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Wednesday, July 6, 2011

Organizational Behavior and the Management Process

Managerial work is fraught with complexity and unpredictability and enriched with opportunity and excitement. However, in characterizing managerial work most educators and other experts find it useful to conceptualize the activities performed by managers as reflecting one or more of four basic functions. These functions are generally referred to as PLANNING, ORGANIZING, LEADING AND CONTROLLING. While these functions are often described in as sequential manner, in reality, of course, most managerial work involves all four functions simultaneously.
         Similarly, organizations use many different resources in the pursuit of their goals and objectives. As with management functions, though, these resources can also generally be classified into four groups: HUMAN, FINANCIAL, PHYSICAL, and/or INFORMATION resources.


Planning, the first managerial function, is the process of determining the organization's desired future position and deciding how best to get there. The planning process at Sears, for example, includes studying and analyzing the environment, deciding on appropriate goals, outlining strategies for achieving those goals, and developing tactics to help execute the strategies. Behavioral processes and characteristics pervade each of these activities. Perception, for instance, plays a major role in environmental scanning, and creativity and motivation influence how managers set goals, strategies, and tactics for their organization. Larger corporations such as General Motors and Starbucks usually rely on their top management teams to handle most planning activities. In smaller firms, the owner usually takes care of planning.the second managerial function is

Organizing, the process of designing jobs, grouping jobs into manageable units, and establishing patterns of authority among jobs and groups of jobs. This process produces basic structure, or framework, of the organization. For large organizations such as Sears and Toyota, that structure can be extensive and complicated. The structure includes several hierarchical layers and spans myriad activities and areas of responsibility. Smaller firms can often function with a relatively simple and straight forward form of organization. As noted earlier, the processes and characteristics of the organization itself are a major theme of organizational behavior.

Leading, the third managerial function, is the process of motivating members of the organization to work together toward the organization's goals. A Sears manager, for example, must hire people, train them, and motivate them. Major components of leading include motivating employees, managing group dynamics, and the actual process of leadership itself. These are all closely related to major areas of organizational behavior. All managers, whether they work in a huge multinational corporation spanning dozens of countries or a small neighborhood business serving a few square city blocks, must understand the importance of leading.

The forth managerial function, Controlling, is the process of monitoring and correcting the actions of the organization and its people to keep them headed toward their goals. A Sears manager has to control costs, inventory, and so on. Again, behavioral processes and characteristics are a key part of this function. Performance evaluation, reward systems, and motivation, for example, all apply to control. Control is a vital importance to all businesses, but it may be especially critical to smaller ones. General Motors, for example, can withstand with relative ease a loss of several thousand dollars due to poor control, but an equivalent loss may be devastating to small firm.

1 comment:

  1. that's good idea in building a business, it's good to rest assure about the behavior of your costumer and member of entire organization

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