Question
Based on the week’s readings, identify what you think are the three most important ideas to emerge from “the management century” that will help us manage effectively in the next management century, and write a persuasive essay to defend your choices.
Sample paper
Best Ideas for the Next Management Century
In the article “the management century” Kiechel gives a detailed explanation of management history and how management has been changing with time. According to Kiechel, the management century started when management was regarded as a science. People later started perceiving management as a professional topic due to the introduction of different new ideas to the subject. Kiechel claims that the main trend in the 1990s focused on how to profit shareholders and not stakeholders. The article illustrates how things kept on changing with time to acquire a more improved perception of management and how it can be enhanced. The three most significant ideas that can be deduced from this reading include innovation, leadership and strategic thinking[1].
One of the most important ideas portrayed by Kiechel’s article is strategic thinking. Strategic thinking, in this case, refers to a process that defines the way in which people or organizations view, assess, think about and the future of management. Strategic thinking is a very valuable and effective tool that can be applied to attain the organization’s goal more effectively and much faster. Strategic thinking benefits include enhancing the ability to maximize individual management strengths, efficiency, and defining the easiest and fastest way to attain organization goals. Strategic thinking enhances the organization’s ability to assess the current situation and how it can influence the future of an organization. It is will thus play a great role in guiding the management of organizations in the next management century.
The other important idea demonstrated by Kiechel’s article is leadership. Leadership refers to the art of inspiring a group of individuals to work towards attaining a shared goal. Leadership plays a great role in determining the direction of an organization and influencing followers to take the defined direction. Organization leadership determines the operation strategies to employ and what an organization should prioritize. Leadership assist in studying the environmental changes taking place in a business and define the new directions to be adopted by an organization to be able to cope with changes and to ensure sustainability. According to Alperovitz modern economy movement is seeking a socially responsible and increasingly green economy[2]. The organization leadership should be able to realize such changes in trends and fine-tune the organizational operations to fit into a new direction. This ensures the organization’s viability and sustainability in the future. Leadership thus has a great role to play in ensuring effective management in the next management century.
Innovation is another important idea portrayed in Kiechel’s article. Innovation refers to generating more effective ideas, products, and processes or changing processes to more productive and profitable ones. It can also involve modifying a business model to a more competitive model or employing new measures to be more adaptive to changes in the business environment for improved goods or services. With a growing level of competitiveness in the market, organizations will highly benefit from any applied level of innovativeness. This can include employing innovative ideas in businesses, such as innovative ways to employee management and innovative ways to win more customers in the market. According to Sandel, an organization can use incentives to promote innovation. For instance, offering workers in technical and administrative positions free time (time incentive) to share, discuss, and develop ideas in the manner they feel best. This is an innovative way of fostering a generation of creativity and innovation among workers[3]. It offers an organization a better opportunity to general new ways of solving problems in an organization or generating more effective operational processes. Being innovative even in the market ensures that an organization outshines its rivals and improves its competitive advantage. Innovation is thus an important managerial aspect that is likely to contribute a lot in enhancing management in the next management century.
References
Alperovitz, Gar.” Meet the Movement for a New Economy.” last modified May 26, 2011, http://www.yesmagazine.org/new-economy/the-new-economy-movement
Kiechel, Walter. “The Management Century.“ Harvard Business Review, 90, no.11(2012): 62–75.
Sandel, Michael J. What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013.
[1] Walter Kiechel, “The Management Century, “ Harvard Business Review, 90, no.11(2012): 62–75.
[2] Gar, Alperovitz ” Meet the Movement for a New Economy,” last modified May 26, 2011, http://www.yesmagazine.org/new-economy/the-new-economy-movement
[3] Michael J Sandel, What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets, New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013
