Principles of Management

Units

1. 1

   Managers and management

   4 lessons

   1. Planning, organizing, leading, controllingIdentify the four management functions in a café shift and use the gap between its goal and result to choose a checkable next action.
   2. Management levels and Katz's skillsPlace a manager's job on the pyramid of top, middle and first-line levels, and use Katz's model to say which of technical, human and conceptual skill that level leans on most.
   3. Mintzberg's managerial rolesIdentify a managerial role from an action and justify the choice with evidence from that action.
   4. Efficiency, effectiveness and performanceCalculate a desk’s productivity, judge whether it meets its goal, and use both findings to explain its performance.
2. 2

   The evolution of management thought

   4 lessons

   1. Taylor and scientific managementExplain how Taylor's scientific management replaced rule of thumb with measured methods, standard times and piece-rate pay, work through its calculations, and weigh the critique that it treated workers as machines.
   2. Fayol's principles and Weber's bureaucracyState Fayol's five functions and use his principles of unity of command, scalar chain and the gangplank on an organization chart, and describe Weber's ideal bureaucracy and the costs of its rules.
   3. The Hawthorne studies and human relationsExplain what the Hawthorne studies at Western Electric found, why output kept rising when conditions got worse, what the bank wiring room showed about group norms, and how Follett's integration and the human relations movement changed management thought.
   4. Systems and contingency approachesDescribe an organization as an open system of inputs, transformation, outputs and feedback, use feedback to adjust a decision, and apply contingency theory to choose a structure that fits size, technology and environment.
3. 3

   Environment, culture and global management

   4 lessons

   1. The external environment and PESTELSeparate the general environment (political, economic, social, technological, environmental, legal) from the task environment (customers, suppliers, competitors, regulators), and rank PESTEL factors for a firm by likelihood times impact.
   2. Organizational cultureDescribe Schein's three levels of culture (artifacts, espoused values, basic assumptions), tell a strong culture from a weak one by how widely it is shared, and explain how culture shapes behavior and a merger.
   3. Hofstede's cultural dimensionsName Hofstede's six dimensions, read country scores on them, and use the gaps between countries to predict where a manager's habits will clash.
   4. Ethics and social responsibility for managersContrast the classical and socioeconomic views of social responsibility with a cost calculation, place a manager's reasoning on Kohlberg's stages of moral development, and use codes, training and a decision test to manage ethics.
4. 4

   Planning and strategic management

   4 lessons

   1. Goals, plans and management by objectivesTell strategic, tactical and operational plans apart, write a SMART goal with milestones, run management by objectives as a cycle, and explain Locke's finding that specific hard goals raise performance.
   2. SWOT analysis and the strategic processWalk through the strategic management process from mission to evaluation, build a SWOT matrix that separates internal strengths and weaknesses from external opportunities and threats, and turn it into ranked strategic choices.
   3. Porter's five forcesDraw Porter's five forces (rivalry, threat of entry, substitutes, buyer power, supplier power), rate each for one industry, and judge how attractive the industry is, using a break-even calculation for the entry barrier.
   4. Competitive and corporate strategiesExplain Porter's generic strategies (cost leadership, differentiation, focus), place a firm's product lines on the BCG matrix, and choose among growth, stability and retrenchment.
5. 5

   Managerial decision making

   4 lessons

   1. The rational decision processWalks the eight step rational model from identifying the problem to evaluating the decision, with a weighted criteria decision matrix worked example.
   2. Bounded rationality and satisficingExplains Simon's bounded rationality and satisficing, programmed versus nonprogrammed decisions, and decisions under certainty, risk and uncertainty with expected value.
   3. Biases and heuristics in decisionsCovers anchoring, availability, confirmation bias, overconfidence, framing and escalation of commitment, drawing on Kahneman and Tversky, with ways managers can reduce them.
   4. Group decision makingWeighs group against individual decisions, explains groupthink (Janis), and techniques such as brainstorming, the nominal group technique and the Delphi method.
6. 6

   Organizational structure and design

   4 lessons

   1. Elements of organizational structureExplains work specialization, chain of command, span of control, authority and responsibility, centralization and formalization, with a tall versus flat organization chart.
   2. DepartmentalizationDraws functional, product, geographic, customer and process departmentalization, plus matrix and network structures, with the tradeoffs of each.
   3. Mechanistic and organic organizationsContrasts Burns and Stalker's mechanistic and organic forms and shows how strategy, size, technology (Woodward) and environmental uncertainty drive structural choice.
   4. Job design and the job characteristics modelExplains job enlargement, enrichment and rotation, and Hackman and Oldham's job characteristics model with the motivating potential score formula.
7. 7

   Motivation

   4 lessons

   1. Needs theories of motivationCompares Maslow's hierarchy, Alderfer's ERG theory, Herzberg's two factor theory and McClelland's needs for achievement, affiliation and power.
   2. Expectancy theoryExplains Vroom's expectancy theory, motivation as expectancy times instrumentality times valence, with a worked example of a sales bonus.
   3. Equity and goal setting theoriesExplains Adams' equity theory with input to outcome ratios and reactions to inequity, and Locke's goal setting theory with feedback and commitment.
   4. Reinforcement and reward systemsExplains Skinner's reinforcement theory (positive and negative reinforcement, punishment, extinction), schedules of reinforcement and pay for performance plans.
8. 8

   Leadership

   4 lessons

   1. Trait and behavioral theoriesCovers trait theories and behavioral studies from Iowa, Ohio State (initiating structure, consideration) and Michigan, and the Blake and Mouton managerial grid.
   2. Contingency theories of leadershipExplains Fiedler's LPC model, Hersey and Blanchard's situational leadership and House's path-goal theory, showing how the best style depends on the situation.
   3. Transformational and transactional leadershipContrasts transactional exchange with Bass's transformational leadership (idealized influence, inspiration, intellectual stimulation, individual consideration), plus charismatic and servant leadership.
   4. Power and influenceExplains French and Raven's bases of power (legitimate, reward, coercive, expert, referent) and influence tactics such as rational persuasion and coalitions.
9. 9

   Teams, communication and conflict

   4 lessons

   1. Group development and team typesExplains Tuckman's stages (forming, storming, norming, performing, adjourning) and types of teams: functional, cross functional, self managed and virtual.
   2. Team effectivenessCovers roles, norms, cohesiveness, social loafing and size, and how cohesiveness and performance norms combine to predict team productivity.
   3. The communication processDiagrams the communication model of sender, encoding, channel, decoding, receiver, noise and feedback, plus channel richness and barriers to communication.
   4. Conflict and negotiationUses the Thomas-Kilmann grid of five conflict styles and contrasts distributive and integrative bargaining with BATNA from Fisher and Ury.
10. 10

    Control and organizational change

    4 lessons

    1. The control processExplains the three step control process (measure, compare, correct), feedforward, concurrent and feedback control, and a range of acceptable variation.
    2. Performance measures and the balanced scorecardExplains Kaplan and Norton's balanced scorecard with financial, customer, internal process and learning perspectives, plus benchmarking and key performance indicators.
    3. Operations and quality controlCovers productivity measures, total quality management, Deming's ideas, Six Sigma DMAIC, statistical process control charts and lean management.
    4. Managing organizational changeExplains Lewin's unfreeze, change, refreeze model, Kotter's eight steps, sources of resistance to change and ways to overcome it.