Describe the role of a manager.

Module code and title: BHRM401 The Role of the Manager

RESIT FOR ASSESSMENT 2 (IN-CLASS TEST) BRIEFING:

There is an alternative piece of assessment for those students who need to redo the in class test. You will need to prepare an analysis of the case study ‘Too Many Cooks’, in the same way as you will have prepared for the case studies that have been used in the weekly seminars, and submit your answer as a piece of coursework on Blackboard.

Assessment title: Analysis of the case study ‘Too Many Cooks’

Deadline: The final date for handing in the resit assessment (coursework) is: Monday 6th July 2015, 13:00.

Submission: The coursework (case study analysis) should be submitted electronically. The link is available on Blackboard. There will be penalties for work handed in after 1:00pm, which could include the work being awarded a mark of zero. Normal university regulations apply.

Please note that the academic teaching team are not empowered to give extensions.

Word count: 1,500 – 2,000 [relevance is crucial] – minimum 1,500 words and maximum 2,000 words (excluding material in the title page, table of content, reference list at the end of the report and appendices). Penalties will be applied if your work is less than 1500 words or more than 2000 words.

Assessment task: For this assessment you are asked to diagnose the managerial problems in the case study ‘Too Many Cooks’ (attached separately to Blackboard) and make recommendations to overcome the problems identified.

Coursework assessment marking criteria

The mark you receive will be influenced by the following:

• Identify the key issues, any managerial problems and discuss the solutions that in your opinion could be considered to address the problems identified;

• Present a coherent argument and a logical structure;

• Use of problem solving cycle in the analysis;

• Refer to the reading and relevant theories learnt in the module;

• Use evidence to underpin any points that are being made. This evidence could be personal or from other people’s writings.

Detailed guidance notes

use the following elements of a report structure. There is no need to include Abstract, Table of Content, Introduction and Conclusion. Start by answering question 1 and then answer question 2.

Title page: Include the word count, your name, your ID number, the coursework title, the University of Westminster, Westminster Business School, the date, your seminar leader name, the module code and title.

Coursework structure: This can vary from one paper to another. You will need to include several headings and / or subheadings.

You may use the problem solving cycle stages to structure your main sections. For example your headings could be: identifying problem symptoms and causes, criteria for effective solutions etc.

To structure subsections you could focus on the concepts / theories you use in your analysis. For example, your subheadings could be: motivation, managerial escalator etc.

You do not need to follow the above suggestions. We will accept any clear and logically structured papers. If you are in doubt you may post your ideas on the Discussion Board before submitting the paper.

Analysis: Please remember to stay focused and be specific in your analysis of the problems and solutions to the case study. You are required to identify the most relevant concepts that you studied in this module, and demonstrate why and how you think these concepts can help to explain the managerial problems and solutions in the case study. Remember to state the names of the theories you use in your analysis clearly and reference them correctly.

Referencing: Use Harvard Referencing System. When you make direct quotes you should put them in inverted comas and give brief details of the source, including the page number e.g. (Rees and Porter, 2008, p.5). The full reference should appear in the list of references. You can cross check with examples from Rees and Porter (2008) on how to layout references.

General references to e.g. a book or article do not have to appear in inverted commas.

A bibliography is used for any general works you have used.

Coursework format: Insert page numbers in your report, use double spacing between the lines, use a bigger margin on the right, Use font Arial 12 or similar, use formal language, British English spelling.

CASE STUDY

Case Study – TOO MANY COOKS?

Audrey Hodge is the Head Teacher of a fee-paying independent school. There are 600 pupils in the school, which caters for children of both sexes for secondary level education. There are no facilities for taking ‘boarders’.

Audrey found herself increasingly burdened with administrative and managerial matters. She had a sub structure of staff who helped with her with this work. This mainly consisted of subject and year heads, a full-time secretary and an administrative officer. The administrative officer worked part-time and handled financial matters. All these staff were heavily loaded and Audrey was reluctant to put more burdens upon them. In the case of the subject and year heads she was concerned that any increase in administrative and managerial tasks would cause them to reduce their teaching activities. The subject and year heads were also good teachers, which was why they had been given responsibility allowances and the school had developed a reputation, on which it depended, for academic excellence and reasonable pupil teacher ratios.

Audrey sees little prospect of the administrative and managerial load reducing. This is because of the increasing amount of government regulation of private as well as state schools. In addition, parents and prospective parents are becoming even more demanding in requests for information about the school and its activities and in information about the progress of their children. The level of assessed course work has also increased because examining bodies now preferred a variety of methods of assessment. In addition there is increasing pressure by pupils and parents to provide a greater range of subject choice. This has made time-tabling more complicated and also increased the amount of curriculum development required. This is particularly because the school is given considerable discretion in how they develop some of the newer subjects the school now offered.

Other ways in which the non-teaching work of the school has increased included, compulsory assessment tests of children at age 14. The nature of external regulation is now such that considerable work is necessary to demonstrate that there are adequate internal self-assessment procedures. In addition the way in which pupils are advised about the subjects to choose and how that fits with their aspirations has had to become much more systematic. The marketing activity has had to become more professional because of developments such as government league tables of academic achievement and increasingly professional marketing by other competitor private schools. A staff appraisal scheme has been introduced, which has generated a lot of queries and extra paper work. In addition student discipline has had to be made much more formal, particularly since an appeal panel of trustees over-turned a decision to dismiss a pupil. This was partly because of the excellent advocacy of the person the parents had obtained to defend their son. A further pressure is that, despite the increasing work load, the trustees are anxious to retain the range of extra-curricular activities such as sports and overseas trips that are an important part of the school’s marketing image.

The pressures on Audrey increased to such an extent that she was obliged to approach the school trustees about getting extra senior help. After much discussion they decided that the solution was to appoint a full-time deputy head. The vacancy was duly advertised and eventually Darren Hetherington was appointed. Darren had worked for one of the examining bodies that the school had to deal with and was very well qualified academically. Not much interest had been expressed in the vacancy by the senior staff in the school.

When Darren started Audrey found that the pressures on her increased further. Although Darren had taught for a short while a lot needed explaining to him. Also Audrey found she needed to spend more time than she would have wished listening to Darren’s often unwanted suggestions about how to improve tried and tested procedures that worked perfectly well. However, she found that there was some advantage in having a member of staff who knew the inner workings of an examining body. She did find that his paper work was excellent but had to be careful about what she delegated to him because of his ignorance in many key areas.

There was no doubt that Darren was intelligent and a quick learner. He was anxious to make his mark and seemed to have his sights set on a headship elsewhere eventually. He could see that Audrey was badly overworked and many of his initiatives to take work from her were no doubt well intentioned. However, Audrey found that he had an unfortunate tendency to keep her in the dark about matters on which she felt she should have been consulted. This also led to confusion with members of staff who were not sure who to talk to about some issues, the head or her deputy. As one exasperated subject head said one day there was an increasing tendency for staff to find if they talked to the head about an issue the deputy would later get involved and suggest there had been an alternative and better way of dealing with it. The same thing apparently increasingly happened the other way around, with the head often getting involved in issues that the deputy had handled and then criticising what had been done. This led to a respected member of staff saying quite forcefully at a staff meeting that the appointment of a deputy head had made their situation worse and not better. This was because they often felt as though they had two bosses. Often they had to explain things they had done to both the head and the deputy and then handle the ‘fall-out’ when these two people disagreed on what should be done. This could range from issues such as pupil discipline, curriculum development, applications for training by junior staff, advice to pupils about subject choices and careers and catering complaints. The member of staff said that to make matters worse these were often issues which subject and year heads felt they were perfectly capable of handling themselves.

Questions:

1. Identify the organizational and managerial problems at the school.

2. Assuming that the head came to you for advice, what would you recommend she do and why?

Use the Problem Solving Cycle and the managerial theories learnt whilst studying the module to answer the questions above.