BADM 310 is a leadership theory class in Management and Organizational Behavior. Although it is a class that introduces different approaches and frameworks of managing a company or an organization, I think the concepts can be extended and applied to other groups.

​

Throughout the class, we established that a main goal for managers to achieve is to facilitate both the efficiency and the effectiveness of his/her group members’ or employees’. We learned about the typical structure of management, which includes CEO, top managers, middle managers and first line managers, and their different responsibilities and significance inside an organization. There are also three types of skills involved in managing: conceptual skills, human skills and technical skills. An important difference among different levels of managers is that the higher the level of managing, the greater need for more developed conceptual skills. The lower the level of managing, managers require higher technical skills, but lower conceptual skills.

​

We also investigated different management tools and approaches that could help improve organizational performances.  My favorite was Max Weber’s 5 Principals of Bureaucracy, which is a framework that suggests how bureaucracy inside an organization should be established and structured. One of these principals is that “managers must create a well-defined system of rules, standard operation procedures and norms.” I think this principal can greatly help introduce order inside an organization, reduce unnecessary uncertainty and differences, help keep the products and services consistent, and increase the efficiency of an organization. Another principal is that “people should occupy positions because of their performance, not their social connections.” I am a firm believer that hard work will pay off, and therefore, I strongly support this principal too. I think an organization that rewards its employees based on their performance can truly motivate its employees to be serious with their work and be productive. And this in turn, would improve the organization’s overall performance.

​

The biggest thing I learned is to become a fair leader myself in the future. That is, I should set up reward criteria based on people’s performance, rather than if they have personal relationship with powerful people in the organization or not. In this way, people who truly make contributions to the organization will get recognized and be motivated to keep up their good work in the organization.

​