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All managers are required to make decisions, but managers at different levels make different kinds of decisions. According to Mintzberg, there are four primary types of management decision roles. These include:

Entrepreneur

The entrepreneurs in a firm are usually top-level managers. They identify economic opportunities, lead the initiative for change, and make product decisions.

Disturbance handler

Top and middle managers will react to disturbances (unexpected events) in the organization—whether internal or external. They will decide what corrective actions should be taken to resolve the problems.

Resource allocator

All levels of management will make resource allocation decisions, depending upon whether the decision affects the entire organization, a single department, or a particular task or activity.

Negotiator

Depending on the effect on the organization, most negotiation is done by top and middle-level managers. Top managers will handle negotiations that affect the entire organization, such as union contracts or trade agreements. Middle-level managers negotiate most salary and hiring decisions.

To summarize, managers must play many roles. Some are better than others in particular roles and will tend to be called on for those jobs. Putting a diverse management team in place will ensure that the organization has enough managers to meet most challenges.

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Before the heyday of Apple iPhones, Nokia dominated the mobile phone market. Would it surprise you to know that Nokia began in 1871 in Finland as a paper mill company? Later, it diversified into making rubber tires and boots, laid cables, and eventually moved into making emergency radiophones and commercial car phones. Over the course of its evolution, Nokia’s top managers stayed focused on the external business environment and were willing to make the hard decisions—regardless of how risky or uncertain they seemed at the time—to stay competitive, even if it meant the organization had to change industries and retrain its workforce

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Rodney Adkins, who received a Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degree in electrical engineering from Georgia Tech, was recently named Corporate Executive of the Year by Black Enterprise magazine.  Adkins is currently the Senior Vice President at IBM Systems and Technology Group.

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MODULE 2: CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY STRATEGIES

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MODULE 2: CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY STRATEGIES

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Four strategies organizations employ to increase corporate social responsibility are: environmental efforts, philanthropy, ethical labor practices, and volunteerism.

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Tony Hsieh, the current CEO of Zappos.com, believes that defining and maintaining the organizational culture is key. In fact, as you read in the earlier quote, he believes that the right culture will enable the other functional areas of business to succeed.

This is the strategic advantage of having a culture that resonates throughout the entire organization, it leads to a highly motivated team that is success-focused. Culture is so integral that Zappos.com lists its core values on their corporate website.

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When considering entrance into international business, managers need to realize that conditions they take for granted in the U.S. may be different in other countries. For example, Walmart's first international expansion was into Mexico. It modeled the Walmart stores in Mexico after its stores in the United States, with a stand-alone store surrounded by large parking lots. But it soon realized this was a problem. Many of the customers rode on buses to the store. This meant customers had to walk through the parking lot to get to the store and could only buy what they could carry back to the bus. To address this, Walmart added shuttle buses that took customers to and from the store.When considering entrance into international business, managers need to realize that conditions they take for granted in the U.S. may be different in other countries. For example, Walmart's first international expansion was into Mexico. It modeled the Walmart stores in Mexico after its stores in the United States, with a stand-alone store surrounded by large parking lots. But it soon realized this was a problem. Many of the customers rode on buses to the store. This meant customers had to walk through the parking lot to get to the store and could only buy what they could carry back to the bus. To address this, Walmart added shuttle buses that took customers to and from the store.

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A major concern for managers deciding on a global business strategy is the tradeoff between global integration and local responsiveness. Global integration is the degree to which the company is able to use the same products and methods in other countries. Local responsiveness is the degree to which the company must customize their products and methods to meet conditions in other countries. The two dimensions result in four basic global business strategies: export, standardization, multidomestic, and transnational. These are shown in the figure below.

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This is the question on everyone’s mind: how are you going to handle the competitive threat posed by Amazon? Stated another way, given the current political, social, and competitive environments, what is your strategy to succeed?

In this section, we learned about the importance of crafting a well-thought-out strategy in order to be successful in business. As well as techniques to assess the environments in which your organization operates and how to maneuver within them to achieve a favorable outcome.

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The first, and most crucial, step in the planning process is to determine what is to be accomplished during the planning period.

Planning requires making some assumptions about the future.

There may be more than one way to achieve a goal.

Next, managers must determine the resources needed to implement the plan.

Management will next create a road map that takes the organization from where it is to its goal.Management will next create a road map that takes the organization from where it is to its goal.

It is very important that managers are able to track the progress of the plan.

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The feedback loop of cultural change in an organization involve people’s intentions to enable, engage, encourage, and exemplify the new desired behaviors; this in turn influences the frequency of behaviors. After enough reinforcement, those behaviors become the norm, which self-reinforces through increasing people’s exemplification of those behaviors.

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MODULE 5: FACTORS INFLUENCING ORGANIZATIONAL DESIGN

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MODULE 5: FACTORS INFLUENCING ORGANIZATIONAL DESIGN

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Managing employee conflicts and legal issues is only part of HR’s function. In fact, HR is a key department in any company, and it is responsible for many areas.

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Employers may not discriminate against employees because of:

1. Race or Color: This category includes blacks, whites, people of Latino or Asian origin or descent, and indigenous Americans (Eskimos, Native Hawaiians, Native Americans).

2. National Origin: This means employers may not discriminate based on the country where a person was born or the country from which his or her ancestors came—unless language or other requirements make it impossible for the individual to do the job effectively. For example, a native Russian speaker with no English language skills could reasonably be denied a job as a lecturer in a U.S. college.

3. Sex: This means an employer cannot discriminate against either men or women as a result of their gender. In some states, laws also apply to transgender individuals.

4. Religion: According to the EEOC, protections “include moral or ethical beliefs as to what is right and wrong which are sincerely held with the strength of traditional religious views.” Employers must “reasonably accommodate to an employee’s or prospective employee’s religious observance or practice” unless doing so would impose an “undue hardship on the conduct of the employer’s business.”

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A good leader inspires people to have confidence in the leader. A great leader inspires people to have confidence in themselves.

—Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962)

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MODULE 7: What Do All Great Leaders Have In Common: Matt Beeton TEDex

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MODULE 7: What Do All Great Leaders Have In Common: Matt Beeton TEDex

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According to recent research, 80% of leaders today fail to impress in the first two years of their leadership roles. 70% admit to being incredibly stressed, and over 70% admit to not enjoying the job. Gone are the days when we used to have a job for life; today, people stay in a job for four years, and within the millennials, that’s only three years.

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Gantt charts display the duration of steps in a project and are used by project managers to track the time and sequence of each step. A Gantt chart is a type of bar chart developed by Henry Gantt to illustrate a project schedule. Gantt charts show the start and finish dates of the terminal and summary elements of a project. Gantt charts also display the expected duration of each stage of a project as well as the expected order of each stage.

Gantt charts are used in many types of projects, including technical projects and simple projects. Today they are commonly used, but when they were first introduced, Gantt charts were revolutionary.

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Barriers to managing control include lack of resources, inaccurate measurements, improper information flow, and incorrect analyses. Managing control is essential to making sure that a process or system is running effectively within an organization. There are sometimes barriers to testing, measuring, communicating, or observing how effectively a system or process is running.

These barriers can reduce the efficacy of the organization, not only in the process being controlled, but also in the controlling process. Barriers to organizational