Question 1:

Management definitions and basics

The most used definition of management is the one that belongs to Henry Fayol to
lead is to foresee, plan, organize, manage, coordinate and control.
Other definitions:
Management is a social process that implies planning, controlling, coordination and
motivation E. Brech;
Leadership is the operational process that can be defined best through the management
functions analyzing process. The top 5 essential functions are planning, organizing, coaching,
leading and controlling - Koontz and ODonnel.

Management is a process that lets organizations meet their objectives through planning,
organizing and controlling their resources, process that implies also the earnings of trust and
motivation of their employees.

Key roles of managers consist of:

- Being enterprising good planner, risk taker;
- Skilled in allocating resources good organizer and coordinator;
- Having leader material motivational and coordinator;
- Has to insure a good connection between the coordinator and the controller;
- Good speaker skills, good negotiations skills.


Professor Handy narrowed down the key variables that a manager has to struggle with:

- People
- Work and structures;
- Systems and procedures;




These variables cannot be treated separately, they have to be handled in a safe manner,
taking the restrictions of the environment seriously: the organizations goals, the available
technology, the organizations culture ( values and beliefs).





Question 2:

The traditional school

Fayol, Taylor, Gantt, the Gilbreths, Urwick and Brech struggled to find the moral
principles that can be applied in management development. These principles concern labor
division specialization and the control over the material and human resources through the
hierarchy structures activities.
Some of these principles are applied to the present, such as the hierarchy based
management.

Fayel sais:

- General management principles dont exclusively concern the managers, but hole
organization from top to bottom;

Taylor sais:


- The most important thing is to develop the efficiency of the operational level of the
company; he based most of his solutions on his personal professional experience
working as both a simple employee and a manager.


Question 3:

The HR School


The most important representative of this school was Abraham Maslow. His human
needs hierarchy had a great impact; especially the needs he identified as superior: need of
respect and self-accomplishment.
Herzberd sais:

- It is very important to motivate the employees;
- The content of the labour is more important than the context;
- Employees cannot be bought only with big salaries and proper work conditions, they
have to be satisfied with their accomplishment, their results have to be recognized,
this is how you keep them motivated.





Question 4:

The systems school:

The system is a collection of parts that interact and form a whole.
Social systems organizations are open systems just as the biological and informational ones.
The most important characteristics of the systems are:
- They receive entries, resources and energy from within their environment;
- They transform the entries in outcomes (results);
- They supply their results to their environment after the conversion process of the
entries.


Entries materials, row materials, human resources, money and information.

These are used to transform the human resources and materials in products and services.
The key variables for the system approach are: people, technology, the structure of the
organization and the environment.




Question 5:

The decisional subsystem of the organization

Decision: the common perception of management is associated to the decision taking key
element

Harrison sais:
- To manage is to decide / to make decisions;
- The right decision is the one that meets the followed objectives.

Drruker sais:

- Management is based on making decisions and other activities that are not met in
this domain.
Decision the result of a selection process that consists of choosing from many alternatives
one action to follow that leads to the achievement of the settled goal.

Steps in the decisional process:

- Define problem -> search for the ways/alternatives to act on ->evaluate the
alternatives -> select one.
Decisional lay-outs/patterns/models:

1. ICONIC its a physical replica of the system, it admits a different representation of
reality at another scale ( ex. A product line, a plane, a car);
2. ANALOGICAL it consists of only a behavioral representation of the system (ex.
diagram, organization chart);
3. MATHEMATICAL abstract models that try to reproduce the interaction complexity of
some systems that cannot be reproduced physically.
These kinds of patterns (models) reproduce various situations and can be easily scaled/handled
through experiments.

Shaping:

- Implies a multitude of activities such as :

a. The models components;
b. The models structures;
c. The math relation;
d. Validating the model and the sensibility analysis. + check image 2.1 !!!!

Question 6:

Informational system management:

Def: any decisional system as management is defined, needs a material support - an input =
informational system.

- A data conversion system with data from internal and external sources.
- It converts the data input in information -> it communicates the resulted info to the
managers -> they use the given info in the decisional process.
So.. it represents a sum of activities that imply receiving, processing and disseminating
(spreading) information.

Data = the results of recorded observations and facts that reflect only one aspect of reality ;
Information = analyzed, grouped, processed and interpreted data.

Information characteristics:

- Accuracy = the correct reflection of reality ( quality and quantity wise); the behavior
of the sourse;
- Real-time = info has to reach the decision factor in practical time;
- Absolute = info has to identify all key factors of the problem;
- Relevancy = info has to be concise and meet the nature of the problem