Sensing

the process of receiving signals from a sender and paying attention to them.

1. they are precise and measurable

2.  they address important issues.

3. they are challenging but realistic.

4. they specify a time period in which they should be achieved.

Formulating strategies.

Managers identify a set of corporate, business, and operating strategies that support each other and enable the organization to attain its goals.

1. gives direction and purpose to an organization.

2. the process by which management allocates scarce resources, including capital and people, to different activities.

3. planning drives operating budgets-strategic, operations, and unit plans determine financial budgets for the coming year.

4. Planning assigns roles and responsibilities to individuals and units within the organization.

5. planning enables managers to better control the organization.

1. too centralized and top-down: where planners make decisions that do not take market realities into account.

2. failure to question assumptions: all plans are based on assumptions about the future.

3. failure to implement: plan not put into action.

4. failure to anticipate rival's actions: when managers do not consider what rivals are doing.

1. managers have to identify the problem to be solved by a decision.

2. managers must identify decision criteria

3. managers need to weight the criteria by their importance.

4. managers need to generate alternative courses of action.

5. managers need to compare the alternatives against the weighted criteria and choose one alternative.

6. they should implement that choice.

7. after a suitable period, they should always evaluate the outcome and decided whether the choice was a good one.

1. centralization can facilitate coordination

2. centralization can help ensure that decisions are consistentwith organizational objectives

3. centralization can avoid duplication of activities by various subunits within the organization

4. centralization can give top level managers the means to bring about needed major organizational changes.

The art of getting things done through people.

·         – A formal process wherebymanagers choose goals; identify actions to attain those goals, allocate responsibility for for implementing actions to specific indivivuals or units, measure the success of actions by comparing actual results against the goals and revise plans accordingly.

·         An action that managers take to attain the goals of an organization.

·         The process of deciding who within an organization will perform what tasks, where decisions will be made, who reports to whom, and how different parts of the organization will coordinate their activities.

·         The task of hiring, training, mentoring, and rewarding employees in an organization, including other managers.

The knowledge, skills, and capabilities embedded in individuals.

– Managers of different divisions in a multi-level business.

·         Managers responsible for leading a particular function or a subunit within a function. Ex: Marketing, Production etc.

Managers behave as leaders to motivate, influence, and direct others within an organization; also they strategize, plan, organize, control and develop.

They scan the environment both inside and outside the organization.

Regularly inform staff about the company’s direction and sometimes about specific technical issues.  Sometimes in the supervisory level they will have one-on-one conversations with specific employees about particular matters.

:  Organizations never have enough time, money, facilities, or people to satisfy all their needs.  These managers decide the best way to allocate the resources that they have, and are guided by the strategy of the organization.

They negotiate with supplies for better delivery, lower prices, higher quality inputs. They negotiate with customers over prices, delivery and design of products.  Negotiate for everything in a business.

A manager’s skills, values, and motivational preferences.

·         Skills that include mastery of specific equipment or following technical procedures.

·         Skills that managers need, including the abilities to communicate, persuade, manage conflict, motivate, coach, negotiate, and lead.

·         Desire to Compete for Management Jobs

·         Desire to Exercise Power

·         Desire to be Distinct or Different

·         Desire to Take Action

It constitutes everything outside a firm that might affect the ability of the enterprise to attain its goals.

Actual and potential competitors, suppliers, and buyers(customers or distributer); firms that provide substitutes products to those sold in the industry, and firms that provide complements.

Political and legal forces, macroeconomic forces, demographic forces, socio-cultural forces, technological forces, and international forces.

Everything inside a firm that affects managers’ ability to pursue actions or strategies.

Model of competitive forces that determine the intensity of competition in an industry.

·        Ability of buyers to bargain down prices charged by firms in the industry or to raise the costs of firms in the industry by demanding better product quality and service.

·        Ability of suppliers to bargain up prices charged by firms in the industry or to raise the costs of firms in the industry by supplying lower-quality products and service.

·        The goods or services of different businesses or industries that can satisfy similar customer needs.

·        A product that is difficult to differentiate from those produced by rivals.

·        Barriers to Exit – Factors that stop firms from reducing capacity even when demand is weak and excess capacity exists.

·        The costs that must be borne before the firm makes a single sale.

·        Firms providing goods or services that are complementary to the product produced by enterprises in the industry.

·        Industry changes resulting from changes in laws and regulations.

·        Government agencies with responsibility for formulating, interpreting, and implementing rules specific to a particular industry.

·        – Forces that affect the general health and well-being of a national or regional economy, which in turn affect the profitability of firms within that economy.

·        Outcomes of changes in the characteristics of a population, such as age, gender, ethnic origin, race, and sexual orientation, and social class.

·        Changes that do not alter the basic nature of competition in the task environment.

·        Change that fundamentally transforms the nature of competition in the task environment.

·        An inability to predict with accuracy the nature, magnitude, timing, and direction of change in the environment.

·        The basic pattern of values and assumptions shared by employees within an organization.

·        A view that resources of an enterprise can be a source of sustainable competitive advantage.

·        Assets that manager’s have to work with in their quest to improve the performance of an enterprise.

·        Physical assets, such as land, buildings, equipment, inventory, and money.