Strategic Management Essay Sample

Managing Employees for Increased Productivity

According to David (2011, p.6), strategic management is the process of assessing, implementing, and drafting important business decisions, which allows a company to accomplish its objectives. Strategic management aims to integrate management, accounting, research, production, marketing, development, and information systems that can realize the organizational success. The goals of strategic management are to venture, innovate different and new opportunities for the future, and extensive planning. Strategic plans portray a commitment to procedures, policies, operations, and specific markets. Strategic management processes include the formation of business ideas, implementation, and evaluation (Hunger & Wheelen, 1996, p.10). For a company to have healthy competition, it must have a good strategic plan. However, these plans are made and implemented by the employees in an organization. Tough managerial decisions among other many good alternatives result to effective strategic plans derivation and implementation. Strategic management benefits firms by enhancing communication, improving understanding of the company and other's views, and greater commitment to working hard, implementing strategies, and achieving the company’s objectives (David, 2011, p.8). This essay focuses on managing employees for increased productivity and points on the different personalities, methods of understanding group social perceptions, recommended strategies for improved job performance, means of solving communication issues, and ethical behavior demonstrations regarding information.

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Individual differences have proved to be a challenge to many managers in firms. The managers may not be able to depict the personalities of employees, regarding their interests, decisions, skills, and emotions. Due to such differences, organizations have a vast collection of individual differences that are enjoyable and productive (David, 2011, p.201). Researchers explain that even though the variability of all workers is substantial at all levels, it increases significantly with work complexity. The growth in the diversity of workforce drives managers to picture individual differences in new ways. Managers today need to have a better understanding and accommodate individual differences and employee diversity. Individuals have a self-motion, which is the thoughts a person has socially, physically, and spiritually instills upon himself. There cannot be a self-concept with the lack of capacity to think about complicated processes and things, bringing up the role of cognition. Cognition symbolizes any opinion, belief, or knowledge concerning oneself or one's behavior, and the environment. Those that are relevant to organizational behavior include anticipation, introspection, goal setting, planning, setting personal standards, and evaluation. Self-concept includes self-esteem, self-monitoring, ad self-efficacy.

Self-regard is a notion concerning a person’s evaluation based on his worth. Praise and personal achievements tend to increase one's self-esteem, compared to cases such as prolonged unemployment and bad hair days, which can erode one’s self-esteem. Kreitner & Kinicki (2013, p.4, para 2) explains that there are person centered practices that which benefit both an organization and an employee. The practices entail eliminating fears of a layoff, having a generous pay for performance, sufficient training, trust and emphasis on status. Monitoring one’s self is a matter of being comparatively low or high in terms related to patterns of self-expression. Research findings show self-monitoring to be useful and relevant when it comes to job performance and emerging leaders.

Methods to Understand Group Social Perceptions

Workplaces today also demand employees with self-confidence. When an employee has self-efficacy, belief of one's high chance of success, he can accomplish specific tasks successfully. Some of the sources of self-efficacy that can pave the way for success or failures are previous experience, behavior figures, influence from others, and evaluation of the physical and emotional state.

According to Kreitner & Kinicki (2013, p.268, para 2), managers need to build social capital which will help them to understand one among many social skills which is social perceptions. For those who seek to polish their social skills, it is recommended that they should have an expanded form of emotional intelligence called social intelligence. One of the most significant and harmful perceptual result concerned with person perception is stereotypes. A stereotype is a person's set of beliefs dealing with attributes and characteristics of a group. Stereotypes can also be positive. The process of stereotyping has four steps. The first phase involves categorizing people in groups depending on criteria such as age, gender, sex, occupation, and race. Then people within a particular category are inferred according to similar characteristics and traits. Thirdly, there is the formation of others' expectations and interpretation of their behavior according to the stereotypes. The fourth is how stereotypes are maintained, which includes overestimation of the frequency of stereotyping acts exhibited by others, incorrectly explaining unexpected and expected behaviors, and different minority persons from oneself (Kreitner & Kinicki, 2013, p.188, para 4).

Managers need to inform the workers about stereotyping issues through employee training and education. The managers also need to identify responsible people difference that distinguishes between unsuccessful and successful performers (Hunger & Wheelen, 1996, p.122).

Strategies to Improve Job Performance and Stress Management

Entrepreneurs aim to get the most out of all the operations undertaken. However, overworking and very strict policies may make the employees tired, stressed, and repulsive. Scientific research gives some of the strategies proved to work. The managers are encouraged to pull the all-nighter by staying up all night and coming up with creative solutions. The managers should also help the workers to get enough sleep. Other companies also offer midday siesta to reduce stress, heighten sensory perception, and improve memory and logical thinking. Assigning less time to work to prevent burnout and increase productivity. Productive procrastination has also proved to help as it helps gain motivation to work later. According to Hunger & Wheelen (1996, p.67), structured procrastination is only a means of allowing oneself to time for other activities. Music has also proved to boost productivity so much time as there is moderation. The employees required to have full concentration may listen to music without lyrics. However, each of the mentioned strategies requires high adherence and self-discipline.

Managers also improve job performance by the use of a team. According to Kreitner & Kinicki (2013, p. 307, para 1-3), job performance at an organizational level can increase using teams. For instance the use of teams that have a clear purpose, that are informal without tension, have consensus decision making and have civilized disagreement tend to be efficient for an organization.

‘Research evidence from companies in both the United States and Germany shows the following seven people-centered practices to be strongly associated with much higher profits and significantly lower employee turnover: 1. Job security (to eliminate fear of layoffs). 2. Careful hiring (emphasizing a good it with the company culture). 3. Power to the people (via decentralization and self-managed teams). 4. Generous pay for performance. 5. Lots of training. 6. Less emphasis on status (to build a “we” feeling). 7. Trust building (through the sharing of critical information)”(Kreitner & Kinicki, 2013, p.4, para 1).

Ethical Behavior Regarding Information Technology

Some of the issues that may hinder communication are gender, age, speech, ethnicity, personality, appearance, mannerism, and other personal characteristics. Anyone in need to pass any communication should keep this in mind. Managers need to screen processes that can alter both coming and go interface. Building trust can also improve disclosure in an organization. Managers can also encourage innovation instead of being punishing for failed attempts of change. According to Kreitner & Kinicki (2013, p. 397, para 5) it is important that managers use a medium that resonates with the type of message, audience and size of the audience. Using and appropriate form of communication medium helps avoiding miscommunication.

Many codes of ethics include the aspirations of organizations and the principles and rules by which all the members of a business are expected to follow. Employees in the information sector are monitored due to access to personal computers, the Internet, and corporate data and information systems. The most common ethical concerns involving information technology users are software piracy, improper use of information technology resources, and sharing information inappropriately. Therefore, information sector should establish guidelines for the usage of company software, define the convenient use of IT resources, structuring information systems to protect information and data, and maintaining installed a corporate firewall (David, 2011, p. 312).

Organizations that understand that employees are the backbone of their business have higher chances of achieving the primary objectives. As explained in the essay, managers who take the time to accept, understand, and utilize multiple personalities in employees give room for a diverse workforce. Additionally, managers who also take the time to learn about the group social perceptions gain knowledge on stereotypes, types of stereotypes, and manners in which to handle the issues in a company. Strategic management enables an organization to identify and handle communication issues, stress among employees, and how to improve job performance. The essay also explains on matters concerning information sector. Means of protecting organizational data can be addressed in multiple ways that can see to it that the company data does not fall into the wrong hands.

References

David, F. (2011). Strategic Management; Concepts and Cases. Florence, SC: Pearson Education, Inc.

Hunger, J. D., & Wheelen, T. L. (1996). Strategic management. Reading, Boston, MA: Addison-Wesley Pub. Co.

Kreitner, R., & Kinicki, A. (2013). Organizational Behavior. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Irwin.