Management
During the course, I acquire knowledge and skills important for managerial profession. Now, I understand that the development of a managerial philosophy forms the foundation for the goal-setting technique. The management philosophy presented here is not intended to be an ideology but rather an individual philosophy. The reader may agree, disagree, and even challenge what is said. These are matters on which reasonable people differ. An intent is to provide a different, and perhaps fresh, perspective that challenges the best thinking about management philosophy (Drejer, 2002). There are situations in which leaders depend on an encyclopedic grasp of the complexities and technicalities of procedure. The skill in itself is not evidence of leadership, but when linked with leadership gifts, it forms a potent combination. Some managers exhibit leadership skills, and some leaders find themselves managing at times. Leadership and management are not the same thing, but they may overlap.
Main Text
New millennium demands new theory of management and unique skills and knowledge. New knowledge and practices are based on employee ethics and moral values, traditions and labor relations. In the new millennium, managers and leaders call for the kind of effort, restraint, drive, and discipline that result in great performance. They create a climate in which pride makes significant contributions to shared goals. Leaders may inspire and motivate and managers may effectively allocate resources, but the consequences are of little use unless they accomplish the purpose for which the organization exists. The traditional definitions of management and leadership have focused on and described the management process. What a manager or leader does is important, but descriptions do not address the function or purpose of management. The purpose of management to produce positive results (Drejer, 2002).
In the new millennium a special role is played by medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) which open new development opportunities or business. In this situation, management is more than leading people. Indeed, it has many more components. Management is also routine administration, supervision, and knowledge of procedures, rules, and regulations; for instance, it requires negotiation techniques, cost control, and legal responsibilities. An important part of management is a knowledge and understanding of process and procedures, but a new definition should focus on the results to be achieved. Managerial success is measured by achievement, not by the process used to accomplish the results. Based on this results-oriented philosophy of management, the new definition of management focuses on outcome.
The management can be defined as: the act of setting goals and taking responsibility for producing positive results. The implication is that managers will be held accountable, not only for their own personal effectiveness, but for the output and results of others in their unit, team, and organization. Integrity suffers when managers demand or expect from their subordinates an exaggerated personal loyalty to mission–the kind of sentiment that makes people lie, cheat, or steal. An extreme emphasis on performance as a criterion of success may foster an atmosphere of raw striving that results in brutality, be it profit, competition, status, money, or whatever. When results become an end in themselves, the manager has overstepped the bounds of human dignity–the moderator is integrity. People are perceptive. Once a manager is judged, or even perceived, as lacking integrity, he or she is in trouble (Drejer, 2002).
The new economic and social changes demand new skills and knowledge. For a quality manager, these skills are selling and introducing new quality processes, development and implementation of an efficient Management System. Goals should be judged against ethical standards. Too often, managers turn to the law and their lawyers to obtain legal opinions on ethical standards. The thinking tends to be, “If it is legal, it must be ethical”–which is dead wrong. Ethics lie largely outside the law. Ethical standards are related to those less well defined and intangible moral values on which managers must rely. It has been postulated that what is ethical is what managers feel good after and what is unethical is what managers feel bad after. Ethical standards have more to do with emotions, feelings, and values than with rules, regulations, and the law.
Coaching helps managers and organizations to create unique human resources and develop employees. In addition, the application of ethics involves the application of intangible values to specific goals where there are tangible and measurable outcomes. It goes far beyond the simple tangible measures. It even goes beyond the application of moral and ethical rules on what is right and wrong, or good and evil. It relies on judgments where there is seldom a single, clear-cut, or simple right answer to what constitutes an ethical goal or how it should be attained. Individual managers confront and contrast individual and organizational values in achieving corporate goals. There will never be total agreement on all organizational and individual values, nor will there ever be a list of values that can unambiguously resolve the dilemmas that managers routinely encounter. Rather, the balance of the ethical behavior equation centers around the ideal of individual integrity.
Another remarkable feature of the new mill union is innovation management. Innovating firms face a range of possible marketing policies. At one extreme, they can choose policies to make the maximum short-run profit and then decide to meet competition as it arises as with a pricing policy of skimming markets. At the other extreme, they can build a solid market position by accepting modest immediate returns and taking a longer period of time to cover their outlays, thus making it more difficult for new entries, as with a pricing policy of market penetration. Between these extremes, they may choose to be reimbursed for their original outlays while still holding a competitive advantage, and then use the advantage to increase volume and build a stronger market position. From a social perspective, the benefits of various innovations are often challenged. Fundamental innovations that create something new in the physical sense are hailed as beneficial. Adaptive innovations, particularly those that generate psychological values and are based on style or design obsolescence, are often criticized.
The main types of innovations are product innovation and process innovation. In business, innovation is regarded as a means of differentiating products, reducing costs, matching and overcoming competition, and keeping an enterprise alert and vibrant. It results in new products and services, the streamlining of organizations, the development of new channels of distribution, and the incorporation of new techniques and technology to gain competitive advantage. From the standpoint of the social scientist, innovation is one of a number of factors in social change and the problems change poses. The social scientist concerns himself with the effects of innovations on cultures, the impact of culture on innovation, and the acceptance and rejection process that determines whether innovations are diffused or rejected. Innovation is, therefore, an area of interdisciplinary convergence.
The main benefits and outcomes of innovations are advancing technology, changing environment, changing industrial structures and strategies, evolving society, evolving customer desires, competitors improve their products, processes and services, customers stop buying old products and services so a company needs to replace them and add new products and services. Innovation, in essence, is becoming a way of corporate life. New products are planned in research and development departments to be introduced into the competitive environment. Seen as a method of assuring growth and survival, innovation is becoming institutionalized. Newness is not merely a matter of haphazard discoveries and research, for a planned innovative cycle is put into effect. Innovation is managed and becomes programmed, with new products developed to meet a marketing calendar. Yet many innovations have not been the result of goaldirected research. Marketing executives are both receptors and instigators of innovations. They must perceive market environments, infer relations, and put together various types of information, impressions of reality, and associations. Eventually, the right combination of inputs enables the innovator to conceive of a new product.
To become successful innovations, new products must be based on the familiar. They must not tax the adjustment capabilities of consumers. Innovations succeed where the consumer can adapt with ease. Therefore, innovation in part is the process of making the new or different very familiar. It is not merely individualism or the willingness to accept something new that supports innovation; conformity plays a large part. Only with a mass market can the necessary conformity result that assures the success of the innovation.
The main industries which use innovations as a driven force of their business are new industries such as genetic engineering, electronics and telecommunications, automotive and aerospace. Companies are faced with a drive to innovate because the outcome provides a differential advantage. Innovation is a means of generating profitable growth, using plant capacity, capitalizing on executive and other resources, meeting the cost-price squeeze, and spreading overhead costs. Social, economic, and political institutions give high rewards to those who produce better consumer items. Energetic people are interested in encouraging change. The abundance of well-developed natural resources, the development of technology, the urbanization of consumers, the impact of such life-style factors as convenience and service, and the activities of government all stimulate the development of new products.
Innovations leading to new products stem from the ability to perceive and connect elements in a different manner. They are based on degrees of mental ability, creativity, existing knowledge, and the need for new approaches emerging out of the environment. Customers want new products; they desire change. Although cultures differ as to their rate of acceptance of change, innovation is a means of satisfying the customer’s basic needs. The product-and-service mix is a significant force in corporate growth. Profit performance and market adjustment have as their fulcrum new product development, which has been called the life blood of a company. A study of corporate profitability indicates that the growth industries -electronics, chemicals, drugs — have been new-product oriented. New products contribute substantially to profitable sales. The necessity of adding new products that will yield profits to sustain corporate growth is clear. New products also level out seasonal impacts, spread risks, use talents, capitalize on tax advantages, and replace obsolescent items. Business success depends on producing the right product at the right time. New-product development is risky, for market opportunity is couched in uncertainty and instability, and our competitive system and the unpredictability of customer reaction increases the risk. Product planning requires a careful estimation of costs, profits, and timing. The latter factor is crucial; products developed too soon or too late will fail. Companies faced with high expenses and new-product risks may adopt different strategies from those that are not. For example, they may introduce a new product in one geographic area at a time rather than on a national basis. This limits the risk. Mistakes are made and corrected on a local rather than national basis, and the funds generated from sales in one area can be used to finance expansion (Drejer, 2002).
In the new millennium, business represents a complex system consisted of different sub industries and markets. Industry classification helps manages to navigate and perform on the global scale. New-product opportunities should be assessed on the basis of the degree of fit not only with production capabilities but also with present product lines and marketing capacity. The meshing of marketing requirements can assist in achieving product success. The vastly expanded categories and more meaningful coefficients should prove useful in forecasting market trends. Yet there are many difficulties: the coefficients developed from available data are not current, achieving industry breakdowns fine enough for decision purposes causes problems, the classification of industries is not standardized, and future technological developments must be accounted for in the calculation of coefficients.
The main sectors are materials, industrials, consumer discretionary, consumer staples, health care, financial, information technology, telecommunication section and utilities. Industry classification permits the planner to obtain both a graphic and an analytical description of the importance of various industries to his company, and gives a clearer view of both actual and potential markets. It permits the planner to vary assumptions about the future and give valuable intelligence about what likely future developments will probably be, the kinds of industries his company should be interested in, and the industries worthy of current cultivation. Although relatively few companies are now actively applying input-output analysis in marketing planning, it holds rich promise for the future. One company has used it as a basic tool in deciding to consummate a merger, and others have used it to direct sales efforts and to uncover significant market opportunities. But this approach is just another technique to be added to the marketplanners arsenal, rather than a means of supplanting conventional market analysis.
Alternative classifications divide the main sectors on subgroups and subcategories. Marketing planning, the second of the systemic functions, is closely related to the assessment of market opportunity. The utilization of scarce marketing resources to capitalize on opportunities requires planned marketing strategies and operations. Organizational boundaries are dynamic and adjust to meet the changing needs of their environments. As a result, organizations have a life and style of their own, and at certain periods, the influence of different groups may increase. For example, organization structures may change in periods of surplus from their form in periods of production shortages (Drejer, 2002).
The information mentioned above shows that marketing organizations have multiple objectives, and the relative importance of their various goals changes. Sometimes goals conflict; but it is desirable for them to be compatible. Since marketing sectors vary, the relative importance of goals must be determined to achieve organization and establish criteria for effectiveness. The goal of profit maximization, often assumed in discussions of economics, may not be the primary organization goal. The classical doctrine is concerned mainly with the anatomy of formal organization, and focuses on the division of labor, scalar and functional processes, structure, and the span of control. The study of line and staff structures falls into this realm. Neoclassical theory modifies the classical doctrine by superimposing consideration of individual behavior and the influence of informal groups on organizations. It is closely associated with the emphasis on human relations. Modern organization theory is integrative and studies organizations as systems of mutually dependent variables. It investigates the parts of the system, the formal organization, the informal organization, the pattern of behavior resulting from the interaction of the two, the physical setting, and the linkage process. Modern theory includes the study of marketing systems. Organizational arrangements are directed by manufacturer-distributor-retailer relationships. Where a large manufacturer is linked to numerous small distributors, the manufacturer emphasizes marketing leadership. Where a large distributor such as a wholesaler deals with a large number of manufacturers, retailers, or both, he furnishes the leadership. The former situation exists in autos and electrical appliances; the latter in wholesaler sponsored voluntary cooperatives.
Bibliography
Drejer, A. 2002, Strategic Management and Core Competencies: Theory and Application. Quorum Books.