Posts Selected From the Category "Modern Management Concepts"

Features of Modern Business

Posted by Abey Francis on January 14, 2013 in Modern Management Concepts / No Comments

Now a days, business is viewed more as a profession or occupation. From the days of family owned business, we have reached a stage of professionals and experts starting and running business. It could also be noted that business administration and business management have emerged as the most prospective field of study and occupation. Persons with educational background in business, enter business or join business organizations to make them successfully function. Unlike the olden days, a number of interests are involved in business today, viz. owners, investors in business, suppliers, customers, employees, government, stake holders, administrators, managers, strategists, executives, and so many others. Hence, every business activity has to meet the goals or aims or objectives of these various groups of people. That in fact, has made business a most complicated activity.

Modern business has a number of features. Understanding of these would help to appreciate and organize business activities in a highly professional way.

1. Business is an Economic Activity

Business involves organizing activities to satisfy human plants. These activities may result in the manufacture or production of a commodity or extension of a service. When a good or service is produced, resources are involved. Resources like human resources, physical resources and financial resources are all required to realize output to meet human needs.…

Organizational Effectiveness Through Adaptive-Coping Cycle

Posted by Abey Francis on December 8, 2012 in Modern Management Concepts / No Comments

The organization must develop a system through which it can adapt or cope with the environmental requirements; Edgar H Schein has suggested that an organization can do this through the adaptive coping cycle, which consists of various activities that enable an organization to cope with the dynamics of environment.

Adaptive-Coping Cycle is a continuous process. There are six stages in the adaptive-coping cycle as follows:

Sensing of Change: The first stage is the sensing of change in internal or external environment. Most of the organizations have adaptive sub-system such as marketing research, research and development and other similar devices for effective coping with the environment.
Importing the Relevant Information: Organizations must be able to take the relevant information from the environment, which constitutes the input.
Changing Conversion Process: The organization takes the inputs from environment for further processing, normally known as conversion process.
Stabilizing Internal Changes: The fourth stage of the cycle is to stabilize an internal sub-system of an organization, which is dependent on external, sub-system. This is because change in one may affect other and this change can be either positive or negative.
Exploring New Outputs: When the internal change is stabilized, the organization can export new outputs, which are in accordance with environment requirements.

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Concept of Organizational Effectiveness

Posted by Abey Francis on December 8, 2012 in Modern Management Concepts / No Comments

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Organizational effectiveness is defined as an extent to which an organization achieves its predetermined objectives with the given amount of resources and means without placing undue strain on its members.

Sometimes efficiency and effectiveness are used as synonyms. However, there exists a difference between the two concepts. Therefore, it is important to explain the difference between the concepts of effectiveness and efficiency to understand why organizations may he effective bin not efficient, or efficient but not effective. Effectiveness is a broad concept and takes into account a collection of factors both inside and outside an organization. It is commonly referred to as the degree to which predetermined goals are achieved. On the other hand, efficiency is a limited concept that pertains to the internal working of an organization. It refers to an amount of resources used to produce a particular unit of output. It is generally measured as the ratio of inputs to outputs. Further, effectiveness concentrates more on human side of organizational values and activities whereas efficiency concentrates on the technological side of an organization.

Approaches to Organizational Effectiveness

However the concept of organizational effectiveness is not simple because there are many approaches in conceptualizing this term. Such approaches can be grouped into following three approaches:…

Organization Development Interventions

Posted by Abey Francis on December 8, 2012 in Modern Management Concepts / No Comments

Organization Development Interventions refer to various activities which consultant and client organization perform for improving organizational functioning by enabling organization members to better manage their team and organization cultures. French and Well have defined OD interventions as “sets of structured activities in which selected organizational units (target groups or individuals) engage with a task or a sequence of tasks where the task goals are related directly or indirectly to organizational improvement. Interventions constitute the action thrust of organization development; they make things happen and are what is happening.”

Organizational Development Intervention Techniques

Sensitivity Training: Sensitivity training is a small-group interaction under stress in an unstructured encounter group, which requires people to become sensitive to one another’s feelings in order to develop reasonable group activity. In sensitivity training, the actual technique employed is T-group. T-group has several characteristic features:

The T-group is generally small, from ten to twenty members

The group begins its activity with no formal agenda

The primary role of trainer is to call attention of members from time to time lo the ongoing process within the group

The procedure lends to develop introspection and self-examination, with emotional levels of involvement and behavior.

The objectives of such training are increased openness with others, more concern for others, increased tolerance for individual differences, less ethnic prejudice, understanding of a group process, enhanced listening skills and increased trust and support.…

The Nature of Organizational Change

Posted by Abey Francis on December 8, 2012 in Modern Management Concepts / No Comments

Organizations introduce changes through people. Unless the people are willing to accept the need and responsibility for organizational change, intended changes can never be translated into reality. In addition, individuals have to learn to adapt their attitudes and behavioral patterns to constantly changing environments.

Management of change involves both individual and organizational change. Individual change is behavioral change, which is determined by individual characteristics of members such as their knowledge, attitudes, beliefs, needs, expectations and skills. It is possible to bring about a total change in an organization by changing behaviors of individual members through participative and educative strategies. Although, the degree of difficulty involved in the change and the time taken to bring about the change will depend on the target of change. The attitudes towards change are largely dependent on the nature of the situation and the manner in which changes are initiated and executed.

Changing individual behavior is more time consuming and a difficult task. The linkage between attitude and behavior is not direct and therefore changing behavior is more difficult than changing attitudes. One’s attitude does not necessarily get reflected in one’s behavior. For example, we know that honesty is the best policy and we have favorable altitudes towards people who are honest but in certain situations, we may still act in a less honest way.…

Approaches to Organizational Change

Posted by Abey Francis on December 8, 2012 in Modern Management Concepts / No Comments

Organizational Change simply refers to alteration in the existing conditions of an organization. Even in most stable organizations change is necessary to maintain stability. The economic and social environment is so dynamic that without adapting to such change even the most successful organizations cannot survive in the changed environment. Therefore, management must continuously monitor the outside environment and be sufficiently innovative and creative to implement these changes effectively.

As organizational change is a complex process, therefore managers must approach it systematically and logically. Some organizational changes are planned whereas other changes are reactive. Planned change is designed and implemented by an organization in an orderly and timely fashion in the anticipation of future change.

Reactive change results from a reaction of an organization to unexpected events. In contrast to planned change, it is a piece-meal response to circumstances as they develop. External forces that the organization has failed to anticipate or interpret always bring about reactive change. Since reactive change may have to be carried out hastily, it increases the likelihood of a poorly conceived and poorly executed Program.

Planned change is always preferable to reactive change. Managers who sit back and respond to change only when they can no longer avoid it are likely to waste a lot of time and money trying to patch together a last-minute solution.…