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Text 18 Horizontal dimension: responsibility areas

In addition to their vertical differences, managerial jobs differ on a horizontal dimension that relates to the nature of the area of responsibility involved.

The three major types of horizontal differentiation among managerial jobs on the basis of responsibility area are functional, general, and project managers.

Functional managers are managers who have responsibility for a specific, specialized area (often called a functional area) of the organization and supervise mainly individuals with expertise and training in that specialized area. Common specialized, or functional, areas include finance, manufacturing or operations, marketing, human resources management, accounting, quality assurance, and engineering.

General managers are managers who have responsibility for a whole organization or a substantial subunit that includes most of the common specialized areas within it. In other words, a general manager presides over a number of specialties or functional areas (hence the term "general"). General managers have a variety of titles such as "division manager" and "president", depending on the circumstances. A small company usually will have only one general manager, who is the head of the entire organization. Depending on how it is organized, a large company may have several general managers (in addition to the chief executive officer).

Project managers are managers who have responsibility for coordinating efforts involving individuals in several different organizational units who are all working on a particular project. Because the individuals report not only to managers in their specific work units but also to project managers, project managers usually must have extremely strong interpersonal skills to keep things moving smoothly. Project mangers are frequently used to coordinate projects. They can also be used to stay on top of market development for specific products or services.

 

 

Exercises to Text 18

1) Write in English the definitions of the following jobs:

· functional managers;

· general managers;

· project managers.

2) Answer the questions:

1 What do a vertical dimension and a horizontal dimension differ in?

2 What managers typically oversee the overall planning for the organization?

3 What do functional areas include?

4 What does a general manager preside over?

5 Why must project managers usually have extremely strong interpersonal skills?

3) Can you think of responsibility areas in the tourism and hospitality industry and give examples of managerial jobs described in the text applied to the above mentioned industry?

Case study/presentation

The summer of 2014 has witnessed several crises in the tourism industry. The companies Labyrinth, Neva and some others have gone bankrupt. Try to analyze this situation answering the following questions:

1) Do you think there were certain signs of the forthcoming crises which the management should have noticed?



2) Was there any chance to prevent the bankruptcy?

3) Did the companies’ management make any mistakes which resulted in bankruptcy or were there any external reasons for the crisis?

4) Were there any drawbacks in HR management so that the staff happened to be inadequate?

5) Talking of the tourism industry, is it likely that only few of the biggest and strongest companies in the market will survive and stay on?

 

Nowadays some companies employ a crisis manager, i.e. a manager who deals with a major event that threatens to harm the organization, its stakeholders or the general public. Do you believe that crises in general could be predicted and prevented? Is this a job of a crisis manager? Can strategic management predict and prevent a crisis? Is a crisis inevitable in running modern business? If it is, could a crisis be beneficial for a company?

 


Date: 2015-12-18; view: 1131


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