved in lot of external work for the hospital. She spends a significant amount of her time out of the office, either at meetings or touring the hospital, speaking to domestics, nurses or administrative staff and checking the progress and quality of work. She also plays her informational role while monitoring the day to day activities of her staff members that all the work is done accordingly and the quality is maintainted well. She also helds scheduled meetings like committee meetings, policy meetings or negotiations, involving a wide variety of people, and unscheduled meetings or conversations - with domestic, nursing and administrative staff. As a decisional role she is engaged in negotiations with the different authority levels of the hospital and is involved in seeking out people to obtain or give information, to deal with problems and to request or give assistance. Stewart's Demands, Constraints and Choices' Model: ALEX Alex is bounded by certain demands that he has to fulfil while on job that includes Ordering and controlling materials, Controlling money, Monitoring operational performance, Maintaining company quality standards, Planning and maintaining staff levels. These are some of the most important demands of Alex job. Along with it he has certain contraints given the number of rules and procedures within which alex has to work like standard menus and prices, methods of food preparation and presentation and etc. That's why he make choices according to situation and does spend much of his time in office doing paper work. ROSE Rose is bounded my certain important tasks that she has to do which includes Planning and ensuring staff level, Good industrial relations, Standard of cleanliness, Cost of domestic service function and etc. Although there are many constraints that she faces in day to day activities like Atmospheric crisis and uncertainity, restructuring issues is what must peoccupy her she has many restictions from within the organizations from different factors. But although she makes considerable choices about how she handles it. She chooses to make the job people-oriented and political', trying to reconcile competing interests, ameliorating the impact of change on domestic staff. The Internal Environment ALEX Alex is influenced by many factors of the organizations internal environment. The internal environment of the organization is the atmosphere in which the company is operating and the different attitudes and behaviour of peoples wihin the organization. It also includes the rules and procedures and the organizational structure as well. The first and the most important factor is that his staff members considers that the two activities training and entrepreneurial should be performed by Alex where as Alex doesn't considers this to be a part of his job. Alex is also influenced by the strict rules and procedures that he has to follow that doesn't allow Alex to go for creativity and that unfortunately hurts the entrepreneurial activity for the organization, which can ultimately hurt organizational performance. ROSE Rose who is working in hospital has some direct effect on his job from the internal environment of the hospital. The first reason is the dynamic changes in the funding and structure of the organization which makes uncertainity for Rose to perform her duties effectively and efficiently. Rose is working in the domestic service unit which is strongly unionised and staff are fearful of, and opposed to, the impending changes. Due to these important changes it is very difficult for Rose to organize, plan, and control. On the other hand a diverse set of people have very high expectations from her from the lower level as well as from the higher level management which ultimately comes in conflicting pressures from the other departments of the organization also. Due to this increased pressures she is continously in stress because everyone is expecting that she will give benefits to the organization as well as to the members. The External Environment ALEX The external environment of an organization includes factors such as Customers, Suppliers, Competitors and Pressure groups. Customers are one of the most important factor which can influence Alex in terms of his daily routine job and the type of duties assigned to him. Customers are the most important asset for any organization because we make profits by sellling our goods or services to our customers. If the organization doesn't considers the need of its customers, the customers can switch to other good or service which can harm the companys image as well as revenues. Suppliers can also play an important role if Alex doesn't communicate properly with its suppliers then the delivery of goods and other materials is not going to be constant. Supplies of materials continously and properly is very important for Alex as he is running a restuarent in which ordering and controlling of goods at a proper time is very important. If supply of goods is not done at proper time it can effect the quality and standards of the restuarent which will create a bad image in the minds of the customers. ROSE Rose also faces certain factors of an organizations external environment which includes the legal conditions and sociocultural conditions. Since Rose is the manager of a domestic services unit responsible for the cleaning and housekeeping of a large National Health hospital she might faces certain legal conditions by the state government which can influence the work of Rose like the provision of domestic services, however, continues to be subject to stringent regulations, imposed by the health authority, relating to hygiene standards. Sociocultural conditions has an immediate impact on Rose job as now a days man people are becoming health concious and they require consultation regarding their diet to balance their nutritions. EFFECTIVENESS Rose is more effective as compared to Alex in terms of the tasks they do. Although the nature of job is different although we can analyze that Rose is handling her work more accurately and intelligently as compared to Alex. Alex does a job which is based on routine work and there is no much creativity or different situations around him where as Rose is facing with a dynamic and complex environment around her as the structure of her hospital is changing. The type of job she is doing has lots of political issues and Legal conditions as well. She also co-ordinates with her staff members and give all the necessary information regarding the nature of job. Rose also faces a situation that Alez doesn't that is the staff members of Rose have no unity and they are strongly unionised and staff are fearful with the continous changes. DEFINITION Effectiveness is basically defined as completing activities so that all the organizational goals are achieved within the time that has been set. Effectiveness is "Doing the right things". Through variuos work programs these goals are achieved. Management is not concerned only with getting the activities done but also doing with efficiency that is getting maximum outputs from minimum inputs as doing things right. There are many other evidences which can prove that who is effective and efficient and who is not. MANAGERIAL SKILLS Grouping activities on the basis of product or service or customer flow. Because each process requires different skills, process departmentalization allows homogenous activities to be categorized. For example, the applicants might need to go through several departments namely validation, licensing and treasury, before receiving the driver's license. Owing to the complexity of tasks and the competitive environment in which organisations operate, they often use a combination of the above-mentioned methods in departmentalization. Managers also need to know that what their competitors are doing in the industry. They can't ignore competition around them in this dynamic world. Managers need to be informed that what they are doing in terms of Product development, Pricing, Marketing strategies and many more things. DECISION MAKING AND LEADERSHIP Employee in organic type organizations require minimal formal rules and little direct supervision. Their high levels of skills and training and the support provided by other team members make formalization and tight managerial controls unnecessary. Decision making is the cognitive process leading to the selection of a course of action among variations. Every decision making process produces a final choice. It can be an action or an opinion. It begins when we need to do something but know not what. Therefore, decision making is a reasoning process which can be rational or irrational, can be based on explicit assumptions or tacit assumptions. Managers within organizations make decisions and permeates everything an organization does. Decisions are the means by which organizations turn ideas into action and can have a positive or a negative impact. Works Cited 1. L. Mullins. Essentials of Organizational Behavior. Pearson Education, 2006. 2. Stephen P. Robbins and Mary Coulter. Management. Prentice Hall, 2001. Read More