¶ … Management Course
The field of management is one that has evolved over centuries and continues to transform to meet the needs of the ever-changing globalized world of business. I have long been interested in this arena of business and its powerful influence and strong importance to virtually every sector and industry. I hope to one day occupy a managerial position and use my knowledge and skills to improve the efficiency, effectiveness, productivity and profitability of my future company. The wisdom I have received in this course will certainly help me in achieving my goal. The Principles of Management Course has provided a comprehensive insight into the real world of management and organizational theory, and how all of the relevant concepts are actively applied in several business sectors. And while I have aspired to achieve my managerial goal for quite some time and have built a steady knowledge base through my personal reading and learning, this course was able to enlighten me in several areas of this critical subject that I had never before examined. Most notably, while I had done a significant amount of reading regarding financial management and executive management, I had never truly learned to appreciate topics like relationship management and transformational leadership . These conceptual areas were extremely fascinating to me and have truly opened my eyes to the cumulative nature of a manager's job. Accordingly, this course challenged me to abandon many of my pre-existing ideologies and definitions regarding management. In doing so, I was able to formulate a much more accurate and well-rounded definition of this field and its core concepts, all of which will undoubtedly make my goals easier to achieve by making me a better candidate for a career in management.
In approaching this course, I was under the impression that this was going to be a simple and basic introduction to management. I was anticipating a relatively shallow depiction of managerial roles and some basic theories. A general history of the field was also on my list of expectations. I believed that all of this data would culminate to form a basic understanding of this field, which I already possessed. That is, knowing that I was already very interested in management studies, I did not expect to be very challenged by the elementary insights that would comprise this course. I suppose that I initially viewed this course as a required stepping-stone to furthering my management education. While I did assume that it would be basic and relatively easy, I did not go into this class with a closed mind. I am genuinely interested in this field and I will always strive to learn as much as I can about it. Therefore, despite my assumptions about the course material, I came in with an opened mind hoping to learn as much as I could.
To my pleasant surprise, this course exceeded my expectations on all counts. While the class curriculum certainly did provide a basic framework for managerial studies, there were numerous in depth insights into many aspects of this field that I did not anticipate. The more simple and straightforward topics that I thought would comprise the bulk of the course were all completed within the first two weeks. After this period we moved on to several areas of new and interesting material regarding management theory, applications of principles, different schools of management and how the overall field of management relates to other organizational principles of business. Throughout the course I was thoroughly challenged and constantly learning new material relating to management. I was forced to dedicate much more time to this course than I had initially expected. But knowing my great enjoyment of management studies, I was happy to do it. Overall, this course went far above and beyond all of my expectations and left me very happy...
Coming into this course with a long list of opinions regarding managerial concepts and theories, I was constantly reassessing these beliefs during my readings for this course. It was difficult for me to integrate a large portion of the subject matter into what proved to be a very shoddy ideological framework that I had created on my own. Initially, I was frustrated and doubted much of the material that I was reading for this course. However, this doubt began to cease as the course progressed. That is, as I saw all of the concepts and theories systematically amalgamating into a succinct depiction of this massive field and it became very difficult for me to question any of this material. Eventually, I overcame this plethora of internal challenges by abandoning many of my pre-existent ideas and delving deeper into the course material. This approach proved to be very effective in improving my scholastic performance and helping me to get through the material with greater ease.
Despite my initial frustrations and struggles in this course, I was able to develop a strong set of learning strategies aimed at making the most out of this course and its various concepts. Knowing that I would be doing a significant amount of reading for this course (both required materials and supplementary materials), I always forced myself to read actively. This type of active reading style allowed me to elicit several key ideas and concepts from the literature and helped to remember these themes in preparing for quizzes and exams . By chronically highlighting and summarizing important passages and data field, I was able to effectively create study guides and personalized learning material that were critical in my ultimate success in the course. I also continuously tried to apply this approach to my time in the classroom by engaging in active listening. Through my chronic note-taking and my propensity for asking questions, I was able to educe a wealth of valuable information from each class session . Each of these participative strategies unquestionably aided in my academic success and my construction of a truly comprehensive knowledge based in the field of management.
As implied above, I had a great deal of beliefs regarding management prior to this course. Somewhat naively, I believe that the bulk of a manager's work took place in boardrooms. That is, my idea of a manager was someone that simply analyzed data, made policies and delegated tasks to employees. Even though many managers do engage in these activities, I have found through my studies in this course that these duties are just the tip of the iceberg in many managerial situations. And once again as stated above, I was initially quite frustrated at my own naivety and ignorance regarding this subject that I admired. However, as the cumulative picture of a manager's true job life was constructed, I became increasingly fascinated with the new and additional aspects of this field. This intensive interest caused me to work harder and continue to learn as much as I could. Thus, I was able to successfully cope with a frustrating situation by turning it into a new opportunity to learn more about a field that I find genuinely appealing.
One of the main concepts that truly fascinated me in this course was the idea and importance of relationship management. The essentiality of this aspect of management was something I had never considered before. I thoroughly enjoyed learning about the success that has been accomplished by managers that make active efforts to build relationships with their subordinates and peers. Through my supplementary readings I found that companies like Apple and the General Electric Corporation have realized massive levels of success as a result of strategic relationship management (Anthony 2010; Slater 2000). My strong admiration for these…
Bibliography
Anthony, Scott. "Three Critical Innovation Lessons from Apple." Harvard Business Review. May 2010. http://hbr.org/anthony/2010/05/three_critical_innovation_less.html (accessed October 20, 2011).
Bass, Bernard M., and Paul Steidlmeier. "Ethics, Character, and Authentic Transformational Leadership Behavior." The Leadership Quarterly 10, no. 2 (1999): 181-217.
"Google on Innovation." August 2007. http://www.think-differently.org/2007/08/google-on-innovation.html (accessed October 20, 2011).
Slater, Robert. The GE Way Fieldbook: Jack Welch's Battle Plan for Corporate Revolution. McGraw-Hill Company, 2000.
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