MANAGEMENT CHAPTER 1 :
Managing and performing
Learning objectives :
1 Summarize the major challenges of managing in the new competitive landscape.
2 Describe the sources of competitive advantage for a company.
3 Explain how the functions of management are evolving in today’s business
environment.
4 Compare how the nature of management varies at different organizational levels.
5 Define the skills you need to be an effective manager.
6 Understand the principles that will help you manage your career.
Managing in a competitive world
Management is a challenge requiring knowledge and skills to adapt to new circumstances
4 ongoing challenges that characterize de business landscape:
Globalization:
Today’s enterprises = global, with offices and production facilities in countries all
over the world. Corporations operate worldwide, transcending national borders
Companies that want to grow often need to tap international markets. The
change from local to global marketplace is irreversible
It also means that a company’s talent and competition can come from anywhere
It affects small companies as well as large. Many companies export their goods.
Many domestic firms assemble their products in other countries. And companies
are under pressure to improve their products in the face of intense competition
from foreign competitors
Firms today must ask themselves : “How can we be the best in the world? “
Technological change:
Technology both complicates things and create new opportunities. The
challenges come from the rapid rate at which communication, transportation,
information and other technologies change
E.g.: widespread desktop use -> laptop -> tablets, smartphones
Internet is critical to business, it’s a digital marketplace, a means for
manufacturing goods and services, a distribution channel, an information
service, an arena for social activism,….
It drives down costs and speeds up globalization, improves efficiency in decision
making, managers can watch and learn what companies around the world are
doing in real time
They also create threats: not just from hackers but from competitors as they
capitalize sooner on new developments than you do
Web 1.0
- Mid 1990s- early 2000s
- On-line consultation data, ‘reading’, dot.com companies and crisis
Web 2.0
- 2005-2015
- Interactive, more user-friendly, consulting and sharing (video’s, photographs, …). Social
media start-ups
Web 3.0
- 2015…
1
, - “read-write-execute” => Internet of Things (IoT), Real Time, Artificial Intelligence,
Mobile Applications, Big Data Analytics, Cloud Computing
Knowledge management :
Companies + managers need good new ideas. Because companies in advanced
economies have become so efficient at producing physical goods, most workers
have been freed up to provide services or “abstract goods” such as software,
entertainment, data and advertising
These workers: primary contributions -> ideas and problem-solving expertise =
referred as knowledge workers
Success of modern businesses often depends on the knowledge used for
innovation and the delivery of services, organizations need to manage that
knowledge
Knowledge management = set of practices aimed at discovering and harnessing an
organization’s intellectual resources-fully using the intellects of the organization’s
people.
It’s about finding, unlocking, sharing and capitalizing on the + precious resources
of an organization: people’s expertise, skills, wisdom and relationships
Knowledge workers: Use and create knowledge and information to develop
ideas, and to signal and solve problems
Collaboration across boundaries
1 of the + important processes of knowledge management: is to ensure that
people in different parts of the organization collaborate effectively with one
another ( this require productive communication among different departments,
divisions, or other subunits of the organization)
E.g.: T-shaped manager -> they break out of the traditional corporate hierarchy
to share knowledge freely across the organization (horizontal part of t) while
remaining committed to the bottom-line performance of their individual
business units (vertical part of t). McKinsey -> developed this as a way for its
employees to view clients’ problems from both broad and deep perspectives
E.g.: Toyota -> keeps its product development process efficient by bringing
together design engineers and manufacturing employees from the very
beginning
It occurs even beyond the boundaries of the organization itself. Companies
today must motivate and capitalize on the ideas of people outside the
organization ( consultants, advertising agencies, suppliers and clients). Customer
can be collaborators. Companies must realize that the need to serve the
customer drives everything else
Example customer service: customer reviews Amazon, TripAdvisor, …
Managing for competitive advantage
A key to understanding the success of a company is the competitive advantages it holds and
how well it can sustain the advantage. You gain competitive advantage by being better than
your competitors at doing valuable things for your customers. To succeed managers must
deliver performance.
2
, Fundamental success drivers of performance are :
INNOVATION:
Companies must continually innovate. Innovation= the introduction of new
processes, technologies, goods and services. Your firm must adapt to changes in
consumer demands and to new competitors and be ready with new ways to
communicate with customers and deliver the products to them
Products don’t sell forever; in fact, they don’t sell for nearly as long as they used
to because competitors are continuously introducing new products. Your firm
must innovate or it will die
QUALITY:
Quality= the excellence of your product
Customers expect => high-quality goods and services and often they will accept
nothing less
Historically Today
Pertained primarily to the physical Preventing defects before they occur
goods that customers bought: It Achieving zero defects in manufacturing
referred to: Emphasis on quality already in design-phase
• Emphasis on attractiveness = Total Quality Management
• Minimal defects Continuous improvement (see the Japanese
• Long-term reliability Kaizen):
Combined with: (the traditional approach to Ongoing effort to improve products and
quality was): processes. How? Cooperation, commitment,
First, quality check after product proactivity and creativity in solving problems
completion.
Next, eliminate defects.
Quality is further provided when companies customize goods and services to the
wishes of the individual consumer
Providing world-class quality requires a thorough understanding of what quality
really is. Quality can be measured in terms of product performance, customer
service, reliability…
SERVICE:
Important quality measures often pertain to the service customers receive. This
dimension of quality is important because the service sector has come to
dominate the U.S. economy
Service incl: intangible products : insurance, hotel accommodations, medical
care….
Service= giving customers what they want or need, when they want it. So it is
focused on continually meeting the needs of customers to establish mutually
beneficial long-term relationships
An important dimension of service quality is making it easy and enjoyable for
customers to experience a service or to buy and use products
SPEED:
Speed= rapid execution, response and delivery often separates the winners from
the losers.
3
, How fast can you develop and get a new product to market? How quickly can
you respond to customer request?
Speed isn’t everything you can’t get sloppy in your quest to be first. But other
things being equal, faster companies are more likely to be the winners, slow
ones the losers
It is no longer just a goal of some companies; it’s a strategic imperative
COST COMPETITIVENESS:
= keeping costs low to achieve profits and be able to offer prices that are
attractive to consumers
If you can offer a desirable product at lower price, it is more likely to sell
Why worry about costs? -> consumers can compare on the internet the different
prices of competitors
SUSTAINABILITY:
Avoiding wasteful use of energy can bolster a company’s financial performance
while being kind to the environment
Efforts to cut energy waste are just one way to achieve an important form of
competitive advantage: sustainability, which at its most basic is the effort to
minimize the use and loss of resources, especially those that are polluting and
nonrenewable
It is about protecting our options. Done properly, it allows people to live and
work in ways that can be maintained over the long term without depleting or
harming our environmental, social and economic resources
DELIVERING ALL TYPES OF
PERFORMANCE -> best Innovation
managers/companies: deliver
on all of these performance Sustainability Quality
dimensions
Perfor
mance
Speed Service
The functions of Management Cost
competitiveness
Management is the process of
working with people and resources
to accomplish organizational goals. Good managers do those things both effectively and
efficiently. To be effective is to achieve organizational goals. To be efficient is to achieve
goals with minimal waste of resources—that is, to make the best possible use of money,
time, materials, and people.
= the best managers achieve high performance by focusing on both effectiveness and
efficiency
In the business world today, great executives not only adapt to changing conditions but also
apply the fundamental management principles
These fundamentals incl. the four traditional functions of management , these are
used in organizations of every type. They remain as relevant as ever and they are
needed in start-ups as much as in established corporations
4
Managing and performing
Learning objectives :
1 Summarize the major challenges of managing in the new competitive landscape.
2 Describe the sources of competitive advantage for a company.
3 Explain how the functions of management are evolving in today’s business
environment.
4 Compare how the nature of management varies at different organizational levels.
5 Define the skills you need to be an effective manager.
6 Understand the principles that will help you manage your career.
Managing in a competitive world
Management is a challenge requiring knowledge and skills to adapt to new circumstances
4 ongoing challenges that characterize de business landscape:
Globalization:
Today’s enterprises = global, with offices and production facilities in countries all
over the world. Corporations operate worldwide, transcending national borders
Companies that want to grow often need to tap international markets. The
change from local to global marketplace is irreversible
It also means that a company’s talent and competition can come from anywhere
It affects small companies as well as large. Many companies export their goods.
Many domestic firms assemble their products in other countries. And companies
are under pressure to improve their products in the face of intense competition
from foreign competitors
Firms today must ask themselves : “How can we be the best in the world? “
Technological change:
Technology both complicates things and create new opportunities. The
challenges come from the rapid rate at which communication, transportation,
information and other technologies change
E.g.: widespread desktop use -> laptop -> tablets, smartphones
Internet is critical to business, it’s a digital marketplace, a means for
manufacturing goods and services, a distribution channel, an information
service, an arena for social activism,….
It drives down costs and speeds up globalization, improves efficiency in decision
making, managers can watch and learn what companies around the world are
doing in real time
They also create threats: not just from hackers but from competitors as they
capitalize sooner on new developments than you do
Web 1.0
- Mid 1990s- early 2000s
- On-line consultation data, ‘reading’, dot.com companies and crisis
Web 2.0
- 2005-2015
- Interactive, more user-friendly, consulting and sharing (video’s, photographs, …). Social
media start-ups
Web 3.0
- 2015…
1
, - “read-write-execute” => Internet of Things (IoT), Real Time, Artificial Intelligence,
Mobile Applications, Big Data Analytics, Cloud Computing
Knowledge management :
Companies + managers need good new ideas. Because companies in advanced
economies have become so efficient at producing physical goods, most workers
have been freed up to provide services or “abstract goods” such as software,
entertainment, data and advertising
These workers: primary contributions -> ideas and problem-solving expertise =
referred as knowledge workers
Success of modern businesses often depends on the knowledge used for
innovation and the delivery of services, organizations need to manage that
knowledge
Knowledge management = set of practices aimed at discovering and harnessing an
organization’s intellectual resources-fully using the intellects of the organization’s
people.
It’s about finding, unlocking, sharing and capitalizing on the + precious resources
of an organization: people’s expertise, skills, wisdom and relationships
Knowledge workers: Use and create knowledge and information to develop
ideas, and to signal and solve problems
Collaboration across boundaries
1 of the + important processes of knowledge management: is to ensure that
people in different parts of the organization collaborate effectively with one
another ( this require productive communication among different departments,
divisions, or other subunits of the organization)
E.g.: T-shaped manager -> they break out of the traditional corporate hierarchy
to share knowledge freely across the organization (horizontal part of t) while
remaining committed to the bottom-line performance of their individual
business units (vertical part of t). McKinsey -> developed this as a way for its
employees to view clients’ problems from both broad and deep perspectives
E.g.: Toyota -> keeps its product development process efficient by bringing
together design engineers and manufacturing employees from the very
beginning
It occurs even beyond the boundaries of the organization itself. Companies
today must motivate and capitalize on the ideas of people outside the
organization ( consultants, advertising agencies, suppliers and clients). Customer
can be collaborators. Companies must realize that the need to serve the
customer drives everything else
Example customer service: customer reviews Amazon, TripAdvisor, …
Managing for competitive advantage
A key to understanding the success of a company is the competitive advantages it holds and
how well it can sustain the advantage. You gain competitive advantage by being better than
your competitors at doing valuable things for your customers. To succeed managers must
deliver performance.
2
, Fundamental success drivers of performance are :
INNOVATION:
Companies must continually innovate. Innovation= the introduction of new
processes, technologies, goods and services. Your firm must adapt to changes in
consumer demands and to new competitors and be ready with new ways to
communicate with customers and deliver the products to them
Products don’t sell forever; in fact, they don’t sell for nearly as long as they used
to because competitors are continuously introducing new products. Your firm
must innovate or it will die
QUALITY:
Quality= the excellence of your product
Customers expect => high-quality goods and services and often they will accept
nothing less
Historically Today
Pertained primarily to the physical Preventing defects before they occur
goods that customers bought: It Achieving zero defects in manufacturing
referred to: Emphasis on quality already in design-phase
• Emphasis on attractiveness = Total Quality Management
• Minimal defects Continuous improvement (see the Japanese
• Long-term reliability Kaizen):
Combined with: (the traditional approach to Ongoing effort to improve products and
quality was): processes. How? Cooperation, commitment,
First, quality check after product proactivity and creativity in solving problems
completion.
Next, eliminate defects.
Quality is further provided when companies customize goods and services to the
wishes of the individual consumer
Providing world-class quality requires a thorough understanding of what quality
really is. Quality can be measured in terms of product performance, customer
service, reliability…
SERVICE:
Important quality measures often pertain to the service customers receive. This
dimension of quality is important because the service sector has come to
dominate the U.S. economy
Service incl: intangible products : insurance, hotel accommodations, medical
care….
Service= giving customers what they want or need, when they want it. So it is
focused on continually meeting the needs of customers to establish mutually
beneficial long-term relationships
An important dimension of service quality is making it easy and enjoyable for
customers to experience a service or to buy and use products
SPEED:
Speed= rapid execution, response and delivery often separates the winners from
the losers.
3
, How fast can you develop and get a new product to market? How quickly can
you respond to customer request?
Speed isn’t everything you can’t get sloppy in your quest to be first. But other
things being equal, faster companies are more likely to be the winners, slow
ones the losers
It is no longer just a goal of some companies; it’s a strategic imperative
COST COMPETITIVENESS:
= keeping costs low to achieve profits and be able to offer prices that are
attractive to consumers
If you can offer a desirable product at lower price, it is more likely to sell
Why worry about costs? -> consumers can compare on the internet the different
prices of competitors
SUSTAINABILITY:
Avoiding wasteful use of energy can bolster a company’s financial performance
while being kind to the environment
Efforts to cut energy waste are just one way to achieve an important form of
competitive advantage: sustainability, which at its most basic is the effort to
minimize the use and loss of resources, especially those that are polluting and
nonrenewable
It is about protecting our options. Done properly, it allows people to live and
work in ways that can be maintained over the long term without depleting or
harming our environmental, social and economic resources
DELIVERING ALL TYPES OF
PERFORMANCE -> best Innovation
managers/companies: deliver
on all of these performance Sustainability Quality
dimensions
Perfor
mance
Speed Service
The functions of Management Cost
competitiveness
Management is the process of
working with people and resources
to accomplish organizational goals. Good managers do those things both effectively and
efficiently. To be effective is to achieve organizational goals. To be efficient is to achieve
goals with minimal waste of resources—that is, to make the best possible use of money,
time, materials, and people.
= the best managers achieve high performance by focusing on both effectiveness and
efficiency
In the business world today, great executives not only adapt to changing conditions but also
apply the fundamental management principles
These fundamentals incl. the four traditional functions of management , these are
used in organizations of every type. They remain as relevant as ever and they are
needed in start-ups as much as in established corporations
4
