Chapter 1: Management P a g e | 12
Questions
1. How is this decision emblematic of a mangers role as a liaison?
2. How would your team choose to respond to Coca-Colas request?
3. If you respond positively to Coca-Colas request for changes to the label, how would you explain the
change to consumers? If you respond negatively to the request, how would you explain your decision
to Coca-Cola? What would you to make sure your relationship does not turn hostile?
Source:
Elizabeth Olson, Can Honest Tea Say No To Coke, Its Biggest Investor? The New York Times, July 7,
Practice Being a Manager
FINDING A MANAGEMENT JOB
Management is a wide-ranging and exciting area of work. One way to gain a sense of the possibilities is
to study the advertisements for management job openings. Companies advertise their management
openings in a variety of ways, including print advertisements in such newspapers as The Wall Street
Journal (especially its Friday career section) and online ads at job sites like Monster.com and
CareerBuilder.com.
Step 1: Find a job you’d like to have. Search through the newspaper and online ads and locate several
detailed job descriptions for management positions. Select the one that you find most appealinga job
that you could picture yourself interviewing for either in the near future or later in your career. Do not be
Step 2: Share your job description. In class, your professor will assign you to a pair or group of three.
Step 3: Think like a hiring manager. Read the job description you received from your partner. Imagine
that you are the manager responsible for hiring someone to fill this position. A human resources specialist
Step 4: Take turns interviewing. Each member of the group should be briefly interviewed (510
minutes) for the job he or she selected.
Step 5: Debrief. Discuss your experiences with your partner(s). What was it like to be interviewed for
your selected position? What was it like to role-play interviewing someone for a management position?
Chapter 1: Management P a g e | 13
Self-Assessment
IS MANAGEMENT FOR YOU?
This assessment is meant to establish your students baseline interests in the skills covered in the chapter.
It will not tell them whether they should or should not be a manager, or whether they have what it takes
to be a manager. It will, however, give them feedback on whether they are interested in the kinds of things
that managers do in their jobs. The research supporting this assessment can be found in P. Hunsaker,
Management: A Skills Approach (Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2005) 24-25.
In-Class Use
Give students 5 7 minutes to complete the inventory.
Scoring
Scoring instructions are included in the Self-Assessment at the end of the chapter. But students will want
to know what their raw score means. Heres what you can tell them:
Scores range from 20 to 100. Higher scores indicate a better match between your current behaviors
and tendencies and those needed for a career in management. If your score is low, it does not
organizational skills.
Management Workplace
Management Workplace videos can support several in-class uses. In most cases you can build an entire
50-minute class around them. Alternatively, they can provide a springboard into a group lesson plan. The
Management Workplace video for Chapter 1 would be a nice companion to your introduction to the
course on the first day of classes.
VIDEO: Camp Bow Wow
Innovative Management for a Changing World
Summary:
Sue Ryan, a Camp Bow Wow franchisee from Colorado, knows the ins and outs of managing a care
center for pets. To help launch her business a few years ago, Ryan recruited experienced pet care worker
Candace Stathis, who came on as a camp counselor. Ryan soon recognized that Stathis was a star
performer with a natural ability to work with clients and pets alike, and today Stathis serves as the camps
Chapter 1: Management P a g e | 14
Discussion Questions:
1. Identify three skills that companies look for in managers and explain which might be most needed for
the Camp Bow Wow leaders highlighted in the video.
The three general categories of management skills are conceptual skills, human skills, and technical
skills. Conceptual skill, which is the most important skill category for top managers, is the cognitive
ability to see the organization as a whole system and the relationship among its parts. Human skill,
which is highly important for middle managers, is the ability to work with and through other people
and to work effectively as a group member. Technical skill, which is most important for first-line
managers and nonmanagers, is the understanding of and proficiency in the performance of specific
tasks.
While all managers at Camp Bow Wow require some degree of each of the three skill sets, Camp
Bow Wow franchise owner Sue Ryan needs to have well-developed conceptual skills to think
2. Which activities at Camp Bow Wow require high efficiency? Which activities require high
effectiveness?
Effectiveness is the degree to which the organization achieves a stated goal; efficiency refers to the
amount of resources used to achieve an organizational goal. A high performance company is one that
achieves organizational goals to the maximum extent possible (effectiveness) while making the best
3. List two activities that leaders at Camp Bow Wow perform daily, and identify which of the
managerial roles discussed in the chapter figure prominently for each.
Chapter 1: Management P a g e | 15
Management Workplace Video Quiz
Students are able to take the following video quiz on CourseMate. The video is broken into segments, and
each segment has related questions to make sure students understand how the clip connects to the chapter
concepts.
Video Segment 1
Video segment title Management Skills and Positions
Start time (in sec) 0:00
Stop time (in sec) 1:54
Quiz Question 1 In this clip, Camp Bow Wow general manager Candace Stathis emphasizes
the importance of the following managerial skills:
a. Conceptual skills
Quiz Question 2 Camp Bow Wow franchise owner Sue Ryan states that managers need to
understand the big picture aspects of their jobs. This requires the
following managerial skills:
a. Conceptual skills
b. Human skills
c. Technical skills
Quiz Question 3 Camp Bow Wow owner Sue Ryan explains that she established her
business with a flat leadership structure but began promoting people to
higher management positions within the organization. This speaks of the
different:
a. Functions of management
Chapter 1: Management P a g e | 16
Video Segment 2
Video segment title Management Roles
Start time (in sec) 1:54
Stop time (in sec) 3:40
Quiz Question 1 When Sue Ryan describes the inner-workings of Camp Bow Wow in this
video, which managerial role is she fulfilling?
a. Monitor
b. Leader
Quiz Question 2 According to Sue Ryan, a staff position at Camp Bow Wow is designed to
cover multiple roles taking care of dogs, answering phones, providing
customer service, making reservations, etc. What managerial role is Sue
fulfilling in designing these jobs?
a. Entrepreneur
Quiz Question 3 When a manager at Camp Bow Wow has to deal with an unsatisfied
customer or a particularly troublesome dog, which managerial role is she
fulfilling?
a. Disturbance handler
b. Monitor
Chapter 1: Management P a g e | 17
Video Segment 3
Video segment title Balancing Effectiveness and Efficiency
Start time (in sec) 3:40
Stop time (in sec) 6:02
Quiz Question 1 Based on the contents of the video, a strong emphasis on efficiency in
customer service matters would result in:
a. High quality interactions with clients
b. Low quality interactions with clients
Quiz Question 2 Based on the contents of the video, a strong emphasis on effectiveness in
customer service matters would result in:
a. High quality interactions with clients
b. Low quality interactions with clients
Quiz Question 3 Camp Bow Wow owner Sue Ryan learned to balance management
efficiency and effectiveness by:
a. Working longer hours
Additional Assignments and Activities
Review Questions
1. Explain the difference between efficiency and effectiveness.
Chapter 1: Management P a g e | 18
2. What are the four management functions?
performance.
3. What are the main differences in the responsibilities of top managers versus middle managers?
Top managers lead the company toward an overall direction. They make the big-picture, most
4. What distinguishes a first-line manager from a team leader?
First-line managers manage the work of entry-level workers. They must constantly motivate
5. Describe the three principal managerial roles identified by Henry Mintzberg and give examples of
each.
Managers play interpersonal roles, decisional roles, and informational roles.
Interpersonal roles: Managers must be able to work with people across the organization. They must
be:
Informational roles: Managers are responsible for obtaining and sharing information with the people
they manage. They must be:
Monitors who scan their environment for information, actively contact others for information,
Chapter 1: Management P a g e | 19
Decisional roles: Managers must be able to make good decisions in a variety of areas. They must be:
Entrepreneurs who adapt themselves, their subordinates, and their units to incremental
change;
6. How do companies determine that employees would be good managers?
Technical skills are the ability to apply the specialized procedures, techniques, and
knowledge required to get the job done. For example, the manager of product development at
a semiconductor company must understand how to design integrated circuits.
7. How important is competence in the core managerial skills for the different types of managers?
Technical skills are especially important for first-line managers who supervise the workers
who produce products or serve customers. Team leaders and first-line managers need
technical knowledge and skills to train new employees and help employees solve problems.
An example would be an engineering manager who manages a department of engineers who
Chapter 1: Management P a g e | 20
8. List the mistakes that managers commonly make. What distinguishes an arriver from a derailer?
The top ten mistakes made by first-year managers are:
Insensitive to others: abrasive, intimidating, bullying style
Cold, aloof, arrogant
Betrayal of trust
9. Describe how managers typically change in their first year on the job.
At first, most new managers make the mistake of using formal authority and acting like a boss and
of seeing their jobs as managing tasks instead of people. After a few months in management, they
10. How does the way a company is managed affect its competitive advantage?
An organizations most important resource is its people, and how this resource is utilized will
Chapter 1: Management P a g e | 21
Develop Your Career Potential
INTERVIEW TWO MANAGERS
This assignment is designed to raise students awareness about the day-to-day realities of managerial
work. Consequently, this is an excellent assignment to discuss in class. If finding managers to interview is
difficult for students (huge class, rural location, etc.), this assignment can also be done in pairs or in
threesomes. Since students are to interview experienced and inexperienced managers, ask students to
describe the responses they received from both. Compare and contrast the differences as you process the
discussion on the board.
Here are the questions that students should ask their interviewees:
1. Briefly describe your current position and responsibilities.
2. What do your subordinates expect from you on the job?
3. What are the major stresses and challenges you face on job?
Organizing the Discussion
Eight questions is a lot of material to review, so here are some suggestions for organizing class
discussion: First, break the class into small groups for a short discussion and review of individual
findings. Second, have each group choose a group spokesperson to report group findings to the class.
Third, divide the groups according to how you want to organize the discussion. One way to do this is by
the content of the questions. For example, you can assign each group responsibility for a different pair of
questions: 1 & 2, 3 & 6, 4 & 5, and then 7 & 8. If you have more than four groups, its okay to assign the
same pair of questions to different groups. This allows everyone to participate in the discussion in a
shorter amount of time.
Another way to organize discussion is by the kind of manager that your students interviewed. Ask
students who interviewed top-level managers to raise their hands. This will probably be the smallest
Chapter 1: Management P a g e | 22
Additional Activities
Out-of-Class Project: “Career Skills Requirements.” This activity is a companion to the assignment in
the Group Work lesson plan. For this project, each student in a group should research a career in which
they are interested. The research should focus on the skills necessary to succeed in this career: technical,
human, and conceptual skills. Students can use secondary sources or interview people who currently have
these careers. Students should then share what theyve found with their group members in class.
Management Skills. Go to the website of Apple, Inc., at
Competitive Advantage through People. Go to the website of Fortune magazine at www.fortune.com.
Click on the Rankings link for Fortune rankings. Select Worlds Most Admired Companies. Among
the list, select one company and skim the various articles about the company. What criteria were used to
judge companies? Why do you believe this company made this list? What specific management issues
make this company so admired?
Management Consulting. Go to the website of the Boston Consulting Group, one of the worlds leading
Management Careers. Search the Internet for five different management careers. These careers can
include: human resource manager, strategic planner, operations manager, marketing manager, engineering
manager, etc. Write a paragraph describing the duties that each of these careers might involve.