Free Custom «Collaborative Style of Business Management» Essay Paper

The success of any organization or company is relies on the leadership and managerial style that exists in the company. The managers of a specific company play various major roles. The major roles played by managers are; planning, organizing, staffing, directing, coordinating, reporting and budgeting. Planning majorly involves the manager laying down long and short term activities of a company. Organization majorly involves the aspect of managers setting up functions and activities to be done by specific groups of people. All the above duties are carried out by managers at specific level to ensure that the company still remains productive.

There are various managerial styles that can be employed in any company or institution. All these styles are basically involved with delivering the above mentioned managerial functions in the best way possible to the workers and other stake holders. Once these roles are performed in the best way possible, the overall performance and productivity of the company of firm will grow as all the stake holders will be satisfied and motivated to continue being part of the company’s activities.

 

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It is worth noting the various categories of managers in any institution or company. This will then help understand the various business management styles that are employed in various companies. There are a total of three levels of managers; the first line managers who form the lowest level of management and majorly oversee what the workers are doing. They also relay information to the workers from the top managers. The second level of managers is the middle managers who mainly direct the activities of the first line managers. They also link the first line managers to the top managers. The last level of managers is the top managers who carry out the overall role of management of the company or institution.

The major managerial styles that are employed in most companies are the hierarchical and the collaborative styles of management. Both of these styles have proved productive to the companies’ activities and the choice of either depends on the wish of the general managers of the institution. Both of these business managerial styles have advantages and disadvantages. Of late, most companies have been shifting from hierarchical management style to the collaborative style. This proves to have more advantage and hence has been improving the overall running of companies. A brief description of the two business management styles is given in the next two paragraphs.

Hierarchical management style is basically a form of management where each level of management is a subordinate to one other level of management. This is only except the level of managers who are the overall managers and are not subordinate to any other management level. For instance, the middle managers are subordinates to the top managers. This form of management allows only official communication with the level just above or below a specific management level. This limitation of communication is usually the greatest disadvantage of this style of business management. However, this form of management is still being used in many organizations and companies in most parts of the world (Asfahl&Rieske, 2009).

As seen in the hierarchical style of business management, most of the decisions that concern the overall running of the institution or the company come from the top managers. This then leaves other workers and stake holders as mere implementers of what their bosses want. In fact this form of management beliefs in the slogan; let’s get the job done, not wallow away in meetings exploring everyone’s “valuable” feedback. I totally disagree with this slogan and the overall aspect of the hierarchical business management style. The fact that other members of the company are left out of the process of decision making in the decision making concerning key issues in the company make them lose motivation because of lack at appreciation and recognition. The workers are left to be just machines that need to implement what the bosses want concerning an institution.

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The collaborative style of business management is a business management style that gives all the stake holders of an institution a position in determining and implementation of key issues in the company that affects their working lives. The collaborative form of management recognizes the other stake holders like workers through various bodies like; worker negotiating committees, suggestion schemes, workers directors on the board of directors, financial participation, autonomous work groups and joint consultation.

In the collaborative form of business management, the overall management of the organization retains the overall decision making on behalf of the institution but seeks to utilize the efforts and the initiatives of the workers by involving them in the decision making process. This is through giving them a chance to give suggestions on how some key issues in the company can be handled or solved. The top management normally informs the employees of its plans and opinions concerning a specific aspect that they want to implement in the institution or company and then ask the workers to give suggestions, corrections and differing views about the same through either their unions or suggestion boxes. After the suggestions are given, the managers go through them keenly to come up with a decision that incorporates the views of almost all stake holders in the company (Morvay & Gvozdenac, 2008).This form of business management has several advantages that are analyzed in the next paragraphs.

Through the collaborative style of business management, expert advice is obtained concerning a specific issue from the workers who have knowledge of a specific issue from the grass roots. This willhelp provide simple and inexpensive solutions to problems that initially looked very complex to the top management of the institution.

Collaborative style of management gives the workers to exert some limited control over their working environment. Once the workers feel that their contribution have been accepted and implemented, they will be motivated to work even more efficiently. This will improve the overall performance of the company.

The collaborative method also improves communication between the management and the workers. Through this good communication, the workers are able to deliver their grievance to the top management more easily.

In the hierarchical system of business management, there is little communication between the workers and the management. This automatically denies the management valuable information from the workers. The collective style of management gives a chance for such valuable information to be passed to the management directly from the workers at the lower levels.

Through collective bargaining between the workers and the management, both parties will be able to view issues at another group’s point of view. Through this, both parties will understand each other’s problems and assist in solving them. This will foster unity, understanding and peace in the organization. All this aspects will bring success to the institution.

Despite the many advantages of the collaborative style of management, it also has some disadvantages. One of the disadvantages is that at most times, the workers normally concentrate on the immediate workplace issues while the management normally focuses on the long term issues. With this conflict of interests, there is a big likelihood of the two parties always differing on important decisions to be undertaken by the institution (Barney & Hesterly, 2007).

Most of the time, the suggestions normally given during the joint consultations between the management and the workers is normally a session where workers just merely pass on information that might not necessarily be important to any specific issue. This will then not be beneficial to the activities of the institution. In addition, some officials of unions representing the workers may be driving their own agenda while claiming that the views are from the workers.

Lastly, some of the important and secret issues in an institution may be revealed to the workers. This may put the management in a vulnerable position as the workers might seek explanations. This will affect the overall operations of the institution as the workers may feel left out in the major decisions of the institution.

Despite the few disadvantages that have been mentioned concerning the collaborative style of business management, this still remains the most appropriate form of management that needs to be adopted by all the institution. This is because this style motivates the workers to feel part of the institution hence increase their efficiency. As already mentioned about the hierarchical form of management, it may be applicable but does not increase the efficiency of the workers as they always feel left out in most decisions in the organizations. Therefore the institutions still having the hierarchical form of management needs to do away with it. This style of management needs to be replaced with the collaborative form of management that is more efficient.