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Teaching and Learning Resources
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Administrative Office Management
Rationale
Functions of Managers
Managers just don't go out and haphazardly perform their responsibilities. Good managers discover how to master five basic functions: planning, organizing, staffing, leading, and controlling.
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Planning: This step involves mapping out exactly how to achieve a particular goal. Say, for example, that the organization's goal is to improve company sales. The manager first needs to decide which steps are necessary to accomplish that goal. These steps may include increasing advertising, inventory, and sales staff. These necessary steps are developed into a plan. When the plan is in place, the manager can follow it to accomplish the goal of improving company sales.
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Organizing: After a plan is in place, a manager needs to organize her team and materials according to her plan. Assigning work and granting authority are two important elements of organizing.
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Staffing: After a manager discerns his area's needs, he may decide to beef up his staffing by recruiting, selecting, training, and developing employees. A manager in a large organization often works with the company's human resources department to accomplish this goal.
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Leading: A manager needs to do more than just plan, organize, and staff her team to achieve a goal. She must also lead. Leading involves motivating, communicating, guiding, and encouraging. It requires the manager to coach, assist, and problem solve with employees.
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Controlling: After the other elements are in place, a manager's job is not finished. He needs to continuously check results against goals and take any corrective actions necessary to make sure that his area's plans remain on track.
All managers at all levels of every organization perform these functions, but the amount of time a manager spends on each one depends on both the level of management and the specific organization.
Roles performed by managers
Learning Objectives and Outcomes
This is a non-taught unit designed for self-directed study by those intending to enhance their professional or managerial competence, knowledge, understanding, and skills in administrative office management..
Knowledge
After completing the course, student understand
1. Functions and roles performed by managers
2. Principles of facilities management
4. Factors contributing to an effective office working environment
6. Role of human resource management in the selection, training and motivation of office personnel
7. Importance of an effective computer and telecommunication systems for an organization
8. Importance of effective records management program for an organization
9. Importance of effective quality and quantity control
Skills
After completing the course, student will be able to
1. Develop an appropriate management strategy for use by an administrative office manager, taking into consideration the evolutionary nature of the broader field of management.
2. Develop an appropriate philosophy regarding the organizing function of administrative office management
4. Develop an appropriate philosophy regarding the important role communication plays in administrative office management.
5. Design an efficient layout for a general office area
6. Develop effective strategies for selection, training, motivation and supervision of subordinates
7. Evaluate the effectiveness of office systems and communications software
8. Evaluate records management programme of an organization
9. Evaluate budgetary and cost control procedures of an organization
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Teaching and Learning Resources
Processes
Office manager is a profession related to office supervisory positions.
People that hold office management positions conduct special studies and based on the results of these special studies, they develop reports. Apart from developing reports, they also provide input to management on the development of policies and procedures. Office management may also provide paralegal support, and may draft correspondence for management, schedule appointments, etc.
- Office technology
- Office equipment
- Association of Professional Office Managers (APOM)
- National Office Managers Association of America (NOMAA)
- Chief administrative officer
Organizing, like planning, must be a carefully worked out and applied process. This process involves determining what work is needed to accomplish the goal, assigning those tasks to individuals, and arranging those individuals in a decision-making framework (organisational structure). The end result of the organizing process is an organization — a whole consisting of unified parts acting in harmony to execute tasks to achieve goals, both effectively and efficiently.
A properly implemented organizing process should result in a work environment where all team members are aware of their responsibilities. If the organizing process is not conducted well, the results may yield confusion, frustration, loss of efficiency, and limited effectiveness.
In general, the organisational process consists of five steps (a flowchart of these steps is shown in Figure below
The goal of communication is to convey information—and the understanding of that information—from one person or group to another person or group. This communication process is divided into three basic components: A sender transmits a message through a channel to the receiver. (Figure below shows a more elaborate model.) The sender first develops an idea, which is composed into a message and then transmitted to the other party, who interprets the message and receives meaning. Information theorists have added somewhat more complicated language. Developing a message is known as encoding. Interpreting the message is referred to as decoding.
Office Environment
Tutorials
Readings
Facility management is an interdisciplinary field primarily devoted to the maintenance and care of commercial or institutional buildings, such as hospitals, clinics, hotels, resorts, schools, office complexes, sports arenas or convention centres. Duties may include the care of air conditioning, electric power, plumbing and lighting systems; cleaning; decoration; grounds keeping and security. Some or all of these duties can be assisted by computer programs. These duties can be thought of as non-core or support services, because they are not the primary business of the owner organization (e.g., the core function of a school is teaching, and custodians or HVAC system maintenance personnel are support personnel.)
It is the role of the facility management function (whether it is a separate department or small team) to coordinate and oversee the safe, secure, and environmentally-sound operations and maintenance of these assets in a cost effective manner aimed at long-term preservation of the asset value, and also other janitorial duties such as making sure the environment is properly cleaned and sanitized for its tenants. In those cases where the operation of the facility directly involves the occupants and/or customers of the owner organization, the satisfactory delivery of facility-related services to these people will be an important consideration too; hence, the term "end-user satisfaction" is often used both as a goal and a measure of performance.
The term facility management is similar to property management although not exactly the same. While both manage the day to day operations of a facility the property such as cleaning, maintenance and security, similar to Janitors, one must not confuse it with such a title. The property manager has an expanded role which includes leasing and marketing activities whereas the facility manager role focuses on existing tenants who usually are owner occupants. An important feature of facility management is that it takes account of human needs of its tenants in the use of buildings and other constructed facilities. These softer factors complement the harder factors associated with the maintenance and care of engineering services installations.
According to Atkin and Brooks[1], an important concept in the facility management field is that of outsourcing, where the owner enters into an arrangement with external organizations to provide one or more services in preference to their being provided through internal arrangements. The reasons for this action can vary, including lack of in-house resources, lack of expertise and pressure to reduce costs. Unfortunately, confusion can exist because of the close association that facility management has with outsourcing. The two concepts are not synonymous; rather, outsourcing is one means for providing facility-related services to the owner organization.
Facility management is performed during the operational phase of a building’s life cycle, which normally extends over many decades. As such, it will represent a continuous process of service provision to support the owner’s core business and one where improvement will be sought on a continuous basis. It is essential that decision-making in the preceding design and construction phases is therefore properly informed about operational requirements if the facility is to provide optimal support to the owner’s business. In this connection, facility management can be seen as an integral part of a coordinated and controlled process of design, engineering, construction and operations. Where a facility is provided on a turnkey basis, for example design-build-finance-operate (DBFO), the consortium responsible for the delivery of the physical asset and then operating the core service will need to understand implicitly the day-to-day demands in managing that facility. Under such arrangements – typically public-private partnerships (PPP) – owner-operators must fully integrate operational thinking into early design decision-making.
A major challenge facing facility owners is reducing demand for energy for economic reasons, but also because energy consumption goes hand-in-hand with carbon emissions. Reducing energy during the operational phase of a facility's life similarly reduces carbon emissions. When considering that 30-40% of a country's total carbon emissions is attributable to buildings and other constructed facilities, it is clear that operations and, hence, facility management have a significant role to play.
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Human Resources
Tutorials
- Selecting Office Employees
- Developing Office Employees
- Supervising Office Employees
- Motivating Office Employees
- Appraising Performance of Office Employees
- Analysing Jobs of Office Employees
- Evaluating Jobs of Office Employees
- Administering Salaries of Office Employees
- Measuring Output of Office Employees
- Improving Productivity of Office Employees
Readings
Human resources is a term used to describe the individuals who comprise the workforce of an organization, although it is also applied in labour economics to, for example, business sectors or even whole nations. Human resources is also the name of the function within an organization charged with the overall responsibility for implementing strategies and policies relating to the management of individuals (i.e. the human resources). This function title is often abbreviated to the initials 'HR'. Human resources is a relatively modern management term, coined as early as the 1960s - when humanity took a shift as human rights came to a brighter light during the Vietnam Era.[citation needed] The origins of the function arose in organizations that introduced 'welfare management' practices and also in those that adopted the principles of 'scientific management'. From these terms emerged a largely administrative management activity, coordinating a range of worker related processes and becoming known, in time as the 'personnel function'. Human resources progressively became the more usual name for this function, in the first instance in the United States as well as multinational or international corporations, reflecting the adoption of a more quantitative as well as strategic approach to workforce management, demanded by corporate management to gain a competitive advantage, utilizing limited skilled and highly skilled workers. |
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Performance-related pay is money paid to someone relating to how well he or she works at the workplace. Car salesmen, production line workers, for example, may be paid in this way, or through commission.
Business theorist Frederick Winslow Taylor was a great supporter of this method of payment, which is often referred to as PRP. He believed money was the main incentive for increased productivity and introducing the widely used concept of 'piece work'.
This standards-based system is used for evaluating employees and setting salaries by many employers. Standards-based methods have been in de facto use for centuries among commission-based sales staff: They are paid more for selling more, and low performers do not earn enough to make keeping the job worthwhile.
In addition to motivating the rewarded behaviour, standards-based methods can provide a level of standardization in employee evaluations, which can reduce fears of favouritism and make the employer's expectations clear. For example, an employer might set a minimum standard of 12,000 keystrokes per hour in a simple data-entry job, and reassign or replace employees who cannot perform at that level. Employees would be secure in knowing that their performance was evaluated objectively according to the standard of their work instead of the whims of a supervisor, or against an ever-climbing average of their group.
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Systems and Computing
Tutorials
Readings
Information Systems (IS) is an academic/professional discipline concerned with the strategic, managerial and operational activities involved in the gathering, processing, storing, distributing and use of information, and its associated technologies, in society and organizations.[4] As an area of study, IS bridges the multidisciplinary business field and the interdisciplinary computer science field that is evolving toward a new scientific discipline.[5][6][7][8] An information systems discipline therefore is supported by the theoretical foundations of information and computations such that undergraduate students have unique opportunities to explore the academics of various business models as well as related algorithmic processes within a computer science discipline.[9][10][11] Typically, information systems or the more common legacy information systems include people, procedures, data, software, and hardware (by degree) that are used to gather and analyse digital information.[12][13] Specifically computer-based information systems are complementary networks of hardware/software that people and organizations use to collect, filter, process, create, & distribute data (computing).[14] Computer Information System(s) (CIS) is often a track within the computer science field studying computers and algorithmic processes, including their principles, their software & hardware designs, their applications, and their impact on society.[15][16][17] Overall, an IS discipline emphasizes functionality over design.[18]
As illustrated by the Venn Diagram, the history of information systems coincides with the history of computer science that began long before the modern discipline of computer science emerged in the twentieth century.[19] Regarding the circulation of information and ideas, numerous legacy information systems still exist today that are continuously updated to promote ethnographic approaches, to ensure data integrity, and to improve the social effectiveness & efficiency of the whole process.[20] In general, information systems are focused upon processing information within organizations, especially within business enterprises, and sharing the benefits with modern society.[21]
- Overview
- Definition
- The Discipline of Information Systems
- Differentiating IS from Related Disciplines
- Types of information systems
- Information systems career pathways
- Information systems development
- Information systems development methodology
- Information systems research
- Association for Information Systems (AIS)
- Centre for Information Systems Research - Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- European Research Centre for Information Systems
- Index of Information Systems Journals
- Information Systems Department, The George Washington University
- Information Systems Department, UMBC
- Information Systems and Innovation Group, Department of Management , London School of Economics
- Information Systems Network a research network from the Social Science Research Network
- School of Information Systems, Deakin University
- Department of Information Systems, University Teknologi Malaysia
- Systems Analysis
- Microsoft Office
Computing is usually defined as the activity of using and improving computer technology, computer hardware and software. It is the computer-specific part of information technology. Computer science (or computing science) is the study and the science of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and their implementation and application in computer systems.
Computing Curricula 2005[1] defined computing:
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A computer is a machine that manipulates data according to a set of instructions called a computer program. The program has an executable form that the computer can use directly to execute the instructions. The same program in its human-readable source code form, enables a programmer to study and develop the algorithm. Because the instructions can be carried out in different types of computers, a single set of source instructions converts to machine instructions according to the central processing unit type.
The execution process carries out the instructions in a computer program. Instructions express the computations performed by the computer. They trigger sequences of simple actions on the executing machine. Those actions produce effects according to the semantics of the instructions.
Computer programming in general is the process of writing, testing, debugging, and maintaining the source code and documentation of computer programs. This source code is written in a programming language, which is an artificial language, restrictive, demanding, and unforgiving to humans but easily translated by the computer. The purpose of programming is to invoke the desired behaviour (customization) from the machine. The process of writing high quality source code requires knowledge of both the application's domain and the computer science domain. The highest quality software is thus developed by a team of various domain experts, each person a specialist in some area of development. But the term programmer may apply to a range of program quality, from hacker to open source contributor to professional. And a single programmer could do most or all of the computer programming needed to generate the proof of concept to launch a new "killer" application.
Records and Mail
Tutorials
- Records Management and Micrographics
- Forms Design and Control
- Office Reprographics and Mail Services
Readings
Records management, or RM, is the practice of maintaining the records of an organization from the time they are created up to their eventual disposal. This may include classifying, storing, securing, and destruction (or in some cases, archival preservation) of records.
A record can be either a tangible object or digital information: for example, birth certificates, medical x-rays, office documents, databases, application data, and e-mail. Records management is primarily concerned with the evidence of an organization's activities, and is usually applied according to the value of the records rather than their physical format.
Control
Tutorials
Readings
Quality assurance, or QA for short, refers to a program for the systematic monitoring and evaluation of the various aspects of a project, service, or facility to ensure that standards of quality are being met.
It is important to realize also that quality is determined by the program sponsor. QA cannot absolutely guarantee the production of quality products, unfortunately, but makes this more likely.
Two key principles characterize QA: "fit for purpose" (the product should be suitable for the intended purpose) and "right first time" (mistakes should be eliminated). QA includes regulation of the quality of raw materials, assemblies, products and components; services related to production; and management, production and inspection processes.
It is important to realize also that quality is determined by the intended users, clients or customers, not by society in general: it is not the same as 'expensive' or 'high quality'. Even goods with low prices can be considered quality items if they meet a market need. QA is more than just testing the quality of aspects of a product, service or facility, it analyses the quality to make sure it conforms to specific requirements and comply with established plans.
There are two types of control, namely budgetary and financial. This chapter concentrates on budgetary control only. This is because financial control was covered in detail in chapters one and two. Budgetary control is defined by the Institute of Cost and Management Accountants (CIMA) as:
"The establishment of budgets relating the responsibilities of executives to the requirements of a policy, and the continuous comparison of actual with budgeted results, either to secure by individual action the objective of that policy, or to provide a basis for its revision".
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