Four basic functions of a business

User Generated

pbyn87

Writing

Description

Research, identify, and discuss the four basic functions of a management. Also explain which function you feel is out important and why.

I have attached all the required reading as well.

Unformatted Attachment Preview

BA101 Week 2 Lecture Congratulations on completing week one and move on to week two. Were going to be talking about the functions of managers and leaders in business. So go ahead and select the lessons tab at the top of your screen week two end in the getting started folder once you open the getting started folder you'll see that this week we have two learning objectives. They are to distinguish between management and leadership and to summarize the changing functions of management and business organizations. Take a look at your activities for the week you do have several articles that you'll be asked to read and their two lecturers went on leadership versus management and another lecture on functions of management. Finally there is a discussion question and an assignment of the four functions of management that you have to complete by the end of week two. Again it is always a good idea to go ahead and print this out and keep by your computer so that you can check off your activities as you complete them. Let’s look at lecture one leadership versus management. During this lecture we will describe the differences in leadership versus management. Many people use the words management and leadership interchangeably without giving much thought to the differences between the two. While these differences may seem subtle it's important to understand what it means to be a manager as opposed to being a leader within an organization. I feel that having a deeper insight into the differences could help us become more successful at those. Let’s begin by discussing it needs a definition of both. Managing needs to direct and be responsible for subordinates and/or resources leading is more about coming up with the vision motivating and inspiring people to follow you and helping them buy into your vision. Leadership looks at the long-term not just the here and now. A manager in an organization typically is focused on running the day-to-day operations of the business and concentrate on the business becoming competitive efficient and effective. In addition to directly supervising subordinates they develop monitor and evaluate performance criteria. They establish budgets and design action plans for the organization. On the other hand a leader in an organization is not necessarily involved with the day-to-day operations and or running of the business. Oftentimes leaders do have direct subordinates but instead they are responsible for creating and maintaining the company's overall mission and vision. A leader is the visionary who looks ahead to where they want to see the business in five years or 10 years. Leaders inspire employees to follow them and buy into the vision. Leaders motivate employees by acting as role models - build the sense of community within the organization as well as the local community and create an organizational culture and environment where employees can both grow and develop themselves both as individuals as well as employees. While both managers and leaders are important to an organization the biggest difference between being a manager and a leader is the way you motivate people. Generally speaking employees follow a manager because they have to but follow a leader because they choose to. Making the leap from manager to leader is possible again while the differences may be subtle, a newly promoted leader just needs to focus on the key areas below and that is: employee morale, empowering employees, work life balance of employees, and effective team building. Lecture two in week 2 looks at the functions of management. I'd like to begin discussion by defining what management is. Simply stated management is coordinating the activities of the business by working with the people and resources of the organization to achieve its overall goals. In today's hectic business world it is common for manager to wear several hats. Think of it this way in many organizations the manager is not only the coach of the team but they are also the cheerleader the umpire a groundskeeper all rolled into one. It doesn't matter what your particular management style is there are 4 main functions that are required of all managers. Part of being a manager is that your primary responsibility is usually to manage the people who are actually doing the tasks not doing those tasks yourself. In my experience understanding the basics of what a manager does will not only help you be a better manager but will also help you become a better employee. Does that make sense? Let’s take a look at the four main management functions. The first is planning which involves most basic functions of management defining team goals developing strategies for reaching goals and designing ways to merge and coordinate team activities. Organizing tasks to accomplish the organization's goals and deciding what tasks are to be done and who will do them Then there is leading. Leading involves motivating employees. Positively influencing individuals or teams as they perform tasks. Mentoring and coaching employees. And handling employee behavior issues. Finally there's controlling. Controlling involves evaluating if things are going as planned monitoring and evaluating employee performance and correcting any employee issues. under week two articles where three articles that you'll need to read but I'd like to turn your attention to the article titled a new role for management in today's postindustrial organization this was written by Mitch McCrimnon in August of 2010 but you’ll see that it's just as relevant today. In many organizations employees know more about their work and their managers. This reality should force organizations that still cling to the old top-down style of managing to recognize that many employees today are very capable of managing themselves. This author explains the why and how of the new style of managing for today. When we try to define management our first thought is usually a manager who occupies the role and who has authority over people but in the case of knowledge workers or people who manage themselves management is seen as a process one which can engage everyone. Thus when we define management is a role we restrict it to something that refers to managers only. Such a definition is not only a limited one is one that does not account for the way in which work and responsibility has changed. industrial age organizations were formal hierarchies that assigned specific roles to employees the focus on roles put all power in the hands of managers who covered employees by planning organizing and controlling their work. This is essentially what made management of top-down restricting function today we talk of managing one's boss and of having relationships with strategic partners, suppliers and customers. But if partners can manage their relationships with each other then management cannot be a one sided controlling activity and if you can manage your boss management isn't restricted to the use of authority to control the people who report to you. Management is much more than what managers simply do to get work done through employees. Today we can manage ourselves our time and many other activities that don't require one to have a formal managerial role or even to manage people. This is why today the function of management as distinct from the role of the manager has become everyone's business. The truth is that the role of the manager is only a particular application of management not the whole story of managing. A broader perspective avoids the negative connotations so commonly attributed to management such as controlling and restricting people. More over employee engagement especially with respect to innovative knowledge workers cannot become a reality until we move beyond our industrial age definition of a manager. In modern postindustrial organizations all employees need to manage. Selfmanaging teams use complex systems to help them manage their own work and precise performance measures are openly accessible. Knowledge workers don't need to be told what to do and often they know better than their managers. This article will outline how we should see and define management for the 21st century by starting not with the role of the manager but by seeing management as a process that can be led by all employees’ not just managers. Let’s continue by talking about modern management defined. Management can be defined as a way of achieving goals that add the most value. It’s about being sufficiently organized to identify the right goals and best means for achieving them. To take a simple example whenever you set priorities for yourself you're managing your time. Prioritizing means deciding which activities are most likely to achieve a specific goal and which tasks are the most urgent or important. Management is that like investing a process of allocating resources to obtain the best return. Even if those resources are just your own time, knowledge, and experience. Clearly it is possible for all employees to manage their own time and other personal resources without occupying a formal managerial role and without managing people. Management is closely linked to goal achievement. Suppose your goal is to develop a cure for a disease you could achieve this goal in one of three ways by luck you could stumble on a cure while looking for something in a disorganized wasteful manner exceeding your budget and alienating stockholders or in a cost-effective inclusive way that makes the best use of all your resources. If you preferred the third approach you are opting for management overlapping chaos. Everyone has goals personal career business financial social learning and leisure among others. The fact is that a managed approach and not necessarily regimentation will allow you to achieve more. Front-line employees who have no one reporting to them routinely need to achieve multiple targets and tight time frames. This is possible only if they manage key aspects of their working time clearly they can manage a lot of things without having authority over people or management title. One immediate benefit of adopting this perspective is that it allows us to silence the call to banish management. Even without the complexity of the modern world no one today can live without management. In fact complexities simply make management all the more vital. Today we have self-managing knowledge workers and teams as a result the role of manager needs to change. The function itself however is essential. The healing cry to get rid of management is really a call to dismiss managers. Setting tradition aside we need to separate management for managers and industrial age thinking treats them as one and the same which is why management has been tarred with the same brush as managers. We need to see that managers are just as critical as management itself. Management as we know it is not totally without its supporters but even some of its champions are helping to sustain its industrial era image. In his latest book managing management thinker and author Henry Mintzberg equates management with the role of the manager thus distorting the role and overlooking how nonmanagers manage themselves and their own resources we need to rid ourselves of the concept and practice of industrial age management but not managers. As organizations evolved to meet new demands management must be reinvented and redefined accordingly. Importantly as well industrial age managers need to be replaced by modern managers not by leaders. Let’s look at the role of the manager. The operating style of industrial age managers is represented by metaphor of the organization as person. Where the head things in the hands do .it is no coincidence that employees were once called hired hands? The implication of this metaphor is that managers do all the thinking of managing. The vision of employees as unthinking hands to be moved about at will by a remote mind is unsustainable in an age of empowerment and employee engagement. We only started to discourage managers in the 1980s when Japan's success in North America ignited the call to replace these same managers with leaders. Previously management was regarded as a positive force in organizational life but the 1980’s bandwagon was a case of throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Managers used to have a choice of styles. Theory y people are responsible and can be trusted where theory x people are responsible and need to be controlled but the 1980s called to replace managers with leaders arbitrarily restricted managers to the theory X. style while gifting leadership with the theory y style this move was made because we wanted leaders to take over the domain of managers getting work done through people. This left us no way to differentiate managers from leaders except through totally arbitrary style assignments. A broader definition of management rids as of this negative image and supports two claims. The first is all employees manage being more self-managing. They need to take more responsibility for ensuring that they obtain the best return on all of their efforts and two if management simply means getting work done in a way that makes the best use of all resources then there is no implication of being rigidly controlling or canonistic. The modern manager needs to get work done through engaged self-managing knowledge workers who are far cry from the hired hands of the industrial age. The role of today's manager can be illustrated by four analogies. Today’s managers need to behave something like investors, customers, sport coaches and partners. Analogies are approximation otherwise they would be identical to the comparison objects and not analogies at all. Thus, managers share some attributes with them, but not identical to any of them Let’s first take a look at managers as investors. They manage their resources to obtain the best result. Their effectiveness is based on how well they use their resources. Managers differ from investors and to respect. First knowledge workers want a say in what they do so any allocation needs to be negotiated not decided unilaterally as an investor would do with his or her money. Second managers actively develop people so they are not is arm's-length for the people they manage as their investors. Managers as customers. Customers as employees become more engaged their status changes from simply being hired hands to be more like self-employed business people supplying services to internal customers. In this relationship employees can be more proactive and able to identify the needs of managers in deed astute employees might see needs that managers overlook. This interaction involves two-way communication and negotiation not one-way top down directing. Also enterprising employees might devise new services to sell to their managers as a way of advancing their careers or building their businesses. Whenever employees contribute ideas for process improvements to their bosses they can be framed condescendingly as suggestion box material or more appropriately as attempts by employees to sell their services to management. Employees who suggest a better way of managing some part of the business and offer to do it themselves can in steps transform their roles into something new. By thinking of themselves as operators of the business of serving their bosses of customers and employees become more empowered to manage their own careers. When high demand knowledge workers are in short supply they have more power than their customer the boss. Such employees can easily move to new customers and being knowledgeable they might offer more advice to their boss rather than the way around. So much for the belief that power resides only at the top and all direction flows top down. And finally what about managers and sport coaches. Professional golfers have coaches and managers the latter help them with their business matters sponsorships and travel arrangements however. This manager cannot fire the golfer is the other way around. The sports managers a facilitator coordinator and advisor with no power to director control the golfer. Modern business managers are moving in this direction although they will always be able to fire the employees they manage. Still, when managing rare, expensive talent, they cannot fire them without carefully weighing the consequences. In any case, modern managers do more coaching and less directing so they need to behave more like coaches than industrial age managers. As the power of knowledge workers grow they become more like partners then hired Toyota and other smart companies forge partnerships with external suppliers. Employees are similarly internal suppliers and partners. Still suppliers and employees can be fired unlike real partners who must agree on appropriate severance. In the industrial age managers directed and controlled the work of hired hands. In our postindustrial era managers operate more like facilitators and instead of allocating resources like passive hands off investors that is without much thinking they bring the right people together and engage them in planning the work and coordinate the execution. By customers they monitor the progress of projects but they may listen more often than provide one-way direction. In this context the acts of controlling morphs into coaching, facilitating, nurturing, and developing. The conventional managerial functions of planning and organizing directing and controlling become a shared activity or ones that are completely delegated depending on the context. Management adapts to meet current needs rather than hangs onto obsolete industrial age preconceptions. changing how decisions are made by customers and investors managers retain the right to decide whether and how much to invest or whether to use different resources but they can no longer dictate if they hope to engage knowledge workers and reap the benefits of their full potential. Now they have to ask what you think where they give orders instead of making the decisions they need to involve employees by asking questions to draw solutions out of them. This change in style, however, is not just a tactic to engage employees more deeply; it is recognizing the reality that employees know as much or more than the manager. Being more engaging and given to less distraction and direction are essential for making the best decisions. transformational leadership or managerial motivation - the transformational leadership bandwagon was launched in the 1980s not coincidentally at the same time that leaders were up serving the role of managers. We used to say that managers had to motivate employees but once managers were cast in the bad guy role of controlling disciplinarians - we needed transformational leaders to inspire employees. Transformational leadership however is an industrial age model because it portrays influences as a force that flows exclusively top-down. Modern managers help employees find motivation through coaching. They help identify their motivation and strengths. Managers then provide the kind of work that best leverages the strengths. It’s like performing a strategic review of a business with a manager helps employees discover their core strengths and then helps them channel their focus accordingly. Finding what motivates particular employees is a process of discovery that is very much led by the employee. Transformational leaders and industrial age managers operate with a boss knows best mindset. This is why they try to inject motivation to employees in a one-way top-down manner. Maintaining the status quo versus innovation - managers are often faulted for preserving the status quo and blocking innovation. This accusation may have been justified for industrial age managers but remember that the objective of managers is to achieve goals in a way that makes the best use of all resources. All organizations have two objectives - to maintain today's business profitability and to create the future through innovation. To foster innovation modern managers act as facilitators and culture builders. They bring the right people and other resources along with whatever support mechanisms are required to foster creative thinking. It’s often said that leaders are creative while managers are not, but this again exemplifies industrial age thinking and it’s a complete red herring because it forces exclusively on the individual in charge which is consistent with one-way top-down mode of operating. The person in charge the leader or manager does not need to be creative at all because the role properly fulfilled is one of facilitating creative thinking in others. Managers can foster innovation with or without being creative. Management reinvented and redefined as described at the resumes its rightful place as a core driver of organizational performance. But what is there left for leadership to do? Leadership is the process of influencing. Whenever any employee influences others to change direction leadership has been demonstrated. Whether it's top-down or bottom-up. If leadership is an influence process then it can make decisions thus all decisions are managerial actions even strategic ones. A CEO shows leadership by promoting a new vision and knowledge workers show leadership by promoting a new product. so why does this matter to achieve the level of innovation required for competitive advantage today we need to achieve a better balance of power throughout organizations and employees need to be more fully engaged in making strategic decisions and in planning and organizing more of their own work. To break the stranglehold of the organization as person metaphor employees need to share and strategic thinking. Such ownership is the only way to achieve deep engagement. As a result managers need to do less telling and as facilitators do more asking as in what to use think there is a trend to view leadership in facilitative terms but this is really leadership usurping management territory. Drawing solutions out of employees is a management technique, not a demonstration of leadership. Keep in mind how Martin Luther King Jr. showed leadership. He didn’t facilitate a meeting of stockholders. He spoke over their heads directly to the general public. He challenged the status quo and called for change. He influenced people to change without the power to decide anything for them. Competitive advantage depends on ridding ourselves of industrial age notions of leadership and management. All employees can share in management and show leadership, but only in postindustrial organization Congratulations on completing the reading assignments in week two now before you're finished with this week's work don't forget you do have to complete the discussion question and you do have to complete the assignment. This week's discussion question revolves around the issue of managers versus leaders and you need to discuss whether or not you were aware of the differences between managers and leaders. Now if you've read this week's work you know what the difference is but does it change your outlook on being a manager versus being a leader? Why or why not. Don’t forget you have a participation requirement. This initial substantial response needs to be in by day five and your replies to two other fellow students within the course have to be done by day seven. Again don't forget that you do have a word limit of between 75 and 150 words minimum for your responses and I agree or great job will not count as a response to fellow student’s substantive reply. Your week two assignment is about the four functions of management. Please remember that we're looking for critical analysis which involves analysis, evaluation, synthesis, and summary. Simply writing a paper where you describe what the four functions of management are and quote it word for word out of your textbook will not get you a good grade on this paper. You need to show that you understand the four functions of management and then provide some critical analysis with that. Remember that there is a page length - your traditional paper should be 2 to 3 pages in length. Now keep in mind that the total paper length does not include a title page does not count references appendix , any of that ,it simply counts the body of the paper so the body of the paper should be between 2 and 3 pages. Weekly Related Readings Leadership vs. Management - The Debate Continues! The debate continues as to the difference between leadership and management. This article focuses on why that debate is so important. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/leadership-management-debate-continues-linda-marsh How Leadership Differs from Management! Leadership versus management, the fact is that being great at management does not necessarily equate to being a great leader. http://www.leadership-tools.com/leadership-versus-management.html A New Role for Management in Today's Post-Industrial Organization When we try to define management, our first thought is usually of a manager who occupies a role and who has authority over people. http://iveybusinessjournal.com/publication/a-new-role-for-management-in-todays-post-industrial-organization/ Please complete the following assignment, incorporating ideas and concepts from the week's lecture and/or articles. Please feel free to incorporate outside resources as well. When completing your assignment, please make sure to double space your paper. Traditional Paper Research, identify and discuss the basic functions of management. Also, explain which function you feel is most important and why. The requirements below must be met for your paper to be accepted and graded: • Write between 500 – 750 words (approximately 2 - 3 pages) using Microsoft Word. • Attempt APA style, see example below. • Use font size 12 and 1" margins. • Include cover page and reference page. • At least 60% of your paper must be original content/writing. • No more than 40% of your content/information may come from references. • Use at least two references from outside the course material, preferably from EBSCOhost. Text book, lectures, and other materials in the course may be used, but are not counted toward the two reference requirement. Reference material (data, dates, graphs, quotes, paraphrased words, values, etc.) must be identified in the paper and listed on a reference page.Reference material (data, dates, graphs, quotes, paraphrased words, values, etc.) must come from sources such as, scholarly journals found in EBSCOhost, online newspapers such as The Wall Street Journal, government websites, etc. Sources such as Wikis, Yahoo Answers, eHow, etc. are not acceptable. Please complete the following assignment, incorporating ideas and concepts from the week's lecture and/or articles. Please feel free to incorporate outside resources as well. When completing your assignment, please make sure to double space your paper. Traditional Paper Research, identify and discuss the basic functions of management. Also, explain which function you feel is most important and why. The requirements below must be met for your paper to be accepted and graded: • Write between 500 – 750 words (approximately 2 - 3 pages) using Microsoft Word. • Attempt APA style, see example below. • Use font size 12 and 1" margins. • Include cover page and reference page. • At least 60% of your paper must be original content/writing. • No more than 40% of your content/information may come from references. • Use at least two references from outside the course material, preferably from EBSCOhost. Text book, lectures, and other materials in the course may be used, but are not counted toward the two reference requirement. Reference material (data, dates, graphs, quotes, paraphrased words, values, etc.) must be identified in the paper and listed on a reference page.Reference material (data, dates, graphs, quotes, paraphrased words, values, etc.) must come from sources such as, scholarly journals found in EBSCOhost, online newspapers such as The Wall Street Journal, government websites, etc. Sources such as Wikis, Yahoo Answers, eHow, etc. are not acceptable.
Purchase answer to see full attachment
User generated content is uploaded by users for the purposes of learning and should be used following Studypool's honor code & terms of service.

Explanation & Answer

Attached.

Running Head: FOUR BASIC FUNCTIONS OF MANAGEMENT

FOUR BASIC FUNCTIONS OF MANAGEMENT
Name:
Institution:

1

FOUR BASIC FUNCTIONS OF MANAGEMENT

2

When we want to define management, what comes into our minds first is the idea of a
manager who occupies a certain role and has authority over his employees. But when we think
about knowledge workers, these manage themselves, and then management becomes a process
that seeks to engage all. Therefore, when management is defined as a role, we only restrict it to
refer only to managers. This kind of definition is not only limiting but does not include to what
extent responsibility and work has changed (McCrimmon, 2010). Modern management can be
defined as a way of achieving goals that will meet value.
To understand this, we must look at some of the functions of a mana...


Anonymous
Great! Studypool always delivers quality work.

Studypool
4.7
Trustpilot
4.5
Sitejabber
4.4

Related Tags