Mgmt986 Essay

MGMT986
Sample assignment: Mini-essay 1
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Management theories as seen in Vascellaro, J. D. (2008) ‘Yahoo to overhaul operations in a bid to develop web services’, Wall Street Journal, 21 June 2008, p. A4. Reprinted in The Australian, 23 June 2008, p. 35.

This article presents several management theories, including Fayol’s four managerial functions, ideas about levels of management, Mintzberg’s managerial roles, and challenges for management in the general and global environments, especially achieving a competitive advantage.

Managerial functions, levels of management. Ms Susan Decker, the president of Yahoo, will soon unveil a new ‘operational blueprint.’ By definition, this is part of the planning function. Because the change is a large one – it involves the whole organisation – it is not surprising that it involves the top levels of management.

Specifically, the plan involves centralising the accounting functions of the company’s web services. This relates to the organising function in Yahoo: we would expect to see more central control of accounting employees if Ms Decker’s plan goes ahead. Because Ms Decker must ‘sell the plan to employees’ we can regard her as carrying out the function of leading, because leaders have to present a vision or idea to their organisation. The organising function appears again with the mention of the ‘internal shake-up’: the reporting relationships in Yahoo are being changed ‘to restore confidence’. Presumably Ms Decker belives that different staff rather than the present executives would do a better job of putting her new plan in place. As well, several senior staff (three vice-presidents and several other executives) are leaving, so this will lead to reorganising of the work they do. The controlling function is not mentioned directly, but at the end of the article we are told that ‘the investment community’ would like to be more confident that Yahoo has ‘devised[d] new ways to... [continues]

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