Management Theories free essay sample

This essay presents several management theories and ideas which can be seen in the Vascellaro article. They include Fayol’s four managerial functions, some ideas about levels of management, Mintzberg’s managerial roles, and challenges for management in the general and global environments, especially achieving a competitive advantage. The essay concludes by considering the implications of Ms Decker’s plan for Yahoo! ’s staff. Managerial functions, levels of management Ms Susan Decker, the president of Yahoo! , will soon unveil a new ‘operational blueprint. ’ A blueprint is a plan or model, so by definition this is part of the planning function. Because the change is a large one – it involves the whole organisation – it is not surprising that it involves the top levels of management. The plan involves centralising the accounting functions of the company’s web services. This relates to the organising function in Yahoo! : we would expect to see more central control of employees who carry out accounting tasks if Ms Decker’s plan goes ahead. We will write a custom essay sample on Management Theories or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Because Ms Decker must ‘sell the plan to employees’ we can regard her as carrying out the function of leading, because leaders have to present a vision or idea to their organisation. The organising function appears again with the mention of the ‘internal shake-up’: the reporting relationships in Yahoo! are being changed ‘to restore confidence’. Presumably Ms Decker believes that new staff rather than the present executives would do a better job of putting her new plan in place. As well, several senior staff (three vice-presidents and several other executives) are leaving, so this means Yahoo will need to allocate their work to other people. The controlling function is not mentioned directly, but at the end of the article we are told that ‘the investment community’ would like to be more confident that Yahoo! has ‘devise[d] new ways to strengthen its brand against Google and to compete for consumers’ increasingly fragmented attention online’. This would require working out exactly how to monitor Yahoo! ’s performance against these goals, but it is not clear from the article what these evaluation mechanisms would be. Mintzberg’s management roles Mintzberg would regard Ms Decker’s development of new web services as part of the entrepreneurial role, since it is a major new project for Yahoo. In addition, ‘selling the plan to staff’ relates to Mintzberg’s ‘spokesperson’ role, and the ‘organisational shake-up’ relates to the ‘resource allocator’ role, because staff have to be assigned to specific projects. If Ms Decker needs to deal with negative perceptions of the investment community, she would be carrying out the ‘disturbance handler’ role. Challenges for management in a global environment Yahoo! is a global company: it operates and competes in more than one country. However the article makes it clear that Yahoo! has had difficulty achieving a competitive advantage against its major competitor, Google. To use the definition given in Waddell et al. (2007: 21-22), Yahoo! is so far not able to ‘produce desired goods or services more efficiently and effectively’ than that particular competitor. Waddell et al. (p. 22) say that the four building blocks of competitive advantage are ‘superior efficiency; quality; speed, flexibility and innovation; and responsiveness to customers’. Yahoo! ’s latest strategy, devising new web services which would appeal to different regions worldwide, appears to be aimed at ‘responsiveness to customers’, and also ‘innovation’, since the regional focus would differentiate Yahoo! ’s web services from Google’s. The organisation’s environment Waddell et al. 2007: 58) say that resources in the organisational environment ‘include the raw materials and skilled people that an organisation requires to produce goods and services’. Several skilled executives have already left Yahoo! , and there are fears that more will leave, so Yahoo! is clearly having difficulty keeping its skilled human resources. Conclusions and implications The article gives good insights into Yahoo’ s situation in its broader environment, the management roles being carried out by its president, and the four management functions at a general level. It does not discuss how Yahoo! ’s employees feel about the changes. However because some are leaving, it is likely that at least some of the remaining employees may be concerned about whether they will also lose their jobs. Even if they stay, they may be worried about having to do the work of their former colleagues. Some may be concerned about the extra work and responsibility, and others may be worried about whether they have the necessary training. All this could give Google, Yahoo! s main competitor, an opportunity to recruit these unhappy staff or the staff who have already left the company. Yahoo! ’s CEO should discuss with the president of its human resource department how to manage this difficult situation.