A History of Management Thought, Cybernetics, and Systems Theory in Management - Essay Example

Reflective Journal Name University Affiliation Introduction to management: Managers and Managing This is one of the modules that really changed my perspective on the whole issue of management. I had the perception that skill and some inborn expertise is all that one needed in the management of the organizations functions. However later on I came to realise that it takes more than that through the experience I got in this module. I learnt that the management involves four processes. According to Samson and Daft, 2012, Management involves the process of planning, organizing, leading and controlling. Planning entails the definition of goals for the future performance of the organization (Samson & Daft, 2012).This means that one has to take account of the environmental, social, political and the economic aspects that may affect the planning process. According to Miles, 2012,Organizing refers to the assignment of duties to particular individuals, giving each department a task to perform and allocating the resources. Leading entails that the leader influences the employees to meet the organizational goals and the objectives. This may be through the communication of the cultural values and the communication of goals that makes the employees want to achieve their best. Controlling means that the employees are monitored closely so that any errors can be corrected to ensure that people are on track to achieving the set goals. This new experience helps me in my campus leadership. I shall integrate the four concepts in my leadership skills. I shall also apply these concepts in planning for my studies to ensure that the desired success is achieved. In future I shall apply these concepts while dealing with my subordinates in the business organization. I shall ensure that consistency is maintained in the use of the concepts. If I am in a managerial position in any organization, I shall introduce these perspectives in dealing with managerial issues. The success of the application of these concepts therefore lays in the realization of the organizations goals. This shall be despite the changes in the systems that surround the business environment. The systems shall not change anything because the planning process has been effectual in maintaining them The History of management I read a module on the evolution of management thinking. I realised that there is a lot of things concerning management that I did not know due to the variety of lessons that I learnt. Firstly I learnt that management has got four perspectives (Witzel, 2012).These are the view points at which people develop ideas on the issue of management. The four perspectives are classical, humanistic, management science and the systems and contingency perspectives ( Samson & Daft,2012). These are however only tools in the evolution of management since in the earlier days the focus was only in the internal aspects of the management structure. This has majorly been in contrast to the systems theory whereby the management has been an inclusion of both the external and the internal focus of management (Wallis, 2009). I learnt that we all need these earlier perspectives in the management of firms today. This is because they provide a framework in which the management concepts are built upon. They assist the managers in the organization and the designing of their companies. In module one I learnt that management is difficult and this new perspectives help me in the simplifying of the management process. This is because each perspective of management focuses on one given issue of management. The experience of learning the evolution of management helps me to acknowledge the fact that learning is a lifelong process. This is because the early theorist thought that they had discovered the best theories only to be analysed by others and the points of weakness being found out. This also has taught me to focus on the integration of many aspects in the design and organisation of any company so as to solve both internal and external problems. This shall be in the involvement of every stakeholder and individual employees in the organization. In future if ever I am in the formation committee of any business organisation, I shall ensure that the design has incorporated as many perspectives as possible to seal any loopholes that might be there. The success of this shall be the minimal number of issues that shall arise in the management of the business. Managing ethics, social responsibility and organisational culture According to Samson and Daft, 2012, ethics refer to the moral principles that govern the behaviour of a person or a group of people in a given organization. As I learnt in the module of communication, every action that we take in our lives influences the lives of those whom we are directly or indirectly interacting with. In the matter of ethics standards are set as to what is considered as wrong and what is considered as right in the different organizations. This however coupled with a lot of conflicts since morals vary according to the cultural background that we have been raised in. The law however provides an equal parameter for analyzing what is good and what is bad. The lesson that I learnt in this module is the management of the organization through various perspectives. According to Samson and Daft, 2012, there are four perspectives of management ethics: utilitarian, individual, moral rights and justice. The integration of the four ethical principles is important in the decision making of organizations. This will in turn prevent the continuity of the ad hoc ethics that are based on the judgment of one individual person. This will help me in future and also currently in the management of the different stakeholders in a given organization. Before a decision is made I shall ensure that it looks into the well being of the different individuals involved. At the end of the day it shall be as the utilitarian perspective suggests for the good of all. The success of the inclusion of the four perspectives in the decision making process shall lie entirely on the effect that the decisions shall have on individuals. This shall be noted during the face to face interactions, through completing an online survey of the consumers as well as the stakeholders’ perspective on the decisions that have been made in particular occasions. The law in a particular country shall also be used in the gauging of how ethically well an organisation is being managed. While dealing with my friends an ethical decision shall be viewed as is mutually beneficial to us. . Motivation Gallup, 2013, indicates that more than one third of India’s actively disengaged employees’ experienced anger and stress the previous day. This therefore implies that the motivation to work for such employees may be very minimal. The concept of motivation involves the act of improving the performance of an individual or a group and therefore ultimately improving the performance of an entire organization in terms of productivity. Motivation arouses in us the persistence and the enthusiasm of performing a specific task. The lesson that I learnt in this module is how the different motivational theories can be used in the stirring up of employees to raise into productivity levels. The rewards acquired may be from within that is intrinsic or from other people that is extrinsic rewards. One such theory is the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (Jerome, 2013) Here I learnt that individuals have different psychological needs and therefore the needs are to be meet are different (Goble, 2004). Herzberg suggests that people have got different issues that he termed as “hygiene factors” that are differently satisfied .McClelland need theory indicates that the three motives for the performance of the individuals are the need for achievement, affiliation and need for power (Daft, 2014). Equity theory relates to fairness at work while expectancy theory relates to the choice of an individuals’ action in relation to what may happen in the future. These theories shall help me in the later life in my life as an organizational leader. These will go a long way in the motivation of the employees and therefore influencing the productivity of the organization. The implementation of these motivational theories shall be founded on the incorporation of them as it seems fit. For example the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs shall be incorporated especially to employees in the organization that are psychologically different areas. The measure of the achievement of these factors shall be in the rate of productivity in the organization. This however shall not be the only measure since for the success or lack of it, but shall be an inclusion of many other factors such as the employees’ skills and abilities. Team work A team basically means a group of more than one person. This means that the group has certain qualities that are similar in all the members. The qualities as I learnt in the module are: shared goals, regular meetings, shared leadership roles as well as the single collective outcome. According to West, 2012, teams may be functional or dysfunctional according to the leadership that is in place. I learnt that teams are different from the groups that are formed (Katzenbach& Smith, 1995). These differences arise due to the complexities that are concerned with the achievements of each group of people. A team achieves more than a group. Formation of teams is the new management tool. A team I learnt may even have shared leadership with a similar group. This means that the properly managed teams effectively meet the objectives of the organization and the individual needs of the members. The whole experience of this module means that it effectively meets the needs of the individual members. This calls for the continuity in the process of grouping people in the organization so that together they can achieve a given task and perform more effectively. According to me teams are more than the hierarchical groupings, rather they focus on the attainment of a particular goal and therefore they are vision focused. I shall use the teams experience in the various groups to bring into being the different organizations parts. Firstly it shall be used in the student leadership to make sure that the members are functioning actively rather than being silent in groups. In my future career as a human resource manager I shall group people into various teams. Each team shall have its own set of goals and objectives to perform. The team leaders shall be carefully selected. This means that each individual member shall look into making the excellence of the team to be more than in the other teams. The team that shall perform best shall be recognized so as to stir up some sort of competition. The success of the team shall be measured in terms of the achievement of the set objectives. Communication in organizations Before I learnt about this module I had a different perspective altogether of what communication in organizations may entail. My perception was that of simply passing information from one person to another individual who may be affected by the specific information .I learnt that communication is much more than the words that we speak and that it is more than passing words, because communication influences the person that we are communicating to and therefore is also responsible for the building of the relationships between the different parties communicating (Samson & Daft, 2012) What struck me most in this lesson is that there are various things that influences the way we communicate with each other (Miller, 2014). This is said to be due to our personality type: the perception that we have about others and also the perception that we have about them, the channels that we use for our learning, the conflict resolution styles, the stress levels and the energy that we got at a particular time as well as the leadership skills that are possessed by the different leaders. This means to me that the same message can be communicated by different people and the recipients get them as being different messages. The different departmental heads may be given the same message to deliver but the employees in the different section of the management gets different things altogether. This experience is very important in my life as it helps me to ensure that I remain sober during every communication moment. As a leader in school I will manage the above mentioned issues so that they do not influence my personal interactions with others. As a leader in future in my career, I shall ensure the timeliness of every piece of information that has been passed across. If a head of a particular sections seem to be stressed up then I shall shelve that information until they relax a bit before passing the information on. The achievement of this goal shall be in the knowledge that the information passed across has been acted upon accordingly. This shall be the mark of success in my communication activities with my colleagues in the work place and friends in life. Coaching I learnt that traditionally employees could get on the job training. This means that the employees could acquire the skills and the expertise through the training they acquired from the job they had already. This presently has been replaced by coaching of the new members. According to Wilson, 2011, coaching is the act in which the employees directly receive the coaching from the employer so that the employees can get to know the realities of the workplace and therefore consequently remove any barrier in the optimal performance in the organizations. I learnt of the different groups in which as a human resource manger I can actively perform the coaching practice. Firstly it shall be the group that is not consistent in good performance, secondly shall be the employees that are poor time managers, coaching employees through the organizations structural, organizational and cultural practice and finally coaching the staff to follow the right protocols. The experience that I have learnt shall be very important in my career in future. As a human resource manager I shall ensure that the staff members are continually coached into what is expected of them. This shall eliminate any barrier to optimum performance in the organization. Every speech I offer shall be guided towards continued performance in the organization. The new employees shall be the target of most of my speeches. This means that there shall be specific timings that shall be allocated to the audience of the employees to me. I shall also incorporate the coaching leadership style into my leadership in the campus. I shall take in the new students through the process of knowing the campus at large. This shall entail continual walks and notifying them of any new development in the industry. The success of the coaching process shall be seen in the continual improvement in the performance of the particular employees. This means that the employees shall be gauged on a continual basis to assess whether they have gained anything from the coaching process. The productivity rate shall be used as measure of performance. References Daft, R .(2014) The Leadership Experience. Australia: Cengange Learning Gooble, G. F. (2004) The Third Force: The Psychology of Abraham Maslow. Maurice Basset Publishing Jerome, N (2013) Application of the Maslow’s hierarchy of need theory; Impacts and implications on organizational culture, human resource and Employee’s performance. International Journal of Business and Management Invention ISSN (Online): 2319 –8028, ISSN (Print): 2319 –801X www.ijbmi.org Volume 2 Issue 3 ǁ March. 2013ǁ PP. 39-45 Miller, K (2014) Organizational Communication: Approaches and Processes. Australia: Cengange Learning Miles A.J (2012) Management and Organization Theory. San Francisco: John Wiley and Sons Samson, D,. & Daft, L.R (2012) Management (4th Asia Pacific, ed.) Australia: Cengange Learning Wallis, S.E (2009) Cybernetics and Systems Theory in Management: Tools, views and Advancements USA. IGI West, A. M (2012) Effective Team Work from Organizational Research. London: BlacksWell Wilson, C (2011) Best Practice in Performance Coaching Witzel, M. (2012) A History of Management Thought. USA: Routledge Read More