Management Essay Questions

While empowerment is seen as a positive factor, managers often feel threatened by the loss of power and become more rigid and defense mode

Improvement à it’s all about becoming better, by using systematic approaches and careful methods with a lot of control internally and make incremental improvements.

Based on the fact that if you can’t be seen, you don’t exist. Visibility increases in client-oriented positions where executives tend to be more impressed with what they see in a meeting rather than by what they read about a worker. Lack of visibility can be solved by participating in problem-solving task forces and show yourself visible.

• An illusion of invulnerability
• Rationalization where they try to rationalize away objection
• Self-censorship
• Direct pressure within the team to threaten people out if they don’t agree

• There are three needs:
• Need for achievement - behavior leading to competition with a standard of excellence
• Need for affiliation – a desire to feel reassured and acceptable to others
• Need for power – a desire to influence others and to control one’s environment

 

The one described in the question, is the need for affiliation. An example of need for achievement is the need to perform well in a certain project. Need for power is a manager who would like to make sure that his project

Expertise – when a person possesses a great knowledge within a certain field, they develop an expertise with build reliability. However, this can lead to being a generalist.

 

Personal attraction – if the person has a certain charisma and poise within a group, they will be likeable by their peers

 

Effort – if a person puts in their effort and does whatever it takes for the company, they will be considered dependent by their peers

 

Legitimacy – if the leader is legitimate and applies what they say in practice à they will be deemed acceptable by their peers and be able to influence

• Constancy – looking at things from one side
• Commitment – too invested in one thing and can’t’ think outside of that solution
• Compression - looking too narrowly at a problem, screening out too much relevant data and/or making assumptions that inhibit problem solution
• Complacency – fear, ignorance or simply laziness that lead to bad solutions

• Re-supply
• Retrain
• Refit
• Reassign
• Release

Manager sees that an employee is doing bad à they try to micromanager à employee notices and performs even worse à manager sees it as a confirmation that they’re doing bad à vicious cycle that could possibly be reversed

• 1. Centrality- Due to the stressful enviroment decision making is pulled back torwards managment
• 2. Threat rigidity respons- Empowering is decrease due to managers fear of being replaced by giving subordinates less power-
• 3. Information decrease- due to the stressful times less information is shared due to fear.
• 4. Moral lost- Since people might fear losing their job some tend to lose morale and lose hope.
• 5. Politelized Enoviroment- Parts may be made due to conflicts wich is not good for the unity in the organization.
• 6. Trust lost: Due to the stressfull enviroment people tend to be more suspicious and then also trust is affected.
• 7. Conflict arise: more conflicts due to several factors. One could be the decrease in communication but also the stressed enviroment
• 8. Teamwork is lacking: Teams perform worse and less effective
• 9. Loyalty lost: People might look more on their own interest in stressful situations and therefore be less loyal.
• 10. Scapegoating leaders: since theres alot of stress in the organisation scapegoating might occur beacuse people want to have someone to blame
• 11.Short term perspective: Organisations seem to use short terms perspecive more freuqnrlty when in strressed situations

• -Do you have the right qualification in relation to the task?
• -Are you committed to the ask and will you enjoy it?
• -Do you see an opportunity to learn and grow through the task?
• -Do you think we have the same shared values and perspectives? What do you gain from this and do I gain?
• -Do you have the time to fulfill the assignment?

Emotional intelligence identifies emotional awareness and control and refers to the ability to diagnose, understand and manage emotional cues. People who are emotionally intelligent are able to accurately diagnose and empathize with the feelings of others and can respond to them appropriately. This trait is important to have in situations where people have different opinions and need to understand the other party better. Or in a conflict where you do need evaluate your feelings and not upset the other party.

• Front page test – would I be comfortable describing my actions or decisions to a customer or stock-holder and not be embarrassed?
• Golden rule test – would I be willing to be treated in the same manner?
• Dignity and liberty test – are the dignity and liberty of others preserved by this decision?
• Equal treatment test – are the rights, welfare and better treatment of minorities and lower status people given full consideration?
• Personal gain test – is an opportunity for personal gain clouding my judgement?
• Congruence test – is this decision or action consistent with my espoused personal principles? Does it violate the spirit of any organizational policies or laws?
• Procedural justice test – can the procedures used to make this decision stand up to scrutiny by those affected?
• Cost-benefit test – does a benefit for some cause unacceptable harm to others?
• Good night’s sleep test – whether or not anyone else knows about my action of decision, will it produce a good night’s sleep?

There are three strategies:

•  
• Retribution – a form of personal threat where they try to coerce someone to do something or by intimidate them
• Reciprocity – they offer an exchange by bargaining “if you scratch my back ill scratch yours”
• Reasoning – persuasion by providing facts that will lead to someone being convinced

There are 5 key areas of self-awareness:

•  
• Cognitive style – the way a person learns stuff, this can differ from people to people since everyone learns in different ways
• Emotional intelligence – the way one manages and controls emotions with oneself as well with others
• Personal values – we have values that defined how we are personally and our attitude towards others, there are both technical values (desirable for an ends or goals) and instrumental values (desirable standard or methods for attaining an end)
• Core self-evaluation – focuses on one sees themselves as a complete product of individuality          
• Adaptability to changes – how one reacts to a change, there is the locus of control that can be both internal or external

• Myth 3: The senior manager needs aggregated information, which a formal management information system best provides
• Fact: Managers strongly favor verbal media, telephone calls and meetings over documents

The rational problem-solving model has 4 steps:

•  
• Defining the problem à problems that can occur is that the problem is complex and ambiguous, and one can’t really come to a consensus on what the problem is and that the symptoms are confused with the real problem
• Generating alternatives à one doesn’t take time to think about the alternatives and just accept the first one presented, one can’t come up with lots of alternatives that are known
• Evaluating and selecting an alternative à one can’t come up with information about the information and it also costs money to gather information to evaluate
• Implementing and follow up à one accepts the alternative and don’t want to change, don’t know what to monitor and follow up, and it’s time-consuming to implement

Four positional sources of power:

 

• Centrality
• Access to information in a communication network, by occupying a position of centrality in a broad network of task and interpersonal relationships à effective performance à power

 

• Visibility
• How an excellent task performance is seen by influential people in the organization, the more people-oriented someone is and shows themselves in an organization will have more a more powerful position

 

• Flexibility
• Amount of discretion vested in a position, basically the freedom to exercise one’s judgement in different situations by being improvisational and innovative à demonstrate initiative à power

 

• Relevance
• Being associated with tasks that are directly linked with the central objectives and issues in an organization à influential in the most key parts à power

• Retribution
• When someone threats someone directly to impose sanctions or by intimidating someone

 

• Reciprocity
• To influence someone by bargaining and exchanging motives à “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours”

• Reason
• Bases persuasion on factual grounds

• Issue-focused conflicts
• Happens when two parties in a negotiation don’t know how to allocate their resources

• People-focused conflicts
• Happens when people are fueled by their morals which displays in emotions/expressions in the other parties’ face

Establish a positive climate with compassion for yourself where you focus on strengths and uniqueness

 

Create readiness with benchmark practices where you compare standards with competitors and create a new language to describe old realities

 

• Articulate a vision of abundance which includes:
• Rational and artistic features
• A vision statement
• Passion and principles that reflect core values
• Attach the vision to a symbol

 

Generating commitment that ensures public commitments and communication of the vision over and over

 

Institutionalize the vision which means to create an irreversible momentum

The Iron Law of Power is the theory that all managers will resort to institutionalizing their power and take control rather than being democratic. It is used since it is easier and requires less time and effort and hassle than to collaborate between two parties. The larger hierarchical distance between the manager and the subordinate, the more often it is used

Groupthink is when the preservation of the group exceeds the priority of good decisions and solving problems that one is faced by. There are different ways of dissolving groupthink, such as:

•  
• Critical evaluators – these can either be on the inside in the form of a “devil’s advocate” or on the outside
• Have an open discussion
• Create subgroups so that the mentality changes within the group
• Hire in outside experts that can help

There are a couple of rules for effective feedback:

•  
• The importance of focusing on the behavior and not the person
• To focus on observations, not inferences, and descriptions, not judgements
• Focus on a specific situation and not be abstract
• Focus on things in real time and not the past
• Focus on sharing ideas by giving and taking instead of ordering and advising
• Give constructive criticism and not complaint
• The feedback should be given at an appropriate time and place and not only when it suits you the best

Focus on the behavior and not the person

Focus on one specific thing and not to be so abstract

Focus on situation in present and not past

Focus on giving constructive criticism and not just complain

Focus on giving the feedback in time and place accordingly and not only when it suits you

Focus on observation, not inferences, and descriptions, not judgements

Focus on sharing ideas front and back and not just giving and ordering someone

• Power + influence
• External source which few people possess
• Describes how much you can get people do to what you want them to do
• To gain power means that someone else loses it
• Leads to competition

 

• Empowerment
• Internal source that many people can access
• Describes how you can get people to do what they want to do
• Having empowerment doesn’t someone else loses it
• Leads to cooperation

In their core, smart people are not used to failing and have high standards so failing is for them to have low performance. Because of this, they fear being critically examined. What they don’t realize is that when someone question your reasoning, they are not necessarily mistrusting you – rather allowing you the chance of learning. By having that mentality, they will end up in the doom loop à doom zoom.

Forming – early stage, everyone is insecure and self-conscious and superficial

Norming – in this stage, they develop standards and expectations that the members are supposed to conform to and there is a heightened attraction in between the members

Storming – coalition and cliques start to be formed, there is a competition between some of the members and disagreements with the leader à challenging

Performing – in this final stage, people raise their mutual trust for each other and everyone gets along

Personal values

Emotional intelligence

Adaptability to changes

Core self-evaluation

Cognitive thinking