M.S.

-01

Management Functions and Behaviour

ASSIGNMENT SOLUTIONS GUIDE (2013-2014)
Disclaimer / Special Note: These are just the sample of the Answers/Solutions to some of the Questions given in the Assignments. These Sample Answers/Solutions are prepared by Tutor for the help of the student to get an idea of how he/she can answer the questions of the Assignments. Sample answers may be Seen as the Guide/Reference Book/Assignment Guide. Any Omission or Error is highly regretted though every care has been taken while preparing these Sample Answers/Solutions. Please consult you Teacher / Tutor before you prepare a Particular Answer.

Q. 1. What are the Institution Building Skills of the Top Executives in organizational set up? Explain with examples from various Institution Building Personalities quoting their role relating to various skills which contributed in Institution Building. Briefly describe the organizational history you are referring to. Ans. A top executive serves the task of institution building. Soon after the manager attains the goals of conceptual and technical skills, there is also a need to gain an access for developing skills to attain goal of institution building. The top executive should always think for assuring employees satisfaction, about their welfare and also in their development that can create an impact on society. This way, a top level executive always strive for excellence aiming to take his organization towards newer horizons. Role of a Top Level Executive A top level executive should always play diverse role. The first role is to make sure that there is an identity of creating role, the second is to enable the role to the right person, the third is to synergise the role. Similarly, the fourth one is to balance the role and fifth one is to develop the linkage for building role. The sixth role is the linkage building role and the last one is futuristic role. His last but not the least role is to ensure superordination. It is being done by giving them the feeling that they are working for a great cause. At this level, there should be a sense of pride in his subordinates. Some of the significant functions of top manager include building efficient and strong team, reviewing the functioning of organization at different times, to finish off the search for competent people at all levels and to work as a chief executive for sharing ideas with policy makers and to develop a kind of skill in an organization that is required. He should always take initiative and lead as a leader. A good manager has to lead from the front. At one hand, he should be perfect in dealing with issues such as organizing, leading, controlling, planning etc., he should at the

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other hand, should also remain well equipped to tackle with human emotions. He has to take up certain issues such as technical, human and conceptual to make him function as a good human being. He should know how to build the institution while taking all the team members in account. Planning Skills With times, things are changing and so the modified skills are required to fulfil the functions in modern era. A good manager should know how to think ahead, he needs to have an ability to forecast future environmental trends affecting the organization, he needs to have an ability to state organizational objectives, he should have an ability to choose strategies that can help in attaining objectives with respect to future trends and he also needs to arrive at performance standards or yardsticks to monitor the implementation of these strategies. Organizing Skills A manager should always excel in organizing skills. He should be a master in doing a planning job. Soon after the planning process, there comes the organizing process than states who would achieve what and how it achieves. A structure of an organization is constituted through an integrated network of people, their jobs and their working relationships. Thus, the organizing skills include the ability to analyse and describe the organizational jobs, an ability to select, train and induct people in jobs, an ability to draw working links and an ability to change these working links when there are changes in an environment. Leading Skills A leader should know the basic importance of values, personality, perception and attitude. He should also know the meaning of value that comes as conviction which a person holds about a certain code of conduct. These values at work could be defined in terms of honesty, hard work, freedom, productivity, knowing the right people, living at right places, tolerance and saving time and finding a better way. The other trait of leader is his personality that comes as a total of personal traits. It does come as a conglomeration of forces in an individual. Another different perspective is perception that comes as a process where individuals keep organizing and interpreting their own impressions of an environment around them. Last but not the least, it is the attitude that makes one know about the persons tendency to behave in one particular condition. The attitude could be cognitive, affective or behavioural. A good leader should have skills to understand and work with different people. Controlling Skills A good manager should know how to control the actions and decisions to ensure that the good results are attained.
Planning Skill

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Organising Skill Leading Skill Controlling Skill Decision making Skill Feedback

Performance

Figure I: Relationship of Various Skills with Performance and Feedback A good manager always receives a feedback about his teams performance and then takes decisions accordingly. He also uses his motivating and leading skills for controlling and regulating performances. Decision-making Skills Decision-making skills play a crucial role in planning. These skills are vital in all the functions such as organizing, leading and controlling. It is this quality that he manager uses to solve various problems cropping up in an organization from time to time. The manager is adjudged with his timely decisions he take to solve different problems. Q. 2. What are the common barriers to effective Decision-making? How can they be overcome? Quote and describe the instances from your own experiences or the experiences you are aware of relating to and substantiating the answers to this question. Briefly describe the organization and the situation, you are referring to. Ans. There are different steps being associated with the process of decision-making. The first step in this process is to set off a mission. Once a mission is set, there could be a well defined list of significant elements of this process that includes objectives, goals, strategies, policies, programmes and procedures that helps in deriving the benefits of an organization. This sequential process forms a logical framework which further helps in making certain decisions at each management level. Therefore, it is quite evident that the following processes help in evaluating and finalizing the decision-making process: Mission Mission could be defined as the terms of benefits that a firm provides to its customers. Although it does not come in the form of physical dimension of firm or its products, however, it does always exist in one form or the other while finalising the decision-making. In almost all the businesses, there is a presence of a firm. This firm always works for the satisfaction of its customer. In the absence of the firm there would be no customers. Thus, in this context, customers form the starting point to define the process of mission setting. In case, if the customers exist outside the business, then, the mission is defined from outside the office. This mission remains concerned with future and mostly asks the question, What should our business be like? The concept of mission mostly remains dynamic and keeps changing over time in terms of technology, social structure, taste, fashion, etc. Objectives Once a mission is set, an elaborative objective needs to be defined. Thereafter, the management takes a decision to translate these objectives into an action. These objectives reflect the action orientation of mission. It is not mandatory that a firm needs to have only a single objective. It can have as many objectives as they want to have. The major cause of concerns is meant for setting objectives of profit and sales growth. These objectives are mostly taken for corporate level, business level, divisional level and individual level. Many of these organizations are seen concentrating only on profit making as the only criterion, however, the others take it as contemporary thing. However, in government and public sector undertakings, the objectives remain a bit different.

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Goals Goal setting also plays yet another significant role in the process of decision-making. These goals are basically derived from objectives. Mostly, they remain the time bound targets. They are necessary to attain the organizations objectives. They have in general four components. These four components include the target that needs to be achieved, secondly, a certain time limit to attain it, thirdly, a standard to measure performance and fourthly, a derived objective that needs to be fulfilled. Most of these goals remain time bound and are work-oriented. Further, they provide a regular path to convert plan into action. Strategy Once the objectives and goals are set, a well defined strategy needs to be chalked out. This strategy is meant to attain the objective. Basically, the strategy could be defined as a kind of action that firm takes to accomplish the set aims and objectives. This strategy comprises of five components that include a product/market scope, growth vector, competitive advantage, distinctive competence and synergy. Like all other steps such as goal defining, defining objectives, etc., the strategy formation also forms an essential part of the decision-making process. The process of strategy formation remains very much well defined. It is composed of the external-internal analysis. It is this process that helps in identifying the opportunities and threats. Once they are shortlisted, they can highlight ones own strengths and weaknesses. There exists yet another process that is meant for generating strategy alternatives that can help in fulfilling its objectives. Mostly, there are four strategies that are followed almost in all the organizations. They include the witness to the current products in current markets, to launch new products in current markets, to relaunch same products in new markets and to launch new products for new markets. In the third process of defining and designing strategy, one need to evaluate the strategy alternatives and the fourth one includes making a choice of strategies that can prove beneficial for an organization. Types of Managerial Decisions There are several decisions required to make a manager that include personal and organizational decisions, basic and routine decisions and programmed and nonprogrammed decisions. Basic decisions are unique, one time decisions while routine decisions are opposite extreme. They are everyday and highly repetitive kind of decisions. There are programmed and non-programmed decisions as well. While the programmed ones are routine and repetitive decisions, the non-programmed ones are unique and one shot decisions. There is a Greshams Law of Planning which states that there is a tendency for programmed activities for overshadowing non-programmed activities. Based on the complexity of the problem and the certainty of the outcome of decision, four kinds of decision modes could be identified that include mechanistic, analytical, judgemental and adaptive.

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Judgement Decision Outcome Uncertainty High Low (e.g. marketing. investment, and personnel problems)

Adaptive Decision (e.g. research and development and long-term corporate planning) Analytical Decision

Mechanistic Decision (e.g. daily routines and scheduled activities ) LOW

(e.g. complex production and engineering problems) Problems Complexity HIGH

Figure II: Types of Managerial Decisions 1. Mechanistic decisions: These decisions are routine and repetitive in nature. 2. Analytical decisions: This kind of decision has a problem with several decision variables, where outcomes of decisions alternative could be easily computed. 3. Judgemental decisions: This kind of decision has a problem with a limited number of decision variables. 4. Adaptive decisions: The adaptive decision has a problem with several decision variables. Decision-making under Different States of Nature The decision-maker may face the conditions of knowledge that are referred to as states of nature. They are labeled as decisions under certainty, decisions under risk and decisions under uncertainty. Figure III shows three conditions displaying relationship between knowledge and predictability of decision states.

Figure III: Decision-making Conditions Continuum There are different states of nature where decision needs to be taken. These are as follows: 1. Decision-making under certainty: This is an area where the manager knows about the results. There are as such no danger outcomes from the decision taken under this stream. An example of fixed deposits in nationalised banks can be taken where a customer knows that he would get the fixed results from the same. 2. Decision-making under risk: This is an area where a single action can generate potential results. Therefore, this area plays a potential role for a manager because if successful it can give surprising results. 3. Decision-making under uncertainty: Under this subject, the probability of each outcome remains unknown. There are as such no historical data available to assess the results of a particular project being taken under this project. For example, it has come as a major issue to select a particular advertising programme out of few campaigns. Q. 3. Conflict is an integral part of organizational functioning. Briefly describe and discuss the impact of conflict on organizational functioning. Draw from your 6

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Increasing Knowledge Complete Knowledge Lack of Knowledge Decreasing Knowledge

own experience or the situations and effect you are aware of in organizational set up with reference to the various impacts listed in the study material. Briefly describe the organization, and the situation you are referring to. Ans. The process of conflict has different parts including the potential antagonism, cosgnition and personalisation, conflictve and conflict management behavious and the aftermath effect.
Potential Antagonism Cognition and Personalisation Stage II Perceived Conflict Consequences Antecedent Conditions FELT Conflict Manifest Conflict Conflictive Conflict Handling Behaviour Stage III Aftermath

Stage I

Stage IV

Figure III: The Conflict Process The conflict process is well explained with the figure where there is potential antagonism where the opportunities are created for conflict to arise. Secondly, there is cognition and personalization where the antecedent conditions may not lead to conflict and must be perceived as threatening. The third stage is conflictive which suggests that manifest behaviour is the action resulting from perceived and/or felt conflict. Finally, the aftermath comes to fore where there is interplay between different forms of overt conflict behaviour and conflict handling strategies. You have just observed that beginning within an individual, conflict can be found on several levels. The nature of intrapersonal conflict is of very high significance and the knowledge of mechanisms available to resolve it is immensely important in improving personal effectiveness. For a conflict to exist it must be perceived by the parties to it. If no one is aware of a conflict then it is generally agreed that no conflict exists. Still, does a mere awareness of opposing goals or differences of option or antagonistics feelings imply that there is a conflict? It would be easier for you to understand conflict, if you view it as a dynamic process which includes antecedent conditions, cognitive states, affective states and conflicting behaviour. Potential Antagonism: The first stage is the presence of antecedent conditions that create opportunities for conflict to arise. They need not necessarily lead to conflict and may be present in the absence to conflict as well. The antecedent conditions may or may

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Conflict Management Strategy Stimulation Resolution

not lead to conflict. They must be perceived as threatening if conflict is to develop. The situation may be ignored if it is seen as minimally threatening. Conflictive and Conflict-management Behaviour: Manifest behaviour is the action resulting from perceived and/or felt conflict. At this stage, a conscious attempt is made by one party to lock the goal achievement of the other party. The two instances of inter-departmental conflicts are the fight between product head and our GM on their different kind of strategies. Each was on insisting on the fact that he was right. Secondly, there was a conflict on content issue between the editor and the chief subeditor regarding the selection of the content. There were changes in sources, processes, strategies and outcomes during these two conflicts. New strategies were sorted out and there were new outcomes with new ideas after these conflicts. Q. 4. How do you see the relationship between leadership styles and leadership theories? Describe, explain and relate your answer with the experience you have had in the organizational set up yourself or you are aware of. Describe the situation and the organization briefly, which you are referring to. Ans. Leadership Styles and Leadership Theories Trait Theory Kelly in 1974 described the theory and attempted to classify what personal characteristics that include physical, personality and mental which are associated with the success of leadership. The theory relies on research relating traits to leaders success. Group and Exchange Theories of Leadership Hollandder and Julian (1969) stated this theory saying that the leader provides more benefits than burden or costs for followers for they help them in achieving the goals of an organization. Social Learning Theories Bandura in 1977 came up with theory that shows that there is a continuous reciprocal interaction between person, environment and behaviour as is shown in Figure I.

Figure I: Reciprocal Determination in Social Learning Further, there is also a social learning approach for leadership that has been shown in Figure II. 8

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Person Behaviour Environment