Friday 13 January 2012

Management inforamtion system


1. Introduction to Management

 

July-2004 [2]

1.         Give very brief (2-3 lines) answers to the following questions: 
            Define Fayol's Principles.      
Ans :-- Management Principles developed by Henri Fayol: 
  1. DIVISION OF WORK: Work should be divided among individuals and groups to ensure  that effort and attention are focused on special portions of the task. Fayol presented work specialization as the best way to use the human resources of the organization.                                                                                                                   
  2. AUTHORITY: The concepts of Authority and responsibility are closely related. Authority was defined by Fayol as the right to give orders and the power to exact obedience. Responsibility involves being accountable, and is therefore naturally associated with authority. Whoever assumes authority also assumes responsibility.                                                              
  3. DISCIPLINE: A successful organization requires the common effort of workers. Penalties should be applied judiciously to encourage this common effort.                                                                              
  4. UNITY OF COMMAND: Workers should receive orders from only one manager.                                                                                              
  5. UNITY OF DIRECTION: The entire organization should be moving towards a common objective in a common direction.                                                                                                        
  6. SUBORDINATION OF INDIVIDUAL INTERESTS TO THE GENERAL INTERESTS: The interests of one person should not take priority over the interests of the organization as a whole.                                                                                                                                   
  7. REMUNERATION: Many variables, such as cost of living, supply of qualified personnel, general business conditions, and success of the business, should be considered in determining a worker’s rate of pay.                                                                                                  
  8. CENTRALIZATION: Fayol defined centralization as lowering the importance of the subordinate role. Decentralization is increasing the importance. The degree to which centralization or decentralization should be adopted depends on the specific organization in which the manager is working.                                                                                                                  
  9. SCALAR CHAIN: Managers in hierarchies are part of a chain like authority scale. Each manager, from the first line supervisor to the president, possess certain amounts of authority. The President possesses the most authority; the first line supervisor the least. Lower level managers should always keep upper level managers informed of their work activities. The existence of a scalar chain and adherence to it are necessary if the organization is to be successful.                                                                                                    
  10. ORDER: For the sake of efficiency and coordination, all materials and people related to a specific kind of work should be treated as equally as possible.                                                                          
  11. EQUITY: All employees should be treated as equally as possible.                                                                                                                 
  12. STABILITY OF TENURE OF PERSONNEL: Retaining productive employees should always be a high priority of management. Recruitment and Selection Costs, as well as increased product-reject rates are usually associated with hiring new workers.                                                                                                 
  13. INITIATIVE: Management should take steps to encourage worker initiative, which is defined as new or additional work activity undertaken through self direction.                                                    
  14. ESPIRIT DE CORPS: Management should encourage harmony and general good feelings among employees.

July-2005 [10]

1.
a)         Explain any four Principal activities of Management Process.               [4]
ans :-- The main four activities of the management process are:
Design (including modelling the management process)
Execution (running the process)
Monitoring (checking for problems)
Optimisation (making the process better)
BPM (business process management) is an integrated collection of critical software technologies that enables the control and management of business processes.
BPM emphasizes business user involvement in the entire business process improvement life cycle, from design through implementation, deployment, monitoring and ongoing optimization. Instead of reducing relience on employees, BPM - Business Process Management software emphasizes the added value of employee activity coordidantion and making their business activities tranparent and auditable
Business Process Management enables business stakeholders to monitor all interactions between human, system and information resources and optimise behavior to get the most out of dynamic market events and improve business performance outcomes.

c)         A common misconception is that organizations with to have managers with technical skills and not with human relations skills. Why this statement is not correct?                     [6]

 

July-2006[4]

1.
a)         Explain the skills, which a manager should possess.                                           [4]
ans :-- There are three fundamental skills of a manager:
  1. TECHNICAL
    The manager should be proficient at specific tasks. This in turn helps to provide the credibility or knowledge to persuade people to do certain things.
  2. HUMAN
    The manager has to know how to work with people.
  3. CONCEPTUAL
    The manager can see the organisation as a whole. In other words, there has to be some knowledge of the organisation and what it does and how it interacts with other organisations.
 The most important skill of a manager
For more specific skills, here is a list compiled by management experts in decreasing order of importance:

  1. People skills
  2. Strategic thinking (planning ahead and predicting what was going to happen)
  3. Visionary
  4. Flexible/adaptable to change
  5. Self-management
  6. Team player
  7. Solve-complex problems and make decisions
  8. Ethical/high personal standards
Hence the most important skill of a manager is to understand people and what makes them motivated to do the work in the acheivement of certain goal(s).
 Are managers leaders?
Firstly we need to know the difference between a leader and a manager.

A leader is someone described as a creative genius who has the vision of leading his/her people within an entire organisation or nation to something that we can all believe in and realistically achieve as something worthwhile to strive for in our lives.
A manager is someone described as a practical genius who is aware of the vision for an entire organisation or nation and can achieve various goal(s) to help reach for this vision in a practical way.
Now a good manager is one that has both managerial and leadership skills. Thus a manager can be a leader. It all depends on the person's upbringing, nature of the managerial job, and the kind of knowledge and experience they acquire to become a good manager.

July-2007 [4]

1.
a)         Explain in brief, four main propositions of classical approach to management.     [4]
ans :-- The approach has focused on on input-output mediators and given less attention to constraining an facilitating factors in the external environment. The writers have dealt with human motivation only in a very rudimentary manner.
In the classical approach, wherein organisation is treated as a machine, the efficiency of the organisation can be increased by making each individual efficient in it. The emphasis is more on specialisation of performance and co-ordination of various activities. In fact among the classical writers, few emphasised on individual efficiency and others emphasised on group efficiency. As such, it was given tow streams-scientific management and administrative management. However, it should be made clear, here, that classical label does not mean that views are static and time-bound many of their views still hold good today.

Taylor and other contributories, notably Frank Gilbreath an Lilian Gilbreath, Henry Gantt, Emerson, investigated the effective use of human beings in industrial organisations. In industrial organisations. They studied primarily the use of human beings as adjuncts to machines in performance of routine task. The area of human behaviour in organisations investigated by them was quite narrow, and the theories of human behavior in this approach encompass primarily physiological variables. This is because of the historical accidents of their positions and training in the industry and the type of problems they faced there.


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