Civil rights leaders demanded a federal investigation and vowed to march through the streets in protest after three police officers were cleared of all charges Friday in the killing of an unarmed man cut down in a hail of 50 bullets on his wedding day.
The verdict by Justice Arthur Cooperman elicited gasps as well as tears of joy and sorrow. Detective Michael Oliver, who fired 31 of the shots, wept at the defense table, while the mother of victim Sean Bell cried in the packed courtroom. Shouts of "Murderers! Murderers!" and "KKK!" rang out on the courthouse steps.
Bell, a 23-year-old black man, was killed outside a seedy strip club in Queens in 2006 as he was leaving his bachelor party with two friends. The officers — undercover detectives who were investigating reports of prostitution at the club — said they thought one of the men had a gun.
The slaying heightened tensions in the city and stoked long-standing allegations of racism and excessive use of force on the part of New York City's police, even though two of the officers charged are black.
In announcing his verdict in the non-jury trial, the judge said that the inconsistent testimony, courtroom demeanor and rap sheets of the prosecution witnesses — mainly Bell's friends — "had the effect of eviscerating" their credibility.
"At times, the testimony just didn't make sense," the judge said.
Police had assigned extra officers to the courthouse and had helicopters in the air to help deal with any unrest. But within an hour, the angry, weeping crowd of about 200 people outside the courthouse had scattered, and despite a few scuffles, no arrests were made.
Oliver and Gescard Isnora were acquitted of charges that included manslaughter, assault and reckless endangerment. The third officer, Marc Cooper, faced lesser charges.
The verdict does not entirely resolve issues surrounding the case.
After the verdict, the U.S. attorney's office said it will look into the case and "take appropriate action if the evidence indicates a prosecutable violation of federal criminal civil rights statutes."
In addition, relatives of the victims have sued the city, and those cases could either go to trial or be settled out of court with the potential for multimillion-dollar payouts.
Also, the officers, who had been on paid leave, still face possible departmental charges that could result in their firing. While the judge found that the officers' behavior was not criminal, he added, "Questions of carelessness and incompetence must be left to other forums."
The officers appeared somber later at a news conference. Each called the verdict fair. One apologized.
"I'd like to say sorry to the Bell family for the tragedy," Cooper said.
The Rev. Al Sharpton, who represents Bell's family, demanded a federal investigation.
"This verdict is one round down, but the fight is far from over," the civil rights leader said on his radio show. He said he is organizing "economic withdrawal" and "civil disobedience" that could involve going to jail and marching on Wall Street, at the judge's house and at police headquarters.
"We are going to close the city down in a nonviolent, effective way," Sharpton said. "We're going to hit the pocketbooks. We're going to let you know that we are not going to be in any way diverted from exercising our civil rights."
Mayor Michael Bloomberg said: "We don't expect any violence, nor is there any place for it."
The officers had complained that pretrial publicity had unfairly painted them as cold-blooded killers. They opted to have the judge instead of a jury decide the case, a strategy that appeared to pay off.
District Attorney Richard Brown said that despite losing the case, prosecutors had "revealed significant deficiencies" in police tactics that need "prompt and serious attention."
The case brought back painful memories of other New York police shootings, such as the 1999 killing of Amadou Diallo, an African immigrant who was gunned down in a barrage of 41 bullets by police officers who mistook his wallet for a gun. The acquittal of the officers in that case led to days of protests, with hundreds arrested.
"An ugly pattern is emerging in New York," the Rev. Jesse Jackson said in Chicago after Friday's verdict. "This was a massacre. This was not a shootout. And the U.S. attorney general must give America the assurance that we all have equal protection under the law,"
The nearly two-month trial was marked by deeply divergent accounts of the night.
The defense painted the victims as drunken thugs who the officers believed were armed and dangerous. Prosecutors sought to convince the judge that the victims had been minding their own business, and that the officers were inept, trigger-happy cowboys.
Bell's companions — Trent Benefield and Joseph Guzman — were both wounded; Guzman still has four bullets lodged in his body. Both testified. Guzman, a burly ex-convict, grew combative during cross-examination, and said of Isnora: "This dude is shooting like he's crazy, like he's out of his mind."
None of the officers took the stand. Instead, the judge heard transcripts of the officers telling a grand jury that they believed they had good reason to use deadly force.
The officers said that as the club closed around 4 a.m., they heard Guzman say, "Yo, go get my gun" — something Bell's friends denied.
Isnora claimed that after he warned the men to halt, Bell pulled away in his car, bumped him and rammed an unmarked police van that converged on the scene. The detective also said Guzman made a sudden move as if he were reaching for a gun.
Benefield and Guzman testified that there were no orders from the police.
With tires screeching, glass breaking and bullets flying, the officers said they believed they were the ones under fire. Oliver responded by emptying his semiautomatic pistol, reloading, and emptying it again. Isnora fired 11 rounds, and Cooper four. Two other officers who fired weren't charged.
When the smoke had cleared, there was no weapon inside Bell's blood-splattered car.
Selasa, 15 Juli 2008
Obama's secret weapon: The media
My, oh my, but weren’t those fellows from ABC News rude to Barack Obama at this week’s presidential debate.
Nothing but petty, process-oriented questions, asked in a prosecutorial tone, about the Democratic front-runner’s personal associations and his electability. Where was the substance? Where was the balance?
Where indeed. Hillary Rodham Clinton and her aides have been complaining for months about imbalance in news coverage. For the most part, the reaction to her from the political-media commentariat has been: Stop whining.
That’s still a good response now that it is Obama partisans — some of whom are showing up in distressingly inappropriate places — who are doing the whining.
The shower of indignation on Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos over the last few days is the clearest evidence yet that the Clintonites are fundamentally correct in their complaint that she has been flying throughout this campaign into a headwind of media favoritism for Obama.
Last fall, when NBC’s Tim Russert hazed Clinton with a bunch of similar questions — a mix of fair and impertinent — he got lots of gripes from Clinton supporters.
But there was nothing like the piling on from journalists rushing to validate the Obama criticisms and denouncing ABC’s performance as journalistically unsound.
The response was itself a warning about a huge challenge for reporters in the 2008 cycle: preserving professional detachment in a race that will likely feature two nominees, Obama and John McCain, who so far have been beneficiaries of media cheerleadinThis is not to say that ABC’s performance was flawless. There were some weird questions (“Do you think Rev. Wright loves America as much as you do?”). There were some questionable production decisions (the camera cutaways to Chelsea Clinton, the stacking of so many process questions in the first 45 minutes).
But there was nothing to justify Tom Shales’s hyperbolic review (“shoddy, despicable performances” by Gibson and Stephanopoulos) in The Washington Post or Greg Mitchell’s in Editor & Publisher (“perhaps the most embarrassing performance by the media in a major presidential debate in years”). Others, like Time’s Michael Grunwald, likewise weighed in against ABC.
In fact, the balance of political questions (15) to policy questions (13) was more substantive than other debates this year that prompted no deluge of protests. The difference is that this time there were more hard questions for Obama than for Clinton.
Moreover, those questions about Jeremiah Wright, about Obama’s association with 1960s radical William Ayers, about apparent contradictions between his past and present views on proven wedge issues like gun control, were entirely in-bounds. If anything, they were overdue for a front-runner and likely nominee.
If Obama was covered like Clinton is, one feels certain the media focus would not have been on the questions, but on a candidate performance that at times seemed tinny, impatient and uncertain.
The difference seems clear: Many journalists are not merely observers but participants in the Obama phenomenon.
(Harris only here: As one who has assigned journalists to cover Obama at both Politico and The Washington Post, I have witnessed the phenomenon several times. Some reporters come back and need to go through detox, to cure their swooning over Obama’s political skill. Even VandeHei seemed to have been bitten by the bug after the Iowa caucus.)
(VandeHei only here: There is no doubt reporters are smitten with Obama's speeches and promises to change politics. I find his speeches, when he's on, pretty electric myself. It certainly helps his cause that reporters also seem very tired of the ClintoAll this is hardly the end of the world. Clinton is not behind principally because of media bias; Obama is not ahead principally because of media favoritism. McCain won the GOP nomination mainly through good luck and the infirmities of his opposition. But the fact that lots of reporters personally like the guy — and a few seem to have an open crush — did not hurt.
But the protectiveness toward Obama revealed in the embarrassing rush of many journalists to his side this week does touch on at least four deeper trends in the news business.
1. The breakdown of journalistic conventions about point of view. In an earlier era these standards — favoring austere, stoical language conveying voice-of-God authority — were designed in part to ensure that stories betrayed no hint of the writer’s real feelings.
But the convention was a pretense. There is a generally laudable move toward more conversational — and more candid — language in stories. This shift allows a respected pro like the Associated Press’s Ron Fournier to unsheathe a knife and write this sentence earlier this year about Mitt Romney: “The former Massachusetts governor pandered to voters, distorted his opponents' record and continued to show why he's the most malleable — and least credible — major presidential candidate.”
This shift is also what allows NBC News to feel comfortable with its Obama reporter, Lee Cowan, who has acknowledged that he finds it hard to keep his objectivity covering Obama.
But when does a legitimate attempt to capture the energy and mood of a political movement become boosterism? Did Cowan cross the line in this dispatch for the “Nightly News” on Feb. 5?: “Since the early days of his campaign, the candidate has morphed from the intellectual to the inspirational. … And it's that theme that's brought crowds in the door and to their feet.”
It is a thin and often illegible line between this kind of journalism and outright favoritism.
Wherever the line, it is clear that the profession collectively has stepped over it — based as much on what it hasn’t covered as what it has.
Two of the questions ABC asked Wednesday were related to subjects that have largely been met with media yawns.
One was Obama’s casual association with 1960s era radicals and would-be bomb-setters William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn: What is the nature of his relationship?
Another was about a questionnaire from a 1996 legislative race in which he endorsed a ban on handguns. Obama said the questionnaire was filled out by someone else and was in error about his views at the time. But it was later found that his handwriting was on the document: What gives?
One can dispute the relevance of these stories — though it seems certain they will be of interest to many moderate voters Obama would need in the fall — but it is indisputable that if Clinton was facing similar questions they would be the subject of constant and all-consuming coverage. There is an obvious double standard.
2. The rise of the liberal echo chamber. It used to be that if a reporter received a letter that started, “You biased S.O.B.,” it was almost certainly coming from someone on the right. In 1998 — the year of the Monica Lewinsky scandal and Bill Clinton’s impeachment — those notes began coming in equal measure from the left. During the Bush era — when the media stumbled in coverage of the march to wBut it has only been in this campaign cycle that we have seen the liberal echo chamber — from websites like The Huffington Post and cable commentators like Keith Olbermann — be able consistently to drive a campaign story line. In the past, it was only the conservative echo chamber — Matt Drudge, Rush Limbaugh — who regularly drove stories in new media and old media alike. This is a huge shift.
3. The blurring of lines between journalist and advocate. The Huffington Post is an admirable enterprise, staking a flag in a new media landscape. Its success this year was made possible by the openness of the Web and the decline in what was once the near-monopoly power of old media institutions like The New York Times to set the agenda on national politics. (Politico is itself an experiment in that new media landscape — one reason we admire Huffington.)
But it covers politics with a mix of traditional reporters and analysts, like Tom Edsall, and with people who define themselves principally as advocates. Many of these advocates, like The Huffington Post as a whole, are proudly cheering for Obama. (This is true even though the site, almost apologetically, broke the story about Obama’s recent remarks saying small-town Pennsylvanians turn to guns and God because they are bitter.)
Obama benefits also from probably the strongest bias of traditional, old media reporters: Against partisan combat and for a brand of politics that would transcend differences in favor of cooperation and centrism on elite issues like entitlement reform. Many of these reporters see Clinton representing bad, angry, contrived old politics and Obama bravely leading the way for good, civil, authentic new politics.
4. Covering politics as it is versus as it should be. Many of the people complaining about ABC’s coverage, even some Clinton supporters, disliked the questions and the tone because they felt they were serving as a warm-up act for Republican attacks in the fall.
It is not an easy balance. It is not reporters’ job to promote the opposition’s story lines — especially dubious ones like the suggestion that because Obama does not favor flag pins on his lapel it reflects adversely on his patriotism. But nor can serious reporters avert their gaze from the fact that questions about how well candidates connect personally and culturally with voters matter a lot — they were decisive factors in both the 2000 and 2004 elections.
Gibson and Stephanopoulos handled this balancing act responsibly. They asked tough questions of both candidates. In the wake of the debate, it is time for Obama’s cheerleaders in the media to ask some questions of themselves.
Nothing but petty, process-oriented questions, asked in a prosecutorial tone, about the Democratic front-runner’s personal associations and his electability. Where was the substance? Where was the balance?
Where indeed. Hillary Rodham Clinton and her aides have been complaining for months about imbalance in news coverage. For the most part, the reaction to her from the political-media commentariat has been: Stop whining.
That’s still a good response now that it is Obama partisans — some of whom are showing up in distressingly inappropriate places — who are doing the whining.
The shower of indignation on Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos over the last few days is the clearest evidence yet that the Clintonites are fundamentally correct in their complaint that she has been flying throughout this campaign into a headwind of media favoritism for Obama.
Last fall, when NBC’s Tim Russert hazed Clinton with a bunch of similar questions — a mix of fair and impertinent — he got lots of gripes from Clinton supporters.
But there was nothing like the piling on from journalists rushing to validate the Obama criticisms and denouncing ABC’s performance as journalistically unsound.
The response was itself a warning about a huge challenge for reporters in the 2008 cycle: preserving professional detachment in a race that will likely feature two nominees, Obama and John McCain, who so far have been beneficiaries of media cheerleadinThis is not to say that ABC’s performance was flawless. There were some weird questions (“Do you think Rev. Wright loves America as much as you do?”). There were some questionable production decisions (the camera cutaways to Chelsea Clinton, the stacking of so many process questions in the first 45 minutes).
But there was nothing to justify Tom Shales’s hyperbolic review (“shoddy, despicable performances” by Gibson and Stephanopoulos) in The Washington Post or Greg Mitchell’s in Editor & Publisher (“perhaps the most embarrassing performance by the media in a major presidential debate in years”). Others, like Time’s Michael Grunwald, likewise weighed in against ABC.
In fact, the balance of political questions (15) to policy questions (13) was more substantive than other debates this year that prompted no deluge of protests. The difference is that this time there were more hard questions for Obama than for Clinton.
Moreover, those questions about Jeremiah Wright, about Obama’s association with 1960s radical William Ayers, about apparent contradictions between his past and present views on proven wedge issues like gun control, were entirely in-bounds. If anything, they were overdue for a front-runner and likely nominee.
If Obama was covered like Clinton is, one feels certain the media focus would not have been on the questions, but on a candidate performance that at times seemed tinny, impatient and uncertain.
The difference seems clear: Many journalists are not merely observers but participants in the Obama phenomenon.
(Harris only here: As one who has assigned journalists to cover Obama at both Politico and The Washington Post, I have witnessed the phenomenon several times. Some reporters come back and need to go through detox, to cure their swooning over Obama’s political skill. Even VandeHei seemed to have been bitten by the bug after the Iowa caucus.)
(VandeHei only here: There is no doubt reporters are smitten with Obama's speeches and promises to change politics. I find his speeches, when he's on, pretty electric myself. It certainly helps his cause that reporters also seem very tired of the ClintoAll this is hardly the end of the world. Clinton is not behind principally because of media bias; Obama is not ahead principally because of media favoritism. McCain won the GOP nomination mainly through good luck and the infirmities of his opposition. But the fact that lots of reporters personally like the guy — and a few seem to have an open crush — did not hurt.
But the protectiveness toward Obama revealed in the embarrassing rush of many journalists to his side this week does touch on at least four deeper trends in the news business.
1. The breakdown of journalistic conventions about point of view. In an earlier era these standards — favoring austere, stoical language conveying voice-of-God authority — were designed in part to ensure that stories betrayed no hint of the writer’s real feelings.
But the convention was a pretense. There is a generally laudable move toward more conversational — and more candid — language in stories. This shift allows a respected pro like the Associated Press’s Ron Fournier to unsheathe a knife and write this sentence earlier this year about Mitt Romney: “The former Massachusetts governor pandered to voters, distorted his opponents' record and continued to show why he's the most malleable — and least credible — major presidential candidate.”
This shift is also what allows NBC News to feel comfortable with its Obama reporter, Lee Cowan, who has acknowledged that he finds it hard to keep his objectivity covering Obama.
But when does a legitimate attempt to capture the energy and mood of a political movement become boosterism? Did Cowan cross the line in this dispatch for the “Nightly News” on Feb. 5?: “Since the early days of his campaign, the candidate has morphed from the intellectual to the inspirational. … And it's that theme that's brought crowds in the door and to their feet.”
It is a thin and often illegible line between this kind of journalism and outright favoritism.
Wherever the line, it is clear that the profession collectively has stepped over it — based as much on what it hasn’t covered as what it has.
Two of the questions ABC asked Wednesday were related to subjects that have largely been met with media yawns.
One was Obama’s casual association with 1960s era radicals and would-be bomb-setters William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn: What is the nature of his relationship?
Another was about a questionnaire from a 1996 legislative race in which he endorsed a ban on handguns. Obama said the questionnaire was filled out by someone else and was in error about his views at the time. But it was later found that his handwriting was on the document: What gives?
One can dispute the relevance of these stories — though it seems certain they will be of interest to many moderate voters Obama would need in the fall — but it is indisputable that if Clinton was facing similar questions they would be the subject of constant and all-consuming coverage. There is an obvious double standard.
2. The rise of the liberal echo chamber. It used to be that if a reporter received a letter that started, “You biased S.O.B.,” it was almost certainly coming from someone on the right. In 1998 — the year of the Monica Lewinsky scandal and Bill Clinton’s impeachment — those notes began coming in equal measure from the left. During the Bush era — when the media stumbled in coverage of the march to wBut it has only been in this campaign cycle that we have seen the liberal echo chamber — from websites like The Huffington Post and cable commentators like Keith Olbermann — be able consistently to drive a campaign story line. In the past, it was only the conservative echo chamber — Matt Drudge, Rush Limbaugh — who regularly drove stories in new media and old media alike. This is a huge shift.
3. The blurring of lines between journalist and advocate. The Huffington Post is an admirable enterprise, staking a flag in a new media landscape. Its success this year was made possible by the openness of the Web and the decline in what was once the near-monopoly power of old media institutions like The New York Times to set the agenda on national politics. (Politico is itself an experiment in that new media landscape — one reason we admire Huffington.)
But it covers politics with a mix of traditional reporters and analysts, like Tom Edsall, and with people who define themselves principally as advocates. Many of these advocates, like The Huffington Post as a whole, are proudly cheering for Obama. (This is true even though the site, almost apologetically, broke the story about Obama’s recent remarks saying small-town Pennsylvanians turn to guns and God because they are bitter.)
Obama benefits also from probably the strongest bias of traditional, old media reporters: Against partisan combat and for a brand of politics that would transcend differences in favor of cooperation and centrism on elite issues like entitlement reform. Many of these reporters see Clinton representing bad, angry, contrived old politics and Obama bravely leading the way for good, civil, authentic new politics.
4. Covering politics as it is versus as it should be. Many of the people complaining about ABC’s coverage, even some Clinton supporters, disliked the questions and the tone because they felt they were serving as a warm-up act for Republican attacks in the fall.
It is not an easy balance. It is not reporters’ job to promote the opposition’s story lines — especially dubious ones like the suggestion that because Obama does not favor flag pins on his lapel it reflects adversely on his patriotism. But nor can serious reporters avert their gaze from the fact that questions about how well candidates connect personally and culturally with voters matter a lot — they were decisive factors in both the 2000 and 2004 elections.
Gibson and Stephanopoulos handled this balancing act responsibly. They asked tough questions of both candidates. In the wake of the debate, it is time for Obama’s cheerleaders in the media to ask some questions of themselves.
HBS Cases: Negotiating with Wal-Mart
What happens when you encounter a company with a great deal of power, like Wal-Mart, that is also the ultimate non-negotiable partner? A series of Harvard Business School cases by James Sebenius and Ellen Knebel explore successful deal-making strategies. From the HBS Alumni Bulletin. Key concepts include:
• Driving a mutually agreeable deal with a large company such as Wal-Mart means price alone can't be the centerpiece of the interaction.
Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, sold $315 billion worth of goods in 2006. With its single-minded focus on "EDLP" (everyday low prices) and the power to make or break suppliers, a partnership with Wal-Mart is either the Holy Grail or the kiss of death, depending on one's perspective.
There are numerous media accounts of the corporate monolith riding its suppliers into the ground. But what about those who manage to survive, and thrive, while dealing with the classic hardball negotiator?
In "Sarah Talley and Frey Farms Produce: Negotiating with Wal-Mart" and "Tom Muccio: Negotiating the P&G Relationship with Wal-Mart," HBS professor Jim Sebenius and Research Associate Ellen Knebel show two very different organizations doing just that. The cases are part of a series that involve hard bargaining situations.
"Wal-Mart could clearly live without Frey Farms, but it's pretty hard to live without Tide and Pampers."
"The concept of win-win bargaining is a good and powerful message," Sebenius says, "but a lot of our students and executives face counterparts who aren't interested in playing by those rules. So what happens when you encounter someone with a great deal of power, like Wal-Mart, who is also the ultimate non-negotiable partner?"
The case details how P&G executive Tom Muccio pioneers a new supplier-retailer partnership between P&G and Wal-Mart. Built on proximity (Muccio relocated to Wal-Mart's turf in Arkansas) and growing trust (both sides eventually eliminated elaborate legal contracts in favor of Letters of Intent), the new relationship focused on establishing a joint vision and problem-solving process, information sharing, and generally moving away from the "lowest common denominator" pricing issues that had defined their interactions previously. From 1987, when Muccio initiated the changes, to 2003, shortly before his retirement, P&G's sales to Wal-Mart grew from $350 million to $7.8 billion.
"There are obvious differences between P&G and a much smaller entity like Frey Farms," Sebenius notes. "Wal-Mart could clearly live without Frey Farms, but it's pretty hard to live without Tide and Pampers."
Sarah meets Goliath
Sarah Talley was 19 in 1997, when she first began negotiations to supply Wal-Mart with her family farm's pumpkins and watermelons. Like Muccio, Talley confronted some of the same hardball price challenges, and like Muccio, she acquired a deep understanding of the Wal-Mart culture while finding "new money" in the supply chain through innovative tactics.
For example, Frey Farms used school buses ($1,500 each) instead of tractors ($12,000 each) as a cheaper and faster way to transport melons to the warehouse.
Talley also negotiated a coveted co-management supplier agreement with Wal-Mart, showing how Frey Farms could share the responsibility of managing inventory levels and sales and ultimately save customers money while improving their own margins.
"Two sides in this sort of negotiation will always differ on price," Sebenius observes. "However, if that conflict is the centerpiece of their interaction, then it's a bad situation. If they're trying to develop the customer, the relationship, and sales, the price piece will be one of many points, most of which they're aligned on."
Research Associate Knebel points out that while Tom Muccio's approach to Wal-Mart was pioneering for its time, many other companies have since followed P&G's lead and enjoyed their own versions of success with the mega-retailer. Getting a ground-level view of how two companies achieved those positive outcomes illustrates the story-within-a-story of implementing corporate change.
"Achieving that is where macro concepts, micro imperatives, and managerial skill really come together," says Sebenius. And the payoffs—as Muccio and Talley discover—are well worth the effort.
Sarah Talley's Key Negotiation Principles
• When you have a problem, when there's something you engage in with Wal-Mart that requires agreement so that it becomes a negotiation, the first advice is to think in partnership terms, really focus on a common goal, of getting costs out, for example, and ask questions. Don't make demands or statements ... you know, can we do this better and so forth. If the relationship with Wal-Mart is truly a partnership, negotiating to resolve differences should not endanger the tenor of the partnership.
• Don't spend time griping. Be problem solvers instead. Approach Wal-Mart by saying, "Let's work together and drive costs down and produce it so much cheaper you don't have to replace me, because if you work with me I could do it better."
• Learn from and lobby with people and their partners who have credibility, and with people having problems in the field.
• Don't ignore small issues or let things fester.
• Do not let Wal-Mart become more than 20 percent of your company's business. It's hard to negotiate with a company that controls yours.
• Never go into a meeting without a clear agenda. Make good use of the buyers' face time. Leave with answers. Don't make small talk. Get to the point; their time is valuable. Bring underlying issues to the surface. Attack them head on and find resolution face to face.
• Trying to bluff Wal-Mart is never a good idea. There is always someone willing to do it cheaper to gain the business. You have to treat the relationship as a marriage. Communication and compromise is key.
• Don't take for granted that just because the buyer is young they don't know what they are talking about or that it will be an easy sell. Most young buyers are very ambitious to move up within the company and can be some of the toughest, most educated buyers you will encounter. Know your product all the way from the production standpoint to the end use. Chances are your buyer does, and will expect you to be even more knowledgeable.
• Driving a mutually agreeable deal with a large company such as Wal-Mart means price alone can't be the centerpiece of the interaction.
Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, sold $315 billion worth of goods in 2006. With its single-minded focus on "EDLP" (everyday low prices) and the power to make or break suppliers, a partnership with Wal-Mart is either the Holy Grail or the kiss of death, depending on one's perspective.
There are numerous media accounts of the corporate monolith riding its suppliers into the ground. But what about those who manage to survive, and thrive, while dealing with the classic hardball negotiator?
In "Sarah Talley and Frey Farms Produce: Negotiating with Wal-Mart" and "Tom Muccio: Negotiating the P&G Relationship with Wal-Mart," HBS professor Jim Sebenius and Research Associate Ellen Knebel show two very different organizations doing just that. The cases are part of a series that involve hard bargaining situations.
"Wal-Mart could clearly live without Frey Farms, but it's pretty hard to live without Tide and Pampers."
"The concept of win-win bargaining is a good and powerful message," Sebenius says, "but a lot of our students and executives face counterparts who aren't interested in playing by those rules. So what happens when you encounter someone with a great deal of power, like Wal-Mart, who is also the ultimate non-negotiable partner?"
The case details how P&G executive Tom Muccio pioneers a new supplier-retailer partnership between P&G and Wal-Mart. Built on proximity (Muccio relocated to Wal-Mart's turf in Arkansas) and growing trust (both sides eventually eliminated elaborate legal contracts in favor of Letters of Intent), the new relationship focused on establishing a joint vision and problem-solving process, information sharing, and generally moving away from the "lowest common denominator" pricing issues that had defined their interactions previously. From 1987, when Muccio initiated the changes, to 2003, shortly before his retirement, P&G's sales to Wal-Mart grew from $350 million to $7.8 billion.
"There are obvious differences between P&G and a much smaller entity like Frey Farms," Sebenius notes. "Wal-Mart could clearly live without Frey Farms, but it's pretty hard to live without Tide and Pampers."
Sarah meets Goliath
Sarah Talley was 19 in 1997, when she first began negotiations to supply Wal-Mart with her family farm's pumpkins and watermelons. Like Muccio, Talley confronted some of the same hardball price challenges, and like Muccio, she acquired a deep understanding of the Wal-Mart culture while finding "new money" in the supply chain through innovative tactics.
For example, Frey Farms used school buses ($1,500 each) instead of tractors ($12,000 each) as a cheaper and faster way to transport melons to the warehouse.
Talley also negotiated a coveted co-management supplier agreement with Wal-Mart, showing how Frey Farms could share the responsibility of managing inventory levels and sales and ultimately save customers money while improving their own margins.
"Two sides in this sort of negotiation will always differ on price," Sebenius observes. "However, if that conflict is the centerpiece of their interaction, then it's a bad situation. If they're trying to develop the customer, the relationship, and sales, the price piece will be one of many points, most of which they're aligned on."
Research Associate Knebel points out that while Tom Muccio's approach to Wal-Mart was pioneering for its time, many other companies have since followed P&G's lead and enjoyed their own versions of success with the mega-retailer. Getting a ground-level view of how two companies achieved those positive outcomes illustrates the story-within-a-story of implementing corporate change.
"Achieving that is where macro concepts, micro imperatives, and managerial skill really come together," says Sebenius. And the payoffs—as Muccio and Talley discover—are well worth the effort.
Sarah Talley's Key Negotiation Principles
• When you have a problem, when there's something you engage in with Wal-Mart that requires agreement so that it becomes a negotiation, the first advice is to think in partnership terms, really focus on a common goal, of getting costs out, for example, and ask questions. Don't make demands or statements ... you know, can we do this better and so forth. If the relationship with Wal-Mart is truly a partnership, negotiating to resolve differences should not endanger the tenor of the partnership.
• Don't spend time griping. Be problem solvers instead. Approach Wal-Mart by saying, "Let's work together and drive costs down and produce it so much cheaper you don't have to replace me, because if you work with me I could do it better."
• Learn from and lobby with people and their partners who have credibility, and with people having problems in the field.
• Don't ignore small issues or let things fester.
• Do not let Wal-Mart become more than 20 percent of your company's business. It's hard to negotiate with a company that controls yours.
• Never go into a meeting without a clear agenda. Make good use of the buyers' face time. Leave with answers. Don't make small talk. Get to the point; their time is valuable. Bring underlying issues to the surface. Attack them head on and find resolution face to face.
• Trying to bluff Wal-Mart is never a good idea. There is always someone willing to do it cheaper to gain the business. You have to treat the relationship as a marriage. Communication and compromise is key.
• Don't take for granted that just because the buyer is young they don't know what they are talking about or that it will be an easy sell. Most young buyers are very ambitious to move up within the company and can be some of the toughest, most educated buyers you will encounter. Know your product all the way from the production standpoint to the end use. Chances are your buyer does, and will expect you to be even more knowledgeable.
New Guidelines Proposed for Hedge Funds
-- In the place of new government regulations, the Bush administration is coming forward with some industry-developed "best practices" to guide the operation of hedge funds.
Those guidelines were scheduled to be unveiled Tuesday by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and the leaders of the two groups working on guidelines for the funds.
One set of recommendations provides guidelines on how investors of hedge funds should operate. It was drawn up by an investors' group headed by Russell Read, the chief investment officer of the California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS), the largest pension fund in the United States.
The other set of recommendations designed to serve as guidelines for the managers of the hedge funds was draw up by an advisory panel headed by Eric Mindich, the head of Eton Park Capital Management, a large hedge fund.
The Bush administration has resisted pressure to increase government regulation of hedge funds, arguing that market discipline is the best way to handle these funds. The White House still supports that view even after the turbulence that has hit financial markets roiled by a serious credit crisis.
Those troubles claimed their biggest victim last month with the near-collapse of Bear Stearns, the country's fifth largest investment bank, which was taken over by JP Morgan Chase & Co. in a deal in which the Federal Reserve provided a $30 billion loan.
Hedge funds, vast pools of capital that operate secretively and with very little government supervision, have grown explosively in recent years.
While hedge funds cater to institutional investors and very wealthy individuals, millions of ordinary people have become investors in them through their pension plans.
Hedge funds have been caught up in the recent turmoil in financial markets, with investors growing worried about the solvency of funds that had invested heavily in securities backed by subprime mortgages, where delinquencies have hit record levels
Those guidelines were scheduled to be unveiled Tuesday by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and the leaders of the two groups working on guidelines for the funds.
One set of recommendations provides guidelines on how investors of hedge funds should operate. It was drawn up by an investors' group headed by Russell Read, the chief investment officer of the California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS), the largest pension fund in the United States.
The other set of recommendations designed to serve as guidelines for the managers of the hedge funds was draw up by an advisory panel headed by Eric Mindich, the head of Eton Park Capital Management, a large hedge fund.
The Bush administration has resisted pressure to increase government regulation of hedge funds, arguing that market discipline is the best way to handle these funds. The White House still supports that view even after the turbulence that has hit financial markets roiled by a serious credit crisis.
Those troubles claimed their biggest victim last month with the near-collapse of Bear Stearns, the country's fifth largest investment bank, which was taken over by JP Morgan Chase & Co. in a deal in which the Federal Reserve provided a $30 billion loan.
Hedge funds, vast pools of capital that operate secretively and with very little government supervision, have grown explosively in recent years.
While hedge funds cater to institutional investors and very wealthy individuals, millions of ordinary people have become investors in them through their pension plans.
Hedge funds have been caught up in the recent turmoil in financial markets, with investors growing worried about the solvency of funds that had invested heavily in securities backed by subprime mortgages, where delinquencies have hit record levels
Areas and categories and implementations of management
• Accounting management
• Agile management
• Association management
• Capability Management
• Change management
• Communication management
• Constraint management
• Cost management
• Crisis management
• Critical management studies
• Customer relationship management
• Decision making styles
• Design management
• Disaster management
• Earned value management
• Educational management
• Enterprise management
• Environmental management
• Facility management
• Financial management
• Forecasting
• Human resources management
• Hospital management
• Information technology management
• Innovation management
• Interim management
• Inventory management
• Knowledge management
• Land management
• Leadership management
• Logistics management
• Lifecycle management
• Management on demand
• Marketing management
• Materials management
• Operations management
• Organization development
• Perception management
• Practice management
• Program management
• Project management
• Process management
• Performance management
• Product management
• Public administration
• Public management
• Quality management
• Records management
• Research management
• Resource management
• Risk management
• Skills management
• Social entrepreneurship
• Spend management
• Spiritual management
• Strategic management
• Stress management
• Supply chain management
• Systems management
• Talent management
• Time management
• Visual management
• Agile management
• Association management
• Capability Management
• Change management
• Communication management
• Constraint management
• Cost management
• Crisis management
• Critical management studies
• Customer relationship management
• Decision making styles
• Design management
• Disaster management
• Earned value management
• Educational management
• Enterprise management
• Environmental management
• Facility management
• Financial management
• Forecasting
• Human resources management
• Hospital management
• Information technology management
• Innovation management
• Interim management
• Inventory management
• Knowledge management
• Land management
• Leadership management
• Logistics management
• Lifecycle management
• Management on demand
• Marketing management
• Materials management
• Operations management
• Organization development
• Perception management
• Practice management
• Program management
• Project management
• Process management
• Performance management
• Product management
• Public administration
• Public management
• Quality management
• Records management
• Research management
• Resource management
• Risk management
• Skills management
• Social entrepreneurship
• Spend management
• Spiritual management
• Strategic management
• Stress management
• Supply chain management
• Systems management
• Talent management
• Time management
• Visual management
Management topics
Basic functions of management
Management operates through various functions, often classified as planning, organizing, leading/motivating and controlling.
• Planning: deciding what needs to happen in the future (today, next week, next month, next year, over the next 5 years, etc.) and generating plans for action.
• Organizing: making optimum use of the resources required to enable the successful carrying out of plans.
• Leading/Motivating: exhibiting skills in these areas for getting others to play an effective part in achieving plans.
• Controlling: monitoring -- checking progress against plans, which may need modification based on feedback.
[edit] Formation of the business policy
• The mission of the business is its most obvious purpose -- which may be, for example, to make soap.
• The vision of the business reflects its aspirations and specifies its intended direction or future destination.
• The objectives of the business refers to the ends or activity at which a certain task is aimed.
• The business's policy is a guide that stipulates rules, regulations and objectives, and may be used in the managers' decision-making. It must be flexible and easily interpreted and understood by all employees.
• The business's strategy refers to the coordinated plan of action that it is going to take, as well as the resources that it will use, to realize its vision and long-term objectives. It is a guideline to managers, stipulating how they ought to allocate and utilize the factors of production to the business's advantage. Initially, it could help the managers decide on what type of business they want to form.
[edit] How to implement policies and strategies
• All policies and strategies must be discussed with all managerial personnel and staff.
• Managers must understand where and how they can implement their policies and strategies.
• A plan of action must be devised for each department.
• Policies and strategies must be reviewed regularly.
• Contingency plans must be devised in case the environment changes.
• Assessments of progress ought to be carried out regularly by top-level managers.
• A good environment is required within the business.
[edit] The development of policies and strategies
• The missions, objectives, strengths and weaknesses of each department must be analysed to determine their roles in achieving the business's mission.
• The forecasting method develops a reliable picture of the business's future environment.
• A planning unit must be created to ensure that all plans are consistent and that policies and strategies are aimed at achieving the same mission and objectives.
• Contingency plans must be developed, just in case.
All policies must be discussed with all managerial personnel and staff that is required in the execution of any departmental policy.
[edit] Where policies and strategies fit into the planning process
• They give mid- and lower-level managers a good idea of the future plans for each department.
• A framework is created whereby plans and decisions are made.
• Mid- and lower-level management may add their own plans to the business's strategic ones.
[edit] Managerial levels and hierarchy
The management of a large organization may have three levels:
1. Senior management (or "top management" or "upper management")
2. Middle management
3. Low-level management, such as supervisors or team-leaders
4. Foreman
5. Rank and File
Top-level management
• require an extensive knowledge of management roles and skills.
• They have to be very aware of external factors such as markets.
• Their decisions are generally of a long-term nature
• Their decision are made using analytic, directive, conceptual and/or behavioral/participative processes
• They are responsible for strategic decisions.
• They have to chalk out the plan and see that plan may be effective in the future.
• They are executive in nature.
Middle management
• Mid-level managers have a specialized understanding of certain managerial tasks.
• They are responsible for carrying out the decisions made by top-level management.
Lower management
• This level of management ensures that the decisions and plans taken by the other two are carried out.
• Lower-level managers' decisions are generally short-term ones
Foreman
• They are men who have direct supervision over the working force in office factory, sales field or other areas of activity of the concern.
Rank and File
• The responsibilities of the persons belonging to this group are even more restricted and more specific than those of the foreman.
Management operates through various functions, often classified as planning, organizing, leading/motivating and controlling.
• Planning: deciding what needs to happen in the future (today, next week, next month, next year, over the next 5 years, etc.) and generating plans for action.
• Organizing: making optimum use of the resources required to enable the successful carrying out of plans.
• Leading/Motivating: exhibiting skills in these areas for getting others to play an effective part in achieving plans.
• Controlling: monitoring -- checking progress against plans, which may need modification based on feedback.
[edit] Formation of the business policy
• The mission of the business is its most obvious purpose -- which may be, for example, to make soap.
• The vision of the business reflects its aspirations and specifies its intended direction or future destination.
• The objectives of the business refers to the ends or activity at which a certain task is aimed.
• The business's policy is a guide that stipulates rules, regulations and objectives, and may be used in the managers' decision-making. It must be flexible and easily interpreted and understood by all employees.
• The business's strategy refers to the coordinated plan of action that it is going to take, as well as the resources that it will use, to realize its vision and long-term objectives. It is a guideline to managers, stipulating how they ought to allocate and utilize the factors of production to the business's advantage. Initially, it could help the managers decide on what type of business they want to form.
[edit] How to implement policies and strategies
• All policies and strategies must be discussed with all managerial personnel and staff.
• Managers must understand where and how they can implement their policies and strategies.
• A plan of action must be devised for each department.
• Policies and strategies must be reviewed regularly.
• Contingency plans must be devised in case the environment changes.
• Assessments of progress ought to be carried out regularly by top-level managers.
• A good environment is required within the business.
[edit] The development of policies and strategies
• The missions, objectives, strengths and weaknesses of each department must be analysed to determine their roles in achieving the business's mission.
• The forecasting method develops a reliable picture of the business's future environment.
• A planning unit must be created to ensure that all plans are consistent and that policies and strategies are aimed at achieving the same mission and objectives.
• Contingency plans must be developed, just in case.
All policies must be discussed with all managerial personnel and staff that is required in the execution of any departmental policy.
[edit] Where policies and strategies fit into the planning process
• They give mid- and lower-level managers a good idea of the future plans for each department.
• A framework is created whereby plans and decisions are made.
• Mid- and lower-level management may add their own plans to the business's strategic ones.
[edit] Managerial levels and hierarchy
The management of a large organization may have three levels:
1. Senior management (or "top management" or "upper management")
2. Middle management
3. Low-level management, such as supervisors or team-leaders
4. Foreman
5. Rank and File
Top-level management
• require an extensive knowledge of management roles and skills.
• They have to be very aware of external factors such as markets.
• Their decisions are generally of a long-term nature
• Their decision are made using analytic, directive, conceptual and/or behavioral/participative processes
• They are responsible for strategic decisions.
• They have to chalk out the plan and see that plan may be effective in the future.
• They are executive in nature.
Middle management
• Mid-level managers have a specialized understanding of certain managerial tasks.
• They are responsible for carrying out the decisions made by top-level management.
Lower management
• This level of management ensures that the decisions and plans taken by the other two are carried out.
• Lower-level managers' decisions are generally short-term ones
Foreman
• They are men who have direct supervision over the working force in office factory, sales field or other areas of activity of the concern.
Rank and File
• The responsibilities of the persons belonging to this group are even more restricted and more specific than those of the foreman.
Management
Management in simple terms means the act of getting people together to accomplish desired goals. Management comprises planning, organizing, resourcing, leading or directing, and controlling an organization (a group of one or more people or entities) or effort for the purpose of accomplishing a goal. Resourcing encompasses the deployment and manipulation of human resources, financial resources, technological resources, and natural resources.
Management can also refer to the person or people who perform the act(s) of management.
Overview
The verb manage comes from the Italian maneggiare (to handle — especially a horse), which in turn derives from the Latin manus (hand). The French word mesnagement (later ménagement) influenced the development in meaning of the English word management in the 17th and 18th centuries.[1]
[edit] Theoretical scope
Mary Parker Follett (1868–1933), who wrote on the topic in the early twentieth century, defined management as "the art of getting things done through people".[2] One can also think of management functionally, as the action of measuring a quantity on a regular basis and of adjusting some initial plan; or as the actions taken to reach one's intended goal. This applies even in situations where planning does not take place. From this perspective, Frenchman Henri Fayol[3] considers management to consist of five functions:
1. planning
2. organizing
3. leading
4. co-ordinating
5. controlling
Some people, however, find this definition, while useful, far too narrow. The phrase "management is what managers do" occurs widely, suggesting the difficulty of defining management, the shifting nature of definitions, and the connection of managerial practices with the existence of a managerial cadre or class.
One habit of thought regards management as equivalent to "business administration" and thus excludes management in places outside commerce, as for example in charities and in the public sector. More realistically, however, every organization must manage its work, people, processes, technology, etc. in order to maximize its effectiveness. Nonetheless, many people refer to university departments which teach management as "business schools." Some institutions (such as the Harvard Business School) use that name while others (such as the Yale School of Management) employ the more inclusive term "management."
Speakers of English may also use the term "management" or "the management" as a collective word describing the managers of an organization, for example of a corporation. Historically this use of the term was often contrasted with the term "Labor" referring to those being managed.
[edit] Nature of managerial work
The neutrality of this section is disputed.
Please see the discussion on the talk page.(December 2007)
Please do not remove this message until the dispute is resolved.
In for-profit work, management has as its primary function the satisfaction of a range of stakeholders. This typically involves making a profit (for the shareholders), creating valued products at a reasonable cost (for customers), and providing rewarding employment opportunities (for employees). In nonprofit management, add the importance of keeping the faith of donors. In most models of management/governance, shareholders vote for the board of directors, and the board then hires senior management. Some organizations have experimented with other methods (such as employee-voting models) of selecting or reviewing managers; but this occurs only very rarely.
In the public sector of countries constituted as representative democracies, voters elect politicians to public office. Such politicians hire many managers and administrators, and in some countries like the United States political appointees lose their jobs on the election of a new president/governor/mayor. Some 2500 people serve at the pleasure of the United States Chief Executive, including all of the top US government executives.
Public, private, and voluntary sectors place different demands on managers, but all must retain the faith of those who select them (if they wish to retain their jobs), retain the faith of those people that fund the organization, and retain the faith of those who work for the organization. If they fail to convince employees of the advantages of staying rather than leaving, they may tip the organization into a downward spiral of hiring, training, firing, and recruiting. Management also has the task of innovating and of improving the functioning of organizations.
[edit] Historical development
Difficulties arise in tracing the history of management. Some see it (by definition) as a late modern (in the sense of late modernity) conceptualization. On those terms it cannot have a pre-modern history, only harbingers (such as stewards). Others, however, detect management-like activities in the pre-modern past. Some writers[who?] trace the development of management-thought back to Sumerian traders and to the builders of the pyramids of ancient Egypt. Slave-owners through the centuries faced the problems of exploiting/motivating a dependent but sometimes unenthusiastic or recalcitrant workforce, but many pre-industrial enterprises, given their small scale, did not feel compelled to face the issues of management systematically. However, innovations such as the spread of Arabic numerals (5th to 15th centuries) and the codification of double-entry book-keeping (1494) provided tools for management assessment, planning and control.
Given the scale of most commercial operations and the lack of mechanized record-keeping and recording before the industrial revolution, it made sense for most owners of enterprises in those times to carry out management functions by and for themselves. But with growing size and complexity of organizations, the split between owners (individuals, industrial dynasties or groups of shareholders) and day-to-day managers (independent specialists in planning and control) gradually became more common.
[edit] Early writing
While management has been present for millennia, several writers have created a background of works that assisted in modern management theories.[4]
[edit] Sun Tzu's The Art of War
Written by Chinese general Sun Tzu in the 6th century BCE, The Art of War is a military strategy book that, for managerial purposes, recommends being aware of and acting on strengths and weaknesses of both a manager's organization and a foe's.[4]
[edit] Niccolò Machiavelli's The Prince
Believing that people were motivated by self-interest, Niccolò Machiavelli wrote The Prince in 1513 as advice for the leadership of Florence, Italy.[5] Machiavelli recommended that leaders use fear—but not hatred—to maintain control.
[edit] Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations
Written in 1776 by Adam Smith, a Scottish moral philosopher, The Wealth of Nations aims for efficient organization of work through division of labor.[5] Smith described how changes in processes could boost productivity in the manufacture of pins. While individuals could produce 200 pins per day, Smith analyzed the steps involved in manufacture and, with 10 specialists, enabled production of 48,000 pins per day.[5]
[edit] 19th century
Some argue[citation needed] that modern management as a discipline began as an off-shoot of economics in the 19th century. Classical economists such as Adam Smith (1723 - 1790) and John Stuart Mill (1806 - 1873) provided a theoretical background to resource-allocation, production, and pricing issues. About the same time, innovators like Eli Whitney (1765 - 1825), James Watt (1736 - 1819), and Matthew Boulton (1728 - 1809) developed elements of technical production such as standardization, quality-control procedures, cost-accounting, interchangeability of parts, and work-planning. Many of these aspects of management existed in the pre-1861 slave-based sector of the US economy. That environment saw 4 million people, as the contemporary usages had it, "managed" in profitable quasi-mass production.
By the late 19th century, marginal economists Alfred Marshall (1842 - 1924) and Léon Walras (1834 - 1910) and others introduced a new layer of complexity to the theoretical underpinnings of management. Joseph Wharton offered the first tertiary-level course in management in 1881.
[edit] 20th century
By about 1900 one finds managers trying to place their theories on what they regarded as a thoroughly scientific basis (see scientism for perceived limitations of this belief). Examples include Henry R. Towne's Science of management in the 1890s, Frederick Winslow Taylor's Scientific management (1911), Frank and Lillian Gilbreth's Applied motion study (1917), and Henry L. Gantt's charts (1910s). J. Duncan wrote the first college management textbook in 1911. In 1912 Yoichi Ueno introduced Taylorism to Japan and became first management consultant of the "Japanese-management style". His son Ichiro Ueno pioneered Japanese quality-assurance.
The first comprehensive theories of management appeared around 1920. The Harvard Business School invented the Master of Business Administration degree (MBA) in 1921. People like Henri Fayol (1841 - 1925) and Alexander Church described the various branches of management and their inter-relationships. In the early 20th century, people like Ordway Tead (1891 - 1973), Walter Scott and J. Mooney applied the principles of psychology to management, while other writers, such as Elton Mayo (1880 - 1949), Mary Parker Follett (1868 - 1933), Chester Barnard (1886 - 1961), Max Weber (1864 - 1920), Rensis Likert (1903 - 1981), and Chris Argyris (1923 - ) approached the phenomenon of management from a sociological perspective.
Peter Drucker (1909 – 2005) wrote one of the earliest books on applied management: Concept of the Corporation (published in 1946). It resulted from Alfred Sloan (chairman of General Motors until 1956) commissioning a study of the organisation. Drucker went on to write 39 books, many in the same vein.
H. Dodge, Ronald Fisher (1890 - 1962), and Thornton C. Fry introduced statistical techniques into management-studies. In the 1940s, Patrick Blackett combined these statistical theories with microeconomic theory and gave birth to the science of operations research. Operations research, sometimes known as "management science" (but distinct from Taylor's scientific management), attempts to take a scientific approach to solving management problems, particularly in the areas of logistics and operations.
Some of the more recent developments include the Theory of Constraints, management by objectives, reengineering, Six Sigma and various information-technology-driven theories such as agile software development, as well as group management theories such as Cog's Ladder.
As the general recognition of managers as a class solidified during the 20th century and gave perceived practitioners of the art/science of management a certain amount of prestige, so the way opened for popularised systems of management ideas to peddle their wares. In this context many management fads may have had more to do with pop psychology than with scientific theories of management.
Towards the end of the 20th century, business management came to consist of six separate branches, namely:
• Human resource management
• Operations management or production management
• Strategic management
• Marketing management
• Financial management
• Information technology management responsible for management information systems
[edit] 21st century
In the 21st century observers find it increasingly difficult to subdivide management into functional categories in this way. More and more processes simultaneously involve several categories. Instead, one tends to think in terms of the various processes, tasks, and objects subject to management.
Branches of management theory also exist relating to nonprofits and to government: such as public administration, public management, and educational management. Further, management programs related to civil-society organizations have also spawned programs in nonprofit management and social entrepreneurship.
Note that many of the assumptions made by management have come under attack from business ethics viewpoints, critical management studies, and anti-corporate activism.
As one consequence, workplace democracy has become both more common, and more advocated, in some places distributing all management functions among the workers, each of whom takes on a portion of the work. However, these models predate any current political issue, and may occur more naturally than does a command hierarchy. All management to some degree embraces democratic principles in that in the long term workers must give majority support to management; otherwise they leave to find other work, or go on strike. Hence management has started to become less based on the conceptualisation of classical military command-and-control, and more about facilitation and support of collaborative activity, utilizing principles such as those of human interaction management to deal with the complexities of human interaction. Indeed, the concept of Ubiquitous command-and-control posits such a transformation for 21st century military management.
Management can also refer to the person or people who perform the act(s) of management.
Overview
The verb manage comes from the Italian maneggiare (to handle — especially a horse), which in turn derives from the Latin manus (hand). The French word mesnagement (later ménagement) influenced the development in meaning of the English word management in the 17th and 18th centuries.[1]
[edit] Theoretical scope
Mary Parker Follett (1868–1933), who wrote on the topic in the early twentieth century, defined management as "the art of getting things done through people".[2] One can also think of management functionally, as the action of measuring a quantity on a regular basis and of adjusting some initial plan; or as the actions taken to reach one's intended goal. This applies even in situations where planning does not take place. From this perspective, Frenchman Henri Fayol[3] considers management to consist of five functions:
1. planning
2. organizing
3. leading
4. co-ordinating
5. controlling
Some people, however, find this definition, while useful, far too narrow. The phrase "management is what managers do" occurs widely, suggesting the difficulty of defining management, the shifting nature of definitions, and the connection of managerial practices with the existence of a managerial cadre or class.
One habit of thought regards management as equivalent to "business administration" and thus excludes management in places outside commerce, as for example in charities and in the public sector. More realistically, however, every organization must manage its work, people, processes, technology, etc. in order to maximize its effectiveness. Nonetheless, many people refer to university departments which teach management as "business schools." Some institutions (such as the Harvard Business School) use that name while others (such as the Yale School of Management) employ the more inclusive term "management."
Speakers of English may also use the term "management" or "the management" as a collective word describing the managers of an organization, for example of a corporation. Historically this use of the term was often contrasted with the term "Labor" referring to those being managed.
[edit] Nature of managerial work
The neutrality of this section is disputed.
Please see the discussion on the talk page.(December 2007)
Please do not remove this message until the dispute is resolved.
In for-profit work, management has as its primary function the satisfaction of a range of stakeholders. This typically involves making a profit (for the shareholders), creating valued products at a reasonable cost (for customers), and providing rewarding employment opportunities (for employees). In nonprofit management, add the importance of keeping the faith of donors. In most models of management/governance, shareholders vote for the board of directors, and the board then hires senior management. Some organizations have experimented with other methods (such as employee-voting models) of selecting or reviewing managers; but this occurs only very rarely.
In the public sector of countries constituted as representative democracies, voters elect politicians to public office. Such politicians hire many managers and administrators, and in some countries like the United States political appointees lose their jobs on the election of a new president/governor/mayor. Some 2500 people serve at the pleasure of the United States Chief Executive, including all of the top US government executives.
Public, private, and voluntary sectors place different demands on managers, but all must retain the faith of those who select them (if they wish to retain their jobs), retain the faith of those people that fund the organization, and retain the faith of those who work for the organization. If they fail to convince employees of the advantages of staying rather than leaving, they may tip the organization into a downward spiral of hiring, training, firing, and recruiting. Management also has the task of innovating and of improving the functioning of organizations.
[edit] Historical development
Difficulties arise in tracing the history of management. Some see it (by definition) as a late modern (in the sense of late modernity) conceptualization. On those terms it cannot have a pre-modern history, only harbingers (such as stewards). Others, however, detect management-like activities in the pre-modern past. Some writers[who?] trace the development of management-thought back to Sumerian traders and to the builders of the pyramids of ancient Egypt. Slave-owners through the centuries faced the problems of exploiting/motivating a dependent but sometimes unenthusiastic or recalcitrant workforce, but many pre-industrial enterprises, given their small scale, did not feel compelled to face the issues of management systematically. However, innovations such as the spread of Arabic numerals (5th to 15th centuries) and the codification of double-entry book-keeping (1494) provided tools for management assessment, planning and control.
Given the scale of most commercial operations and the lack of mechanized record-keeping and recording before the industrial revolution, it made sense for most owners of enterprises in those times to carry out management functions by and for themselves. But with growing size and complexity of organizations, the split between owners (individuals, industrial dynasties or groups of shareholders) and day-to-day managers (independent specialists in planning and control) gradually became more common.
[edit] Early writing
While management has been present for millennia, several writers have created a background of works that assisted in modern management theories.[4]
[edit] Sun Tzu's The Art of War
Written by Chinese general Sun Tzu in the 6th century BCE, The Art of War is a military strategy book that, for managerial purposes, recommends being aware of and acting on strengths and weaknesses of both a manager's organization and a foe's.[4]
[edit] Niccolò Machiavelli's The Prince
Believing that people were motivated by self-interest, Niccolò Machiavelli wrote The Prince in 1513 as advice for the leadership of Florence, Italy.[5] Machiavelli recommended that leaders use fear—but not hatred—to maintain control.
[edit] Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations
Written in 1776 by Adam Smith, a Scottish moral philosopher, The Wealth of Nations aims for efficient organization of work through division of labor.[5] Smith described how changes in processes could boost productivity in the manufacture of pins. While individuals could produce 200 pins per day, Smith analyzed the steps involved in manufacture and, with 10 specialists, enabled production of 48,000 pins per day.[5]
[edit] 19th century
Some argue[citation needed] that modern management as a discipline began as an off-shoot of economics in the 19th century. Classical economists such as Adam Smith (1723 - 1790) and John Stuart Mill (1806 - 1873) provided a theoretical background to resource-allocation, production, and pricing issues. About the same time, innovators like Eli Whitney (1765 - 1825), James Watt (1736 - 1819), and Matthew Boulton (1728 - 1809) developed elements of technical production such as standardization, quality-control procedures, cost-accounting, interchangeability of parts, and work-planning. Many of these aspects of management existed in the pre-1861 slave-based sector of the US economy. That environment saw 4 million people, as the contemporary usages had it, "managed" in profitable quasi-mass production.
By the late 19th century, marginal economists Alfred Marshall (1842 - 1924) and Léon Walras (1834 - 1910) and others introduced a new layer of complexity to the theoretical underpinnings of management. Joseph Wharton offered the first tertiary-level course in management in 1881.
[edit] 20th century
By about 1900 one finds managers trying to place their theories on what they regarded as a thoroughly scientific basis (see scientism for perceived limitations of this belief). Examples include Henry R. Towne's Science of management in the 1890s, Frederick Winslow Taylor's Scientific management (1911), Frank and Lillian Gilbreth's Applied motion study (1917), and Henry L. Gantt's charts (1910s). J. Duncan wrote the first college management textbook in 1911. In 1912 Yoichi Ueno introduced Taylorism to Japan and became first management consultant of the "Japanese-management style". His son Ichiro Ueno pioneered Japanese quality-assurance.
The first comprehensive theories of management appeared around 1920. The Harvard Business School invented the Master of Business Administration degree (MBA) in 1921. People like Henri Fayol (1841 - 1925) and Alexander Church described the various branches of management and their inter-relationships. In the early 20th century, people like Ordway Tead (1891 - 1973), Walter Scott and J. Mooney applied the principles of psychology to management, while other writers, such as Elton Mayo (1880 - 1949), Mary Parker Follett (1868 - 1933), Chester Barnard (1886 - 1961), Max Weber (1864 - 1920), Rensis Likert (1903 - 1981), and Chris Argyris (1923 - ) approached the phenomenon of management from a sociological perspective.
Peter Drucker (1909 – 2005) wrote one of the earliest books on applied management: Concept of the Corporation (published in 1946). It resulted from Alfred Sloan (chairman of General Motors until 1956) commissioning a study of the organisation. Drucker went on to write 39 books, many in the same vein.
H. Dodge, Ronald Fisher (1890 - 1962), and Thornton C. Fry introduced statistical techniques into management-studies. In the 1940s, Patrick Blackett combined these statistical theories with microeconomic theory and gave birth to the science of operations research. Operations research, sometimes known as "management science" (but distinct from Taylor's scientific management), attempts to take a scientific approach to solving management problems, particularly in the areas of logistics and operations.
Some of the more recent developments include the Theory of Constraints, management by objectives, reengineering, Six Sigma and various information-technology-driven theories such as agile software development, as well as group management theories such as Cog's Ladder.
As the general recognition of managers as a class solidified during the 20th century and gave perceived practitioners of the art/science of management a certain amount of prestige, so the way opened for popularised systems of management ideas to peddle their wares. In this context many management fads may have had more to do with pop psychology than with scientific theories of management.
Towards the end of the 20th century, business management came to consist of six separate branches, namely:
• Human resource management
• Operations management or production management
• Strategic management
• Marketing management
• Financial management
• Information technology management responsible for management information systems
[edit] 21st century
In the 21st century observers find it increasingly difficult to subdivide management into functional categories in this way. More and more processes simultaneously involve several categories. Instead, one tends to think in terms of the various processes, tasks, and objects subject to management.
Branches of management theory also exist relating to nonprofits and to government: such as public administration, public management, and educational management. Further, management programs related to civil-society organizations have also spawned programs in nonprofit management and social entrepreneurship.
Note that many of the assumptions made by management have come under attack from business ethics viewpoints, critical management studies, and anti-corporate activism.
As one consequence, workplace democracy has become both more common, and more advocated, in some places distributing all management functions among the workers, each of whom takes on a portion of the work. However, these models predate any current political issue, and may occur more naturally than does a command hierarchy. All management to some degree embraces democratic principles in that in the long term workers must give majority support to management; otherwise they leave to find other work, or go on strike. Hence management has started to become less based on the conceptualisation of classical military command-and-control, and more about facilitation and support of collaborative activity, utilizing principles such as those of human interaction management to deal with the complexities of human interaction. Indeed, the concept of Ubiquitous command-and-control posits such a transformation for 21st century military management.
List of relational database management systems
Open-source software
• CSQL
• Derby aka Java DB
• Firebird
• Gladius DB
• H2
• HSQLDB
• Ingres
• LucidDB [1]
• Mckoi SQL Database
• MonetDB
• MySQL
• Ocelot SQL [2]
• OpenLink Virtuoso (Open Source Edition)
• PostgreSQL
• Quadcap QED
• Rebol sql-protocol
• SmallSQL
• SQLite
• txtSQL
Freeware (proprietary)
• Adabas D
• Advantage Local Server
• IBM DB2 Express-C
• FrontBase
• MaxDB
• Microsoft SQL Server Express
• Oracle Database 10g Express Edition
• Sav Zigzag
• ScimoreDB
• Sybase ASE Express Edition
• tdbengine
Proprietary software
• 4th Dimension
• Microsoft Access
• Advantage Database Server
• Alpha_Five
• CA-Datacom
• Dataphor
• Daffodil database
• DB2
• EnterpriseDB
• eXtremeDB
• Faircom c-tree
• FileMaker Pro
• Greenplum
• Helix database
• Informix
• InterBase
• Jbase
• Kognitio, WX2
• Linter
• Matisse
• Microsoft Jet Database Engine (part of Microsoft Access)
• Microsoft SQL Server
• Microsoft Visual FoxPro
• Mimer SQL
• mSQL
• Multivalue
• MySQL
• Netezza
• NonStop SQL
• Oddity Databases
• Openbase
• Oracle
• Oracle Rdb for OpenVMS
• OpenLink Virtuoso Universal Server
• Pervasive
• Pick Post-Relational
• Progress 4GL
• Pyrrho DBMS
• Sand Analytic Server (formerly known as Nucleus)
• SIR (including SIR/XS, SIR2002, SIR2000 ...)
• solidDB
• GUPTA SQLBase
• Sybase SQL Anywhere (formerly known as Sybase Adaptive Server Anywhere and Watcom SQL)
• Sybase Adaptive Server Enterprise
• Sybase Adaptive Server IQ
• Teradata
• ThinkSQL
• TimesTen
• Unify
• Valentina (Database)
• Vertica
• VistaDB
• VMDS
• Whitecross Systems
• WinBase602
• CSQL
• Derby aka Java DB
• Firebird
• Gladius DB
• H2
• HSQLDB
• Ingres
• LucidDB [1]
• Mckoi SQL Database
• MonetDB
• MySQL
• Ocelot SQL [2]
• OpenLink Virtuoso (Open Source Edition)
• PostgreSQL
• Quadcap QED
• Rebol sql-protocol
• SmallSQL
• SQLite
• txtSQL
Freeware (proprietary)
• Adabas D
• Advantage Local Server
• IBM DB2 Express-C
• FrontBase
• MaxDB
• Microsoft SQL Server Express
• Oracle Database 10g Express Edition
• Sav Zigzag
• ScimoreDB
• Sybase ASE Express Edition
• tdbengine
Proprietary software
• 4th Dimension
• Microsoft Access
• Advantage Database Server
• Alpha_Five
• CA-Datacom
• Dataphor
• Daffodil database
• DB2
• EnterpriseDB
• eXtremeDB
• Faircom c-tree
• FileMaker Pro
• Greenplum
• Helix database
• Informix
• InterBase
• Jbase
• Kognitio, WX2
• Linter
• Matisse
• Microsoft Jet Database Engine (part of Microsoft Access)
• Microsoft SQL Server
• Microsoft Visual FoxPro
• Mimer SQL
• mSQL
• Multivalue
• MySQL
• Netezza
• NonStop SQL
• Oddity Databases
• Openbase
• Oracle
• Oracle Rdb for OpenVMS
• OpenLink Virtuoso Universal Server
• Pervasive
• Pick Post-Relational
• Progress 4GL
• Pyrrho DBMS
• Sand Analytic Server (formerly known as Nucleus)
• SIR (including SIR/XS, SIR2002, SIR2000 ...)
• solidDB
• GUPTA SQLBase
• Sybase SQL Anywhere (formerly known as Sybase Adaptive Server Anywhere and Watcom SQL)
• Sybase Adaptive Server Enterprise
• Sybase Adaptive Server IQ
• Teradata
• ThinkSQL
• TimesTen
• Unify
• Valentina (Database)
• Vertica
• VistaDB
• VMDS
• Whitecross Systems
• WinBase602
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