Management Function Essay

All organizations depend on group efforts. Teamwork and group action have become necessary in every day of life, and it will lead to the success in group efforts. The management will be very important to the groups because it can helps to achieve group goals, provides maximum resources to his or her team, minimizes the cost, establishes sound organization, and generates more welfare to his or her team. Management functions, manager’s skills, management control and strategic management process will be analyzed to define how an excellent manager should be. Four Management Functions The four management functions comprise the primary functions to the managers. These four functions which are planning, organizing, leading and controlling can be used in all fields of management, be it at a factory, a super market, a restaurant or even at home. Planning Managers need to perform the planning function to define goals, establish strategies to achieve these goals and develop sub plans to coordinate activities for his or her team members. For example, as a merchandising manager in the supermarket chain business, the manager needs to define what the target customers like Western people, South East Asia people or East Asians the supermarkets want to attract. After define the goals are attract more and more Asian-Canadian families, the manager need to establish strategies like bringing Asian-Canadian families fresh foods and introducing the diversity of Asian food culture at stores that offer exceptional convenience, service, and value to those Asian customers. Then, lots of sub plans like which kind of merchandises should be imported and the merchandises’ price setting strategies will be developed by the manager and pass to different buyers to follow up. Organizing Managers need to arrange job duties to his or her team members to achieve the organization’s goal. The managers will determine what tasks should be done, who will responsible for the task and how the tasks are to be grouped. For example, as the merchandising manager in the supermarket chain business, the manager needs to organize his or her team to different group and each group will in charge of different merchandises by categories like drink, snack, rice oil and noodles. After different teams have been organized, each team’s supervisor will be selected by the merchandising manager. The buyers will report to their supervisors and the supervisors will report to the merchandising manager. Leading Managers need to lead their team members to achieve the organizations’ goals. The leading function will require the managers to provide good communication skills and lead ship skills to resolve the behavior issues. As the merchandising manager in the supermarket chain business, some conflicts will be appeared with different buyers. Buyers will provide some products that buyers want to promote to be the promotion products in each week’s flyer, due to the limited space of the flyer, not all the products will be selected to be the promotion products by merchandising manager. The manager will use the communication skills and lead ship skills to let the buyers know why their products cannot be selected and what they should improve next time. Controlling The last management function is controlling. Managers need to evaluate and monitor employees’ performance and make sure every step is correct to achieve the goals. As the merchandising manager, the merchandises’ sales are the key performance index to evaluate buyers’ performance. Usually, merchandising manager will use category sales to evaluate each team’s performance and total stores sales’ growth percentage to evaluate the whole department’s performance. Skills Required by Managers Technical skills, human skills and conceptual skills are three most important skills required by managers. Though these three skills, managers can know more about the specified filed they are working, have better interpersonal relationship with people and have more ideas when facing the complex situations. Technical skills Managers need have strong technical skills in the specified filed because the managers need to deal with his or her employees when the employees face some difficulties during the working. The managers will give help and lead the employees to solve technical problems to achieve the organizations’ goals. For example, as a merchandising manager in the supermarket chain business, he or she must have strong purchasing skills, budgeting skills, know well with different merchandises that are sold in stores and inventory management skills. Human skills Managers must have ability to work well with different employees. Managers with perfect human skills, they can receive more and more trust from their employees and the employees can make full effort to achieve the organizations’ goals. As the supermarket chain’s merchandising manager, he or she should get well not only with different buyers, but also with store levels’ employees. If the manager can work well with store levels’ employees, the products that they imported can be displayed very well and follow merchandising department’s pricing strategies, as a result, the company’s goal can be achieved easily. Conceptual skills Managers must have ability to analyze and provide solutions when facing difficulties or complex situations. In the business world, top-level management positions usually required to have this skill. For example, as the merchandising manager in the supermarket chain business, when the new store will be opened, the manager will use conceptual skills to analyze what the best location is, what the best merchandises will be on shelf and what the target sales will be generated and so on. Also, if one of categories’ sales was continuing decreasing in the past several weeks, the manager need provide insight and solutions to the category team to help them overcome the difficulties. Two Views of Management Control Omnipotent view of management: The traditional view of managers is that they are directly responsible for organizations’ success and failures. When the organizations’ performance is poor, the managers should provide reasons and solutions; when the organizations’ performance is good, the managers should get the credit even if they only do little things to achieve the goals. Symbolic view of management Managers only have limited effects on organizational outcomes and performances because of the large number of factors like customers, competitors, government policies and economy outside the control of managers. Both omnipotent view of management and symbolic view of management purpose are to achieve organizations’ goals and provide the excellent performance to the organizations. As well, either omnipotent view of management or symbolic view of management, managers needs to make decisions within organizations when something happened. Like the merchandising manager in the supermarket chain business, if stores’ sales are continuing decreasing, whatever the reason is merchandises’ price are not attractive or the outside economy is in downtrend, the manager need provide insights and solutions to improve sales for the company. However, there are big differences between omnipotent view of management and symbolic view of management. The managers will in charge of everything for organizations’ success and failures under omnipotent view of management; but under the symbolic view of management, lots of external factors will affect organizations’ performance, so the managers do not have big effects on organizational outcomes and performances. As the merchandising manager in the supermarket chain business, when stores’ sales are continuing decreasing, the manager will think if customers do not like the merchandises that they imported or the merchandises’ price is too high for the customers under omnipotent view of management, then the manager will provide solutions to improve the sales; however, under the symbolic view of management, the manager will think about if stores’ sales were effected by strong competitions in the market or the downtrend of economy. Strategic Management Process Step1: identify the organization’s current mission, goals and strategies Explain: The mission, goals and strategies of an organization are very important to employees, especially for managers. Managers need to create scope work by step to achieve organizations’ goals, missions and strategies. Example: A supermarket Inc. mission is that attract more and more Asian-Canadian families, bringing Asian-Canadian families fresh foods and introducing the diversity of Asian food culture at stores that offer exceptional convenience, service, and value to those Asian customers. The merchandising manager need bring in more Asian products to the stores to attract customers. Step2: do an internal analysis Explain: An internal analysis about the organization’s resources and capabilities will be done to indentify the organization’s strength and weakness Example: The merchandising manager will do an internal analysis to indentify the company’s strength which is have different kinds of Asian foods cross grocery, produce, seafood and bakery and weakness which is lack of experience about what kind of western foods is suitable for Asian customers. Step3: do an external analysis Explain: An external analysis about the business environment, government policies, and competitions will be done to help managers know opportunities and threats for organizations. Example: The merchandising manager will do an external analysis to know the opportunities and threats for the company. Opportunities are more and more Asian families move to Toronto and lots of labor supply in the market. Threats are the strong competitions exist in Toronto’s Asian supermarkets field. Step4: formulate strategies Explain: After identify organizations’ missions and finished internal and external analysis, managers need formulate strategies to achieve organizations’ mission base on SWOT. Example: The merchandising manager formulates the strategy which is open more new stores to achieve the company’s mission. More and more Asian families move to Toronto and lots of labor supply in the market, new stores will be easy opened and can attract more Asian customers. Meanwhile, strong competitions exist in the market, the company need to increase the number of stores to low the products’ cost. Step5: implement strategies Explain: After managers formulate the strategies, lots of members will be involved to implement the strategies to achieve organizations’ goals. Example: The merchandising manager will request his or her buyers to import more Asian merchandises for new stores, work with the store operation department to decide the layout of stores and work with finance department about new stores’ budget. Step6: evaluate results Explain: After the strategies were implemented, managers need to evaluate the results to see if achieve the organizations’ goals and make any adjustments if necessary. Example: After new store was opened, the managers need to calculate if store’s sales had been achieved the target. If not, the manager will provide solutions to improve store sales immediately.