AUTHOR’S BIO Benneth Nnaji I am undergraduate student of business and management in the University of Central Lancashire in the north of England. I was on the board of directors for the plumbing company ‘24hrs Plumbing and Heating Services Ltd’ for 5, during my time as a director I was tasked with negotiating with client or potential clients and coming up with the best deal that suite both the company and the clients, I would also make sure all work where carried out by specification this means site visitation/inspection once before the projects starts, half way through the project and at the final stage which is called the handover stage. I was also tasked with making sure we did not go out of budget therefore not authorizing materials that are not necessary, with this I was able to develop my interpersonal skills like managing conflicts because more often the client wants more for their money and you must demonstrate through facts and evidence that some practices are not durable or effective in the long term. After my time at the construction firm, I went on to successfully complete a foundation year in Building Services and Sustainable Engineering at the University of Central Lancashire. Studying the course helped me broaden my knowledge of what I already knew about the industry helping me to understand more in technical terms, but I soon realized after adding my experience as a director in the industry and my foundation year in engineering that I was best fit in mongering side of things I was more effective in coming out with new ideas, delegating and motivating staff as well as motivating myself, with that in mind I decided to pursue a career in business and management. My aim will be after the completion of my degree in business and management I will be looking forward to gaining more experience in the UK as a manager as I current work for Amazon, I will be using that opportunity to step up the ladder, after which in my later years will go back to Africa to head a family business.

I was born in Lagos the south of Nigeria, west Africa and has lived in 3 major continent and speak three different languages which gives me broad understanding of cultures and traditions. I come from a linage of business minded people it is often said that the Igo’s where I am originally from are the engineering force that drives the Nigerian economy and business runs in our blood streams, I'm looking forward adding to my skills while developing them and learning new ones.

DEFINING MANAGEMENT

LEVELS OF MANAGEMNT Top Management These group of managers leads the organisation and would normally have the final say in decision making. They include the board of directors, partners, the managing director chief executives and management committee. Top management is also responsible for setting out the company’s mission statements, goals, vision, and overall strategies. Middle Management The middle management are responsible for specific department and are primarily tasked with implementing the policies, plans, and strategies laid down by top management. These group include the marketing manager, the purchasing manger and the human resource and are involve in the medium-term and short term planning of an organisation with the help of departmental heads.

According to Smit (2011,9) “management can be defined as the process of planning, organizing, leading and controlling the resources of the organization to predetermined stated organization

goals as productive as possible” however according to Boddy D (2011, 10) “Management as a universal human activity occurs whenever people take responsibility for an activity and consciously

Lower / First-line Management Lower or first-line managers are responsible for mostly the day to day activities of the organisation they include and not limited to product managers , promotion managers and sales managers, they can also include foremen in the case of some construction or mining organisation. They carry out function like implementing short term plans of the middle management and assist to motivate subordinates to accomplish day-to-day goal.

try to shape its progress and outcome.” he went on to describe management as the outcome of a practices which leads to a greater output focusing more on the human and outcome, but we see other writers concentrating and the activities like planning, controlling and leading Smit et al. (2007,12) 12/8/2021

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MANAGEMENT ERAS Scientific Management There were theorist who produced ways to get things done faster and more efficiently, like Fredrick Taylor who increased specialization and division of labour to increase efficiency. Frank &William Gilbreth focused on identifying better way or methods and reorganizing individual action while Henry Gantt paid bonuses to those who met daily target. Mullis and Christy (2013, 45) Despite its criticism Fredrick Taylor’s scientific theory, is still been practiced in our modern society in organizations like McDonalds where time of processing meal is used to measure staff competency and staff are paid on how fast they work on the other hand we also see example of the human relation theories at play, according to a case study on google in Mullins and Christy (2013,73) “the company famously encourages its employees to spend 20 per cent of each working week working on projects that interest them rather than their main responsibilities” in contrast to the approach carry out by McDonalds google allows their staff to think more about themselves claiming it makes their

In all three emphases we see the shift in what was a slow and arguably unintelligent way of carry out practices into a fast and efficient way of carry out task. The downside of these theories was that it was turning humans into machines as it made employees worked in a timely fashion, these methods saw workers who found the work boring and requiring little skill. There was also a committee setup in 1912 to investigate Tylor’s scientific theory, the conclusion of the committee was that the scientific management did not provide some useful techniques and offered valuable organizational suggestion but gave production managers a dangerously high level of uncontrolled power. Although Taylor’s scientific management is seen as unpopular in our modern work let us remember that it was written in the 1900s at the time of industrial reorganization and the emergence of large, complex organization with new forms of technology. His theory is said to have given managers the momentum to develop management thinking and the organizational behavior in management.

employees think outside the box therefore helping them to be more innovative

and creative in getting the job done.

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CHALLENGES FACING MANAGERS It is the ever evolving state of management that makes it challenging, the idea of management been an art and constantly trying new and erasing old theories due to finding a more effective way of carrying out task is what all manager have to deal with on a day to day basis.

GLOBALIZATION An organisation is expected to draw essential input of the right quantity, quality and price to attain its goal in staying competitive in a globalise environment, all organisation depend on regular supplies of materials from banks, shareholders, mortgage bonds, labour and their products in some cases their customer can be their client in the case of uber drivers, globalisation can make this challenging as many a times organisation has to order supplies from overseas and trust that the supplies will be delivered in time and exactly what they ordered for, we see this in play in post covid where shops struggled to get truck drivers to bring in supplies from other parts of Europe where Brexit was also said to be a contributing factor in the shortage of drivers, the government had to step in issuing temporary visas for lorry drivers in order to meet demand. According to a BBC report “ A Road Haulage Association (RHA) survey of its members estimates there is now shortage of more than 100,000 qualified drivers in the UK, That number includes thousands of drivers from European union (EU) member state who were previously living in the UK”. These poses a great challenge to managers as they must make alternative arrangement for to get supplies into the country. Another major challenge managers face is scarcity, where resources are limited, or the demand is greater than supply.

The figure below demonstrates the interrelatedness of all environment factors because of these a change in the microenvironment can influence the other environments. Likewise, a change in external factors may influence other eternal environment variables. For example, if the value of pounds drops imported goods and services which are sold in the UK becomes more expensive because them it will cost the business more to purchase therefore transferring cost to the customers. The uncertainty of the environment is also a great concern to all management while some face greater uncertainty then the other according to Smit (2011,62) “ researches found for example that the rate of change in the pharmaceuticals and electronics industries is higher than in the automobile component and bakery industries” therefore understanding the complexity of the environment for an organization will better prepare the management in dealing with any changes that arises.

MANAGEMENT SKILLS Despite the changes in eras of business and the way we carry out business over the years what has not change is the basic skills that helps us carry out task effectively and satisfying growth-production and human relationship. It is a skill for a management to distinguish between personality behaviour and role behaviour; role behaviour is when a person acts according to the position they hold however some personality factor will influence our work and the way we carry out task and this can be easily missed by managers without the right skills set.

According to Mr Jonathan Hogg in a PA news paper “the Real challenge is to increase their self awareness and emotional intelligence, then to provide tools to enable them to engage fully in the running and targeted improvement of their organisation” . It is important that manager are aware of their current skills and how to develop them.

According to the MIT Sloan management review, “companies are struggling with a critical problem finding mangers with the right skills to lead their organisations”, suggesting that this lack of skill does not only affect the organisation but has a bigger impact on the global economy. This was also echoed by the England chief economist ‘ that poor management is the principal cause of the UK’s stagnant productivity’. Bad management also leads to lover level productivity and stagnant growth in developing countries this is sometimes due to lack of adequate training and recourses available to the managers, their inability to change can also be a contributing factor.

The figure below show how interrelated the personal behaviours are to form a set of skills and each relies partially on the other to perform successfully. There also a focus on the interpersonal skills, this deal mostly with the interaction with other, managing conflict and motivating others. The finally part of the management skills focuses on the skills in empowering and engaging others to carry out task while building an effective team and teamwork.

While competition remain one of the key aspect that threaten a business growth managers have to be well skilled to face and deal with this , according to PA Newspaper “front line managers need to improve their capability if UK businesses are to match the productivity and skills of their international competitors”. Poor management skills leads to low productivity, conflict in the workplace and unsatisfied workforce leaving the organisation struggling with unsatisfied customers and missed target or deadlines. Following the Brexit announcement business are struggling to retain skilled staff as it has seen migrates from the EU facing the prospects of returning back to their countries but the 18 months tentative deal on citizen rights agreed between the UK and the EU in December 2017 has made business more optimistic in retaining their skilled staff.

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REFERENCING ❑ Armstrong, M. (2017) How to be an Even Better Manager: A Complete A-Z of Techniques and Essential Skills. 10th ed London: Kogan Page th ed . Pearson Education UK. Boddy,G.,D.J.,(2011) Smit, P.,❑J., Cronje, Brevis, Management.5 T. and Vrba, M., J. (2011) Management Principles: A ❑ Buchanan, D. and Huczynski, A. (2019) Organizational behaviour. Tenth edition. Harlow, England: Pearson. contemporary Edition for Africa Juta publishing ❑ Certo, S. C. and Certo, S. T. (2019) Modern Management : concepts and skills. 15th ed. Harlow, England: Pearson. ❑ Caproni, P.J. (2012) Management skills for everyday life : the practical coach . 3rd ed. Upper Saddle River, N.J: Prentice Hall. ❑ Kriewall, T.J. and Mekemson, K., 2010. Instilling the entrepreneurial mindset into engineering undergraduates. The journal of engineering entrepreneurship, 1(1), pp.5-19. ❑ Mullins, L. J. and Christy, . (2016) Management & organisational behaviour. Eleventh edition. Harlow: Pearson Education Limited. ❑ Mullins, Laurie J.. Management and Organizational Behavior, Pearson Education UK, 2013. ProQuest eBook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uclan-ebooks/detail.action?docID=5136944. ❑ Parmenter, D. (2015) Key performance indicators : developing, implementing and using winning KPIs . Third edition. Hoboken, New Jersey: Wiley. ❑ Poon, J., & Brownlow, M. (2014). Students' views on the incorporation of commercial awareness in real estate education. Property Management, 32(4), 326-351. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/PM-07-2013-0040 ❑ Poon, P.R.J. and Stevens, R., 2012. Enhancing graduate employability: development of a taxonomy of commercial awareness (No. eres2012_350). European Real Estate Society (ERES). ❑ Poon, J. and Brownlow, M., 2015. Development of students’ commercial awareness within the curriculum of professionally accredited courses. Education+ Training. ❑ Rees, W.D. and Porter, C. (2001) The skills of management. 5th ed. / W. David Rees and Christine Porter. Australia ;: Thomson Learning. ❑ Siebert, W.S. and Zubanov, N., 2010. Management economics in a large retail company. Management Science, 56(8), pp.1398-1414. ❑ Smit, P., J., Cronje, G., J., Brevis, T. Vrba, M., J., (2011) Management Principles: A contemporary Edition for Africa Juta publication. ❑ Slack, Nigel, and Alistair Brandon-Jones. Operations and Process Management PDF EBook : Principles and Practice for Strategic Impact, Pearson Education, Limited, 2018. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uclan-ebooks/detail.action?docID=5215506. ❑ Whetten, D.A. (David A. and Cameron, K.S. (2016) Developing management skills . Ninth edition. Harlow: Pearson. ❑

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Wetherly, P. and Otter, D. (2018) The business environment : themes and issues in a globalizing world . Fourth edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Lancashire School of Business and Enterprise

Coursework Cover Sheet HR1027 Magazine

Students should add this coversheet, to the start of their powerpoint before PDF submission through Turnitin.

Module Tutor: Cheryl Gordon Module Title: Management and Practice Module Code: HR1027

Programme Title: BA (Hons) Year of Study: 1

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https://www.uclan.ac.uk/study_here/assets/assessment_handbook_2122.pdf

Have you checked the following in order to maximise the grade you can achieve for this assignment? Learning Outcomes have been addressed Similarity check via Turn-it-in Referencing accuracy according to provided guide Grammar Spelling Word count (or other length limitation as described in the brief)

Please mark X to confirm x x x x x x

WELLBEING

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SELF – REFLECTION

Assessment Criteria:

Self-Evaluation:

Details of this can be found in the assignment brief. In order to ensure the assessment process is fair, we want to make sure that the assessment criteria are clear to you in advance.

Simply rate how you think this assessment will perform against the assessment criteria; i.e. 1st (very good/excellent), 2:1 (good), 2:2 (competent), 3rd (basic), fail (weak). This helps us provide detailed comments on your work and clarify things you do not understand 2:1

Using theory to support understanding of current management Theory supported discussion of management practice Analysis of your practice and skills Presenting yourself as a manager

2:1 2:2 2:1