BM101 Presentation questions

Instructions

1. Presentations shall be done in groups

2. Each group size should range between 5 – 8 members

3. Groups should submit a write-up of their presentation immediately after their presentation.

4. Each group shall make a minimum of two presentations without any specific order.

5. However, the groups shall be notified in advance on the presentation topic.

Questions

The Management Process

1. Discuss the importance of ethics in the relationship between managers and the people they supervise.

2. What is globalization, and what are the implications for working in the new globalised economy.

3. You have just been hired as the new head of an audit team for the national accounting firm. With four years of experience, you feel technically well prepared for the assignment. However, this is your first formal appointment as a “manager”. Things are complicated at the moment. The team has 12 members of diverse demographic and cultural backgrounds, as well as work experience. There is an intense workload and lots of performance pressure. How will this situation challenge you to develop and use managerial skills and related competencies to successfully manage the team to high levels of audit performance?

History of management thought

1. Explain how McGregor’s Theory Y assumptions can create self-filling prophecies consistent with the current emphasis on participation and involvement in the workplace.

2. Explain why the external environment is so important in the open-systems view of organisations.

3. Explain how the deficit and progression principles operate in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory.

1 External environment and Organisational culture

1. At a reunion of graduates form Midlands State University, two former roommates engaged in a discussion about environment and sustainability. One is a senior executive with a global manufacturer, and the other owns a sandwich shop in the University town.

Global executive: “we include sustainability in our corporate mission and have a Chief Sustainability Officer on the senior management team. The CSO is really good and makes sure that we don’t do anything that could cause a lack of public confidence in our commitment to sustainability”.

Sandwich shop owner: “that’s all well and good, but what are you doing on the positive side in terms of environmental care. It sounds like you do just enough to avoid public scrutiny. Shouldn’t the CSO be a real advocate for the environment rather than just a protector of the corporate reputation? We, for example, use only natural foods and ingredients, recycle everything that is recyclable, and compost all possible waste.”

Question: if you were establishing a new position called Corporate Sustainability Officer, what would you include in the job description as a way of both clarifying the responsibilities of then person hired and establishing clear accountability for what sustainability means to your organisation?

2. Exactly how should “sustainability” be best defined when making it part of goal statement or performance objective for a business or an organisation?

The decision making process

1. a. What is the difference between an optimising decision and a satisficing decision?

b. How can a manager double check the ethics of a decision?

2. How would a manager use systematic thinking and intuitive thinking in problem solving?

Fundamentals of planning

1. How might planning through benchmarking be used by the owner of a local bookstore?

2. How does participatory planning facilitate implementation?

3. Put yourself in the position of a management trainer. You have been asked to make a short presentation to the local Small Business Enterprise Association at its biweekly luncheon. The topic you are to speak on in “How Each of You Can Use Objectives to Achieve Better Planning and Control”. What will you tell them and why?

2 Fundamentals of Organising

1. What symptoms might indicate that a functional structure is causing problems for the organisation?

2. Explain the practical significance of this statement “Organisational design should be done in contingency fashion”.

3. Describe two trends on organisational design and explain their importance to managers.

4. Kim supervises a group of seven project engineers. Her unit is experiencing a heavy workload, as the demand for different versions of one of her firm’s computer components is growing. Kim finds that she doesn’t have time to follow up on all design details for each version. Up until now she has tried to do this all by herself. Two of the engineers have shown interest in helping her coordinate work on the various designs. As a consultant, how would you advise Kim in terms of delegating work to them.

Organisational change and development

1. What are the major differences in potential outcomes of using the force-coercion, rational persuasion, and shared power strategies of planned change?

2. Two businesswomen, former university roommates, are discussing their jobs and careers over lunch. You overhear one saying to the other: “I work for a large corporation, while you own a small retail business. In my company there is a strong corporate culture and everyone feels its influence. In fact, we are always expected to act in ways that support the culture and serve as role models for others to do so well. This includes a commitment to diversity and multiculturalism. Because of the small size of your firm, things like corporate culture, diversity, and multiculturalism are not so important to worry about”. Do you agree with this statement? Why?

Essentials of leadership

1. Why does a person need both position power and personal power to achieve long-term managerial effectiveness?

3 2. What are the three variables that Fiedler’s contingency model uses to diagnose the favorability of leadership situations, and what does each mean?

3. How does Peter Drucker’s view of “good old-fashioned leadership” differ from the popular concept of transformational leadership?

4. What are the major insights of the Vroom-Jago leader-participation model?

Motivation theory and practice

1. What preferences does a person with a high need for achievement bring to the workforce?

2. Why is participation important in goal-setting theory?

3. What is the common ground on Maslow’s, Alderfer’s, and McClelland’s views of human needs?

4. How can a manager combine the powers of goal setting and positive reinforcement to create a highly motivational work environment for a group of workers with high needs for achievement?

Teams and teamwork

1. How can a manager improve team effectiveness by modifying inputs?

2. What is the relationship among a team’s cohesiveness, performance norms, and performance results?

3. How would a manager know that a team is suffering from group think (give examples), what could the manager do about it (give examples)?

4. What makes a self-managing team different from a traditional work team?

5. Tawanda has just been appointed manager of a production team operating the 11pm to 7 am shift in large manufacturing firm. An experienced manager, Tawanda is pleased that the team members really like and get along well with one another, but they also appear to be restricting their task outputs to the minimum acceptable levels. What could Tawanda do to improve things in this situation, and why should he do them?

Ethical behaviour and social responsibility

4 1. Using practical examples explain the difference between the individualism and justice views of ethical behaviour.

2. What are the major arguments for and against corporate social responsibility?

3. A small outdoor company in Zimbabwe has just received an attractive offer from a business in Sudan to manufacture its work gloves. The offer would allow for substantial cost savings over the current supplier. The company manager, however, has read reports that Sudan businesses break their own laws and operate with child labour. How would differences in the following corporate responsibility strategies affect the manager’s decision regarding whether to accept the offer: obstruction, defense, accommodation and pro-action?

International management / globalization

1. Why is the “power distance” dimension of national culture important in management?

2. How do regional economic alliances impact the global economy?

3. Kim has just returned from her first business trip to Japan. While there, she was impressed with the intense use of work teams. Now back in Zimbabwe, she would like to totally reorganize the workflows and processes of her steel manufacturing company and its 75 employees around teams. There has been very little emphasis on teamwork, and she now believes this is “the way to go”. Based on the relationship between culture and management, what advice would you offer Kim?

Fundamentals of control

1. List the four steps in the controlling process and give examples of each.

2. How might feed-forward control be used by the owner/manager of a local bookstore?

3. How does Douglas McGregor’s Theory Y relate to the concept of internal control?

5