Introduction to Management and Organization

Unit 1: Introduction to Management and Organizations

A Manager’s Dilemma

“The one error that people make early on in their careers is that they’re very selective about opportunities, so they avoid some, prefer others. I always accepted all opportunities that presented themselves because from each one you can learn something, and they serve as a platform for future endeavors.” This philosophy has guided Jovita Carranza in her career at United Parcel Service (UPS) from her first job in 1976 as a part-time night-shift clerk at the Los Angeles hub to her current position as vice president of air operations, where she manages the world’s largest package distribution facility in Louisville, Kentucky. This $1.1 billion facility serves as the hub of UPS’s international air operation, and it is massive – 4 million square feet, covering a size of more than 80 football fields, containing 17,000 conveyors that can handle 304,000 packages an hour, and housing computers that process nearly 1 million transactions a minute. And, it’s all Jovita’s responsibility. In this position, she manages half of the more than 25,000 employees in Louisville and every aspect of the hub’s operation from technology and engineering to security and human resources.

Although she’s a woman (and a Hispanic woman) in a male-dominated industry, Jovita’s determination, drive, innovation, and leadership have helped her succeed. But she is the first to acknowledge the important role her team plays. She has surrounded herself with capable, skilled employees who are loyal to the company and committed to results. She says, “I have total reliance on the coordination of my team. . . . I can rely on my staff to stay on top of what they have responsibility for . . . and it’s that trust factor that keeps you driven.” However, Jovita doesn’t just interact with her direct-reporting team. She remembers her early days of loading packages and realizes how important it is for her to also personally visit with frontline workers. “I value the input of the staff and the frontline workers. One of my [approaches] is to sit back and listen and observe. You learn more by not speaking. . . .”

Jovita’s goals for the hub include continuing to find ways to be efficient and to contain costs and continually developing her employees’ abilities. Put yourself in her shoes. What skills will be most important for Jovita to encourage her first-line supervisors to develop to help reach these goals?

Managers Respond to a Manager’s Dilemma

Cynthia Brewer

Staff Development Manager, Sears Holding Corporation, Chicago, IL

Jovita evidently understands how important her first-line people are to the overall success of her facility. In fact, it appears that she makes an effort to get out and interact with the frontline workers despite the important responsibilities that she probably has as a vice president. I think that the first-line supervisors are going to be dealing with the issues and problems that undoubtedly arise daily when managing an operation the size of this hub facility. So it is important that these supervisors have appropriate skills for dealing with these challenges. Thus, I think the most important skills that Jovita would first need to encourage her first-line supervisors to develop would be interpersonal and communication skills.

Since they directly manage the package handlers, they’ll need good human skills if they’re going to get the best out of their people in a fast-paced work environment with set deadlines for when the packages have to be loaded in order in order to meet delivery schedules. That’s why I also think it’s important that Jovita’s first-line supervisors have some technical skills – they need to be able to jump in and help out if work gets backed up. They also need to be able to answer questions that may come up as packages are routed and loaded. Finally, I think these supervisors also may need some conceptual skills to help them recognize problem areas and how best to attack those problems.

Managers speak out

Marjorie Scardino, CEO

Pearson PLC

London, England

Describe your job.

I am the CEO of a media company that publishes books, newspapers and magazines, and educational materials – both textbooks and online programs. We’re all about “education” in the broadest sense of the word: education for a five-year-old learning to read, a CEO understanding the way he is or her industry is heading, an investor picking a stock, or a college student studying a course like the one you’re in now. The company has total sales of about $7,045M (in U.K. numbers, that’s $7 billion and $45 million), employs some 30,000 people, has headquarters in London and New York, and makes about 70 percent of its sales in the United States.

My job has three main parts:

1.      Strategy. It’s my responsibility to figure out what the company should do to become more valuable and to produce returns for shareholders, as well as to add something to the world. To do this, we have to look at our assets and our markets and the relevant economic, political, and social trends and decide on the most promising combination of those factors. Then, we have to create a plan for shaping the business into that combination and making sure that our products, sales, and operations are all consistent with that plan.

2.      Execution. No matter how good our strategy, we won’t get very far if we can’t carry out our plan. That involves innovative product design, ingenious marketing strategy, irresistible sales skills, and efficient and engaging customer service. it involves judicious attention to the costs of conceiving, making, selling, and delivering our products, and keeping the right balance between growth and costs. It involves making the pursuit of the plan a process that we can measure and monitor and constantly adjust. It involves knowing when to take a risk.

3.      Culture and people. Finally, and possible most importantly, my job is to set the tone for a company environment and way of behaving in which we can all be most productive and to exemplify that culture myself. The ingredients in culture include everything from pay and benefits to communicating with each other to how we deal with outsiders and how we treat each other inside. A company’s culture is important in determining whether we can attract and keep the best people and whether, when situations are confusing, our employees know how they must behave.

Why are managers important to organizations?

Managers set the goals, the agenda, the measures of achievement, and the standards of behavior. In the most successful organizations, they do all that by setting an example, inspiring and orchestrating in a democratic rather than an autocratic way.

What skills do managers need to be effective in today’s environment?

The ability to see the bigger picture, concentration, parallel thinking, ability to see connection, listening, sense of humor, risk taking, humility, and generosity.

Thinking critically about Ethics

How far should a manager go to achieve efficiency or effectiveness?  Suppose that you’re the catering manager at a local country and you’re asked by the club manager to lie about information on the number of attendees at the events your work group has catered. Suppose that by lying you’ll save an employee’s job. Is that okay? What about saving five employees’ jobs? Is lying always wrong, or might it be acceptable under certain circumstances? What, if any, would those circumstances be? What about simply misrepresenting information that you have? Is that always wrong, or might it be acceptable under certain circumstances? What does “misrepresenting” become “lying”?

Focus on Leadership

The Real World: Do Organizations Need Managers or Leaders or Both?

How important are managers to organizations? How important are leaders? In today’s dynamic environment, organizations need both strong leadership and strong management for optimal effectiveness. Leaders are needed to challenge the status quo, to create visions of the future, and to inspire organizational members to want to achieve those visions. Managers are needed to formulate detailed plans, to create appropriate and sufficient organizational structures for doing the organization’s work, to oversee day-to-day operations, and to implement appropriate evaluation systems to ensure that work is being done as planned. Can they be one and the same? Ideally, yes! It’s important for managers to be able to lead – after all, it is one of the four functions of management. A 2004 survey by the American Management Association showed that managers at all levels were devoting more time to leading than in the past. Let’s look at an example of an organization that has recognized the important leadership role that managers, especially first-line managers, play.

BP, the world’s largest integrated oil and energy corporation with business dealings on every continent, has created a training program for its frontline managers, who supervise 70 percent to 80 percent of the company’s more than 100,000 worldwide employees. Their decision, in aggregate, made an enormous difference in BP’s turnover, costs, quality, safety, innovation, and environmental performance. They were also the people usually called upon to prevent small problems from becoming full-scale operational disasters. Yet BP didn’t have a comprehensive training program for them. But that’s no longer the case. Since early in the twenty-first century, BP has invested significant resources in developing its frontline managers. One of the initial changes was to call this group “first-level leaders,” a title deliberately chosen to emphasize the managers’ significance to BP. These first-level leaders now go through a comprehensive training program that covers supervisory essentials; the context of BP’s overall strategy and its implications for all parts of the organization; and through training on developing better communication skills, management and leadership skills, and work team dynamics. How successful has the program been? BP says that the managers ranked higher in performance than those who haven’t. Other BP executive say that the program has helped make the organization more collaborative and capable. What can we learn from this example? Organizations need bot strong leadership and strong management for optimal effectiveness.

Sources: A. Priestland and R. Hanig, “Developing First-Level Leaders,” Harvard Business Review, June 2005, pp.113-120; and “AMA 2004 Importance of Leadership Survey,” www.amanet.org/research, Copyright ©2004, American Management Association, New York, NY 10019.

Managing your Career

Career Opportunities in Management

Merck plans to cut about 11 percent of its workforce. Unisys reduces its workforce by 10 percent. Pfizer Japan Inc. is cutting its workforce by 5 percent. Kodak plans to eliminate up to 25,000 jobs. Are management jobs disappearing? You might think so based on news reports showing widespread layoffs. The truth is: The future looks bright! Business administration and management continues to be one of the top 10 most popular college majors, and there are likely to be jobs waiting for those graduates.

Some 6 million individuals in the United States are employed as managers. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates 10 percent to 20 percent growth in all executive, administrative, and managerial jobs through the year 2012. These jobs, however, may not be in the organizations or fields that you’d expect. The demand for managers in traditional, Fortune 500 organizations and particularly in the area of traditional manufacturing is not going to be as strong as the demand for managers in small and medium-sized organizations in the services. So keep in mind that a good place to land a management position can be a smaller-sized organization.

Sources: Occupational Outlook Handbook, 2004-05 Edition, U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, available online at www.bls.gov/oco, December 12, 2005; and M. Ballinger and E. WShite, “Matters of Degree,” Wall Street Journal, January 4, 2005, p.B4.

Becoming a Manager

ü  Keep up with current business news.

ü  Read books about good and bad examples of managing.

ü  Remember that one of the things good managers do is discover what is unique about each person and capitalize on it.

ü  Keep in mind the simple advice of the late Peter Drucker, who has been called the most influential management thinker of the twentieth century: Management is about people.

ü  Work on your “soft” skills – work ethic, communications, information gathering, and people skills. These are what employers cite as the most important factors for getting jobs.

ü  Observe managers and how they handle people and situations.

ü  Talk to actual managers about their experiences – good and bad.

ü  Get experience in managing by talking on leadership roles in student organizations.

ü  Start thinking about whether you’d enjoy being a manager.

ü  Go to www.prenhall .com/rolls and complete any of these exercises from the Self-Assessment Library found on R.O.L.L.S.: S.A.L. #I.A.4 – How Well Do I Handle Ambiguity?, S.A.L. #I.C.6 – How Confident Am I in My Abilities to Succeed? S.A.L. #I.C.7 – What’s My Attitude Toward Achievement?, S.A.L. #I.E.1 – What’s My Emotional Intelligence Score?, and S.A.L. #III.B.4 – How Motivated Am I to Manage?