A national sales manager in company z management essay

Fayol mentions five functions of management without which the organization cannot function properly. These are Fayol’s (1916, as cited in Colin Hales, 1999) classic formulation of the five elements of management: forecasting/planning, organizing, commanding, coordinating and controlling. For Fayol (1949: 5-6, as cited in David Lamond, 1997) to manage is to forecast and plan, to organize, to command, to coordinate and to control. To foresee and provide means examining the future and drawing up the plan of action. To organize means building up the dual structure, material and human, of the undertaking. To command means maintaining activity among the personnel. To coordinate means binding together, unifying and harmonizing all activity and effort. To control means seeing that everything occurs in conformity with established rule and expressed command. Fayol (1988, as cited in Judith Ann Chapman, 2001) spearheaded the quest for a general theory of management. He described six organizational functions, one of which was the managerial function. Fayol’s first function planning involves defining the goals and strategies to achieve the organizational goals. In the questionnaire, both manager’s work involve moderate amount of planning as they have rated 3 for defining organizational goals. These similarities between the two manager’s task is because they are working in the middle level of management and planning is mostly done by the upper level of management. Manager A’s task involves planning in the monthly meetings he has to arrange with the supply chain department and marketing department. These meetings are arranged to describe the workflow of the organization in order to improve efficiency. Katz (1955) believed that managers should have specific managerial knowledge in order for them to perform well in their managerial roles. Therefore he introduced these three skills: technical, human, and conceptual. Although Manager A’s work does not involve a lot of planning, but it involves interpersonal skills also known as human skills as he has rated 4 in the questionnaire. It is considered as most important skill for good performance in all the organizational levels. According to Mann (1965, as cited in Peterson and Van Fleet, 2004), human skills include an understanding of behavioural principles, interpersonal relations, motivation, and communication. These human skills, according to Katz, are essential to effective administration at every level, and as one moves up the hierarchy the need for human skills becomes ” proportionally, although probably not absolutely, less” (1974, p. 95, as cited in Pavett and lau, 1983). Manager A uses these skills to interact with the employees by having meetings with sales team and marketing team to discuss the performance and decide on how to improve. His task also involves organizing marketing events. Whereas Manager B’s task, planning is involved in the consultation process with the CEO. Their main aim is to use strategies with the agreement of all employees to achieve the organizational objectives. Manager B’s work involves a lot of interpersonal skills as has rated 5 in the questionnaire. He leads the team of 7 analysts and researchers and has to keep contact with external auditors, shareholders and people from other departments such as marketing, accounting and finance. Personal dealing with live projects and clients is also part of his job which shows that human skills are needed in his task. Fayol’s second function organizing involves taking a decision on what needs to be done, who should be assigned to do it and what strategies should be adopted. Manager A rated 4 for arranging work whereas Manager B rated 5. These differences can be because Manager B works in a small company so he is involved in all the functions whereas Manager A works in a large company and focuses on specific functions. Manager A’s task only involves organizing to manage the flow of supply chain, make sure fulfilment of orders are on time, and to fulfil customer expectations. But his work involves conceptual skills as he has rated 4. While technical skills focus on things and human skills focus on people, conceptual skills focus on ideas and concepts (Yukl, 2002 as cited in Peterson and Van fleet, 2004). Manager A has to take into account what the consumer thinks before he buys the product and what makes him purchase it in order for the customer to fulfil his expectations. Manager A also has to discover new strategies for marketing their product to increase sales. Whereas Manager B’s task involves more organizing as he has to schedule work, decide on what is most important, arrange project management, make Gant Charts, schedule visits to clients, delegate work to the lower staff and give targets to the subordinates. His biggest responsibility is to achieve goals with the consensus on the strategies used. Manager B’s work involves more conceptual skill as he rated 5. His work involves advising clients on the best services which will give them more return if invested. Having up-to-date research is also part of his job. For coordinating both managers rated 4 in the questionnaire. They both use quite the same technique for motivating employees. Manager A gives example of providing incentives such as percentage of sales on achieving sales target, to sales person and warehouse staff on the work and sales performance to motivate them and improve employee efficiency. Manager B also motivates his employees by giving them incentive schemes after considering the budget with the CEO. Moreover interpersonal skills are required for feedback sessions and training sessions which are arranged so that employees are kept connected to the organization and they can be motivated to achieve the overall goal. Fayol’s last management function controlling involves supervising the activities to make sure they are carried out as planned. Both Managers work is similar as it involves very much monitoring and correcting the current activities as they both rated 5 on the questionnaire. Manager A’s task is to check each process at different stages to make sure they are carried out correctly, measure the quality of performance and make sure the standards are being met. Manager A also has to send customers as mystery shoppers to measure the quality of service and collect information about the product of stores and workers. Manager A’s work involves technical skills as he has rated 4. Technical skills are the abilities to perform a particular task using different techniques. O’Neal (1985, p. 51, as cited in Peterson and Van Fleet, 2004) stated that without these fundamental skills, ” managers cannot effectively plan, direct, control, or assess work activities”. Manager A uses these skills to improve the techniques of sales and marketing, to fulfil customer expectations, and to improve the existing products. Whilst for Manager B, although the overall supervision is done by the CEO, his job is to keep regular track of performance through enterprise resource planning system and other project management tools to make sure performance does not decline. Manager B’s task involves more technical skills as he rated 5. His job involves work on technology for example financial modelling on Ms Excel, Ms Office applications such as Ms Power point. Furthermore, Manager B uses technical skills for professional accounting and investment appraisals. Most of the early studies (Brewer and Tomlinson, 1964; Burns, 1957; Copeman, Luijk and Hanika, 1963; Kelly, 1964; Sayles, 1964, as cited in Colin Hales, 1999) were entirely descriptive, classifying managers’ work by task, activity, contacts, media, location and so on, and recording how managers distributed their time amongst these. Other studies added a second dimension to these descriptions by demonstrating a correlation between managers’ work and other variables – such as organization size, hierarchical level, functional specialism or job (Blankenship and Miles, 1968; Dubin and Spray, 1964; Hemphill, 1959; Hodgson, 1965; Horne and Lupton, 1965; Martin, 1956; Stewart, 1967, as cited in Colin Hales, 1999). From The two manager’s work, it can be seen that their work involves universality of management as management is needed in all types of organizational levels regardless of their size and type of the organization. Katz (1955, 1974), Mann (1965), Mintzberg (1973), Guglielmino (1978), Boyatzis (1982), Whetten and Cameron (1983), Bigelow (1991), Analoui (1997, 1998), and Peterson and Peterson (2004 as cited in Peterson and Van fleet, 2004) have all asserted that managerial skills allow managers to enact the functions of management. Through these functions organizations achieve their objectives. However Fayol also has his champions, such as Carroll and Gillen (1987: 48 as cited in David Lamond, 1997) who conclude from their evaluation that Fayol’s characterisation of management still represents ‘the most useful way of conceptualizing the manager’s job’. After interviewing both the managers, it can be concluded that Fayol’s four functions and Katz skills are still very important for the organization to function properly. It appears to be that Manager A’s work mainly involves controlling whereas Manager B’s task involves organizing and controlling. Universality of management is supported by the evidence provided by the two managers. It comes forth that management is necessary whether the company is small or large, belongs from manufacturing or service sector and whether the manager works in the upper level or middle level management in the organization.