Management theories have being developed for conducting managers on their process of coordinating work activities in order to ensure they achieve the organisational goals with and through other people efficiently and effectively. Managers, as decision maker in the organization, operate the managerial function on the personnel (Robbins, Bergman, Stagg & Coulter, 2003). This paper will discuss how Suzie as a manager get things done through other people with the assistance of the ideas of Fayol and Maslow. This will be done by providing these contributors’ theories and relating them to some problems that happened in the grocery store.
Fayol’ s General Administrative Approach Fayol proposes five functions of managerial work, which are planning, organizing, coordinating, commanding and controlling, although these have been condensed down to four functions, which are planning, leading, organising and controlling, they are still the basic and crucial functions that indicating what is important to management (Robbins, et al., 2003).
These elements constitute the process of the manager’s job. Planning can briefly be described as deliberating what going to do in the future and formulating the organizational goals and all the possible activities or tasks that needed to be done (Fells, 2000). By performing the planning function that Suzie made a list of what she wanted to achieve over the next month and some important actions that needed to be done in order to remedy the messy situation of the store. As a manager, she noticed that the store used to be operated without a manager and there are no planning, organising, leading and controlling.
Therefore, careful planning is the first step and essential to managerial success. It allows for rational thinking, which is based on the presented facts and evidence taken before implementing the actions, so that the things can be done in an orderly format, and finally meets the goals (Miller and Vaughan, 2001). By having done those short-term plans, it might be more effective and efficient to make a long-term plan in order to motivate employees and improve the store. She may establish the clear goals and mission statement and develop a strategy for the store in the competitive market to achieve the goal effectively and efficiently (Robbins, et al., 2003).
Another element in Fayol’s four functions is organizing. To organise the company is implementing the activities through the workforce (Fells, 2000). To organize the company, the managers need to work with the employees to determine who, when, what and how to do the job (Robbins, et al., 2003). Suzie gets things done by a serial of activities for this kind of decision making. In this case, Suzie is thinking of setting up an inventory system to solve the problem that resulting from poor organising in order to gain the customer’s satisfactions and the profits. This action shows that Suzie is organising the store by examining the tasks and seeking the way to do them. Apparently, without manager’s organising the tasks that the employees did were often disorganised and the inventory system in the future can help them avoiding the ineffectiveness and inefficiency.
Managers need to performance controlling functions in the organisation, which is to monitoring and adjusting organizational performances in order to keep all the resources in the right track (Fells, 2000). Suzie uses this function as well, in particular, when she is solving the issue of money missing from the cash register and the temperature of the refrigerator. The manager with controlling function enable the organization to keep the pace with the changeable environment, and what is important are limiting the errors, coping with the difficulties and minimize the costs (Griffin and Davidson, 2003).
The rest contribution of Fayol’s is fourteen principles, such as the division of work, unity of command, unity of direction and authority (Refer to Appendix 1). The principle of initiative requires the manager has the ability to make the employees to think independently and let the employees feel free to speak out their own opinions (Fells, 2000). Suzie realised the importance of the employees’ initiative and takes good advantage of it.
By having initiative, the manager’ s ability to ask and recognise the employees’ suggestions, when the suggestions are accepted, and even being used, the employees would bring more effort into the work (Pugh, 1997). In the case, Suzie gives the staff freedom to make suggestions on the better way to manage the store and the possible solutions to the problems. In this way, the whole organization will become more harmony since everyone in this environment caring about others and cooperate with others; finally this esprit is brought into the job and turn into the increasing of productivity (Rodrigues, 2001).
