 |  Management: Skills and Application, 10/e Leslie W Rue,
Georgia State University - Emeritus
Lloyd L Byars,
Georgia Institute of Technology
Introduction to Management
Chapter Summary1. Define management. Management is a form of work that involves coordinating an organization's resources--land, labor, and capital--to accomplish organizational objectives.
2. Describe the levels of management. Three levels of management exist. Top management establishes the goals of the organization and the actions necessary to achieve them. Middle management develops departmental goals and actions necessary to achieve organizational objectives. Supervisors manage operative employees.
3. Discuss the functions of management. The functions of management are- Planning: deciding what objectives to pursue during a future period and what to do to achieve those objectives.
- Organizing: grouping activities, assigning activities, and providing the authority necessary to carry out the activities.
- Staffing: determining human resource needs and recruiting, selecting, training, and developing human resources.
- Leading: directing and channeling human behavior toward the accomplishment of objectives.
- Controlling: measuring performance against objectives, determining causes of deviations, and taking corrective action where necessary.
4. Explain the roles of a manager. The roles of a manager fall into three major categories: interpersonal, informational, and decisional. Formal authority and status together generate certain interpersonal roles. The interpersonal roles, in turn, determine the informational roles of the manager. Finally, access to information, authority, and status place the manager at a central point in the organizational decision-making process.
5. Describe the skills required to perform the work of management. The three skills required in management are- Conceptual skills: involve understanding the relationship of the parts of a business to one another and to the business as a whole. Decision making, planning, and organizing are separate managerial activities that require conceptual skills.
- Human relations skills: involve understanding people and being able to work well with them.
- Technical skills: involve being able to perform the mechanics of a particular job.
6. Explain how principles of management are developed. Typically, principles are developed through a controlled experiment process. However, management principles are developed through observation and deduction.
7. Discuss the increasing role of women and minorities in management. The number of women in the civilian labor force has grown faster than the growth rate of the total number of people employed. Women and minorities have also had a higher percentage growth rate than the overall growth rate of employment in managerial and professional jobs.
8. Define the glass ceiling facing women and minorities. The glass ceiling refers to a level within the managerial hierarchy beyond which very few women and minorities advance.
9. Explain diversity. Diversity means including people of different genders, races, religions, nationalities, ethic groups, age groups, and physical abilities.
10. Define entrepreneur. An entrepreneur conceives the idea of what product or service to produce, starts the organization, and builds it to the point where additional people are needed.
11. Define small business. A small business is a company that is independently owned and operated and is not dominant in its field. As a rule, small businesses have fewer than 100 employees.
12. Outline three requirements for encouraging entrepreneurship in medium-size and large businesses. Organizations must develop a system that supports and encourages people to champion their new ideas or products; they must tolerate failures; and they must have effective communication systems. |
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2003 McGraw-Hill Higher Education