Current Challenges that Managers Face
Being in the position of a manager is a great opportunity and it is accompanied by numerous challenges in this world of business with evolving each and every single day. The leaders that change the world of business today are the managers through inspiring and motivating the working teams to accomplish the aims, objectives and targets and in the process, the managers direct and guide them. There are various issues that disturb the minds of the managers, nevertheless, overcoming these issues are the biggest challenges that managers face (Bernard, Anandan, and RaviKumar, 2019). Some of the challenges include:
Retaining the best talent
The most valuable asset is the human capital in today’s modern companies. The success and improvement of any organization are directly related to the satisfaction and happiness of the employees. Retention od of employees is an issue that is acknowledged by many managers. In this ever-evolving business world, managers have a hard course of holding on the staffs or employees, more specifically the best ones. Managers should, therefore, allocate more time to show their involvement and interest to the success and progress of their employees and motivate the employees to stay a bit longer.
Management of the Remote Employees
It is very hard for the manager of the company to watch and keep all sort of things under control when the co-workers are dispersed geographically across the world and also have different working time zones. Managers are always travelling and, on the go, with lack of clarity and communication develops a problem even though there are technological tools that can be used for interaction of human. Ensuring proper and clear communication between the members of the team, making sure it is timeless and clarity of the information being shared even though there are obstacles in the organization are the main duties of the managers today.
Burnout of the Employee
Managers are responsible for allocating members of the team to different projects, manoeuvring effectively and juggling at once different tasks. Managers are responsible for matching the skill set of an employee with given assignment requirements. Understanding the strengths of the employee and also the areas of expertise are also the job of the managers. It is significance to ensure that employees have the required skills for executing a project effectively.
Principles of Scientific Management
- The theory of Taylor is broken down into the following principles of management:
- Making use of the scientific approach in the training and selection of the workers.
- Bringing workers and science together for the workers to be able to apply the scientific techniques for performing tasks.
- Gather, analyze and convert the information actively to rules, laws or mathematical formulas to perform a given task (Thomas, 2018).
Contribution of the Scientific Management
Scientific management theory founded by Frederick Taylor helps in the analysis of the processes and workflows with a common aim of making them more productive. Some of the contributions of Taylor’s Theory include:
Productivity
One of the greatest achievements of scientific management theory in the massive increase in productivity. Through the study of workers’ activities, scientific management brought to light the methods that make workers more productive and effective. By uncovering the ways of maximizing the efforts of the workers in an organization, there would be an increase in profitability, making the company compete in today’s global market.
Division of Work
Division of work between supervisors and workers is a product of scientific management. Breaking down a task into different parts and making the job systematic have resulted in greater produce and standardization. Today, the project management process being used by organizations for large projects management is related to scientific management principles. Supervisors in the organizations benefit also from this theory through the performance of the management process which is systematic.
Total Quality
There is a direct relationship between total quality and scientific management. Numerous quality improvement principles and the quality management of Six Sigma have their background from scientific management. There is also a direct relation of a constant search for better ways and method for improving quality and continuous improvement to scientific management (Palla, and Billy,2018).
Criticism of Scientific Management
- Exploitation: The workers feel that they are being exploited since they are not given the share in profit increase resulting from their increase in productivity.
- Expensive: It is costly to employ the scientific management system in the organization and requires a big investment in the establishment of work-study, planning department, training of the workers and standardization.
- Monotony: Because of the excessive application of specialization in the organization, workers are unable to make their initiatives (Oberoi, 2016).
Borderless World
A borderless world is an idea of globalization in which technology, goods, services, information, capital flow from one nation or country to other through borders. In this present world of today of globalization, there is a production of a component in one country, assembling of the component in the second country, marketing of the component in the third country and financing of the component in the fourth country. The process of running a business is becoming more interesting. Organizations and companies are discovering many opportunities for running and expanding in other outside countries. In the borderless world, resources also can be easily found hence making the products more efficient and more effective (Sönmez, Wiitala, and Apostolopoulos, 2019).
There are a lot of activities such as exchange of cultures that are done in the borderless world. Running of a business is an example of a task. The affairs of businesses face in today’s world are diverse. Management of the employees that are of different cultures develops numerous challenges to the department of human resource management (Kobrin, 2017).
The Difference between Risky and Ambiguity decision making
Risk can be defined as a condition or a situation in which something is exposed to loss, danger or harm. In the other hand, ambiguity can be defined as a condition or a situation in which there exist more than one interpretation of something hence leading to vagueness and confusion. Furthermore, the difference between ambiguity and risk is that the effects, outcomes or result of risk is known and on the other hand, the outcomes of ambiguity are unknown.
When decisions are made based on the above, there are different techniques that a manager of an organization can use simply because they are two different situation approaches. The most usual risky decisions in business are made in industries of technology. This technological industry is struggling every day to meet the needs of its customers or people. Therefore, their decisions are commonly based on risk. A risky decision can be either successful or unsuccessful risky decision. For example, the risky decision made when google was buying YouTube is a successful risky decision when most of the people thought it was an unsuccessful risky decision (Clay, and Parker, 2018).
The techniques that are used when making risky decisions may include; understanding the weight and magnitude of the risk to be made, thinking not in days but rather in years to come, communicating with people who are familiar with the decision and lastly keeping off the game of what if.
Ambiguous decision making is common in the situations where there exist changes in the marketing conditions of the organization, the traditional or formal business is being affected by the troublesome innovations in the market. The decision under the ambiguous risk is basically based on the consequences and experience. There is no obvious information being provided in regards to the possibilities, probabilities and expanse of negative and positive consequences which are interconnected to the options of decision. The decisions made are learned from the effect or the feedback (Van Den Bos, and Hertwig 2017).
Steps of Management by Objectives (MBO)
Management by Objectives (MBO) can be defined as a thorough system of management that consolidates numerous key activities of management in a systematic process for the efficient and effective accomplishment of goals, projects or objectives of an individual or an organization. The steps of the Management by Objective process include:
- Defining the goals, objectives or target of the organization. Objectives are important issues to the effectiveness of the organization and they perform a number of functions. An organization can have different kinds of objectives which are managed appropriately.
- Defining the objectives of the employees. The manager of the organization goes ahead to ask the employees their objectives or goals that they believe they can achieve within the period of time given and the resources that are available.
- Evaluation of Performance. Under this process of Management by Objectives, the review of performance is done by the managers’ participation in concern.
- Performance appraisal. These are the systematic review of the performance of the employee within the company or the organization (Islami, Mulolli, and Mustafa, 2018).
Advantages of Management by Objectives
- Improvement in Performance
The main focus of Management by Objectives is on controlling and setting goals. Managers are urged to perform planning that is detailed. The managers put more focus on the critical task of performance improvement by cutting the cost and making use of the opportunities. Improved planning will successfully lead to more profits and improved productivity.
- Maximum use of Human Resources
The objectives of the organization are set and fixed in relation to the abilities of the workers or subordinates hence obtaining the maximum contribution from the workers. This leads to the maximum use of the human resources that are available (Amponsah, Opata, and Tetteh, 2018)
Disadvantages of Management by Objectives
- Insufficient support of Top Management
In conventional organizations, the top management is given the authority and then it flows from the top management to the bottom management. In the Management by Objectives, the subordinates have participation opportunities that are equal, which top management totally disliked. Without the support of the top management, this system of MBO cannot triumph.
- Time and Cost consuming
Management by Objectives is a process that is time and cost consuming. The work involves a lot of paper, furthermore, there are many reports being prepared, many meetings to be attended which multiplies the responsibilities of the managers and also burden them (Nuta, and Nuta, 2018)
Reference List
Islami, X., Mulolli, E. and Mustafa, N., 2018. Using Management by Objectives as a performance appraisal tool for employee satisfaction. Future Business Journal, 4(1), pp.94-108.
Amponsah-Tawiah, K., Opata, J.L. and Tetteh, S.D., 2018. Time management: presenteeism versus management-by-objectives. International journal of law and management.
Nuta, A.C. and Nuta, F., 2018. Management of objectives and budgetary planning. EuroEconomica, 37(3).
Van Den Bos, W. and Hertwig, R., 2017. Adolescents display distinctive tolerance to ambiguity and to uncertainty during risky decision making. Scientific reports, 7(1), pp.1-11.
Clay, J.M. and Parker, M.O., 2018. The role of stress-reactivity, stress-recovery and risky decision-making in psychosocial stress-induced alcohol consumption in social drinkers. Psychopharmacology, 235(11), pp.3243-3257.
Kobrin, S.J., 2017. Bricks and mortar in a borderless world: Globalization, the backlash, and the multinational enterprise. Global Strategy Journal, 7(2), pp.159-171.
Sönmez, S., Wiitala, J. and Apostolopoulos, Y., 2019. How complex travel, tourism, and transportation networks influence infectious disease movement in a borderless world. In Handbook of Globalisation and Tourism. Edward Elgar Publishing.
Bernard, N.J., Anandan, C.C. and RaviKumar, A., 2019. CHALLENGES OF HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGERS DUE TO WORKFORCE DIVERSITY.
Thomas, B., 2018. Review on the Principles of Scientific Management.
Palla, A.K. and Billy, I., 2018. Scientific management: its inapplicability to contemporary management challenges. The Business & Management Review, 9(3), pp.459-463.
Oberoi, R., 2016. Frederick Wilson Taylor’s Scientific Management Theory.