The 21st Century Management Practice Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

The 21st Century Management Practice - Essay Example It includes holistic thinking as borrowed from disciplines such as sociology, biology, natural sciences, and control engineering. Therefore, this was an important course in providing critical systems thinking that brings coherence to varied system approaches, advising managers on their use in an organizational setting. One of the most crucial aspects of management I have learned from this course is that management is political and organizations are political fields. As indicated by Bolman and Deal (2013), managers do not have all the powers they would wish to and as such would have to deal with organizations’ political issues. Successful leaders would use politics for the benefit of the organization. They set the agenda that would address concerns of all stakeholders, map the political terrain to identify power resources, interests and major players and network and build coalitions to influence and facilitate negotiations. Additionally, the political aspects of managers would enable them to make ethical and effective choices and bargain and negotiate to ensure win-win situations (Ferris & Treadway, 2012). I now appreciate political skills as critical skills for successful managers. This is what gets them the desired performance. This acknowledgment of managers as being political further made me understand the perception of organizations as political fields. This is because of the contest among various agendas and interests, with each aimed at a given purpose. Managers have their own agendas which could be to lead the employees successfully and impress the shareholders with better returns on their investments. Shareholders look at an opportunity to make wealth from the organization while employees look at earning a living. Other stakeholders, including debtors, creditors, and advertisers among others, also have their interests in their organizations. With these interests interacting, there tend to be contested, thus the political nature of organizations. Thus, Bolman and Deal (2013) encourage managers to appreciate their role in shaping this political field, the contestants and the way the game would be played. To do so, managers need to be firm and accept conflicts, while attending to ethics and values. Furthermore, I learned that management requires creativity in viewing problems in management and finding ways to resolve them. Through creativity, problems in management would be perceived as being interdependent hence a more wholesome approach to the problem. This allows for a combination of various approaches to solving management problems. It provides a divergent approach to thinking of an organization from that of the hierarchical structure to the adoption of various images representing the organization. These metaphors include organizations as psychic prisons, machines and flux and transformation (Jackson, 2003). Other metaphors include organism, culture, carnivals, instruments of domination and brains. This course provided an insightful understanding of the importance of human resource in an organization. It provided the knowledge of investing in people in an organization through empowering and constantly developing employees. This course also made me appreciate the importance of participation and autonomy of employees in their roles and responsibilities (Bolman & Deal, 2013).