Management Scenario

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Business Finance

Description

Scenario 1: Functions of Management

Whether you are an active or aspiring manager of others or just trying to manage your own career and life, being aware of and actively practicing the four functions of management is a foundation for your success (Kinicki & Williams, 2016).

Questions

  • List and define the four principal functions of a manager (Hint: POLC).
  • How are these functions applied at your organization (or an organization with which you are familiar)?
  • How can you apply each function to more effective and efficient at simultaneously managing school, career, and family?

Scenario 2: Management Levels

As an MBA student in the School of Business, you are developing or honing your skills to lead for business excellence. An important point about leadership is that we influence others even if we are not in a leadership position (Kinicki & Williams, 2016). For example, at work, Sarah is not in a management position, but she often finds that she needs to manage her relationship with her boss and colleagues. Managing her boss requires a degree of planning, organizing, leading, and controlling to effectively establish her goals and complete her activities.

Questions

  • What are the four management levels?
  • In your current position at work, where are you in the four management levels?
  • At that level, what are your basic management activities?
  • What do you need to do to move to a higher management level?

Scenario 3: Managerial Skills

To be good managers, Kinicki and Williams (2016) say that we need to develop strong technical, conceptual, and human skills.

Questions

  • Explain each of the managerial skills.
  • Considering your current job or a job to which you aspire, do you have the necessary technical, conceptual, and human skills to be successful?
  • How can you apply management concepts from this course to develop or hone your managerial skills?

Scenario 4: Managerial Roles

Managers fulfill three important roles: interpersonal, informational, and decisional.

Questions

  • Explain each of the roles that managers play.
  • How do you rate against each?
  • How will you leverage your time and activities in the MBA program to develop your interpersonal, informational, and decisional skills?

References

Kinicki, A., & Williams, B. K. (2016). Management: A practical introduction (7 ed.). New York, NY: McGraw Hill Education.

Instructions

Do not start a new thread. Select one of the following scenarios, develop a response, and then post the response as a reply to this discussion starter. Limit your response to 150 to 300 words, demonstrate understanding of and cite the required readings or other credible sources that you apply, and look for opportunities to engage with and learn from others.

Scenarios

Scenario 1: What's your theory?

Various theories of management have evolved over the years, most of which we can recognize are applied in our workplaces today (Kinicki & Williams, 2016). While it's not likely appropriate to say that one theory is best, applying the right theory or combination of theories to certain situations might offer better results. By studying various theories, we can expand our perspectives and develop different approaches to handling dramatically different and dynamically changing problems (Duncan, 2013).

Discussion: For this scenario, consider the management theory or theories that best describe(s) management practices at your organization (or an organization with which you are familiar).

  • Describe the management theory that seems to best explain the management practices at your organization.
  • What other theoretical perspective do you think your organization should consider and why?
  • How can developing an understanding of competing management theories help you to better manage in a complex and dynamic environment?

Scenario 2: Learning Organization

A key to organizational success is to continually adjust to, adapt with, and influence the environment. In other words, the organization and its people must continuously learn to survive, and apply that learning to thrive (Duncan, 2016; Kinicki & Williams, 2016).

Questions

  • What are the key roles managers fill to build a learning organization?
  • Do you see your organization as a learning organization? How does this influence the performance of the people in the organization?
  • Considering the course materials, what are your recommendations for enhancing the learning roles at your organization and how might this impact performance?

Scenario 3: Systems Viewpoint

Because business people tend to have mechanistic perspectives that focus on quantifiable behaviors and outputs, their eyes tend to glaze over when they hear about complexity theory, contingency theory, game theory, and other aspects of the system viewpoint introduced by Kinicki and Williams (2016) in Management, Ch. 2. The reality is that much of what makes people work and organizations succeed is not easily quantifiable, and may even be invisible to those who are limited by mechanistic myopia.

Developing a system perspective can help managers take a more holistic approach that illuminates patterns and associations that influence human behaviors and environmental factors that contribute to performance (Kinicki & Williams, 2016). A fundamental ingredient of becoming an effective manager is moving beyond a mechanistically myopic perspective to a system view that allows you to recognize the associations among seemingly separate factors that drive human and organizational performance (Duncan, 2017).

Questions

  • What is the systems viewpoint?
  • How can developing a systems viewpoint help your organization to better adapt to, influence, and thrive in its environment?
  • How can the systems viewpoint help you to more effectively integrate a challenging MBA program into your professional and personal lives?

References

Duncan, B. A. (2013). Synthesizing disparate perspectives to improve leadership effectiveness.Retrieved from http://donnach.com/index.php/en/explorations/leade...

Duncan, B. A. (2016, June 06). Exploring the definition and controversy of organizational learning. Retrieved from http://donnach.com/index.php/en/explorations/organ...

Duncan, B. A. (2017). System perspective illuminates stress as an essential force for wellness.Retrieved from http://donnach.com/index.php/en/explorations/psych...

Kinicki, A., & Williams, B. K. (2016). Management: A practical introduction (7 ed.). New York, NY: McGraw Hill Education.

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Explanation & Answer

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Anonymous
Really helped me to better understand my coursework. Super recommended.

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