Management Assignment

ARAB OPEN UNIVERSITY

FACULTY OF BUSINESS STUDIES

MANAGEMENT: PERSPECTIVE AND PRACTICE

TUTOR MARKED ASSESSMENT

SEMESTER II

Case Objectives:

This case describes a newly promoted middle manager in a global, multi-cultural organization who is challenged by a number of factors in the workplace which are impacting her and her team's ability to perform to the expectations of her regional manager. While it would be easy to blame the new manager, deeper analysis in fact reveals that many forces are at work here in addition to her inexperience including communication of strategy and performance objectives, mismanaged team members, cultural inconsistencies, and a lack of leadership direction and/or skill from the very top to her supervising manager.

Refer to PDF file Case Study:

QUESTIONS:

Question one (Up to 50% Marks):(1250 words +/- 10 %)

Evaluate Ridchardson’s management skills and their impact on the team. Also, discussher overall performance within the context of the case provided.

Question 2 (Up to 50 % Marks): (1250 words +/- 10 %)

Critically analyze the forces at  play  in  ColorTech’s  Phoenix  office  that  may  be  affecting Richardson’s ability to lead and motivate her team.

Assessment criterion	Description
Engagement with theory	In all TMA submissions students should be engaging with concepts, frameworks, models and theories which are drawn from their work on the relevant units of the module. They should always explain the theory, rather than list bullet points. Bullet points do not demonstrate an understanding of the ideas, but rather display memory only. Students must show you that they have fully grasped and presented the ideas in their terms, not only that they can repeat them.
Use of evidence	Evidence will inform both the way that students critique theory and how they demonstrate their understanding of it. They should give practical examples from their own experiences and practice, or an organisation they know well, in order to provide strong evidence for their arguments. Likewise, they can offer evidence and illustrations for their arguments from the module materials. They must always link their examples to theory, otherwise it is just description and not analysis. They should attempt to weave the theory and evidence together, rather than having large chunks of text about the theory and then large chunks of text about ‘evidence’, as the latter inevitably ends up being descriptive rather than analytical and can feel contrived and difficult to write.
Level of discussion	At Masters level, simple answers and essentially descriptive reports are not adequate. Student TMA submissions should present a level of discussion in which their consideration of evidence and theory takes account of competing positions and elements of contrast, comparison and evaluation. Their work should demonstrate a Masters' level of critical analysis, where appropriate. The dialogue between theory and practice should inform their discussions. They should develop the arguments they are making and situate them in relation to other views and perspectives, which may be supported (or not supported) by the theory. They need to be sure that they answer the question set!

TMA Objective & Guidance:

Please prepare your views to the following questions in light of the information presented in the case.  Tutors should organize and lead his/her candidates’ responses into the following three categories during TMA review sessions in the classroom. Your answers must defend your point of view. Moreover; candidates are suggested to take into consideration the following:

Guidance to Question 1

Students should raise several topics that may be interested when tackling this question. This question is intended to make students start thinking about the meaning of real manager in today’s changing environment. Change management and the responsibilities and duties that necessarily follow. One perspective that may help that Richardson’s preparations for being a sales manager has been micro-focused on her team members in her new office. She has not given thought to larger questions around her role in the larger organization, or to the company’s goals (especially with regard to new acquisitions), or even to her sales staff as more than the sum of the individuals who comprise it. Before Richardson met her team, she needed to understand what the organization expected from her boss, and what her boss expected from her. She needed an understanding of the company’s  strategy  and  how  the  Phoenix  office  fit  into  that  overall  strategy.  With this information, she could have understood the key success factors she needed to meet her objectives.

Next, Richardson should have made every attempt to gather as much information as possible about her new staff before she met anyone in person. At minimum, she could have obtained past performance reviews and tried to talk to her new boss about the staff. With this information, Richardson could have begun to develop a strategy for her team.

Guidance to Question 2

Students should examine, explain, and contribute a thoughtful reflection on motivation theories and ought to provide the most fertile foundational constructs for discussion of this case. Although there are many content and process theories, Victor V room’s expectancy theory provides a framework that lends itself to creating actionable plans for the parties listed above. According to Vroom, it is not enough that desired consequences are contingent upon appropriate behavior; the worker must believe three things: that the behavior can be done, that the behavior will produce the consequences, and that the consequences are desirable. It will also be helpful to explain that motivation and well being of employees at work as Herzberg advocated the design of jobs so that they can be challenging and more interesting, for example by using employees’ talents to a greater degree and giving them more responsibilities. Herzberg called this ‘job enrichment’ (the opposite of the job design advocated by Taylor’s scientific management approach, which suggests that work should be broken down into its simplest and most basic components). Herzberg also distinguished his approach from one in which the number of jobs done by employees is increased (job enlargement) or varied (job rotation) (Pugh and Hickson, 2007). Herzberg proposed seven principles of job enrichment for your reference.

Harvard Style - References / bibliography

Harvard Style Referencing:

• There are various ways of setting out references/bibliographies for an assignment.

• “Harvard Style” is a generic term for any referencing style which uses in-text references such as (Smith, 1999), and a reference list at the end of the document organized by author name and year of publication.

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