Question

Chapter 1: The Manager's Job Learning objectives are listed at the beginning of each Chapter 1. What is the process of management? (Use a work experience or personal example to show the process of management). What are the managerial roles? (Use a work experience or personal example to show different managerial roles). 2. What are the two major reasons you would want to become a manager or would not like to become a manager? (Explain fully by using work experience or personal example). Chapter 2: International Management and Cultural Diversity 3. Identify and briefly describe at least five of the major challenges facing the global managerial worker. Support your answer by using additional source of information. 4. Describe how cultural diversity can give a firm a competitive advantage (or help the firm be more profitable. Use your own company as example to support your answer.

Answer 1

1. The basic activities that comprise the process of management are planning and decision making (determining courses of action), organizing (coordinating activities and resources), leading (motivating and managing people) and controlling (monitoring and evaluating activities). These are not performed on a systematic and predictable schedule. Any business activity performed by a senior manager can be termed as management process. For example - at the start of an audit, senior audit manager makes an audit plan, coordinates with the client to organize the audit, selects appropriate audit team members and directs them as per the audit plan.

Managerial roles can be of three types -

a) Interpersonal roles - The roles of figurehead, leader, liaison; all of which involve dealing with other people. Example - attending ribbon cutting ceremonies, coordinating activities of two project groups, taking visitors to dinner.

b) Informational roles - The roles of monitor, disseminator and spokesperson, all of which involve the processing of information. Example - scanning industry reports, relay information to outsiders in a formal sense, sending memos.

c) Decisional roles - The role of entrepreneur, resource allocator, negotiator, all of which primarily to make decisions. Example - reviewing/revising budget, developing new ideas, dealing with conflicts.

2. The best managers become managers because they enjoy mentoring and leading. Managers should enjoy interfacing with others, soliciting their input on projects and collaborating with them to partner on implementing the features. Two major reasons I want to become a manager are:

a) I have good communication skills. Example - i volunteer to be the moderator in all my school projects and i act as a mitigator in solving problems between my classmates

b) I want to help others succeed. Example - mentoring people and seeing them advance is very rewarding

3. Global managerial workers face many challenges such as:

a) Developing global leadership skills - There is a need to develop global leadership skills and the ability to deal effectively with people from other cultures. Having such skills is a combination of cultural sensitivity and leadership skills.

b) Culture shock - It is described as a group of physical and psychological symptoms that can develop when a person is abruptly placed in a foreign culture. Culture shock contributes to the relatively high rate of expatriates who return home early because they are dissatisfied with their assignments or the expatriate may work in one time zone while contacts in company headquarters work in different time zones.

c) Differences in negotiating style - Differences in cultural values and norms between negotiators of two countries influence negotiating tactics and the outcome. When people negotiate with others from their own culture, they are more likely to achieve mutual gains.

d) Currency fluctuations - Global managers have to respond to changes in the value of currencies in the home country and elsewhere. If the currency of a country gains in value, it may be difficult to export products made in that country.

e) Piracy of Intellectual Property Rights and other merchandise - Considerable amounts of revenue may be lost because firms in other countries might illegally copy his or her product.

4) Successful companies capitalize on diversity and inclusion as a source of competitive advantage. It increases innovation, acceptance and problem solving capacity.

a) Acceptance - International companies face a shifting demography along the lines of language, nationality, religion and race. As a result, customer expectation about the way the company should work are diverse and the best way to gain acceptance of customers is to reflect the diversity of customer base. Example - Company providing multilingual service and support improves customer satisfaction and opens up more opportunities thereby increasing profit.

b) Innovation - Diversity of experience, opinion and background help conceive new ideas. A diverse workforce ensures that product and service concepts do not conflict with different cultural values.