What makes a good manager? First of all, the ability to (1) communicate, to get your ideas across and to listen to other people. Secondly, a good sense of (2) ………... so that working practices are efficient and problems can be anticipated and avoided. Thirdly, managers work long hours and therefore a great deal of (3) …………. is required to avoid stress.
A good manager must also be (4) …………. in his/her own ability to deal with difficult situations and show qualities of (5) …………. so that other will want to follow. Managers have to take the (6) …………… and bring fresh, creative ideas to old problems. But sound (7) ………….. is necessary when a choice of possible courses of action is difficult or risky.
Once decisions are taken, a manager has to make sure they are implemented and obeyed. For this, he or she must demonstrate (8) …………; this includes a sense of honesty, trust and loyalty to the organization and the personnel under his or her control. Managers should also be (9) …………. to their own boss and be able to explain the reasons for making any decision.
2. Complete the following sentences with these words:
Achieved, board of directors, communicate, innovations, manageable, performance, resources, setting, supervise.
1 Managers have to decide how best to allocate the human, physical and capital …………. available to them.
2 Managers - logically - have to make sure that the jobs and tasks given to their subordinates are……………..
3 There is no point in ……………..objectives if you don't ……………them to your staff.
4 Managers have to ………...their subordinates, and to measure, and to improve, their ……….....
5 Managers have to check whether objectives and targets arc being ………………...
6 A top manager whose performance is unsatisfactory can be dismissed by the company's...................
7 Top managers arc responsible for the ……………. that will allow a company to adapt to a changing world.
Match up these verbs and nouns to make common collocations.
E.g. (achieve objectives, deal with crises)
allocate
communicate
develop
make
measure
motivate
perform
set
supervise
decisions
information
jobs
objectives
people
performance
resources
strategies
subordinates
Do the exercise
1. What can be emphasized as being important in management?
2. Managing is expressed in many ways. Please jot down any synonyms for managing.
3. Complete the following statements:
3.1 The preconceived objectives of management can be:
3.2 The manager's narrow, limited definition of management is:
4. Is management an act or a science, an instinct or a set of skills and techniques that can be taught?
5. What do you think makes a good manager?
Marketing
In specialist textbook such as Kotler’s “Principles of Marketing” we can find such definition of it “a social and managerial process by which individuals and groups obtain what they need and want through creating and exchanging products and value with others”. So marketing is the process of studying the customer’s demand and then satisfying of that demand with quality products or services at competitive prices.
Marketing includes all the business activities connected with the movement of goods and services from producers to consumers. Sometimes it is called distribution. Marketing operations include product planning, buying, storage, pricing, promotion, selling, credit, traffic and marketing research.
The various activities of the marketing process are referred to as the marketing mix and traditionally include the four Ps:
- product (characteristics and features)
- price (appropriate market price)
- place (location and distribution of the product in markets).
- promotion (communicating the products’ benefits). Promotion includes all forms of marketing communication: advertising, direct mail, customer service, image, special events, sales and the product or service itself. Promotion is the most complex thing – how to select and divide your market according to the type of product, its price and where it will be available. Each group of the population has its own values to which you want to make your product appeal).
Marketers must understand the complexities of the marketing environment before they can formulate marketing mix.
There are some ways of conducting market research. This could be “primary” data (information for a particular project) or “secondary” data (collected for many purposes and often used as a starting point). Different techniques are used for market research. We know such methods for “primary” data as the interview in the street/shopping centre and telephone surveys. Newspapers and magazines ask subscribers to fill in questionnaires about their publications and they usually offer a free copy or similar gift to the people who accept. Handing out free samples and asking consumers to write back with their comments or giving them a follow-up phone call, is also popular for certain products. Sources for “secondary” data can include statistics, company reports, articles in journals, official information, etc.
The most controllable of the Four P’s is the first “p” – Product service. All products and services have what have been traditionally called “product life cycles”. The stages of the product life cycle are: introduction, growth, maturity and decline. The length of a product cycle depends upon the intensity of the competition; extent to which the new product is an innovation, a modification of an existing product; introductory timing of technologically superior products; marketing techniques. The size and profitability of any business depend on the product life cycles that make it up. Most firms adjust their marketing mixes to differences in target markets.
In order to gain a competitive advantage over rivals, companies create brands that represent aspirations and a desirable image of life that the customer would like to identify with.
