Different Types of Management - Assignment Example

Student Name Tutor Title: Different Types of Management Institution Date Different Types of Management Question 1 Which interpersonal role, if any, was Adam Border exhibiting? Justify your answer. According to Ahmad, Basir and Kitchen (2010) Interpersonal skills refer to mental and communication algorithms applied during social communication and interaction to achieve certain effects and results. Robbins and Hunsaker (2003) have synthesized interpersonal skills to include leadership styles, process of communication and motivation where under leadership, interpersonal role include handling conflicts, running meetings, team building and promoting change. On the other hand, process of communication entails sending messages, listening and providing feed back while motivation encompasses among other things, goal settings, clarifying expectations, persuading and empowering. Adam Border is a team leader in the sale department and therefore need to uplift the team morale apart from nurturing and maintain high rapport with his team. Again, it has been reported by Magnus (2009) that in any organization, the success of achieving its set goals depend largely on the manager’s communication ability and skills. Elsewhere, Brunette and Farr-Wharton (2004) have argued that in an era of apparent constant change and erosion of corporate loyalty, interpersonal skills are vital to promote employer attachment to the organization. Adam’s success may be attributed in part on the commitment of his team which is enhanced by good interpersonal skills. In summing up, Adam Border is exhibiting leadership, communication and motivation aspects of interpersonal role in his current position as a line manager in the sales department. Which decisional role, if any, was Adam Border exhibiting? Justify your answer. Adam Border can be said to exhibiting some decision roles which according to Mintzberg entails entrepreneur, disturbance handler, resource allocator and negotiator. In the decision roles, Adam need to adopt an entrepreneur role while trying to improve his department as well as adapting to changing conditions’, sometimes dealing with a poor cash-flow position, reorganizing a weak department or looking after the various stages of an acquisition. Again from Mintzber definition, Adam Border may need to act as a disturbance handler, to events and change beyond his foresight or control for instance a strike, a failure of a key supplier among other things. As resources allocator, Adam has to decide in how best to deploy his own time while as negotiator, he is responsible for all the variety of decisions involved in dealing with other individuals but most importantly with concern to a difficult sales contract and also may be attracting a new star player to the team. As a first line manager, what managerial skill(s) are important for Adam? What skill(s) are least important? First-line managers are the lowest level in the organization’s management team and they oversee and supervise the work of operating employees. Hales (2005, p. 473) notes that a first-line manager as a manager “to whom non-managerial employees report”. He not only addresses the increasing responsibility given to first-line managers as a change from being operational supervisors to becoming ‘team- leaders/co-ordinators’ or ‘business unit managers’ but also possess delegated authority to take decisions. Technical skills are the mainly essential type of skills for line managers. These are skills which provide an individual with knowledge to carry out particular tasks inside a particular work field (Byrd et al., 2004) they are of paramount important for lower-level managers who mainly oversee and be accountable for performing the center daily work of the organization. As a supervisor, he is not expected to be fantastic about conceptual skills but on how production process is carried out. Time management skills cuts across all levels of management the ability to priotise work, work efficiently and to delegate appropriately (Waddell, 2005). Multi-tasking is yet another important skill of a successful leader in any organization. Managers at all levels are very much likely to handle or perform multi-tasks at any time. Hence, the capability of multi-task handling will certainly facilitate him to carry out those tasks. Conceptual skills top the list of managerial skills considered of little important to line managers, however they add in significance at the middle-management level. At the top management level, theoretical and plan skills and human skills are particularly precious, other than there is comparatively slight need for scientific skills (Yasin Olum, 2004). In his job, Adam needs to undertake which basic management functions? As a first-line managers Adam has an unquestioned crucial role in implementing basic management functions. This functions according to Den Hartog, Boselie & Paauwe, (2004) forms key aspects of Human Resource management and practices which include among others, planning, performance leading and controlling and staffing. For Adam, planning may entail choosing tasks and objectives and the procedures to attain them particularly in his department. This requires to some greater extent, decision-making notably choosing future courses of action from a range of options. Staffing on the other hand, involves replacing, and keeping filled, vacant positions in the organization structure. This can be done by first naming personnel necessities; inventorying the individuals accessible; and employing, choosing, among other things. In leading Adam need to influence his team so that they can contribute to organization and group goals. This will to a great extent depend on Adam’s interpersonal skills but most importantly, as seen in the previous section, leading involves motivation, leadership styles and process of communication. Question 2 How would you characterize Jed’s leader style? Use at least two leadership theories/models in your answer. Jed seems to exhibit a transactional type of leadership strictly motivated by performance of his department. He wants his section to be regarded as the best, most efficient and best-performing in the store. This type of leadership is characterized by the motivation to retain constancy instead of endorsing modification inside a company by means of accepted financial and social exchanges that attain particular objectives for both the directors and their supporters (Lussier & Achua, 2004, p. 358). Transactional leaders are those who “guide or motivate their followers in the direction of established goals by clarifying role and task requirements” (Robbins, 2003: 343). It is also revealed that Jed spends most of his time planning and scheduling what needs to be done, assigning tasks to the staff in his section, giving directions, and emphasizing sales targets and deadlines. This according to Bryant (2003) is in a bid to support steady performance from supporters that permits them to achieve accepted objectives. Sometimes leaders like Jed are ready to do anything including even utilization of incentives and penalties to encourage performance, thus making the leader-supporter association an economic exchange deal (Barnett, 2003) Nevertheless, in a small extent, Jed can be said to show transformational leadership which basically draws from deeply held personal value systems. One of Jed’s values is to see good performance of his organization through excelling in his department. Again, transformative leadership put a lot of emphasis’ on organizational goals and organizational change by propagating innovative values and looking for substitutes to present planning. Discuss the issue of power as it relates to Jed’s situation. Relative to organizations, Cangemi (1992: 499) asserted: "Power is the individual’s capacity to move others, to entice others, to persuade and encourage others to attain specific goals or to engage in specific behavior; it is the capacity to influence and motivate others”. Folger, Poole, and Stutman (1993: 69) defined power as "the capacity to act effectively”. Arguably, Jed needs power to accomplish the organizational set goals. Influential leaders manipulate supporters to perform as per their want them to. Galbraith (1983) said an influential leader will be evaluated by how successfully he or she influenced his or her inferiors to agree to solutions to problems that led to organizational goals. In Jed’s situation however, there is need to control his use of power. He needs to adopt a controlled and effective use of power which entails care about his subordinates and avoid dominating them. It has been argued that unethical use of power may help a leader achieve the organizational goal but in a short-term effect, but over the long run this behavior will cause the leader to become a detriment to the organization and force the organization to move against him or her. Use Fiedler’s contingency theory of leadership to analyze the appropriateness of Jed’s behavior in the given situation. Contingency Theory of Leadership This theory holds that the most effective organizational structural design is where the structure fits the contingencies. Here, the success of the leader is a function of various contingencies in the form of subordinate, task, and/or group variables. The effectiveness of a given pattern of leader behavior is contingent upon the demands imposed by the situation. These theories stress using different styles of leadership appropriate to the needs created by different organizational situations. One of the proponents of contingency theory is Fiedler’s whose strategy departs from feature and behavioral models by stressing that group performance is contingent on the leader’s psychological orientation. So how does Fiedler find out if a circumstance is positive, average, or adverse? He uses three conditions generating situational favorableness: (1) leader-inferior associations, (2) position authority, and (3) task structure. When the leader has an excellent association with the majority of individuals, has high position authority, and the task is structured, the circumstances is incredibly positive. If the leader has a poor associations with workers, has low position authority, and the task is comparatively unstructured, the circumstances is incredibly adverse. Fiedler postulates that three important situational dimensions are assumed to influence the leader’s effectiveness which includes group performance which relates to the confidence the subordinates have in the leader. It also includes the loyalty shown the leader and the leader’s attractiveness. Secondly, it relates to the task structure which include the degree to which the followers’ jobs are routine as contrasted with non routine and lastly the leader’s power position including the rewards and punishments typically associated with the position, the leader’s formal authority (based on ranking in the managerial hierarchy), and the support that the leader receives from supervisors and the overall organization (House and Aditya, 1997). Question 3 Which level of social responsibility best describes the company’s current operations? According to Paul Hawken (1993) social responsibility refers to a company’s strategy to respond to stakeholders economic, legal, ethical or discretionary expectations concerning social responsibility. However, according to Peter and Lukman(2007) Social responsibility entails safe, respectful, liberal, equi-table and equal human development, contributing to humanity and the environment . Social Responsibility can be categorized reactive, defensive, accommodative and proactive. Reactive is when the company does less to what is expected of them by the society whereas defensive is when the company admits problems but does less to what is expected of them by the community. On other hand, accommodative is when the firm admits problems and also does what the society expects of them but proactive is when the anticipate problems and does more than what is expected of them. Some of social responsibilities that can be undertaken by this company may include acts of philanthropy, for instance donation of sales, donation of products, employee volunteerism, fund raising or charity events, school sponsorship among other things. This firm could also consider good business practices like reduced energy consumption, recycling, upholding of human rights, awards for performance, good customer and employee relations. Another worthy option to adopt is branding. Many companies world over have recognized a corporate distinctiveness by means of trademark that has turn out to be a crucial peak of their achievement and competitive advantage (Alessia ,Sybil & Florence 2009). This company could implement numerous fair trade and extra social matters which can be instrumental in differentiating the firm’s offerings and allow accountability build outstandingly in its corporate distinctiveness in the brains of customers. The final one to consider is Product-Related Activities for instance energy efficiency and Product quality. Though it might be expensive to do so, in the long run, it will be economical as it will foster good will in the host community as well as favours from the government. What environmental vision do you communicate to your task force? In other words, what social responsiveness strategy will you adopt at Rosewall Pty? Rosewall Pty’s guiding principles should put more emphasis on the importance of responsible environmental practices. The firm should consider environmental and social issues as a component its policy and business operations. More emphasis should be laid upon minimizing environmental pollution and impacts of the firm’s supply chain but bearing in mind the long-term creation of value for all stakeholders. Can sustainability be economically viable for Rosewall Pty? Sustainability can be defined as a business approach planned to coerce permanent corporate development and productivity by authorizations the insertion of ecological and social matters in the industry model. Contrary to corporate social responsibility that retroactively tackles matters, sustainability entails an onward course. This means that CSR search to the precedent events of an organization whereas sustainability looks onward by altering the character of the organization. Social responsibility does not in any way benefit the company financially but if the firm opts to pursue accommodative and proactive social responsibility as opposed to reactive and proactive, then it will benefit the society. This can be economically viable in the long run. Sustainability is quite ideal for Rosewall Pty for a number of reasons. As argued by Paul Hawken (1993) in a restorative economy, the least expensive means of manufacturing a product should be the most environmentally benign and constructive means. This could be economical in the long run because Rosewall Pty would use inexpensive raw materials and therefore maximize profit. Again, with the advance in technology, it is possible to reduce resource and energy consumption. According to Paul Hawken, it is simply making equipment last twice as long with about half the capital. Again, corporate social responsibility (CSR) actions have the capacity to make numerous separate types of value for consumers and therefore will be beneficial to the company in the long run. It is the consumer view of this value that mediates the association between CSR actions and succeeding economic performance. References Ahmad S.Z., Basir M. 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Milton, Australia: John Wiley & Sons Yasin Olum (2004) Modern Management Theories and practicesbeing A Paper presented at the 15th East African Central Banking Course, Held On12th July 2004, At Kenya School of Monetary Studies. Read More