Management Assignment: Reflection On Managerial Functions
Question
Task:
In this management assignment, you are required to prepare a reflection essay based on a management concept you have observed or practices and how it helped create value within the organization.
Answer
Introduction to management assignment
Overview
In the rapidly changing and competitive business environment, managers of businesses play a significant role in ensuring uninterrupted operations and gaining sustainable competitive advantage by undertaking crucial decisions. Managers perform various roles including decisional, informational and interpersonal that are essential for the success of organizations (Sandhu & Kulik, 2019).
Thesis Statement
In this reflective essay, I will be reviewing the theories, concepts and knowledge gained during the course about these different managerial roles. For this purpose, I will be using the 4Rs Model of reflective writing by focusing on reporting and responding, relating with past experiences, reasoning with factors and reconstructing for future practice.
Reflective Discussion
Reporting
During the course of Fundamentals of Management, I have gained knowledge about different concepts. Out of these concepts, I have found the managerial roles concept as significantly important in today’s competitive business world. In this regard, I came across the theory provided by Mintzberg’s Managerial Roles for classifying these roles into three categories of interpersonal, informational and decisional. The interpersonal roles of managers include figurehead role, liaison role and leader role as they constantly interact with employees, stakeholders, shareholders and partners of the organization (Kumar, 2015). In my opinion, these interpersonal roles are of utmost importance for the managers as businesses now operate in a global context where individuals from various social, economic and cultural backgrounds are present. I think that these roles strengthen the interpersonal relationships of the managers. Furthermore, the information roles include monitoring, disseminating and spokesperson (Altamony & Gharaibeh, 2017). I think that these roles are required for dealing with information related to managerial work. Lastly, I have gained knowledge about the decisional roles of entrepreneur, disturbance handler, resource allocator and negotiator (Van den Oever & Martin, 2015). These roles are essential for making efficient use of information for undertaking decisions. I have been able to understand the essence of each of these three categories of roles throughout the entire course. It has made me realize that these managerial roles are significant for dealing with various issues or challenges managers constantly face while operating in the business world. Thus, I have acquired widespread experience my undertaking the course of management that has helped me to explore this important concept.
Relating
Previously, I used to get confused between the functions and roles of managers as the same, but this course helped me to differentiate these concepts. I am now aware about the three different managerial roles present in organizations and their significance for success in the competitive business environment. In this regard, I can now relate this acquired knowledge with some of the past experiences or skills that I have came across while participating in group projects, reading articles about management or understanding various managerial issues of real-life examples. Here, I can consider the example of Uber as the company has been facing various challenges in the recent years. The founder of this ride-sharing application has been accused of crossing lines on various occasions, such as, exploiting legal gray areas, deceiving stakeholders like clients, coworkers, surpassing legislations and others. Besides, the company has also faced accusations of toxic working environment that fosters discrimination and harassment of the employees. The knowledge gained from managerial roles has enabled me to understand that the senior executives or managers present in this company have failed to perform their interpersonal roles of treating people with respect, dignity and honest to ensure a positive working environment. Besides, I also think that the Uber managers have also failed in fulfilling their informational roles in disseminating truthful and adequate information in legal matters. In my opinion, such failure has also led to the unsuccessful performance of their decisional roles in the organization. Thus, I have been able to better understand and relate my knowledge to explore and analyse the managerial issues persistent in Uber.
Reasoning
From the issues persistent in Uber, I have been able to identify key factors underlying the same. In this regard, the presence of toxic workplace culture was one of the most significant sources of giving rise to such unethical issues in the company. In my opinion, Uber’s culture has become toxic because of the inability of the managers in performing their interpersonal, information and decisional roles in a successful and effective manner. Here, I have tried to apply my theoretical knowledge gained from the course of fundamentals of management about the managerial roles to understand the issues. However, since I have not had the real-life experience of working in the organization or gaining any first-hand information about it, I faced challenges in fully applying the concept. I only had the opportunity of acquiring the information by taking this company as an example from newspaper articles. Besides, there was not enough time, resources or scope in having such working experience and thus, I have only collected secondary information for the reflection. Despite these challenges, I think that my analysis has been effective in revealing the issues and associating it with the concept of managerial roles. Furthermore, I was readily able to identify the lack of interpersonal and informational roles that could have resulted in the various issues present in Uber. This is because such roles are clearly evident from any issues related to workforce or people. However, I experienced certain difficulties in understanding how the absence of proper decisional roles could have led to such issues in the company. For this purpose, I again reviewed the concept of Mintzberg’s managerial roles and tried to better comprehend the category of decisional roles of managers. This made it beneficial for me to relate such roles with both interpersonal and informational roles and consequently, apply it for analyzing the issues of Uber that I have taken as an example.
Reconstructing
It is evident that the concept of managerial roles is essential in dealing with various managerial issues of today’s competitive business world. I had the opportunity of acquiring widespread theoretical knowledge about this concept and consequently, applying it to a real-life company Uber for better understanding it. In my opinion, these roles will become more significant in the future as managers will be experiencing rapid changes in the external and internal environments of the organizations. The theory of Mintzberg’s Managerial Roles has been of great significance to me personally for comprehending the importance of these roles. I have came to realize that despite having certain interpersonal skills in my character, I need to improve my information and decisional skills. Besides, I would also like to develop various leadership skills, understand ways of disseminating and managing valuable information and use these for undertaking decisions. Here, I would also focus on developing my decision-making, critical thinking and problem-solving skills. Thus, I would improve and develop these qualities by participating in group projects, role plays, through internships in companies and others.
Conclusion
Thesis Statement
In this reflective essay, I focused on reviewing the concept and importance of managerial roles in today’s competitive business environment.
Future Implications
I have gained knowledge from the theoretical framework provided by Mintzberg about three categories of managerial roles, namely, interpersonal, informational and decisional. I used this concept for better understanding the managerial issues persistent in Uber to explore my own comprehensive strengths and weaknesses. This helped me to decide that I should focus on developing and improving my leadership, decision-making, critical thinking, problem-solving and information dissemination skills for enhancing my future career for better performing the managerial roles.
References
Altamony, H., & Gharaibeh, A. (2017). The role of academic researcher to Mintzberg’s managerial roles. International Journal of Business Management and Economic Research, 8(2), 920-925. https://omarismailameenmohamedalkhoori.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Journal-1.pdf
Kumar, P. (2015). An analytical study on mintzberg’s framework: Managerial roles. International Journal of Research in Management & Business Studies, 2(3), 12-19. https://ijrmbs.com/vol2issue3/drpradeep.pdf
Sandhu, S., & Kulik, C. T. (2019). Shaping and being shaped: How organizational structure and managerial discretion co-evolve in new managerial roles. Management assignment Administrative Science Quarterly, 64(3), 619-658. https://doi.org/10.1177/0001839218778018
Van den Oever, K., & Martin, X. (2015). Business model change: Managerial roles and tactics in decision-making. Business Models and Modelling (Advances in Strategic Management, Vol. 33), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Bingley, 387-420. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0742-332220150000033010
