Featured Entry

MANAGING PROJECTS

-
Projects represent nonroutine business activities that often have long-term strategic ramifications for a firm. In this chapter, we examined how projects differ from routine business activities and discussed the major phases of projects. We noted how environmental changes have resulted in increased attention being paid to projects and project management over the past decade. In the second half of the chapter, we introduced some basic tools that businesses can use when planning for and controlling projects. Both Gantt charts and network diagrams give managers a visual picture of how a project is going. Network diagrams have the added advantage of showing the precedence between activities, as well as the critical path(s). We wrapped up the chapter by showing how these concepts are embedded in inexpensive yet powerful software packages such as Microsoft Project. If you want to learn more about project management, we encourage you to take a look at the Web site for the Proj...
2 comments

Interpersonal Communication in Organizations

-
The basic elements in the communication process—senders, receivers, transmitters, receptors, messages, channels, meaning, encoding, decoding, and feedback—are interrelated. Face-to-face interpersonal communication has the highest degree of information richness. An information-rich medium is especially important for performing complex tasks and resolving social and emotional issues that involve considerable uncertainty and ambiguity. Important issues usually contain significant amounts of uncertainty, ambiguity, and people-related (especially social and emotional) problems. There are many potential challenges to effective interpersonal communication. Direct barriers include aggressive communication approaches, noise, semantics, demeaning language, and lying and distortion.
Through mastering the factors that constitute dialogue, the likelihood of engaging in ethical interpersonal communications is magnified. Dialogue includes communication openness, constructive feedback, appropriate self-disclosure, and active listening. Dialogue requires senders and receivers to play a dynamic role in the communication process. In open communication, senders and receivers are able to discuss, disagree, and search for understanding without resorting to personal attacks or hidden agendas. Feedback received from others provides motivation for individuals to learn and change their behaviors. How much individuals are willing to share with others depends on their ability to disclose information. By being an active listener, the receiver hears the whole message without interpretation or judgment.
Nonverbal cues play a powerful role in supporting or hindering communications. There are many types of personal nonverbal cues. They were presented through the acronym PERCEIVE, which stands for the following terms: proximity, expressions, relative orientation, contact, eyes, individual gestures, voice, and existence of adapters. Formal organizational position is often tied to status. Status symbols—office size, the floor on which the office is located, number of windows, location of a secretary, and access to senior-level employees—all influence communication patterns. We noted some cautionary comments on the need to avoid simplistic stereotypes as to the meaning of nonverbal cues employed by an individual.
To provide a sense of how much the interpersonal communication process can vary between cultures, we reviewed the concept of taarof in Iran. The barriers stemming from cultural differences are always present. They are more likely to be high when the interaction takes place between individuals from high-context and low-context cultures. We noted how certain nonverbal messages—the use of color, time, and gestures—can affect intercultural communications.
An individual’s communication network extends laterally, vertically, and externally. The development of a strong inside individual network can be determined by being able to respond “yes” to most of the eight questions presented in the chapter text, such as “Do I know a number of the people whose work relates to mine in any way beyond my own department?” For individual networking effectiveness, the individual needs political skill. The informal group network involves the pattern of multiple individual networks. The most common form of informal group network is the grapevine, which may take the pattern of a single-strand chain, gossip chain, probability chain, or cluster chain. The formal employee network focuses on the intended pattern of employee-related communication vertically and laterally. Leaders need to be proactive in creating an open and ethically based pattern to ensure that individual and employee group networks are not in conflict with the formal employee network, but are instead, for the most part, supportive of it. This network may be influenced and supported by a variety of information technologies.
The potential impacts of e-mail as well as text and instant messaging technologies on interpersonal communication were reviewed. We focused on the overuse and misuse of e-mail. Of course, despite the limitations, e-mail, text messaging, and instant messaging are vital in today’s organizations and society.

Comments

Post a Comment

Populer

OPERATIONS AND SUPPLY CHAIN STRATEGIES

-
The operations and supply chain areas are important providers of value in any organization. To ensure that managers make sound operations and supply chain decisions, firms must develop strategies for these functions that are tied to the overall business strategy. This chapter has presented a top-down model of the strategic planning process, with particular attention to the concepts of value, competitive advantage, and core competency. In the second half of the chapter, we defined the major operations and supply chain decision variables, outlined the four generic performance dimensions (quality, time, flexibility, and cost), and discussed the need to make trade-offs between these key dimensions. We showed how order winner and order qualifier information can help managers understand exactly what their customers demand, so they can make trade-offs in a logical fashion. We ended the chapter with a discussion of the four stages of alignment in operations and supply chain strategy, sho...
Read more

MANAGING QUALITY

-
As an area of intense business interest, quality is here to stay. Operations and supply chain personnel in particular need to be familiar with the major quality topic areas, including the different philosophical perspectives on quality and the tools used to manage quality levels on a day-to-day basis. In this chapter, we gave you a solid introduction to quality topics, ranging from high-level discussions of quality issues to detailed descriptions of tools and techniques. We started by defining quality and describing a total cost of quality model. We then presented an overview of total quality management (TQM), as well as a section on statistical quality control (SQC). We ended the chapter with a discussion of how organizations manage quality across the supply chain and some of the issues they face. We encourage you not to let your quality education end here. The American Society for Quality ( www.asq.org ), the Juran Institute ( www.juran.com ), the W. Edwards Deming Institute ( www....
Read more

INTRODUCTION to OPERATIONS and SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT

-
Operations and supply chains are pervasive in business. Every organization must provide a product or service that someone values. This is the primary responsibility of the operations function. Furthermore, most organizations do not function independently but find that their activities are linked with those of other organizations through supply chains. Careful management of operations and supply chains is, therefore, vital to the long-term health of nearly every organization. Because operations and supply chain activities cover everything from planning and control activities to sourcing and logistics, there are numerous career opportunities for students interested in the area. Trends in e-commerce and global competition, as well as the growing importance of maintaining good relationships with other supply chain partners, will only increase these opportunities. Fortunately, there are many professional organizations, including APICS, CSCMP, and ISM, that cater to the career development ...
Read more

Internal Analysis: Resources, Capabilities, and Core Competencies

-
This chapter demonstrated various approaches to analyzing the firm’s internal environment . Differentiate among a firm’s resources, capabilities, core competencies, and activities. Core competencies are unique, deeply embedded, firm-specific strengths that allow companies to differentiate their products and services and thus create more value for customers than their rivals, or offer products and services of acceptable value at lower cost. Resources are any assets that a company can draw on when crafting and executing strategy. Capabilities are the organizational and managerial skills necessary to orchestrate a diverse set of resources to deploy them strategically. Activities are distinct and fine-grained business processes that enable firms to add incremental value by transforming input into goods and services. The compare and contrast tangible and intangible resources . Tangible resources have physical attributes and are visible. Intangible resources have...
Read more

BUSINESS PROCESS

-
Although the term business processes has been in the management lexicon for years, not all organizations clearly understand the importance of business processes and their effects on operations and supply chain performance. In this chapter, we defined the concept of business processes and showed how the business process perspective is different from the traditional, functionally oriented view of business. Business processes change the focus from “How is the business organized?” to “What does the business do?” Fortunately, practitioners and theorists continue to develop various tools and approaches for managing business processes. In this chapter, we described two process mapping approaches and demonstrated how they can be used. We also spent considerable time talking about various approaches to managing and improving business processes, including performance measurement and benchmarking, the Six Sigma methodology, and continuous improvement tools. We concluded the chapter with a discu...
Read more