The Importance Of Effective Managers In Organizations: A Case Study

Role of Managers in Organizations

Organizations depend on the strength of the people (managers) in the management positions. The managers direct the other staff and communicate with the senior professionals in the organization to further the organization's mission and ensure the team realizes its goals. The duties of managers differ based on the workplace and industry, but most execute the same responsibilities. Management is the administration and coordination of tasks to realize a goal. The administrative undertakings include setting an organization's strategy and harmonizing the efforts of the employees to achieve these objectives through the use of the available resources. An effective manager must develop skills, like communication, leadership, planning, and organization (Xu et al., 2020). A manager needs extensive knowledge of the organization's goals and how to direct staff, sales, and other operations to achieve them. The manager is tasked with setting objectives, organizing, motivating the team, formulating measurement systems, and developing people. A good manager is positive, knows how to communicate, collaborates with their team, and offers training when needed.

Manager's role, level of authority, and experience in managing people: 

Mrs. Yang is a nursing unit manager, managing all nursing staff and admin. Her management experience comprises recruitment, approval of payment every fortnight, approval for annual leave, sick leave, monitoring clinical issues & patient compliment, monitoring risk management, monthly incident (clinical), and monitoring monthly budget. 

Mrs. Yang had to formally attend leadership courses many times and have monthly meetings with all the unit managers to discuss areas of improvement and discuss feedback. Mrs. Yang believes that encouraging staff to work usually helps when the senior employee is assigned with a junior employee to help learn the line of work. Mrs. Yang finds that perception could be perceived as bad sometimes due to the level of work, so this could lead to them not coming to work in the future, especially for the junior staff. According to Mrs. Yang, Junior members can learn more from working with a senior member by asking questions and being more involved. Mrs. Yang believes that working in a team brings efficiency in time management and allows staff to learn from each other. She added that satisfaction of the staff is better, their work finishes quicker and is more efficient. Mrs. Yang explained that the main difficulty in managing a team was the personality clash of the staff. Junior staff says that they do not want to work with senior staff, and senior staff does not want to work with junior staff as they feel like they can do it on their own. She sought to overcome this by encouraging them separately and asking them about their personality clash while letting them know that they can learn from each other, especially for senior staff, as they can be some sort of guide to the junior. 

Scaffolding Theory is a method of teaching that helps the learners (staff) to understand content by working with someone that is more understanding of a particular material. It states that an individual learns more and better when they work with other people who have extensive leeway of knowledge than the individual who is learning the content. The person teaching the individual scaffolds the learning materials into small chunks so that the individual can easily understand the material than they would understand it on their own (Shen, & Zhang, 2019). This theory emphasizes what a learner (employee) is able to learn on their own versus what they can do with another person's help. Scaffolding theory can be visualized from three concentric circles. The smallest circle typifies what the staff can learn on their own. The circle that surrounds the small one explains what the staff can do with the aid of a more professional individual (manager). The largest circle illustrates the skills that the staff cannot do, even with the help of others.  

Mrs. Yang's Experience as a Nursing Unit Manager

This theory is advantageous as it challenges the learner (employee). It challenges the employee to learn beyond their current knowledge of the task or goal with the manager's help. It equips them with new content that they would have otherwise been impossible or difficult to learn by themselves. In addition, it engages the employee. Scaffolding theory promotes discussion and engagement between different pairs or groups of employees to expand their knowledge of given tasks or goals. The manager and the employees can collaborate and be more engaged with the task or goal than if the employees were working alone. Scaffolding theory gives the employees a chance for success. It enhances the employees' likelihood of achieving instructional objectives. The manager can provide the employees with clear instructions on how to conduct a task and work with them as they grasp the objectives and work unassisted. The employees also get differentiated learning. In a smaller organization or group, the manager can ascertain every employee's zone of proximal development. With this information, the manager can formulate instructions for every employee or team, relying on their zone of proximal development.

How Scaffolding Theory works in an organizational setting

It is the process in an organization in which a manager or people of higher professions aid the employees within their zonal proximal development. When the manager and the employees start working together, the manager designs most of the work as they explain why and how they conduct things for the employees to grasp the content. As the employees become conversant with the process, the manager reduces their assistance, and the employees do more of the tasks on their own (Arda, Bayraktar, & Tatoglu, 2019). The Scaffolding reduces until the employees have grasped the content and do not need any more Scaffolding. The managers use the Scaffolding Theory to support employees bit by bit, shifting the learning experience from the manager to the employees. Once the employees are conversant with the process or objective and can easily conduct it, the manager moves to the next process and does the same until the employees have mastered the concepts.

An issue that can be identified within Mrs. Yang's management style is that she fails to understand the behavioral viewpoint of the employees and motivate them. 

Michigan Model- Mrs. Yang lacks employee-centered behavior, and; she should pay more attention to the cohesion of teamwork and proactively understand and meet employee needs. 

Maslow's Hierarchy of Need- some junior employees cannot gain enough cognitive esteem from work due to unclear work level distinctions, and these employees will be unwilling to work efficiently. 

Encourage inter-generational learning as it promotes trust and knowledge exchange since one generation can learn from the other. As a result, intergenerational stereotypes would be reduced, and both the younger and older generations would gain knowledge and experience, which would positively influence their ability to remain active for longer (?i? & Žižek, 2017). 

Furthermore, we recommend adopting transformational leadership/management theory, which treats employees as individuals, understands their problems, and supports, engages, and motivates them. This can lead to inspiring employees to achieve organizational goals and increase productivity (Howladar & Rahman & Uddin 2018). 

Conflicts occur when employees have different backgrounds, and dialectic can be a useful approach that Mrs. Yang can apply to solve this situation (Judith and Thoman, 2015) states that a monolithic cultural identity can be broken by the dialectical perspective, and it can complement traditional ways of thinking in a global workplace. After employees form two groups (debate topic can be senior vs. juniors or diversity vs. non-diversity) and have a debate, they will better understand each other and get more involved in their work. 

Conclusion

The success of an organization depends on its management. Good management will see an organization prosper as opposed to poor management. Good management calls for good managers. When an organization has appropriate managers in place, the organization’s mission and goals will be accomplished. A good manager is one who relates with other employees and guides them where necessary. As discussed above, managers have to play their roles appropriately in order to motivate the other employees to strive toward achieving the entity's goals and objectives. In addition, the manager has to be at the forefront of forging unity in the workplace. They should offer training where necessary to new employees or new strategies in accordance with the Scaffolding Theory, as the theory is more elaborate and presents the learner with the opportunity to challenge themselves, engages them more,  and gives them the opportunity to be a successful and differentiated learning experience.

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