Wednesday, October 19, 2011

PRINCIPLES OF MANAGEMENT APPLIED RESEARCH (PUT ORGANIZATIONAL NAME HERE)


INTRODUCTION

            Example: Park University is traditionally an “institution of higher learning committed to the pursuit of knowledge, to intellectual and social development and to work and serve within a non-sectarian Christian setting” (Park 1, 2010, p. 11)….. 
TRANSITION PARAGRAPH
Park University is conducting this research work related to management that includes such topics that help the organizations to improve their productivity in better way.
                                                                      BODY
            This research paper is related to management that covers lot of topics such as:  (a) diversity management, (b) ethical, social and legal responsibilities, (c) international business…,  (XXXXX & YYYY, 2009, p.  18).  

Diversity Management

Now a day’s Diversity management is become an important issue for managers. Diversity management is a strategy that is intended to foster and maintain a positive workplace environment (Google search). Usually human resource managers initiate it and department heads and supervisors try to manage it.  The idea of diversity management style is to encourage employees to feel free and comfortable their work places and develop an appreciation in particular areas such as race, gender, background, sexual orientation or any other factors that may not be shared by everyone working in the same area of the company. It can be adopted in different organizational environments and can be integrated with different management styles. For example if you are promoting recognition and acceptance of diversity among employees then hostile workplace  environment can be converted into welcoming environment where people feel free to communicate,  share and support to each other  in any task associated with job. This thing definitely helps in increasing the productivity level in an organization.
Now the question is what the benefit of diversity management program is. One of the main advantages of diversity management is that it helps to encourage the development of skills and talent among employees. Employees begin to feel valued and be ready to leave their comfort zones and enhance their skills for the benefit of departmental team and company as a whole.
                   Future leaders will define diversity management as "making quality decisions in the midst of differences, similarities, and tensions." This definition will allow them to deal with all kinds of discussions involving differences, similarities, and tensions and to see themselves as engaged in diversity management. Leaders cannot help becoming aware of the craft's ability to assist in unraveling and creatively conceptualizing complex situations. As a result, they will count on the craft when approaching any situation where diverse perceptions, purposes, people, or other differences create substantial complexity. This will be true not only when the issue is race and gender complexity, but also when the complexity is created by diversity mixtures such as customers, mergers and acquisitions, and differing geographic business locations. (R. Roosevelt Thomas Jr, source leader to leader)
               Basically what diversity do, it acknowledges and uses these inherent differences and move towards creativity and innovation for the better performances and competitive challenges. Diversity not only focuses on how people perceive themselves but also how they perceive people. This thing effects their interaction.
            Successful organizations recognize the need for immediate action and are ready and willing to spend resources on managing diversity in the workplace now. There are some benefits of workplace diversity are:
1- Increased adaptability
2- Broader service range
3- Variety of viewpoints
4- More effective execution
Some challenges are also mentioned here according to Josh Greenberg that are:
1-Communication
2-Resistance to change
3-Implementation of diversity in the workplace policies                               
4-Successful Management of Diversity in the Workplace
5-Assessment of diversity in the workplace
(By Josh Greenberg  is President of Alpha Measure, Inc. located in Boulder, Colorado.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/11053)
Ethical, Social, and Legal   Responsibilities
Legal responsibility:
            Whatever the business type, All companies are bond to fulfill all the responsibilities concerned with their legal issues and must follow the law, which impact organizations planning process. Operate its functions soundly; every company needs to familiarize with its external factors that govern the industry and having impact on company’s operations. A issue presented in the HII case which is dependable on Black’s tough responsibilities of fiduciary and contractual duties by “diverting to another company a valuable opportunity that properly belonged to the corporation” (Delaware, 2004, p.1). Black and his co working companies had earned much of their decisive benefits from “Hollinger International’s sale of newspapers from 1998 to 2002” (West head and Doolittle, 2007). A report shows that to transfer HII corporate assets, Black and his associates “unable to reveal material information in required space with the SEC, that they “flimsy corporate books and records” (p.4), and “badly failed to precisely reproduce transactions”. Securities legislation acquires the representation of certain agreed information concerning the business and affairs related to public companies. This adds cyclic financial statements, trading reports the insider reports; an annual information form (AIF), press releases and material change reports (Canadian Securities Institute, 2008).
Social responsibility:
To flourish in the public’s eye, a company needs to know certain social responsibilities that are necessary for survival. It must know where it should add value beyond the products and services it offers. Let take it as example a company can fulfill the social responsibilities by aiding important causes and by doing charity work (Bateman and Stair, 2006). HII have worked a lot in charitable projects but under Black’s management, however, the chief executive’s concerns and moves are dubious as he was misusing the funds from the very company he was making donations with (Fabrikant, 2004).
Ethical responsibility
While discussing the planning process, organizations set some guiding principles in order to preside over their business’s practices and to safe guard the company’s concerns, employees and shareholders. Generally this is done by generating fair codes of conduct. The Caux ethics is a set of rules especially intended to help organizations set up basic rules for ethical practice. The first rule is to the accountability of businesses beyond shareholders toward stakeholders and states that “Businesses have a role to play in improving the lives of all their customers, employees, and shareholders by sharing with them the wealth they have created” (Bateman, Stair, 2006, p. 175). Black was unable to value the basic rule of HII’s ethical responsibility by selling one of its valuable assets, the American Trucker, to another corporation and transferring the US$ 2 million non-competition agreement payment to a related entity, because of this straightly getting benefits from the transaction at the cost of HII’s shareholders (Boritz and Robinson, 2004).
HII had a legal and ethical code of conduct set from the start but it has some drawback as it did not offer proper security to the organization and its shareholders. The concerned set of rules called the code of conduct was established on November 29, 2004 and “offers much details to employees, officers and the most important directors in the company’s ethical principles in a number of areas” (Para 2, SEC). Few of the guidelines are concerned with, regarding the transaction of party, security and proper use of assets, and reports generated by the public company. Latest amendment shows concerns with unethical manners in such a way that it is tough to influence the law in order to behave unfairly.

International Business

It describes all transactions that are doing between two or more regions, countries and nations privately or publically. Here we can take the example of multinational companies who has the big market of products and services. They are performing their functions globally. In international business, legal, political, social issues are really important. Because every country has its own culture, laws and issues related to politics. When companies are operating their function across the border they kept in mind all these issues for clean and smooth transactions. 

General Planning and Strategic Planning

                   In simple words, strategic planning determines where an organization is going over the next year or more, how it's going to get there and how it'll know if it got there or not. In strategic planning, the focus is usually on the entire organization, while in general or business planning the focus is usually on a particular product, service or program. In strategic planning, organizations used different models and approaches according to their business nature. It’s all depend on  the nature of the organization's leadership, culture of the organization, complexity of the organization's environment, size of the organization and expertise of planners. Planning is an important part of business that helps to run business operations in smooth way. As an author says:
“When a planner speaks of implementing goals rationally, he implies that it is possible to demonstrate logically and experimentally the relationship between the proposed means ad the ends they are intended to further.”
(Alan A. Altshuler, planner, The City Planning Process (1965))
Organizing Work and Synergism
Operational Synergy is a concept used to describe the state of an organization when the people and processes work together to continuously expand the ability of the organization to deliver products and services to its customers, while maintaining competitiveness (www.bottomlinesolutions.com)
The term operational is used for what is required to produce. The term Synergy used when the organization diverse skill and capabilities are fully integrated so that their interaction produce great results that are more than individuals contributions..
                                           Organization Structure and Chart
Every organization has its own structure. It has certain guidelines to run its business. It has some rule and regulation to follow the right direction. Organization chart help in understanding the roles of managers and their sub-ordinates. Who will contact to whom, who will report to whom, these things can easily understand through the charts.
Different organization follows the different charts such as hierarchal, horizontal or vertical.
Every chart has its own limitations and boundaries. So it depends on organization nature that which type of chart is suitable for it.

Work Team Utilization

In simple words work team activities are those activities that are properly organized in team  and controlled if you want to get required outputs from work. The main work team definition means that it is a group of people who share the same aspiration to common work team goals, and need to effectively collaborate in order to satisfy all points of work team plan (www.taskmanagementguide.com). In order to design good work team plan, all group members work together at the plan and with their collaboration organization get success. The main point is, building of team work.. These work team building activities include describing and assigning work team roles that mean a set of responsibilities and level of seniority that allows every work team member to take his/her specific position according to individual professional skills and ambitions(www.taskmanagementguide.com) . For proper utilization of team member’s skills, there is a need of strong leader. If leader is strong, he will definitely take good input from all team members.
                                                                            Staffing
The managerial function of staffing involves manning the organization structure through proper and effective selection, appraisal and development of the personnel’s to fill the roles assigned to the employers/workforce.(www.managementstudyguide.com).
As an managerial function, it is most important than other functions. Staffing is a continuous activity. It is performed by all managers. It’s also depending on company size, qualification and skills of managers. If it is small company then top managers perform this activity. Usually this sort of activity is performed by personnel department.

                                                      Employee Training and Development

In globalization, organizations need to enhance the knowledge and skills of their employees timely. Its not only necessary for new hires but also for current employees too. The basic things that cover in employee training are: Communication, computer skills, customer services, diversity, ethics, human relations, safety, sexual harassment and quality initiates. It is not necessary that all organization do the same practice. Wherever they feel lacking in their employees, they will conduct seminars or workshops relating to that issue. This thing helps their employees to enhance their skills and also motivating them to step forward in their areas.

Motivating Employees

“Motivation refers to the process by which a person’s efforts are energized, directed and sustained toward attaining a goal” (Mary Coulter).There is lot of early theories regarding employee motivation. Each person has its own desires and satisfactions. Some motivated by rewards, some are by appreciation. There is a need of to understand employee’s psychology. What they need, what they required, what are their expectations toward their jobs? It’s the sign of good manager who can easily understand his employees. But it’s not so easy to understand your employee. It may be situation that employee does not wish to do a work or he is not interested in doing challenging task. For such type of people it is necessary for manager to understand the motivational requirements of such group including diverse employees, contingent workers and low-skilled minimum wage employees.

Leadership and Management

Leaders are those people who can influence others and leadership is what leaders do. Management involves coordinating overseeing the work activities of others so that their activities are completed efficiently and effectively (by coulter). There are lot of leadership theories that define leaders in different way. There is a close relationship between management and leadership. It’s the duty of managers to overseeing the activities of their employees. What the leaders do, motivate their employees, encourage them, and provide them a proper guideline to achieve a certain goal. Basically both are performing same task. But the main difference is about skills and qualities. Every leader can be a manager but every manager cannot be a leader. It is not necessary that every manager has the leadership skills. But leaders have the management skills too, to handle their employees or subordinates in better way.

Managing Conflict and Stress

Now a day’s stress is becoming an important issue in organizations. Lot of conflicts occur among employees because of different reasons that become the reason of stress and frustration. It is the responsibility of good leaders and managers to solve the conflicts among employees to reduce the stress. In organizations, this culture reduces the productivity level. Due to stress employees could not put their efforts in completing their task that will be against the organization goals.

Managing Change

In this global environment, organizations are facing quick changes like never before. Globalization provides the opportunities of increasing markets as well as competition.
But the real task is how to manage these changes. It is today’s need to enhance the skills and abilities of leaders and managers to manage such sudden changes.
They must have the ability to manage the rapid changes easily and smoothly. There are different types of organizational change, including planned versus unplanned, organization-wide versus change primarily to one part of the organization, incremental (slow, gradual change) versus transformational (radical, fundamental), etc.. Now it’s depending on business nature. Manager must know   which types of change will help to retain scope and perspective during the many complexities and frequent frustrations during change.

Controlling

Controlling consists of verifying whether everything occurs in conformities with the plans adopted, instructions issued and principles established. Controlling ensures that there is effective and efficient utilization of organizational resources so as to achieve the planned goals. Controlling measures the deviation of actual performance from the standard performance, discovers the causes of such deviations and helps in taking corrective actions (www.managementstudyguide.com)
According to Breech, “Controlling is a systematic exercise which is called as a process of checking actual performance against the standards or plans with a view to ensure adequate progress and also recording such experience as is gained as a contribution to possible future needs.”
According to Donnell, “Just as a navigator continually takes reading to ensure whether he is relative to a planned action, so should a business manager continually take reading to assure himself that his enterprise is on right course”

                                                Appraising and Rewarding

              If company has the good appraising and reward system then it can easily motivated its employees in better way. Motivated staff is likely to work hard and show the good performance at their end. In appraisal systems, bounces, pays and other financial incentives are included. Organizations adopt different appraisal methods to encourage their employees.
According to their employees motivated requirements, they tried to facilitate them for taking the good results from them.

Operations Management and Plans

                    It helps in running business functions smoothly. The operation plan highlights the logistics of business such as, what are the responsibilities of different team members, work division among different members, capital and expense requirements related to task. There are various elements of business plans such as Executive Summary, Products and Services Description, Marketing Strategies, Peer Analysis, Research and Development, Project Finance, Operations and Management (www.businessplancentral.net). All organizations have their different operation management and plans according to their business nature. For example, manufacturing plan is totally different than trading and so on.

Operations Control

               In simple words, it is authority that is controlled by leaders and managers. Managers who have authority to control all operations that are under their supervision and then they are bond to report to their bosses. The functions that are under controlling are organizing, task performing in right direction plus assigning task and giving authoritative direction to complete the mission.
                

CONCLUSION

            This research paper that I have completed through different journals and authors is really worthwhile for me. It helps me to better roadmap my desire goal in establishing a sense of management and lot of its topics that I cover in this research paper. 

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