Instructional needs at different management levels

Instructional needs at different management levels. According to Lawrence S. Kleiman, the skills mentioned below are needed at different managerial levels.

First-Level Managers:   
    Basic supervision.
    Motivation.
    Career planning.
    Performance feedback.

Middle-Level Managers:    Designing and implementing effective group and intergroup work and information systems.
    Defining and monitoring group-level performance indicators.
    Diagnosing and resolving problems within and among work groups.
    Designing and implementing reward systems that support cooperative behavior.

Top-Level Managers:Broadening their understanding of how factors such as competition, world economies, politics, and social trends influence the effectiveness of the organization.
(Wikipedia.org)

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Levels of management

In organizations, there are generally three different levels of managers: first-level managers, middle-level managers, and top-level managers. These levels of managers are classified in a hierarchy of importance and authority, and are also arranged by the different types of management tasks that each role does. In many organizations, the number of managers in every level resembles a pyramid, in which the first-level has many more managers than middle-level and top-level managers, respectively. Each management level is explained below in specifications of their different responsibilities and likely job titles.

1. Top-Level Managers: typically consist of Board of Directors, President, Vice President, Chief Executive Officers, etc. These individuals are mainly responsible for controlling and overseeing all the departments in the organization. They develop goals, strategic plans, and policies for the company, as well as make many decisions on the direction of the business. In addition, top-level managers play a significant role in the mobilization of outside resources and are for the most part responsible for the shareholders and general public.

2. Middle-Level Managers: typically consist of General Managers, Branch Managers, Department Managers, etc. These individuals are mainly responsible to the top management for the functioning of their department. They devote more time to organizational and directional functions. Their roles can be emphasized as executing plans of the organization in conformance with the company's policies and the objectives of the top management, they define and discuss information and policies from top management to lower management, and most importantly they inspire and provide guidance to lower level managers towards better performance.

3. First-Level Managers: typically consist of Supervisors, Section Officers, Foreman, etc. These individuals focus more on the controlling and direction of management functions. For instance, they assign tasks and jobs to employees, guide and supervise employees on day-to-day activities, look after the quantity and quality of the production of the company, make recommendations, suggestions, and communicate employee problems to the higher level above, etc. In this level, managers are the "image builders" of the company.

(Wikipedia.org)

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Basic functions dan roles of Management

Basic functions

Management operates through various functions, often classified as planning, organizing, staffing, leading/directing, and controlling/monitoring.i.e.

1. Planning: Deciding what needs to happen in the future (today, next week, next month, next year, over the next 5 years, etc.) and generating plans for action.

2. Organizing: (Implementation) making optimum use of the resources required to enable the successful carrying out of plans.

3. Staffing: Job Analyzing, recruitment, and hiring individuals for appropriate jobs.

4. Leading/Directing: Determining what needs to be done in a situation and getting people to do it.

5. Controlling/Monitoring: Checking progress against plans.

6. Motivation : Motivation is also a kind of basic function of management, because without motivation, employees cannot work effectively. If motivation doesn't take place in an organization, then employees may not contribute to the other functions (which are usually set by top level management).

Basic roles

1. Interpersonal: roles that involve coordination and interaction with employees.

2. Informational: roles that involve handling, sharing, and analyzing information.

3. Decisional: roles that require decision-making.

(Wikipedia.org)

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Task management

Task management is the process of managing a task (or task portfolio) through its life cycle, including planning, testing, tracking and reporting. Task management can help either individuals achieve goals, or groups of individuals collaborate and share knowledge for the accomplishment of collective goals. Tasks also differentiate by complexity, from low to high.

Effective task management supposes managing all aspects of a task, including its status, priority, time, human and financial resources assignments, recurrency, notifications and so on. These can be lumped together broadly into the basic activities of task management.

Managing multiple individual or team tasks may require special task management software which is available on the Web. Specific software dimensions support common task management activities. These dimensions exist across software products and services and fit different task management initiatives in numerous ways. In fact, many people believe that task management should serve as a foundation for project management activities.

Task management may form part of project management and process management and can serve as the foundation for efficient workflow in an organisation. Project managers adhering to task-oriented management are known for having a detailed and up-to-date project schedule, and are usually good at directing team members and moving the project forward. (Wikipedia.org)

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Self management

Self-management means different things in different fields:
In business, education, and psychology, self-management refers to methods, skills, and strategies by which individuals can effectively direct their own activities toward the achievement of objectives, and includes goal setting, decision making, focusing, planning, scheduling, task tracking, self-evaluation, self-intervention, self-development, etc. Also known as executive processes (in the context of the processes of execution).

In the field of computer science, self-management refers to the process by which computer systems will (one day) manage their own operation without human intervention. Self-Management technologies are expected to pervade the next generation of network management systems.

In the field of medicine and health care, self-management means the interventions, training, and skills by which patients with a chronic condition, disability, or disease can effectively take care of themselves and learn how to do so. Personal care applied to outpatients. See also self care.

In condominiums and housing co-operatives, it refers to apartment buildings or housing complexes that are run directly by the owners themselves, either through a committee structure, or through a Board of Directors that has management as well as executive functions.

Self-management may also refer to:

Workers' self-management - a form of workplace decision-making in which the employees themselves agree on choices (for issues like customer care, general production methods, scheduling, division of labor etc.) instead of the traditional supervisor telling workers what to do, how to do it and where to do it. This was the official development strategy of Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia. Workers self-management was promoted on all levels in society.

Self-managed Companies
Some business leaders have begun to structure their companies as either partially or fully self-managed. A fully self-managed company is one that imposes no formal hierarchical structure upon employees (in some cases, having no hierarchy whatsoever). Some companies (e.g. Google, famous for their 20 Percent Time), allow their employees to have free rein for a portion of their time, pursuing projects that they find interesting or promising without requiring consent or authorization from management.

In 2009, authors Isaac Getz of ESCP Europe Business School, and Brian Carney, of The Wall Street Journal, published the book Freedom, Inc., which made the case for businesses based upon the principles of freedom. They advocate removing bureaucratic rules and regulations and allowing employees to do what they do well without traditional "managerial" intervention. Some of the more notable companies detailed in their book:

    IDEO
    W. L. Gore & Associates
    Semco, made famous by a their President, Ricardo Semler, in his book Maverick

The Morning Star Company, a privately held food processing and agribusiness company, is a fully self-managed company, having no formal hierarchy, and allowing colleagues within the company to commit to their own activities, organize their own work, and coordinate their own working relationships with other colleagues. Morning Star was the initial sponsor of the Morning Star Self-Management Institute, a research and training organization aimed at furthering the principles of Self-Management in organizations. (wikipedia.org)

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Management

Management in all business and organizational activities is the act of getting people together to accomplish desired goals and objectives using available resources efficiently and effectively. Management comprises planning, organizing, staffing, leading or directing, and controlling an organization (a group of one or more people or entities) or effort for the purpose of accomplishing a goal. Resourcing encompasses the deployment and manipulation of human resources, financial resources, technological resources, and natural resources.

Because organizations can be viewed as systems, management can also be defined as human action, including design, to facilitate the production of useful outcomes from a system. This view opens the opportunity to 'manage' oneself, a pre-requisite to attempting to manage others.

History
The verb manage comes from the Italian maneggiare (to handle — especially tools), which in turn derives from the Latin manus (hand). The French word mesnagement (later ménagement) influenced the development in meaning of the English word management in the 17th and 18th centuries.[1]

Some definitions of management are:

    * Organization and coordination of the activities of an enterprise in accordance with certain policies and in achievement of clearly defined objectives. Management is often included as a factor of production along with machines, materials, and money. According to the management guru Peter Drucker (1909–2005), the basic task of a management is twofold: marketing and innovation.

    * Directors and managers have the power and responsibility to make decisions to manage an enterprise when given the authority by the shareholders. As a discipline, management comprises the interlocking functions of formulating corporate policy and organizing, planning, controlling, and directing the firm's resources to achieve the policy's objectives. The size of management can range from one person in a small firm to hundreds or thousands of managers in multinational companies. In large firms the board of directors formulates the policy which is implemented by the chief executive officer.
(Wikipedia.org)

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