Unit 5: Management
The management practices that a business adopts will inform how well it can achieve its goals and respond to changes in the workplace. For-profit and nonprofit companies achieve their goals through the four steps of management: planning, organizing, controlling, and leading. Technical, conceptual, and interpersonal skills are essential to the management process. It also involves using human, financial, and informational resources. In this unit, we explore how successful business management requires teamwork, communication, creating a clear corporate mission and culture, following good business ethics, and committing to social responsibility.
Completing this unit should take you approximately 16 hours.
Upon successful completion of this unit, you will be able to:
- define the management process;
- explain how management contributes to the success or failure of a business;
- differentiate between various management styles;
- identify areas of corporate mission, corporate culture, corporate social responsibility, human resource management, and labor unions;
- describe the steps in conducting labor negotiations; and
- describe business law concepts that apply to business.
5.1: Defining Management
Read this section for an overview of management. We will look at this section in more detail as we delve deeper into the process of management.
Read this section to get a clearer view of how important effective management is for a successful business and an overview of the functions of the management process.
Read this section to understand the process a business would use to develop and implement a strategic plan.
Read this section about the levels of management, functional organizational structures, the span of control, and how organizational charts are created.
Read this section about the different leadership styles.
The last function we'll look at in this section is "controlling". Having all of the other management functions working together is the goal, but how do you know they are working? This is where controlling comes in. The controlling management function is all about monitoring and assessing performance. This is the piece that lets you know what is working and what needs corrective action.
Read this section for a brief discussion of the leadership styles we looked at in the last section.
To help answer the question about pay differences between managers and other employees, read this section. Managers have to have many skills that put them at the top of the pay scale, including problem-solving skills the average worker doesn't need.
5.2: The Role of Human Resource Management
Human resource management (HRM) could be the most critical managerial duty for a business. Consider this: if a business cannot recruit, train, develop, motivate and appraise their human resources (read employees), they are likely wasting money and cutting into their profit. Read this section and pay close attention to the introduction to get an overview of the scope of HRM.
Read these sections about recruitment and employee selection to get a sense of the depth of information an HR person has to have to hire and train new employees. Over the last few decades, it has become essential to also focus on employee retention. It is costly to replace an employee, and if the focus is on retention, the employee may stay.
What happens once an employee has been hired? This section discusses training and developing employees and the importance of having a diverse workforce.
Drawing on older theories of motivation such as Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs and Herzberg's two-factor theory, and newer theories such as expectancy and equity theories, HR managers can gain insight into what might motivate employees to do their best work. Read this section to see how these theories can be used.
- It's not enough for HR to recruit, train, develop, and motivate employees. It is also important for employees to be assessed or reviewed to know how they are doing. Read this section to learn about some methods for employee performance review.
Another important duty of human resources is creating a compensation or benefits package that is sufficiently robust to keep employees from leaving but not so extravagant that the business goes bankrupt in trying to compensate their employees. Read this section to see a few types of employee benefits.
Read this section to look at benefits and some factors that make a business a good place to work.
Review the Starbucks case study about employee benefits and answer the critical thinking questions.
A discussion of human resource management would not be complete without including some information on labor unions. While it would be nice to think that business owners would have their employees' best interests at heart, this is not always the case. To provide employees with some power to negotiate for their benefits, labor unions use collective bargaining to get employees what they deserve. Read this section to learn some key terms in labor unions and labor negotiations.
Now, let's look at why unions exist, how they are structured, and how the collective bargaining process works.
5.3: Teamwork and Communications
Communication is a vital part of any human interaction, and business is no exception. Read this section to learn about teams, teamwork, and communication in general in business environments. Complete the exercises at the end of each section to better understand the importance of communication.
5.4: Forming a Corporate Mission and Culture
Review the summary of Twitter's mission statement. Develop your own mission statement; it may be helpful to find mission statements online for similar companies. Summarize your findings in a 500–700-word report.
5.5: Forming a Corporate Mission and Culture
While a business's primary goals are to provide a product society needs and make a profit, they do not operate in a vacuum. They are an integral part of society and have a certain amount of responsibility to the society they operate in. Review this section to refresh your memory about corporate responsibility.
Corporate social responsibility also includes a mandate for businesses to act ethically. While businesses themselves are neither ethical nor non-ethical, the people that run them are. Read this section to see how ethics plays a role in business operations, then complete the three ethical dilemma exercises at the end of the chapter.
5.6: Concepts in Business Law
There is so much that is risky in operating a business, shouldn't there be ways to manage the risk? Read the Wikipedia entry on risk management to get an overview of how businesses can manage risk.
Contracts are an integral part of doing business. Managers in all areas of a business should have a basic understanding of what constitutes an enforceable contract. Finally, while business managers would hope not to be in a situation where they had to consider bankruptcy, they should still be aware of the options available to them, from complete liquidation to reorganizing or renegotiating part of their debt.
Unit 5 Assessment
- Receive a grade
Take this assessment to see how well you understood this unit.
- This assessment does not count towards your grade. It is just for practice!
- You will see the correct answers when you submit your answers. Use this to help you study for the final exam!
- You can take this assessment as many times as you want, whenever you want.