Principles of

Management

Project No. 1
01 - Aakash Sarkar
02 - Aayush Rathi
03 - Aditi Gupta
04 - Aditya Nawalkha
05 - Akshat Mittal

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 TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION......................................................................................... 3
ABOUT THE COMPANY............................................................................ 4
MANAGEMENT FUNCTIONS AT COOPERVISION............................5
ROLE OF TOP MANAGEMENT AT COOPERVISION.........................7
PLANNING.................................................................................................... 8
PLANNING AT COOPERVISION.............................................................9
CURRENT PLANS AT COOPERVISION...............................................10
ORGANIZING............................................................................................ 11
ORGANIZING AT COOPERVISION......................................................12
STAFFING................................................................................................... 14
STAFFING AT COOPERVISION............................................................15
DIRECTING................................................................................................ 16
DIRECTING AT COOPERVISION.........................................................17
CONTROLLING......................................................................................... 18
CONTROLLING AT COOPERVISION..................................................19
KEY FINDINGS.......................................................................................... 20
REFERENCES............................................................................................ 21

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 INTRODUCTION

t We were tasked with approaching a company official in a high managerial

position to ask them about the different functions of management. And the
execution of those functions, both theoretical and practical based.
This project helped us relate textual information with the real-world data and
learn more about the inner workings of one of the biggest soft contact lens
manufacturers in the world – CooperVision.
We interviewed the Managing Director of CooperVision to get his insight
on the company as well as other information about how to manage a company
of that size.
In this Project Report we will relay our findings and present them.

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ABOUT THE COMPANY

Industry
:
Founded in 1980 Medical
Devices

Pleasanton,
Publicly
Headquartered in
CA
Traded
Company

$1.1
billion Soft Contact
Lens
annual Manufacturor

revenue

CooperVision, Inc. is a business unit of The Cooper Companies. The company was founded
in 1980, and it is headquartered in Pleasanton, CA. Its products are sold in over 100
countries, including India.
CooperVision manufactures in Juana Díaz, Puerto Rico; Scottsville, New York; and Hamble
and Southampton in Hampshire, England. It has major distribution centers in the U.K., U.S.,
and Belgium
In 2004, CooperVision acquired Ocular Sciences, Inc., a global manufacturer and marketer of
soft contact lenses. This acquisition helped the company become the third-largest soft contact
lens manufacturer in the world.

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MANAGEMENT FUNCTIONS AT COOPERVISION

Management is important in any company, be it small or big like CooperVision.

According to the functions approach, managers perform certain activities or
functions as they efficiently and effectively coordinate the work of others.
These functions include –
1. Planning
2. Organizing
3. Staffing
4. Directing
5. Controlling
They extensively followed and put into practice at the company. Mr. Arnab S.
told us about how CooperVision plans its approaches, organizes those plans,
recruits and staffs personnel, directs them, and then judges the results based on
different metrics.

“We’re also different. We feel that by collaborating and listening to others, we

can accomplish far more. This is all part of our refreshing perspective to you—
the people who wear our contacts and the eye care practitioners who work with
us.”
CooperVision.com

Distinct
purpose

Deliberate
People
structure

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The organizational structure at CooperVision is flexible, but with strong control
on the adherence to the basic functions and roles. It is an amalgamation of
People, a deliberate structure, and a distinct purpose from personnel.
Managerial Roles: The term managerial roles refers to specific actions or
behaviors expected of and exhibited by a manager. At CooperVision managers
are not restricted to just one or two roles, they take the mantel of managing
different aspects of the business based on their authority, and capability.
These Roles include but are not limited to -
Interpersonal Roles: Ones that involve people (subordinates and persons
outside the organization) and other duties that are ceremonial and symbolic in
nature. The three interpersonal roles include figurehead, leader, and liaison.

Informational Roles: Ones that involve collecting, receiving, and

disseminating information. The three informational roles include monitor,
disseminator, and spokesperson.

Decisional Roles: These entail making decisions or choices. The four

decisional roles include entrepreneur, disturbance handler, resource allocator,
and negotiator.

“As managers perform these roles, Mintzberg proposed that

their activities included both reflection (thinking) and action
(doing)”
Henry Minzberg

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ROLE OF TOP MANAGEMENT AT
COOPERVISION

We interviewed Mr. Arnab from CooperVision. He’s the general manager at

CooperVision and tasked with planning and managing the top level aspects of
the company. Therefore, his primary skillset includes
 Conceptual Skills
 Human Skills
 Technical Skills

Conceptual Skills
Human SKills

Technical
skills

Top Level Management

(Mr Arnab)

As told to us by Mr. Arnab, he focuses mainly on conceptualizing plans and

tasking them to middle level managers at the company. And also, with judging
the metrics relayed to him by the lower level managers at the various stages of
progress of those plans. He then takes decisions based on the information
available to him.
As a result, human skills are very important for him to maintain a good
relationship with everyone. Technical skills however, are not the major priority
as technical aspects are delegated to people specializing in those fields.

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We asked him about the specific functions of management followed by
CooperVision and then related those answers with what we have learnt from the
different management books as well as college lectures.

PLANNING

Definition: Planning is the fundamental management function, which

involves deciding beforehand, what is to be done, when is it to be done, how it
is to be done and who is going to do it. It is an intellectual process which lays
down an organization’s objectives and develops various courses of action,
by which the organization can achieve those objectives. It chalks out exactly,
how to attain a specific goal.

Importance of Planning

 It helps managers to improve future performance, by establishing

objectives and selecting a course of action, for the benefit of the organization.
 It minimizes risk and uncertainty, by looking ahead into the future.
 It facilitates the coordination of activities. Thus, reduces overlapping
among activities and eliminates unproductive work.
 It states in advance, what should be done in future, so it
provides direction for action.
 It uncovers and identifies future opportunities and threats.
 It sets out standards for controlling. It compares actual performance
with the standard performance and efforts are made to correct the same.

By planning process, an organization not only gets the insights of the future, but
it also helps the organization to shape its future. Effective planning involves
simplicity of the plan, i.e. the plan should be clearly stated and easy to
understand because if the plan is too much complicated it will create chaos
among the members of the organization. Further, the plan should fulfil all the
requirements of the organization.

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Keeping this information about Planning with us, we asked Mr. Arnab about
how planning works at CooperVision, and this is the insight he shared with us:

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PLANNING AT COOPERVISION

The first thing we asked Mr. Arnab was how short term and long term plans
were conceptualized at the company.
According to him, the plans are broken down at a micro and macro viewpoint.

MACRO – Long term plans

The macro viewpoint consists of something called as the 5 year plan where they
look at the next 5 years with a broad overview. They take into consideration the
market sentiments and movements, as well as the competition, the different
fiscal measures government is planning to implement etc. All these factors are
what form the 5 year plans at the company.
The 5 year plans are then presented to the board. And the closest year is broken
down into granular micro levels.

MICRO – Short term plans

The month on month movements are looked into, including territory analysis.
Which means looking into which territory and region and customizing the plan
to fit their needs. Then plans to hire manpower are made, as well as selection of
which products that are to be sold, price movements etc.
That is how the short-term plans are formed at CooperVision.

Market sentiments
Macro
Competition
Plans
Fiscal measures by Govt.

Granular analysis
Micro
Territory analysis
Plans
Customization of plans
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CURRENT PLANS AT COOPERVISION

Mr. Arnab was kind enough to share with us some of the plans that are currently
in the works at CooperVision.
The company’s vision is to eradicate blindness. In countries like India, a lot of
preventable blindness exists simply because people don’t have the knowledge or
the resources.
To combat that, CooperVision conducts a lot of eye camps and checkup and
diagnostic programmes. So, the current plan at CooperVision is to ensure the
existence of such a camp in every state and city in India to bring easy access to
eye checkup and care to everyone living in the country.
For this, they have set up a committee that will look into the logistics and
planning of such a mass-scale operation.

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ORGANIZING

Organizing is the function of management which follows planning. It is a

function in which the synchronization and combination of human, physical and
financial resources takes place. All the three resources are important to get
results. Therefore, organizational function helps in achievement of results which
in fact is important for the functioning of a concern.

“Organizing is a function by which the concern is able to define the role

positions, the jobs related and the co-ordination between authority and
responsibility.” Chester Bernard

A manager performs organizing function with the help of following steps: -

Identification of activities - All the activities which have to be performed in

a concern have to be identified first. For example, preparation of accounts,
making sales, record keeping, quality control, inventory control, etc.

Departmentally organizing the activities - In this step, the manager tries to
combine and group similar and related activities into units or departments.
This organization of dividing the whole concern into independent units and
departments is called departmentation.

Classifying the authority - Once the departments are made, the manager
likes to classify the powers and its extent to the managers. This activity of
giving a rank in order to the managerial positions is called hierarchy. The top
management is into formulation of policies, the middle level management
into departmental supervision and lower level management into supervision
of foremen. This helps in avoiding wastage of time, money, effort, in
avoidance of duplication or overlapping of efforts and this helps in bringing
smoothness in a concern’s working.

Co-ordination between authority and responsibility - Relationships are

established among various groups to enable smooth interaction toward the
achievement of the organizational goal. Each individual is made aware of his
authority and he/she knows whom they have to take orders from and to
whom they are accountable and to whom they have to report. A clear
organizational structure is drawn and all the employees are made aware of it.

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ORGANIZING AT COOPERVISION

We asked Mr. Arnab how the company ensures an optimum use of resources
including human resource to achieve the short term and long-term plans.
He told us that unless there’s a perfect match between the resources and the
objectives, there will be desynchronization. While there exist some limitations
due to the complex nature of such a large-scale business, the company tries to
match the resources to the goals.

For example: One of the highest performing territories for CooperVision is

Delhi as it is an optimal market so the maximum resources are provided to that
territory.
The base criterion that is looked at is maximum results for the resources
deployed.
This is how the company organizes its various factors of production, human
resources, and other assets.

Maximum results with current

Criterion
level of resources

Own limitations
problems
Headcount, advertising budget
The other thing we asked Mr. Arnab was about the factors taken into
consideration while assigning tasks to departments and employees.
He told us that the company employs a Bottom’s Up approach as far as targets
are concerned. And it is ensured that everyone has ownership of the targets

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undertaken. They have regional managers that sit with teams and give the
budgets and planning session.
They analyze the resources they have and come up with the results that can be
delivered. Then there is a meeting amongst the regional managers who sit and
discuss these suggested results given the kind of resources and scenarios they
face.
Then a final meeting comprising of everyone takes place where the formulated
plan is turned into action. This plan is accepted by the people as they had stake
in the decisional process so the achievement of results is incentivized.

Top level managers formulate the plan

It is related to regional managers
Phase 1

Regional managers discuss the plans with their

teams
Phase 2 Teams reply with the results that are possible

Regional managers meet and discuss the results

Results are relayed to top level managers and
Phase 3 executed

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STAFFING

Definition: Staffing can be defined as one of the most important functions of

management. It involves the process of filling the vacant position of the right
personnel at the right job, at right time. Hence, everything will occur in the right
manner.
Staffing is the process of hiring eligible candidates in the organization
or company for specific positions. In management, the meaning of staffing is an
operation of recruiting the employees by evaluating their skills, knowledge and
then offering them specific job roles accordingly.
Importance of Staffing

Efficient Performance of Other Functions

For the efficient performance of other functions of management, staffing is its
key. Since, if an organization does not have the competent personnel, then it
cannot perform the functions of management like planning, organizing and
control functions properly.

Effective Use of Technology and Other Resources

What is staffing and technology’s connection? Well, it is the human factor that is
instrumental in the effective utilization of the latest technology, capital, material,
etc. the management can ensure the right kinds of personnel by performing the
staffing function.

Optimum Utilization of Human Resources

The wage bill of big concerns is quite high. Also, a huge amount is spent on
recruitment, selection, training, and development of employees.  To get the
optimum output, the staffing function should be performed in an efficient manner.

Development of Human Capital

Another function of staffing is concerned with human capital requirements. Since
the management is required to determine in advance the manpower requirements.

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STAFFING AT COOPERVISION

We asked Mr. Arnab what the recruitment process was like at CooperVision.
He told us that the recruitment is based on the growth expectations of the
company. Unfortunately, India is a very non-regulated market when it comes
to recruitment of workers and personnel. There exist no regulations at all when
it comes to fitting of optical equipment.
There is a lack of trained personnel, so the first objective of CooperVision is to
train the workers about proper fitting and working of the optical equipment. The
company has allocated a big budget in ensuring this practice. This is known as
Continuous Medical Education (CME) which they conduct on a regular basis.

Further, we asked him about any internship processes at the company.

He told us that while there is no formal chain of internship process, the
company hires and accepts who have some experience in the optical
industry. It is a costly medical industry relying on expensive machinery so
internships are not a major priority.
They generally hire optometrists as they have some technical know-how about
the equipment. Generally having a prior experience of 3-5 years.

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DIRECTING

DIRECTING is said to be a process in which the managers instruct, guide and

oversee the performance of the workers to achieve predetermined goals.
Directing is said to be the heart of management process. 
Directing initiates action and it is from here actual work starts. Direction is said
to be consisting of human factors. In simple words, it can be described as
providing guidance to workers is doing work. In field of management, direction
is said to be all those activities which are designed to encourage the
subordinates to work effectively and efficiently.
“Directing consists of process or technique by which instruction can be issued
and operations can be carried out as originally planned”. - Human

Importance of Directing

It Initiates Actions - Directions is the function which is the starting point of

the work performance of subordinates. It is from this function the action
takes place, subordinates understand their jobs and do according to the
instructions laid.

It Ingrates Efforts - Through direction, the superiors are able to guide,

inspire and instruct the subordinates to work. For this, efforts of every
individual towards accomplishment of goals are required.

Means of Motivation - Direction function helps in achievement of goals. A

manager makes use of the element of motivation here to improve the
performances of subordinates.

It Provides Stability - Stability and balance in concern becomes very

important for long term sun survival in the market. This can be brought upon
by the managers with the help of four tools or elements of direction function

Coping up with the changes - It is a human behavior that human beings
show resistance to change. Adaptability with changing environment helps in
sustaining planned growth and becoming a market leader. It is directing
function which is of use to meet with changes in environment.

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DIRECTING AT COOPERVISION

We asked Mr. Arnab about the effect motivation has on employees achieving
their targets and being more productive.

The answer was a resounding yes. He told us that the success of any plan, be it
finance or marketing, depends on the motivation of employees. If the employee
doesn’t buy into the plan, then it’s a sure shot failure before it even enters the
public space.
These are the people who roll out the plans into the market so their commitment
is of paramount importance. For this, the company hosts many motivational
programmes like wellness and health. They have a dedicated Wellness and
Health manager

The manager ensures that people’s health improves on a regular basis and
they’re well taken care of. They set not just company level targets, but personal
level targets as well.

Various programmes to keep

Motivation employees motivated.
targets Primary objective before rolling out
any plan.

Health and Wellness department

Personal
Targets Setting up of Personal targets to
ensure good health of employees.
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CONTROLLING

Definition: Controlling is one of the important functions of a manager. In order to

seek planned results from the subordinates, a manager needs to exercise effective
control over the activities of the subordinates.

Importance of Controlling

1. Accomplishing Organizational Goals

The controlling function is an accomplishment of measures that further makes
progress towards the organizational goals & brings to light the deviations, &
indicates corrective action.

2. Judging Accuracy of Standards

A good control system enables management to verify whether the standards set
are accurate & objective. The efficient control system also helps in keeping
careful and progress check on the changes which help in taking the major place in
the organization.

3. Making Efficient use of Resources

Another important function of controlling is that in this, each activity is performed
in such manner so an in accordance with predetermined standards & norms so as
to ensure that the resources are used in the most effective & efficient manner.

4. Improving Employee Motivation

Another important function is that controlling help in accommodating a good
control system which ensures that each employee knows well in advance what
they expect & what are the standards of performance on the basis of which they
will be appraised.

5. Ensuring Order & Discipline

Controlling creates an atmosphere of order & discipline in the organization which
helps to minimize dishonest behavior on the part of the employees. system.

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 CONTROLLING AT COOPERVISION

We asked Mr. Arnab about the key result areas that CooperVision keeps in
mind while monitoring the progress of employees.
He told us that since it is a very sale driven company, the number one KRA is
profit and loss bottom-line. The sales targets as well as visibility across outlets
are prioritized in this controlling approach.

Then we gave him a situation where an employee has made a mistake, and
being a manager, how he’d correct it at the company.
He told us that the company employs positive reinforcement when it comes to
controlling the employees. They are a very employee friendly company and the
employee turnover is one of the lowest across all other optical companies. Most
of the people who’ve joined the company initially have retained with the
company.
The company accepts that humans are fallible and they are bound to make
mistakes. In fact they consider mistakes as a step towards success. At
CooperVision, employees aren’t penalized for taking the initiative.

Another tool they use is Positive Monitoring amongst people to ensure a

corrective response all around. If an employee makes a mistake, they are not
singled out and blamed completely. If someone fails, it’s a collective failure.

Employees are motivated and directed using

Positive positive reinforcement.
Reinforcement Negative reinforcement like fear of boss is not
employed.

Positive Employees work together to correct behavior

Monitoring Employees are not singled out for failures

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KEY FINDINGS

These are some of the most significant things we learned and found with the help
of this management project: -

1. How a big company like CooperVision structures itself.

2. The importance of different Managerial functions.
3. How the different functions are practically used in real life.
4. The importance of real-world data and learning about business
management from someone working in the same field.

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 5. How to contact and schedule appointments, and further conduct
professional interviews.

It was a wonderful opportunity to learn about management directly from someone

at one of the highest managerial positions at a Billion-dollar company. The insight
shared by Mr Arnab, the general Manager of CooperVision was indispensable and
highly educational.
A heartfelt thanks to Arnab Sarkar for helping us with this project.

REFERENCES

Arnab Sarkar – General Manager, CooperVision

Essentials of Management - Koontz & Weihrich

Principles of Management - Tripathi & Reddy

Management: Concept, Practice & Cases - Ghuman & Aswathappa

Management Functions – Toppr.com

How Managers Change the World – BusinessInsider.com

Functions of Management – Courses.lumenlearning.com

Management Behavior - universalteacherpublications.com

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