Chapter 1 Summary - Key Elements in Organizations and Careers môn Principles of Management | Trường Đại học Quốc tế, Đại học Quốc gia Thành phố Hồ Chí Minh

Takeaway 1:
There are 6 elements are critically considered across industries: talent, technology, globalization, ethics, diversity and careers
Talent: human resource is one of the advantages that every company want to achieve. Talented
people are able to deliver efficient outcomes in competing with rivals.
-Intellectual capital equation: Intellectual Capital = Competency x Commitment.
Competency is your advantage, your ability or talent that needed for your job
Commitment is your willingness to work hard, to apply them to your tasks.
Both are required to meet career needs and performance requirements.
Knowledge workers: persons whose minds are critical assets. It relates to the
knowledge, the information you acquire and your mindset. Technology:
-Tech IQ: your ability to use technology in all your life aspects and stay
informed on the latest technological developments. High TechIQ is important,
because it helps adapting quickly to new innovations.
-Ex: LinkedIn.com as online career sites used by job hunters and employers.
Filling your online profile with the right key words. Employers use special
software to scan online profiles for indicators of real job skills and
experiences that fit their needs.
Globalization: indicates worldwide interdependence of resource flows, product
markets, and business competition that characterizes our economy.
-Job migration, the shifting of jobs from one country to another.
Ethics: set of moral standards for what behavior is right and what is wrong. It
depends on individual being responsible for conducting right ethical business at all
levels. Leaders are supposed to conduct things right so that their followers can follow.
Diversity: a group of workers or a workforce that have differences in gender, age,
race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, and ablebodiedness. Since society is
diverse, the way we deal with diversity in the workplace is an issue. Some major problems are:
-Prejudice: the holding of negative, irrational opinions and attitudes
regarding members of diverse populations.
-Discrimination: minority members are unfairly treated and denied the full
benefits of organizational membership.
-Glass ceiling effect: an invisible barrier that prevents women and
minorities from rising above a certain level regarding organizational responsibility. Careers:
-Shamrock organization is a core group of permanent, full-time employees,
freelancers and part-time staff.
-Free- agent economy: you can change jobs often and work on flexible
contracts with a mix of employers over time.
-Self-management: realistically assess yourself, make constructive changes,
and manage your personal development. Takeaway 2:
An organization is a collection of people working together to achieve a common
purpose. Its members perform tasks not only for their accomplishment but also for
the final goal of the organization.
Organization as an open system that interact with their environments: Obtaining
resource inputs—people, information, resources, and capital—and transforming
them into outputs in the form of finished goods and services for customers.
-Productivity: measures the quantity and quality of outputs relative to the cost of inputs.
-Performance effectiveness is an output measure of task or goal accomplishment.
-Performance efficiency is an input measure of the resource costs against goal accomplishment.
There are changes in organizations:
-Focus on valuing human capital: work settings that create the knowledge,
experience, and commitment of all members.
-Demise of “command-and-control”: instead of “do as I say”, managers treat people with respect.
-Emphasis on teamwork: Organizations are driven by teamwork that consists
of talents for creative problem solving.
-Preeminence of technology: New developments change the way
organizations operate and how people work.
-Importance of networking: members are networked for intense, real-time
communication and coordination.
-New workforce expectations: A new generation is less tolerant of hierarchy,
more informal, attentive to performance merit, and concerned for work–life balance.
-Priorities on sustainability: more attention to natural resources and
understanding how work affects human well-being. Takeaway 3:
Manager: supports, supervises, and helps motivate the work efforts and
performance accomplishments of staff, followers, team members.
If classifying by levels, we have 4 levels of managers.
-Board of directors whose members are elected by stockholders to
represent their ownership interests. The basic responsibilities of board
members is to make sure that the organization is always being run right
-Top managers are an executive team that reports to the board and is
responsible for the performance of an organization as a whole.
-Middle managers are in charge of relatively large departments consisting of several smaller work units.
-Team leader is in charge of a small work group composed of nonmanagerial staff.
If classifying by levels, we have 4 types of managers.
-Line managers are responsible for work that makes a direct contribution to the organization’s outputs.
-Staff managers use technical expertise to advise and support line workers.
-Functional managers have responsibility for a single area of activity such
as finance, marketing, production, human resources, accounting, or sales.
-General managers are responsible for activities covering many functional areas.
-Administrators are used in non-profit org. Managerial Performance
-Accountability is the requirement of one person to answer to a higher
authority for performance results in his or her area of work responsibility.
-Quality of work life (QWL) indicating the quality of staff experience with their job.
Changing Nature of Managerial Work
The concept of the upside-down pyramid fits with the changing mindset of managerial today.
Takeaway 4: these are the 4 basic functions of a manager
-Planning: is the process of setting performance objectives and determining
what actions should be taken to accomplish them. Through planning, a
manager identifies desired results and ways to achieve them.
-Organizing: Once plans are set, they must be implemented. The process of
assigning tasks, allocating resources, and coordinating the activities to accomplish plans.
-Leading: is the process of arousing people’s enthusiasm and motivating their
efforts to work hard to accomplish objectives. Managers build commitments,
encourage activities and influencing others to do their work.
-Controlling: is the process of measuring performance, comparing results to
objectives, and taking corrective action as needed. Managers control by
staying in contact with people as they work, gathering and interpreting
measurements and make constructive changes. Managerial Roles
Mintzberg identified a set of 10 roles commonly filled by managers:
-Interpersonal roles involve interactions with people inside and outside of org. -
A manager’s informational roles involve the giving, receiving, and analyzing of information. -
The decisional roles involve using information to make decisions to solve
problems or address opportunities.
There are Essential Skills for a manager
-Technical Skills: the ability to use a special proficiency or expertise to
perform particular tasks. Technical skills are very important at job entry and early career levels. -
Human and Interpersonal Skills: the ability to work well in cooperation with others.
oEmotional intelligence: how well you recognize, understand, and
manage feelings while interacting and dealing with others. -
Conceptual and Analytical Skills: the capacity to break problems into
parts, see the relations between the parts, and recognize the implications of
each problem for others. Conceptual
skills are important in high levels of management.