Aim: To develop a critical awareness of current factors affecting leading and managing people and to demonstrate how effective policies can add value to the business' strategic goals.

Learning Outcomes:

To be able to

- Debate and critically evaluate the characteristics of effective leadership and the methods used to develop leaders in organisations.

- Debate and critically evaluate the leading theories behind group and team effectiveness and flexibility at all levels in organisations.

- Critically evaluate the dilemmas of ethical and responsible behaviour that managers face offering appropriate analytical tools to help manage them

- Critically evaluate and analyse the effectiveness of change management in organisations.

Context:

You receive an Email from a senior manager in your organisation (has no formal qualifications) who has been told he has to send three members of his junior management teamon an MBA course. He has received information about the course from the local university but needs clarification on the content of one of the units being offered in year one. Heknows you have completed this course.

The email says:

"I have been readingabout this unit, Leading and Managing People. The course information says it is not a subject like Financial Management or Quantitative Methods in Business, but I am not convinced of its purpose. What value will the topic managing changereally add to my staff's development and how will they ever use the concepts learned? The brochure says there are really no right or wrong answers so far as the leadership and management of people are concerned. Are you able to explain to me why this is the case and what this all means please?"

Your Task:

Formulate a critical and constructive response to this manager in the form of a short report on this topic (managing change)incorporating evidence-based argument to support your views and to advise what he should do.

Task

Discussion of topic

Provide a detailed and critical discussion of the topic chosen. Ensure you define the area clearly and include relevant academic literature, theories and current thinking about the topic. Evaluate the merits and disadvantages of this topic area to a business. How well does it work and what causes it to go wrong? Citations from or references to research and/or other sources of evidence is expected. It will also be useful to include examples of this topic in action in current organisations to show how knowledge about leadership and management has been systematically applied to improve individual and corporate outcomes. You may also wish to challenge the manager's view that there are no ‘right' answers in the people leadership/management arena: even if the answers aren't absolutely ‘right', are there some answers which are better than others?

Please make sure you include in your answer materials from the course and do not rely on random internet sources where quality is not benchmarked.(around 1000 words)