Knowledge and Perception of Management - Coursework Example

Individual Reflective Report Managers are people who are responsible for the supervision of the company’s or organization’s resources so that its goals are achieved. I discovered through my participation in the team work, that all the managers always work within contexts that both supports and constraints them. The managers’ comprehension, interpretation and interaction with these contexts often affect their performance at their places of work. It is a true fact therefore that only managers who are informed that each business is different and the forces used to interact must be unique perform better than others who don’t. Our team work was very effective because each member of our group gave diverse views about the various topics in our discussions and therefore from these, we learnt that Managers should be in position to identify and shape the forces so that the business is in position to perform better. My knowledge and perception about management changed throughout my course and the spirit of team work we had because I was able to better understand management as an academic discipline and was able to know the roles and responsibilities of a manager. I was also in position to know the different practicalities involved in running of a business and how I can be able to make sound decisions that can affect the business. Throughout the course, I was able to appreciate how the business environment operates and how the decision making process affected the day today running of many businesses. The course also provided me with an overview of the different functional parts of management (Williamson, 2003, p. 56). Managers should in position to know that factors that may lead to good performance of a business range from economic, political, social cultural, technological, environmental and political factors. Managers should also know that the negative economic conditions that may lead a company or business to undergo recession are factors like the low consumer confidence which leads to a decrease in consumption, an increase on the rivalry of the competitors and therefore leading to the shrinkage of available resources of a business. A decline in the per capita income for a business may also make a business to undergo recession. The knowledge I learnt from my course helped me to work in my team because it made me to be enlightened on what culture meant. The set of historically learned attitudes and meanings which were shared by the members of my team greatly influenced our material and non-material way of life. I was able to know that the members of my team came from different cultural backgrounds and therefore I knew that once each of our members shared culture, then it was easier for us to make good guidelines of how to handle business cases as we interacted. Our team members easily developed a common understanding and therefore, it was easier for us to perform our team work. On the other hand, it was very hard for our team to be integrated as a strong group because each one of the members had different cultural beliefs and attitudes ad therefore it was initial very hard for us to agree on some issues because each of our member had a different view of the various discussions we held. As time went by, we overcame our different cultural norms and we were able to agree over so many issues. I realized that to work better as a team, we had to uphold all the stages of cultural formation and thus we had to share our values and beliefs, norms, our individual and group behavior and lastly reinforce our outcomes into shared values. My knowledge and perceptions about management and the roles the manager plays changed because I was able to know that organizations can only be efficient when their managers reduce the resources that are input in order to produce the given output of the goods and services. Organizations can therefore excel only when its managers have chosen appropriate goals and aim to achieve them. I discovered that the effectiveness of any organization or business is determined by how appropriate the goals that managers opt to select and how determined they are to ensue that these goals are achieved. I learnt from our group work, that the work of the manager is to build businesses or enterprises which can be able to create value by availing people together so that they accomplish the desired common goals of an organization. A good manager is one who gets all his tasks done with the help of other people and the available resources (Williamson, 2003, p. 58). With the help of my group members we were able to know the meaning of management and its responsibility of building organizations which in turn create value. We as a team were able to agree on the concept of value which we discovered that when value is always added to resources when they are changed into goods or services which are more than the initial cost plus the cost of transforming them. Together with the members of my team, we were able to ascertain the 5 major responsibilities of management which we mentioned as: Planning-we ascertained that management deals with the general direction of the tasks to be done and that management was responsible for forecasting or predicting future trends, development of clear objectives and assessing the available resources for optimum performance. Organizing-we further ascertained that it was the obligation of the management to move abstract plans near to the realization through allocation of time and efforts by developing sound policies for the human resource managers and deciding the best resources that individuals will require. Leading- It is the responsibility of the management to generate efforts and commitment towards motivation of individuals and their teams. Controlling-The management should check on the progress of the company while at the same time comparing it with the plan and take corrective action where it is needed. My contribution to my team was that I advised them how the management of an organization reserves the right to control or manage the economic assets of a community and thereby agree to be held liable for the use of these assets. I also advised them bout how the society was entitled to assign control of its economic assets by accepting responsibility for holding the management of an organization to be responsible for the use of its economic assets. I really enjoyed the experience of working in a team because I discovered that managers do perform both generalist and specialist work and that the variation and diversity of the managerial duties often make different managers to perform the same job in a completely different manner. Through the spirit of team work, we were able to point the suites of a manager which we listed to as but not being limited to acting as the leader and head of any organizational unit, liaising the maintenance and formation of a network of business contacts, allocation of the business resources, handling of any disturbances that may arise in the business premises and maintenance of the workflows, negotiating, innovating, planning and controlling/directing the members of staff (Fine, 2009 p. 120). Creative or innovative thinking is a kind of thinking which leads to discovery of new novel approaches, insights, new perspectives, whole new means of comprehending and conceiving things. Our decision to combine our ideas was one of our major exercises in creative thinking. We decided to follow the steps of mankind’s creative and innovative breakthroughs. Creative thinking leads to production of things like poetry, dramatic literature, inventions, technical innovations and even new business ideas. The creative thinking strategies that we used were the adaptive and innovative. Our team did not value one style but instead focused on both the adaptive and innovative styles of creativity. We discussed how individuals within an organization can be able to work effectively together through capitalization on each team members’ strength rather than punishing one another because of personal differences. We all agreed that the innovators and the adaptors can only be able to join their creative talents if an atmosphere of trust and openness was created in the organization. This will propel the business enterprise to propel to success because people will be able to manifest their creativity and talents in a variety of ways and therefore, it was important that we used both styles of thinking strategies. Our planning tools and methods were aimed at planning our business plan from the start to the end. Therefore, we decided to use planning project tools like software (spreadsheets) and standardized methods. The hard economic times made us make use of some of the untested project planning tools through allocation of a number of resources to our business plan. I personally enjoyed the experience and gained a lot of skills and knowledge from my fellow team members. As a manager, I learnt that my duties will be to be strategist, a planner and thinker of the whole business and that planning ahead and thinking about the future direction of the business forms the core responsibilities of my position. We as a team discovered that we can work more efficiently and confidently than yesterday if we became more concerned with the efficacy, integrity and accountability of the related administrative and financial systems and the people who design, implement and utilize these important systems. I as an individual manager must therefore maintain high standards of responsibility, integrity and accountability so that to fulfill the goals of the organization. References: Fine, L. 2009. The SWOT Analysis: Using your Strength to overcome Weaknesses, Using Opportunities to overcome Threats. New York: Cheddar Press Ltd. Williamson D. 2003. Strategic management and Business Analysis. London: McGraw-Hill. Read More