Convenience

26
Part 1:
An Introduction to Management
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• Lay off a portion of your workforce and then try to
motivate everyone who’s left to work harder; this
option also means selecting future hires from a
lower-skill labor pool and paying lower wages.
• Replace existing equipment with newer, more effi-
cient equipment; although this option entails sub-
stantial up-front investment, you’re sure that you
can more than make up the difference in lower
production costs.
Exercise Task
With this background in mind, respond to the follow-
ing questions:
1.
Carefully examine each of your three options. In
what ways might each option affect other parts of
the organization?
2.
Which is the most costly option in terms of impact
on other parts of the organization, not in terms of
absolute dollars? Which is the least costly?
3.
What are the primary obstacles that you might
face in trying to implement each of your three
options?
4.
Are there any other options for accomplishing
your goal of reducing costs?
SKILLS SELF-ASSESSMENT INSTRUMENT
How Do I Rate as a Manager?*
This self-assessment will help you with your current
understanding of the practice of management and
your own approach to management. This assessment
outlines four important functions of management:
planning, organizing, leading, and controlling. You
should respond to this in one of three ways:
(a) Respond based on your own managerial experi-
ence if you have any.
(b) Respond about effective (or ineffective) managers
you have observed in your work experience.
(c) Respond in terms of how you think an ideal man-
ager should behave.