Management. Educational aid
.pdf3.Objective: The manager's attention is completely focused on production. The human factor is either not paid attention to at all, or very little is paid to it.
4.The golden mean: the leader in his actions tries to sufficiently combine both an orientation towards the interests of the person and the completion of the task. The manager does not demand too much from employees, but also does not indulge.
5.Team: the leader is completely absorbed in the desire to achieve an optimal combination of interests through attention to both production and people. The question is to be both businesslike and humane. The shared commitment that employees make to achieve the organization's goals leads to trust and respect in relationships.
What leadership style do you think is best? Give reasons for your position. At the same time, it cannot be argued that there is some optimal leadership style that always works, since situations differ greatly from each other. Consider whether the leadership style can be flexible [13, p. 18–19].
Exercise 2. Study the following questions:
1.What is the difference between a manager-manager and a leader? Can a manager be a leader?
2.Why is the same management style not suitable for all departments of the organization?
3.What leadership style do you think will be most effective in the 21st century, given the cultural and technological changes occurring in society?
Exercise 3. Determine your manager's leadership style and develop recommendations for changing or adjusting his style if necessary.
Exercise 4. Give options for the main levers of influence of a manager on subordinates using the example of an organization.
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Exercise 5. Fill out the table and compare the competencies of a manager and a leader.
Leader in the organization
No. |
Manager Competence |
Leader Competence |
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CASES
Case 1. Center of power in “Avtostrakh”
Sergei Nikolaev headed the capital's insurance company “Avtostrakh” in the 90s. Anticipating the imminent bankruptcy of the company, his former partner left the country in advance, taking with him almost all the cash from the cash register. Sergey, not without success, spent all this time creating a new organizational culture in the company, based on consensus decision-making and strict work rules. However, he soon discovered that one of the rigid rules he had cultivated became a serious obstacle to increasing the volume of sales of the company's insurance policies to car owners. In principle, Sergei, as the head of the company, could have used his position and changed this rule, but instead he decided to “let things take their course.” As a result of carrying out the change in this way, it would have taken more than two years, and if Sergei had done it from his position of power, then all that would have been needed was an order that could fit on one sheet of paper.
Sergei’s career began even before “perestroika,” when, after graduating from a financial institute, he came to work in one of the branches of the then “Gosstrakh” as an agent for renewing insurance for motorists who previously had it. In 1985, he went to work at “Intourist”, where in four years he promoted to the position of head of the insurance department. He considered himself as a leader to be a “pusher”, promoting his ideas sometimes in a very harsh way.
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At first, as president of the “Avtostrakh” company, Sergei was busy
“plugging holes in a sinking ship,” paying almost no attention to creating a productive work culture. He behaved exactly in accordance with the textbooks of previous years and in his work relied entirely on the position he held. He tried to influence others through “God-given power” and the “carrot and stick” method. He hired the people he needed and fired those he didn’t need, and tried to “put together” his own team at the company.
Sergei considered his “confused” working style to be a mixture of “management by objectives” and “decision making through consensus.”
He believed that the manager alone should not determine the company's policy. Instead, he must create an organizational culture and leadership style in the company in which power is “shared” with subordinates and mutual trust becomes the key to good performance. He was led to this management philosophy by the knowledge gained during an international management seminar organized by the famous British insurance company “Lloyd” for managers of Russian insurance organizations. The seminar clarified for Sergei those issues in the work of foreign insurance companies that he involuntarily encountered in his previous work at “Intourist”.
Many colleagues at the company considered Sergei a politician. They were inclined to do this by the fact that he seemed to adjust the culture of the company to suit himself, to suit his leadership style. At the same time, he could combine group decision-making with personal control over the decision-making process itself. Long before he was going to transfer the decision to the group, Sergei met with the company's employees at their workplaces. Listened to them carefully, trying to find out what the group members were thinking and feeling. He gave advice, encouraged and told them what he thought.
Sergei conducted special incentive classes with his subordinates, the purpose of which was to encourage them to take more active action. The classes were held as follows. Each manager distributed copies of his/her proposals for the firm's budget and goals for the upcoming period to the participants. Then the group leaders, one by one, seemed to “defend” their
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proposals in front of all the participants in the lesson, who attacked the speaker with a hail of comments, questions and counterproposals. Therefore, group leaders could not count on automatic approval of their proposals. They were expected to “sell” their offerings to others. Such classes were held regularly during the pre-planning period and sometimes lasted more than a week. Upon completion, each group leader assumed responsibility for the approved annual plan.
Sergei was very firm that those group leaders who did not cope with the annual task should not receive remuneration. If during the stimulating sessions the group leader tried to push through a low plan, Sergei immediately let him (her) know that this would not work. He wanted everyone in the firm to perform at a high level and forced his subordinates to set realistic but challenging goals. In his opinion, it is the results of work that determine the success of the company. As long as his subordinates achieved results, he didn’t care if “the shine on the shoes was made with a brick.”
The management style used by Sergei turned his subordinates into consistent supporters of reducing the cost of services and setting realistic goals, as well as jealous performers of their work. Sergei showed persistence, showed how to do the work, skillfully forced and motivated his “team”. He learned to listen and share responsibility. This made the whole process seem confusing and unclear. However, Sergei was patient and able to wait for people to see the “light in the tunnel” for themselves.
When he felt the need to make significant changes, he preferred to wait until his entire “team” was imbued with the same state, rather than solve the problem with the “stroke of a pen” by issuing another order.
Sergey was proud of himself that he was able to create a type of corporate culture in which the company's management expects to receive obligations from subordinates, and subordinates expect to be involved in the company's affairs [3, p. 178].
Questions for the case:
1. On what was Sergei’s authority based as the first manager in the company? Provide reasons and factual support for your statements.
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2.What personal sources of power allowed Sergei to create a corporate culture in the company? Give a detailed analysis of this transformation.
3.Why do you think group leaders, while publicly “defending” their proposals for budgets and goals, might consider this, under certain circumstances, an undermining of their power?
4.Give examples of Sergei’s combination of power and politics in achieving his goals.
5.What leadership elements does Sergei’s “confused” management style contain?
Case 2. “Tymkovo toy”
Zinaida Terentyeva parked her Gazelle near the Izmailovskaya Hotel and sighed with relief after a long journey. The pickup truck was filled with samples of clay toys made in her factory. She expected to receive many orders for her products this time, since the Maslenitsa holiday and farewell to the Russian winter were soon to take place and an influx of foreign guests was expected. While waiting for the manager of the souvenir store, Zinaida suddenly remembered how hard it was for her to get what she and her husband have today.
The production of clay molded painted figurines of people and animals, sometimes in the form of whistles, has been one of the Russian folk arts and crafts for several centuries, which was mainly occupied by women. This fishery has long existed in the trans-river settlement of Tymkovo near the city of Vyatka. Whistles — horse, rider, bird — go back to ancient magical ritual images and are associated with natural calendar holidays. Later, the figurines, having lost their magical meaning, became children's and then decorative toys, the production of which turned into an artistic craft. In Soviet times, this was first done by the Clay Toy artel, and then, from 1948, by the State Art Workshop. Today this business belonged to Zinaida and her husband Ivan.
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Zinaida and her husband had amassed their small capital over the past few years in shuttle operations on the “great route from the Varangians to the Greeks.” Ivan was a native of Vyatka, but spent his adolescence and youth in the northern capital, testing fate in search of happiness. He never graduated from any of the universities where he tried to find a solution to his problems. It also did not take root in workplaces in a variety of organizations. He was not afraid of work, and his health allowed it. With the “opening” of a market in the country, he immediately threw himself into the risky “shuttle” business, where he met his future life partner. Zinaida grew up in Rostov-on-Don and graduated from the economics department of the state university there. She dreamed of going to the capital to work, but circumstances brought her and Ivan together, and they decided to open their own family business, fortunately, prices at privatization auctions were still affordable at that time and few people risked investing their meager savings in real production, even at the level of artistic crafts.
The first thing they discovered was that labor productivity in the factory they purchased was low (lower than they expected). They hired workers newly arrived in the region to change the situation at the enterprise. In addition, Ivan created and introduced a new system of piecework payment for workers. He spent a long time and carefully explaining to the employees the meaning of the system and tried, through its discussion, to resolve all the questions that his subordinates had. Since many of the newly arrived workers had never made clay toys before, they asked practically no questions. The only thing they wanted was to receive wages depending on the time worked. Despite the fact that the Terentyevs were confident that piece payment would increase labor productivity, they had to agree to time-based payment for work. Since manual skills for making clay toys were required from each worker to the same extent, payment was made at the same rate.
Soon the Terentyevs discovered that their subordinates' attitude towards work was changing. One day they were unpleasantly surprised when none of their subordinates showed up for work. As they were
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explained, it was a “harvest day” and almost all the inhabitants of this region traditionally spent it on their plots in anticipation of the onset of bad weather with cold and rain.
Ivan Terentyev knew well the potential of the market for decorative items and arts and crafts products in the North of Russia. Therefore, a month ago, he held a meeting with a number of his employees about the transition to the manufacture of new products. Since the sale of “Tymkovo toys” was predominantly of a seasonal and tourist nature — it was especially widespread during the periods of Christmas, Maslenitsa and summer holidays — Ivan thought that at other times the workers could make some other products, for example, decorative dishes and jewelry for kitchens in the “a la russe” style. This would help the firm improve both productivity and overall profitability. The workers listened to his proposal and said that they only knew how to make toys. Ivan decided not to insist on his idea until he and his wife could find out why the workers did not cooperate with them. At the same time, the Terentyevs knew that competition with other manufacturers would force their workers to acquire new skills and abilities to produce other products.
Several quarrels among workers have already taken place in their team. Usually they arose between the old residents of a given area and people who came there from other places as a result of the degradation and collapse of a previously great empire. The quarrels were not serious or long-lasting, but they contributed to the development of a tense atmosphere in the team. All the previous week, Zinaida had been at the factory when Roza Bakhmetyeva complained about Daria Konyukhova and Nadezhda Pervukhina for laughing at her. When Ivan Terentyev asked Rosa what they told her, she said that she did not know, since they spoke in some local “slang” that she did not know. At this time, Ivan was negotiating with the Russian Souvenir chain of stores and did not have time to closely deal with the situation with Rosa. His wife did not have a definite opinion on how to act in such a case, since she herself was from the south of Russia and had not yet had time to learn the intricacies of the local dialect.
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These petty quarrels between workers could have been the reason why the Terentyevs' efforts to develop group work in their small team would have come to nothing. Therefore, Zinaida combined her stay in the capital, where she stayed with her relative, with attending a seminar organized by the Academy of Economics for small entrepreneurs. During the classes, teachers paid a lot of attention to the formation of good relationships at work between members of the organization. Some time later, she and her husband began to put into practice a number of the concepts that she had understood and learned during the workshop. So, she began to create “teams” from among her employees, consisting of representatives from each stage of the production process. After explaining to the workers the essence of group work, Ivan asked the “teams” to discuss areas of possible cooperation and cooperation with each other in order to increase productivity at work and to let him or his deputy Anna Prokhorova know about the successes achieved during the week. A week passed and all the “teams” reported that they had not been able to come up with any ideas on how to better cooperate in their work. Trying to find out in more detail what they actually discussed in the “teams,” Ivan discovered that they had not even met, and therefore did not discuss the problem posed to him.
Then the Terentyevs decided to appoint a responsible person, or leader, in each “team”. Having now given them a month of time, they asked the “teams” to meet informally and report on their achievements. At the end of the month, workers came to the Terentyevs’ office with the same result: problems of cooperation were not discussed in any of the
“teams”. Then the Terentyevs decided to temporarily abandon this idea.
They decided to think again about how to achieve reciprocal support and get the help of their subordinates in order to make the business more successful for all of them [3, p. 185].
Questions for the case:
1. What problems did the Terentyevs encounter in implementing a leadership approach to managing their team?
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2.If the Terentyevs decided to choose a situational leadership model, which leadership style would most help them accomplish what they wanted?
3.If the Terentyevs hired you as a management consultant, what advice would you give them regarding choosing a leadership style? Why would you give them this advice? Justify your recommendations.
CONTROL QUESTIONS
1.What is the essence of the concepts “power”, “influence”, “authority”?
2.Expand the content of the concept of “leadership”.
3.Describe the main management styles.
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6.MOTIVATION AND STIMULATION OF MANAGEMENT ACTIVITIES
Motivation is the process of encouraging each employee and all members of his team to actively work to satisfy their needs and achieve the goals of the organization.
Motivation is based on content and process theories.
Content theories of motivation are based on the identification of those internal drives (called needs) that make people act in one way and not another. These are the motivation theories of Abraham Maslow, David McClelland and Frederick Herzberg.
Process theories of motivation are based primarily on how people behave based on their perceptions and cognitions. The main process theories are expectancy theory, equity theory, and the Porter-Lawler model of motivation.
The process of using various incentives to motivate people is called the incentive process. Incentives come in various forms.
To stimulate means to compel action, to give an impetus. The stimulating effect expresses the state of a person in which he needs to develop a form of behavior that satisfies the leader.
Not only positive but also negative incentives are created, the latter expressed in the form of certain prohibitions and punishments.
In management practice, one of its most common forms is material incentives. The role of this stimulation process is extremely important.
Stimulation is fundamentally different from motivation. The essence of this difference is that stimulation is one of the means by which motivation can be achieved. Moreover, the higher the level of development of relations in an organization, the less often incentives are used as a means of managing people. This is due to the fact that education and training as one of the methods of motivating people lead to the fact that members of the organization themselves show interested participation in
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