Principles of Management:
A Behavioral Approach

Overview

Chapter 1 introduces Principles of Management: A Behavioral Approach, along with the planning-organizing-leading-controlling (P-O-L-C) framework. The chapter learning objectives are:

1. Learn who managers are and about the nature of their work
2. Know why you should care about leadership, entrepreneurship, and strategy
3. Know the dimensions of the planning-organizing-leading-controlling (P-O-L-C) framework
4. Learn how economic performance feeds social and environmental performance
5. Understand what performance means at the individual and group levels
6. Create your survivorÕs guide to learning and developing principles of management

Leveraging the Flat World Knowledge Learning Model

Each chapter of our book is designed to function as part of an integrated book, using P-O-L-C as the overarching structure, but at the same time provide you with a modular basis for adding or removing content. To accomplish this we have written the sections in the chapter such that they do not cross-reference other topics across chapters. When a concept is necessary for another section or chapter, we briefly describe it again—this designed-in redundancy both provides useful repetition for the student and a consistent underlying pedagogy for the instructors.

For instance, the last section of Chapter 1 is titled "Your Principles of Management Survivors Guide." This section introduces students to their personal learning style and encourages them to develop good learning practices for the Principles of Management class. Based on our experience, some instructors actively use this guide throughout the course, while others only discuss it in the first session. There is also a subset of instructors who do not use a tool or framework like this in their POM course. With a regular book this section would be included regardless of your teaching objectives and syllabus. In your book, you can do one of four things or some combination of them:

1. Include the section in the book as is
2. Leave it in, but modify to fit your particular opportunities and challenges
3. Pull it from the chapter, but leave it as another resource the students can voluntarily use
4. Delete it from the chapter

We look forward to learning from you about other such opportunities to improvise and teach with the Flat World Knowledge learning model.

Ethical Dilemma: Applying the Ethical Decision-Making Process

Refer students to the six steps of the ethical decision-making process as they address an ethical dilemma.[1]

1. Assess the Situation: What are you being asked to do? Is it illegal? Is it unethical? Who might be harmed?

2. Identify the stakeholders and consider the situation from their point of view. For example, consider the point of view of the company's employees, top management, stockholders, customers, suppliers, and community.

3. Consider the alternatives available to you and how they affect the stakeholders in terms of:
- consequences
- duties, rights, and principles
- implications for personal integrity and character

4. How does the action make you feel about yourself? How would you feel if your actions were reported tomorrow in the Wall Street Journal (or your daily newspaper)? How would you explain your actions to your mother or to your ten-year-old child?

5. Make a decision. This might involve going to your boss or to a neutral third party (such as an ombudsman or ethics committee). Know your values and your limits. If the company does nothing to rectify the situation, do you want to continue working for the company?

6. Monitor outcomes.

Ethical Dilemma

Since this chapter introduces students to the P-O-L-C framework, and principles of management in general, you can use an ethical dilemma like the following to help them think about how they might incorporate ethical decision making into the four P-O-L-C functions.

Miller's Launch of Sparks: The beer industry has had flat industry sales for a decade. This means that the only way company X can gain more market share is by taking away customers from company Y. Part of the explanation for the zero growth is that there has been little product innovation in beer—after all, a beer is a beer. MillerCoors, however, sought to change that with the acquisition of the Sparks and Steel Reserve brands from McKenzie River Corp., a San Francisco beverage marketing firm. "Sparks and Steel Reserve will have an immediate positive impact on our growth profile," MillerCoors president and chief executive officer Norman Adami said. Launched in 2002, Sparks is a caffeinated malt beverage that is flavored with ginseng, guarana and taurine. The brand achieved a compound annual growth rate of 107% from 2003 to 2005. About 270,000 barrels were sold in 2005. Steel Reserve is a slow-brewed malt liquor that recorded a 35% compound annual growth rate from 2003 to 2005. A total of 1.4 million barrels of Steel Reserve were sold in 2005. In mid-2008, MillerCoors announced the launch of Sparks Red, an even higher alcohol-content version of the wildly successful Sparks.

QUESTIONS:

1. What might be the ethical implication of MillerCoors decision to add the Sparks and Steel Reserve product lines?
2. What is the difference between a business decision and an ethical one?
3. How would you evaluate the ethical implications of the Sparks Red product extension?
4. How might you integrate the ethical decision making framework with P-O-L-C?

ACTIVITIES:

Have students research the Sparks and Steel products on the Web. Who seems to be the key stakeholders and what are their agendas?

UPDATE:

September 20, 2008. MILWAUKEE - MillerCoors says it's going to put plans for a new caffeine-infused alcoholic energy drink on hold pending talks with the 25 states that asked the company not to release the beverage. In a statement Friday, MillerCoors said the company won't go ahead with its scheduled October 1 launch of Sparks Red. On Wednesday, attorneys general from 25 states asked the company to abandon its plans for the drink. Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal and others say adding caffeine to alcoholic beverages reduces drinkers' sense of intoxication and that young people are especially vulnerable.

Topic Icebreakers/Experiential Exercises

We have found a ton of good icebreaker tools and suggestions through the TGI Newsletter, which you can read at http://www.training-games.com/newsletters.html. It's a great resource that you can subscribe to for free.

Beyond the suggestions provided there, you can try:

1. Take the "Can you pass the CEO test?"[2]

The Chief Executive Officer, or CEO, is the highest-ranking executive in a company or organization, responsible for carrying out the policies of the board of directors on a day-to-day basis. This position requires a combination of skills and talents—some people have them, some people donÕt. Take the survey and then compare your results with the "correct" answers.

a. Do you want to be a CEO?
b. What does it take to be a CEO?
c. What level in an organization do you aspire to?
d. What are the ethical implications of answers to any particular question on the survey?

2. Triangles. This exercise is found in Simulation Games by Thiagi (Seventh Edition). While Triangles can be used to explore many facets of management, we use it to introduce the P-O-L-C framework and the opportunities, challenges, and tasks of managers.

3. The Building Game

Purpose: This is a great icebreaker for the first or second day of class—we use it to introduce the P-O-L-C framework. They must use sound planning skills to design, then good organization, leadership, and control skills to build the tallest possible free-standing structure with one Builderific construction set in three minutes. The Builderific set can be anything from Legos to Tinkertoys to scrap wood, paper, and duct tape.

Instructions: This exercise is divided up into two periods, a planning period and a building period.

The instructions for each are as follows:

Planning: 15 minutes

a. You will have 15 minutes to plan how your team will reach its objective of building the tallest structure during the building period.
b. During this time you may remove the pieces from the box, but you cannot assemble any pieces. You may lay out the pieces, take an inventory, draw diagrams, or use any other planning tool that does not require assembling the pieces.
c. Your team should set a goal of how high they intend the structure to be from the base to the top. You should be realistic in what you expect to accomplish; most employees are evaluated based on the extent to which they accomplish the goals they have planned.
d. Write down the goal height in inches on a note card and turn it in to the instructor.
e. Put all of the pieces back in the box.

Building: 3 minutes
You will have three minutes to execute your plan. At the end of this time you will be asked to step back so we can measure the height of your free-standing structure.

Debrief:

a. Type of task: non-programmable, uncertain resources, time constraint, teams
b. Why did the winner win? Why did the loser lose?
c. How did the team resources differ? Did it matter?
d. What was the business definition?
e. What was the vision and mission? Did you have a strategy? Did you achieve it?
f. What factors prevented you from achieving it?

At this point, you can introduce the P-O-L-C framework and how you will help them understand how the pieces fit together.

Closing Case Narrative: Questions to Consider

1. What are the benefits of a decentralized organization? Do you see any downfalls in allowing individual Goodwill branches too much independence? How might these problems be mitigated?
2. Describe the difference between leadership and management, how does this relate to the Goodwill case?
3. What strategies would be beneficial for Goodwill management to effectively lead its diverse workforce?
4. Goodwill has found success in the organization's ability to innovate and adapt to its changing competitive environment. How much does innovation depend on a planned strategy?

Cases

http://aics.acadiau.ca/ The Acadia Institute of Case Studies provides free cases on a range of firms relevant to your POM course. One possible introductory case is Cambridge Suites, located at http://aics.acadiau.ca/case_studies/cambridgesuites.html. Having worked within rigid top-down management structures for many years, Paul Stackhouse, manager of the Cambridge Suites, Halifax, believed that the same or better quality of service and product could be achieved with a different approach. As he studied and learned more about the principles of "quality management," he found a management philosophy and process that seemed to fit his own beliefs.

http://CasePlace.Org/ CasePlace.org is designed for business school faculty and aims to facilitate new curriculum development. It provides faculty with the most recent business cases and related teaching materials from a wide variety of publishers, that focus on mainstream business issues and incorporate ethical, social, environmental, values-based, and governance issues as well.

Registration permits faculty to download "faculty only" sample copies of cases and teaching notes. However, the site remains free and open to students, executive educators, and anyone interested in learning more about social and environmental issues in business. Some of the cases are free to students as well.

http://harvardbusinessonline.hbsp.harvard.edu/ Harvard provides a great selection of cases for your POM course. These cases tend to be best suited for advanced undergrads and MBA, so make sure that the case fits the developmental level of your current students. Here are two that you might consider as part of this introductory portion of your course. While you will find the largest relevant case set coming from the Management set of cases, Harvard's behavioral approach to POM also allows you to leverage many of the cases found in the Organization Behavior and Leadership section.

Example intro case:

HBS Case E263: NetApp: The Day-to-Day of a District Manager Set in mid-2002, this case illustrates "a day in the life" of a district sales manager of a Silicon Valley company, as the technology market faced a downturn. The case enables a polarized class discussion about the tradeoffs that a new district manager might make relative to hiring, firing, and setting quotas, after inheriting a mixed bag of talent in an underperforming district. It also seeks to provide additional texture about the types of challenges and activities that such an individual would face, which are different from those faced by a sales representative. The case enables students to engage in discussions about four key dilemmas faced by the district manager:
1. Which representatives should he retain in his district, and which should he fire?
2. How should he negotiate quotas and goals with his superior, the Regional Manager, and with his representatives?
3. Should he train an employee who will likely fall short of the company's growth goals, or replace him in hopes of hiring on a better performer?
4. What should he do about an employee who appears to insist in putting the customer's interests ahead of the company's?

Other Resources

BusinessWeek—free online videos on large companies and their management. http://feedroom.businessweek.com

Cantos—free online videos on large, mostly European-based, companies and their management. http://w3.cantos.com

Cornell eClips—free online videos around collection themes in entrepreneurship, sustainability, and organizations. http://eclips.cornell.edu

Small Business Television—free online videos on a range of business issues. http://sbtv.com

Stanford University's Entrepreneurship Corner—free online videos, podcasts, and other resources. http://ecorner.stanford.edu/index.html