management essay

management essay

Effective Strategies for Modern Management

1. Introduction to Modern Management

Efficient management without effective management is, in the final analysis, still poverty. He works the written plan. Planning and examination are vitally important, as the Chinese proverb says. But, of course, neither the analysis nor the plan is the decision itself. The analysis or plan is only the foundation for the decision. Postwar management has trained the executive to answer the normative questions. But the moral or value questions remain as questions. They cannot be answered empirically, that is, on the basis of experience or knowledge. They cannot be answered by saying: I want to be free or I want power. The ethical question is not: What do I want to do? The ethical question is: What needs to be done? Management does not perform and can affect overall performance. Can we not say that management, so long as it is good management, is disadvantageous to performance? But we can reduce it to disorder and chaos. The theory is particulate in formulation and loose in fact.

Modern management is taking a new direction and reaching new heights. In the past, the demands of management were expressed in a variety of ritualistic behavior patterns. The effective executive, in the recent meaning of the term, was the practitioner-healer who could solve all problems with a touch. In modern terms, management is efficient, not when things are done right, but when the right things are done. Efficiency in management does not mean doing a job at the lowest possible cost. It costs less to do the wrong thing right than to do the right thing wrong. Postwar management has been far from a failure in the traditional tasks of management. It has been brilliant in extending the scope of application on the physics of management. But these are no substitutes for good management. The product of a decision is action.

2. Key Concepts and Theories in Management

It is important that sound management practices and principles emerge, benefiting from the latest social trends and concepts regarding the well-being of all stakeholders and beneficiaries. Indeed, this social aspect of business might even be considered to be superior to that of the economic and environmental sustainability standards that were previously dominant. At best, business management provides the opportunity for both a successful business and ethical management, but the primary question is: does management focus on climate change issues at the expense of organizational functioning, or is it possible to achieve a balance between the two.

From an organizational perspective, management concerns handling the direction, organization, and control of the various tasks within the respective corporate structure. A small enterprise or a large multinational corporation employs management to operate and sustain the businesses that can eventually benefit the stakeholders or shareholders and a wide span of beneficiaries. In recent pressure-filled economic times, many business concepts appeared to emphasize opportunities and income-generating capabilities without due consideration given to the people that do the work or the companies they work for.

Though the management field is relatively new, numerous theories and concepts have developed, providing useful tools that can be used for the successful management of organizational activities. This chapter outlines a range of issues using selected concepts and theories in the field of management. The chapter closes with a summary of some of the other topics that management research currently covers.

3. Challenges and Trends in Contemporary Management

The development and implementation of competitive strategies are increasingly recognized as essential tasks in the world of production and services, so organizations and their competitiveness are a permanent concern for managers and society. New forms and organizational management modes emerge within each organization’s posture and in relation to the contemporary world economy, where the systematic search for efficiency and effectiveness are requirements to support new management strategies, which prove to be fundamental. They are the companies of the future, as per the revolutionary and strategic paths that wear, expanding and transforming the organizational models and the current planning surfaces achieving proposals for action and questioning paradoxes, providing the organizations with new dimensions of dynamic management and its relation to the social sphere, the environment, and the indissociable element that is the human being.

Currently, there are some trends and challenges that bring about a need for new management strategies and models to take care of modern organizations. In the new scenario, with a rapidly growing technological development, but also with the new world economic geography and the erosion of barriers that separate the individual from his surroundings and the world, the increased speed of development and globalization are some of the biggest competitive difficulties faced by advanced countries. Being competitive is a fair requirement required by the external environments of the organizations, being effectively prepared to respond to many desires and diverse needs of some success factors or “conditioners” of competitiveness which are technology and innovation.

4. Innovative Approaches to Leadership and Decision-Making

On the other hand, approaches to management involving behavioral models include decision-making and the decision-making environment, problem-solving approaches, individual values, decision-making styles which include intuitive, dependent, avoidant, spontaneous, and the theory of rational decision-making. People’s value systems also determine individual decision-making orientations emphasizing basic assumptions, beliefs, and behavior patterns behind decision-making. These frameworks support goals and objectives, the designing of rewards and incentives, communication, employee satisfaction, and motivation for decision-making.

In businesses today, problems are unstructured and complex, information is incomplete, and even the customer needs are unknown. The various models based on the rational approach as presented are Simon’s normative model of decision-making and Turban, Aronson, and Liang’s normative decision model.

A rational model is intuitive and linear. It is amenable to mathematical analysis and computer simulation and forms the basis for most decision-making models. The rational model supports formal planning, common in large organizations, making effective use of resources. It is also useful in situations/technologies where information is exact, customer needs are simple, demand is stable, and processes are highly mechanized. Decision-making models based on this approach mainly support goals and objectives, and designing rewards and incentives.

Decisions in modern organizations are made using knowledge and information, often under time pressure. Many decisions need to be taken within a given deadline, and it is reasonable to expect better results if the decision-making process is also time-saving. Two major approaches to decision-making are the rational model and the behavioral model.