The areas studied this week will form the basis for your next journal entry. Some of the areas and concepts covered this week include: organizing, departmentalizing, organizing concepts, change and staffing.

In your journaling, you are to think about the concepts and key phrases learned this week. Listed below are some thought provoking questions to stimulate your thinking. They are there to help you focus on the concepts and management tools you have studied. Use these questions as thought provokers, and journal thoughts that you have already formulated on the material covered up to this point in the course. (If you do not have direct experience in any of these areas you can use situations that you have been told about or observed).

1. The decision on departmentalizing depends on the company and industry, but what method would work best for a typical America company, for your company, or a company you know? These organizing principles apply to most any organization as an example, how would you organize your community association?
2. The nine (9) major organizing concepts and their influence on decisions are critical to understanding the dynamics of your organization. Think of a current situation in your organization and describe how each principle influences the organizational behavior.
3. Organizational qualities that promote change are important. Think of the ways change has affected your personal and professional life and how you handled it. Also, have you managed change to improve yourself or your organization, or to eliminate undesirable consequences?
4. Consider the staffing process and the environments in which they are used. Looking at this process from your eyes, think about how this process affected you during your hiring process. It is possible that you have been involved on the opposite end of the process while hiring employees. Journal about this process from the employer and prospective employee point of view.
5. What are the Social Responsibilities of a company and the management? Do they conflict with the responsibilities the organization has to the owners (in corporations the stockholders), their employees, and their business partners such as suppliers and marketing intermediaries?
6. Are the ethical considerations the management of an organization must deal with different in nature for ethical situations the managers encounter in their private lives? What ethical and social responsibility situations have you encountered in you private and work life? Did management handle them well? Would you have approached these situations differently?

Directions:

Choose two of the questions listed above and record your personal reflections (at least 1-2 paragraphs) in your journal for future use. Try to choose questions that you have a strong opinion on, or where your opinion has changed as a result of this weeks activities. As the course moves along you will see that the journal will evolve into a cohesive philosophy of management which you will use to complete this course and also use in your role as a manager.