[slide 1 – process of management – mgt as a system]
At the heart of it, management is about accomplishing organizational goals through others. Managers don’t have the “luxury” of doing everything themselves. Accordingly, managers must think about their organization as a system, and the activities necessary for this system to perform well. Inputs into the system include various resources, such as information, money, people, and raw materials. These resources become transformed through the managerial functions of planning, organizing, leading and controlling into outputs such as products and services that you and I want. A current concern for todays’ managers is that every step of the transformation process “adds value” to that resource or material. That is, that every activity the organization performs in some way enhances the ultimate product or service that the organization provides. If an activity does not add value, it may indicate an activity in need of re-design or elimination.

[slide 2 – effectiveness and efficiency]
If these managerial functions are performed well, the organization performs both efficiently AND effectively. Efficiency is commonly defined as doing an activity correctly, with particular reference to the relationship between inputs and outputs, seeking to minimize resource costs. Effectiveness, on the other hand, means doing the correct activities, attaining one’s goals, such as increasing sales, or market share, or reduction of turnover within the organization. Sometimes managers are tempted to focus solely efficiency measures OR solely on effectiveness measures as a way to evaluate the performance of their organization. The challenge, however, is for an organization to be BOTH effective and efficient. And, at different points in time, organizations may focus more on one than the other, a topic we will return to when we consider organizational strategy and structure.

Can you think of any organizations which you would consider to be effective but not efficient?

[slide 3 – example organizations]
Historically, hospitals have fallen into this group. Hospitals may be excellent at providing health services and meeting patient care goals, but more often than not, are criticized as being fairly inefficient in meeting these goals, having a high medical staff to patient ratio, ordering many different types of medical tests which may be unnecessary, having multiple redundant forms to be processed, etc.

How about an organization which is very efficient but not effective? A fast-food restaurant which is very automated, with no unnecessary steps taken in the food-production process might be very efficient. But if the restaurant is serving food that its customers don’t like, or with weak customer service due to inadequate staffing, that restaurant may soon find itself out of business – not a very effective organization.

[slide 4 –think about levels of management and the different functions, skills, and roles played]
As noted by your textbook, there are a variety of managerial titles and positions. We could classify managers by their vertical position in the hierarchy (top, middle, or line managers). Depending on their vertical level, managers spend different percentages of their time engaged in the main functions of management. For instance, not too surprisingly, top level executives spend the bulk of their day in planning and organizing activities, while first-level managers, who are engaged more directly with employees, engage in leading activities predominately during their workday.

[slide 5]
We could also classify them by their horizontal position in the organization (functional managers such as Sales Manager, Human Resource Manager, Financial Manager, etc.). However, regardless of position, all managers require similar basic skills: conceptual, human technical, and political skills. The importance of each of these skills and the degree to which each are utilized in a given day, however, depends upon the specific managerial level. Top level managers rely to a greater extent on conceptual skills, while first level managers utilize their technical skills to a greater extent than middle or top level managers. You may notice that interpersonal skills are required for managers, regardless of level.

[slide 6 – timeline of different schools of thought/approaches]
As you read this section, think about how our beliefs of how work and workers should be managed have been shaped and changed over the past century. For instance, many of the early scholars, such as Taylor, Fayol, Weber, focused on finding universal principles which would make the management of organizations more orderly, predictable, and efficient. These early scholars focused primarily on the design of the job itself or on how the overall organization should be organized. Later work in the mid 1900’s focused more on the individuals within the organization, and recognized the complexities involved with the management of humans. Scholars here include Mayo, McGregor, and Maslow. The current approach to management thought, the contingency approach, recognizes that the organizations and the individuals who inhabit them are complex systems, with intricate inter-relationships internally and externally, and that there are few “one size fits all” approaches to management. Rather, the challenge for managers today is to find the proper way to plan, organize, lead, and control given the specific circumstances and situation of their particular organization.