The role of managers in their organizations

Management takes place in organizations, which are collections of people who work together and coordinate their actions to achieve a wide variety of goals and desired future outcomes effectively and efficiently through planning, organizing, leading, and controlling. (George, Jones, & Haddad, 2016, p. 4). A manager plays a vital role in a workplace. They are the leaders that employees look up to, this is why the manager should lead a good example. They should know how to deal with difficult situations too, and make a smart decision on everything. (Connor, 2017). Managers at all levels and in all departments—whether in small or large organizations, for profit or not-for-profit organizations, or organizations that operate in one country or throughout the world—are responsible for performing the four functions which are planning, organizing, controlling, and leading in order to achieve the organizational goals.

Efficiency is a measure of the appropriateness of the goals that managers have selected for the organization to pursue and of the degree to which the organization achieves those goals. According to management expert Peter Drucker effectiveness means doing the right thing. Organizations are effective when managers choose appropriate goals and then achieve them. When we say efficiency, this is a measure of how well or how productively resources are used to achieve a goal. Being efficient is about doing things right. Organizations are efficient when managers minimize the amount of input resources such as labour, raw materials, and component parts or the amount of time needed to produce a given output of goods or services. (George, Jones, & Haddad, 2016, p. 6).

For a practical example, consider the differences between activity effectiveness and activity efficiency among your sales reps. Every sales team has daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly goals that, when achieved, are representative of the effectiveness of their roles. If your reps are tasked with making 70 calls each day, and they easily hit their numbers, they are effective at their jobs. Some might even go above and beyond and make 80 or 90 calls each day. But what if those dials are producing few connects and even fewer deals? That’s where activity efficiency ratios come in. For a sales manager, having reports that track how many calls lead to connects, how many connects lead to demos and how many demos lead to deals can be an incredibly powerful indicator of which of your reps are not only effective at their jobs but efficient in performing them.

Organizations normally have three levels of management:·First-line managers – they are often called supervisors and responsible for the daily supervision and coordination of the nonmanagerial employees who perform many of the specific activities necessary to produce goods and services. Middle managers – supervise the first-line managers and have the responsibility of finding the best ways to help first-line managers and nonmanagerial employees make better use of resources in order to reduce manufacturing cost or improve the way services are provided to customers. They are also responsible for evaluating whether the goals that the organization is pursuing are appropriate and for suggesting to top managers ways in which goals should be changed. They also coordinate resources across departments and divisions. Top managers – are responsible for the performance of all departments. They are responsible for connecting the parts of the organization together. Top managers help carry out the organizational vision; they establish organizational goals, such as which goods and services the company should produce; they decide how the different departments should interact; and they monitor how well middle managers in each department use resources to achieve goals. They are ultimately responsible for the success or failure of an organization.

Managerial Skills and Roles

To successfully perform their activities in planning, organizing, leading, and controlling, managers must have certain skills: conceptual, interpersonal, and technical.

Conceptual skills – are demonstrated by the ability to analyze and diagnose a situation and to distinguish between cause and effect. Top managers require the best conceptual skills because their primary responsibilities are planning and organizing. Formal education and training are very important in helping managers develop conceptual skills. Conceptual skills allow managers to understand the big picture confronting an organization It lets the manager see beyond the situation immediately at hand and consider choices while keeping the organization’s long term goals in mind. Interpersonal skills – are people skills. They include the ability to understand, alter, lead, and control the behaviour of other individuals and groups. The ability to communicate and give feedback, to coordinate and motivate people, to give recognition, to mould individuals into a cohesive team, and to play politics effectively distinguishes effective managers from ineffective managers.

Technical skills – are the job specific knowledge and techniques that are required to perform an organizational role. Managers need a range of technical skills to be effective. The array of technical skills a person needs depends on his or her position in the organization. For example the manager of a restaurant may need cooking skills to fill in for an absent cook, accounting and bookkeeping skills to keep track of receipts and costs and to administer the payroll, and aesthetic skills to keep the restaurant looking attractive for customers.

Application & Analysis Porter Airlines Mission

Our values as an airline are rooted in delivering a customer experience that makes air travel enjoyable,” said Robert Deluce, president and CEO of Porter Airlines. “ Since we began operating, these values have set us apart and are what makes us recognized around the world. (Porter Airlines Inc., n. d.) The Porter Airlines is pursuing a focused low-cost strategy. They introduced a new entry-level fare class to meet the needs of more price-sensitive travelers. The decision falls within what Porter SVP and CMO Kevin Jackson sees as an industry-wide trend that has been around for the last two years – and which he says won’t be ending anytime soon – with carriers offering unbundled fares that give customers the option of choosing the products and services they find most valuable. Porter’s entry-level fare class comes at the lowest price, but must be booked 21 days in advance and doesn’t allow for itinerary changes or cancellations.

All bags, accept for one small personal item (such as a purse or briefcase), must be checked for a fee. And all services options, including checked luggage and advance seat selection, come at additional costs. The company won’t be doing any broad advertising campaigns around the new class. Instead, its focus remains reaching customers who are looking for great deals on air travel through its digital and email channels, part of a direct-response marketing strategy that is managed entirely in-house. While Porter previously outsourced some of the work, Jackson says it now has the internal talent needed to bring campaigns to market at faster speed. The rise of low-cost flights originated in Europe and the U. S., with the arrival of ultra-low-cost carriers like EasyJet, Ryanair and Spirit Airlines, but the trend continues to grow in Canada, according to Jackson. Air Canada and WestJet offer their own entry-level fares, and the latter’s new ultra-low-cost carrier Swoop began flying just last month. (J, 2018).

Bombardier Mission

The world’s leading manufacturer of planes and trains. (About Us, n. d.). Vision – . We are committed to providing superior value and service to our customers and sustained profitability to our shareholders by investing in our people and products. We lead through innovation and outstanding product safety, efficiency and performance. Our standards are high. We define excellence—and we deliver. (Mission and Vision, 2010).

Goals

We look far ahead to see and shape the future of mobility. Our goal is to continuously find better ways to bridge distances and bring people together. Across cities, countries and the globe. This is our passion. (Bombardier Home, n. d.)

Strategy

The Bombardier is pursuing a corporate-level strategy because when dealing with corporate-level strategy, executives seek answers to a key question: In what industry or industries should our firm compete? The executives in charge of a firm such as Bombardier Inc. must decide whether to remain within their present domains or venture into new ones. In Bombardier’s case, the firm has expanded from its original business (transportation over snow) into railway transportation, aerospace, and several other industries. In contrast, many firms never expand beyond their initial choice of industry (Bombardier Inc., 2014). They fulfill their promise to create better ways to move the world through their enterprise strategy – a roadmap that drives their commitment to solve for the world’s ever-growing need for mobility through innovation. The strategy governs how they run the business and is designed to create both financial and non-financial value for their stakeholders. While it is an ambitious strategy and not without challenges — operational, technological and cultural — it is the right roadmap to be the company that answers some of society’s most pressing mobility challenges – urban congestion, unpredictable fuel prices and environmental uncertainty among them. (Bombardier, n. d.). The things managers must consider when engaging in organizational design.

Organizational Environment – a set of forces and conditions, such as globalization, technology, and competition, that can affect the way the organization operates and the way managers engage in planning and organizing.

External Organizational Environment – a set of external forces and conditions that starts with suppliers, distributors, customers, and competitors and affect an organization’s ability to obtain inputs, such as raw materials and financial resources, and dispose of it’s outputs, or finished products or services. The task environment contains the forces that have the most immediate and direct effect on managers because they arise from the specific sector or industry in which the organization conducts its operations.

General Environment – a wide ranging set of external forces—including political, economic, socio-cultural, technological, and international or global forces—that affect the organization and its industry-specific environment directly or indirectly. For the individual manager, opportunities and threats resulting from changes in the general environment are often more difficult to identify and respond to than are events in the task environment.

Industry-Specific or Task Environment – includes several groups, organizations, persons that the organization deals with directly in its daily operations and that have an immediate effect on the operations and performance levels of the organization by posing opportunities or threats to managers. Forces in the task environment result from the actions of suppliers, distributors, customers, and competitors. Environmental change is the degree to which forces in the specific and general environments change and evolve over time. Change is problematic for an organization and its managers because the consequences of change can be difficult to predict. Managers can try to forecast or simply guess about future conditions in the environment such as where and how strong the new competition may be. But, confronted with a complex and changing environments, managers cannot be sure that decisions and actions taken today will be suitable in the future. This uncertainty makes their jobs especially challenging. It also makes it vitally important for managers to understand the forces that shape the external environment. (George, Jones, & Haddad, 2016, pp. 44-63).

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

I think it still applies today. Humans have basic needs that are essential for their survival, on the bottom of Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs we see those basic needs such as food, shelter. Things we need and crave for to survive. In some ways, life hasn’t changed our fundamental human natures. Whether it’s the ancient Savannah or today’s Face book and Twitter, social behaviours adapt to the environment to support that most basic of human needs. Social connection is ever-present. What social media has done is make it infinitely easier for the social connection to take place. And today’s young people entering the workplace, who have grown up in this inter-connected world, expect the workplace to reflect that.

In 20th Century management, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs was helpful to a certain extent in pointing out to managers why traditional management–hierarchical bureaucracy with managers acting as controllers of individuals—was unlikely to meet the psychological needs of employees. But it offered an unrealistic route to meeting those needs: ascension up the hierarchy of needs towards self-actualization. The truth is that not everyone wants or needs or is able to be a self-actualizing artist or leader. (Surana, 2016)Transactional Leadership are more concerned with maintaining the normal flow of operations. Transactional leadership can be described as “ keeping the ship afloat.” Transactional leaders use disciplinary power and an array of incentives to motivate employees to perform at their best.

The term “ transactional” refers to the fact that this type of leader essentially motivates subordinates by exchanging rewards for performance. A transactional leader generally does not look ahead in strategically guiding an organization to a position of market leadership; instead, these managers are often concerned with making sure everything flows smoothly today. In contrast, transformational leadership goes beyond managing day-to-day operations and crafts strategies for taking his company, department or work team to the next level of performance and success. Transformational leadership styles focus on team-building, motivation and collaboration with employees at different levels of an organization to accomplish change for the better. Transformational leaders set goals and incentives to push their subordinates to higher performance levels, while providing opportunities for personal and professional growth for each employee. (Ingram, 2018).

References

1. 1. About Us. (n. d.). Retrieved from https://www. bombardier. com/en/about-us. htmlBombardier |
2. 2. Home. (n. d.). Retrieved from https://www. bombardier. com/en/home. htmlBombardier Inc. (2014, February).
3. 3. Bombardier Transportation: Profit, Strategy and Market. Retrieved from http://ir. bombardier. com/images/ckeditor/staging/upload/ckeditor/files/BT%20Profile%20Strategy%20and%20Market%20FEB%202014(1). pdf
4. 4. Connor, C. (2017, June 21). The important roles of a manager in achieving the company’s goals. Retrieved from http://leansystemssociety. org/the-important-roles-of-a-manager-in-achieving-the-companys-goals/
5. 5. Edwards, J. (n. d.). Mastering Strategic Management- 1st Canadian Edition. Retrieved from https://opentextbc. ca/strategicmanagement/chapter/selecting-corporate-level-strategies/
6. 6. Goh, G. (2015, July 23). The Difference Between Effectiveness and Efficiency Explained. Retrieved from https://www. insightsquared. com/2013/08/effectiveness-vs-efficiency-whats-the-difference/