1.2 The machinery of government: policy as rational planning Much of the policy literature is imbued with a rather mechanical conception of change: ideas about ‘pulling levers’ to make things happen, or about applying different ‘tools’ or ‘instruments’, all conceive the policy system as something like a machine itself. Component parts – the government departments, regulatory bodies, delivery organisations, and even the people who staff them – are viewed as connected though static and predictable mechanisms. The system is seen as non-ada
4.2 Bureaucracy Bureaucracy as a concept has had an interesting career: it begins in France in the eighteenth century. By the nineteenth century, the German state constructed by its first Chancellor, Bismarck, was a model bureaucracy in both its armed forces and civil administration. Weber (1978) realised that the creation of the modern state of Germany had only been possible because of the development of a disciplined state bureaucracy and a bureaucratised standing army – innovations pioneered in Prussia
Introduction This unit looks at the management of local knowledge-generating practices. You will explore the processes that link practices to global contexts and learn to identify the key dimensions of globalisation and explore the implications for knowing how to ‘do things’ in a variety of contexts. You will go on to compare the approaches to managing and organising, based on universally applicable principles, with context-specific rationalities and look at how viable interpretations of reality might
4.5 Is M&S market led? Allow half an hour. Read Case study 1 and then use the evidence there to answer the following questions. Do you think that M&S is market led? Which value dis 4 How do organisations become market leaders? Drucker (1992) wrote: The five most important questions you will ever ask about your organization [are]: What is our business? Who is our customer? What does our customer consider value? What have been our results? What is our plan? Can you answer these questions for your own organisation? I don't expect you to know all the answers now. Try to think about them Learning outcomes After studying this session, you should be able to: describe the difference between marketing as a function and the concept of being market led; evaluate whether an organisation is market led; evaluate the relevance of marketing concepts to your own and other organisations, whether commercial (for-profit) or non-profit; identify your own customers and consumers; list the tangible and intangible elements of your own prod 6.2 Conflicting objectives You have just seen how an objective to maximise market share may not be compatible with an objective to maximise profits. Businesses may have multiple objectives, many of which conflict. Think, for example, how difficult it would be for an oil refinery to both maximise profits and minimise the effect upon the environment of its production activities. Similarly, maintaining high product quality while minimising costs would be extremely difficult. Imagine if a business was struggling. Its 5.4.2 The main body of the interview Your main objective is to gather information. A practical target is to expect the candidate to talk for 70 per cent of the time. Example 2 describes the kind of conduct to avoid when interviewing. 3.3 Person–organisation fit This approach stresses that people's behaviour and performance are strongly influenced by the environment in which they find themselves. So being successful in a job in one organisation does not necessarily imply success in a similar job in another. In assessing the suitability of a job applicant a manager should explore the reasons why a person has performed well in their existing job and consider whether similar conditions apply in the new job. Advocates of the person-organisation fit appro References 3.6.1 Saying thank you and acknowledging current contribution Probably the single most important way of retaining people's support and goodwill is to say thank you promptly and to demonstrate that you have noted and valued whatever it is they have contributed. If you do not have the systems to guarantee that supporters are thanked appropriately, then you cannot seriously expect to move anyone anywhere – be it up a pyramid, into a kite or round a matrix. References 4.2.3 Restating the problem If your analysis of the problem and its possible causes is thorough, it should enable you to rewrite the problem statement to include the causes. If you can clarify your objective by defining a desired end-state, you are more likely to produce a good solution. 3.1 Introduction Communication on project work is the glue that holds everything together! (Young 1998) The success of a project is principally determined by its stakeholders, including sponsors and project team, and you can only know how you are doing by keeping channels of communication open. In this section, we examine briefly some of the issues involved in communicating with all people involved with the 2.5 Project meetings schedule You need to decide early on what meetings are essential to the monitoring process. All your stakeholders will expect to receive reports at regular intervals, whether formally or informally. So you need to ask yourself: Who needs to be informed? About what? How often? By what means? Effective communication involves giving information, collecting information and listening to people. To ensure the 1.3 Motivating and preparing staff Motivation is important. In resourcing the project it may be worthwhile to build in a reward system that helps to motivate. This depends on the availability of the resources to make this possible. Even if the material rewards are good, the conditions in which staff work and the relationships between them always affect performance. A project manager is often able to influence conditions and culture. The tasks allocated to staff must be realistic and achievable, and it is helpful to agree these Introduction The focus of this unit is on implementing a project. The first part considers how the activities of a project start. Although planning and action run side by side, it is often difficult to initiate action to progress the first tasks. Once things start to happen, the project enters a new stage. Management of the project changes, from stimulating the initial action to monitoring and reviewing it in order to control the project's progress. Control systems are essential in managing a project of a 2.2.2 Mass production In many industries, craft manufacturing began to be replaced by mass production in the 19th century. Mass production involves producing goods in high volume with low variety – the opposite of craft manufacturing. Customers are expected to buy what is supplied, rather than goods made to their own specifications. Producers concentrated on keeping costs, and hence prices, down by minimising the variety of both components and products and setting up large production runs. They developed aggress 2.7 Multiple-cause diagrams As a general rule, an event or outcome will have more than one cause. A multiple-cause diagram will enable you to show the causes and the ways in which they are connected. Suppose, for example, that you were asked to explain why a work group was under-performing. You could use a multiple-cause diagram both to help you to construct the explanation and to present it. 2.6 Mind mapping The term mind mapping was devised by Tony Buzan for the representation of such
things as ideas, notes and information, in radial tree diagrams — sometimes also called
spider diagrams. These are now very widely used — try a web search on ‘Buzan’, ‘mind map’
or ‘concept map’.
Activity 7
