Lesson 1 - Chapter 1.

The Management Process

1. What are the challenges of working in the new economy?

● Talent
- Talent: what you know, what you learn, what you achieve
+ In the past, organizations just focused on manual work because they wanted to
provide as many products to societies as possible
+ Today, people and their talents are the crucial foundations for any organizations
- Intellectual capital: the collective brainpower and shared knowledge of a workforce that can

📌
be used to create value
Intellectual capital = Commitment x Competency
+ Both factors are important
● Competency (năng lực): represents your personal talents or

❓
job-related capabilities
How to evaluate? - Competency can be evaluated based
on 3 components: attitude, knowledge, skills ⇒ Attitude is
the hardest component to gain
● Commitment (sự cam kết): represents how hard the talented people
work to apply their talents and capabilities to important tasks
+ 3 main resources: human, finance, material facility ⇒ Human is the most
important resource in management
- Knowledge worker: someone whose mind - their creativity and insight - is a critical asset to
employers and adds to the intellectual capital of an organization

● Workforce diversity
- Workforce diversity: workers’ differences in terms of gender, age, race, ethnicity, religion,
sexual orientation, and able-bodiedness
+ A diverse and multicultural workforce offers both challenges and opportunities to
employers
+ Diversity means more ideas, more opinions, and more viewpoints within the
workforce ⇒ it also means increased conflict

❓
+ Many call diversity a business imperative and view it as an asset
How diversity bias can occur in the workplace
● Prejudice (định kiến): the display of negative, irrational attitudes toward members of
diverse populations
● Discrimination (phân biệt đối xử): actively denies minority members the full benefits
of organizational membership
+ One of the most noticeable challenges
● Glass ceiling effect (hiệu ứng trần kính): an invisible barrier/ unwritten document
that limits women and minorities from gaining higher positions within the
organizations

⚠️
+ Male-dominated hierarchy: hệ thống phân cấp thống trị
➔ Discrimination of any sort leads to “undervalued and underutilized human
capital” (lực lượng nhân lực bị đánh giá thấp và không được sử dụng đúng)

● Globalization
- Globalization: the worldwide interdependence of resource flows, product markets, and

🔎
business competition that characterize the new economy
EX: franchising - people can access many fast food franchises (McDonald's,
Starbucks,...) in many countries worldwide
● Job migration: a controversial consequence of globalization - firms shift jobs
from a home country to foreign ones
● Reshoring: a flip side of job migration - firms move jobs and manufacturing
back home from foreign locations (quá trình đưa các công việc sản xuất và
chế tạo trở lại quốc gia ban đầu của công ty)

● Technology
- Ever-present developments in info technology are reshaping organizations, changing the
nature of work, and increasing the value of knowledge workers
+ Continuing transformation of the modern workplace through the Internet/ info
technology/ computer networking/ telecommuting/…
+ Increasing demand for knowledge workers with the skills to fully use technology
➔ Tech IQ: the ability to use technology and to stay updated as technology
continues to evolve

● Careers and connections

- Free-agent economy: people change jobs more often and work on independent contracts
with a shifting mix of employers
+ People must be prepared to be any one of these types of workers
(core/long-term/full-time workers; contract workers; part-time workers) by building
and maintaining skill portfolios that fit the new workplace
+ People must make sure that their skills are portable and of current value in
employment markets by carefully maintaining and upgrading them all the time
- Social networking: the use of dedicated websites and applications to connect people having

🔎
similar interests
EX: During the pandemic, many companies laid off their employees to cut costs,
leading to the rise of unemployment ⇒ thanks to social networking (google, FB,
Tiktok,...), many people can access valuable information about jobs and the potential
of jobs

2. What are organizations like in the new workplace? What is the management process?

A. What are organizations like in the new workplace?

❖ Organization purpose

💡
- Organization: a collection of people working together to achieve a common purpose
Purpose: Organizations provide useful goods and/or services that return value to
society and satisfy customer needs
➔ Managers gather and manage people to achieve the organizational purpose

❖ Organizations as systems
- Organizations are open systems
+ Composed of interrelated parts that function together to achieve a common purpose
+ Interact with the external environments to obtain resource inputs → Transform
resource inputs (people, info, resources, capital) into product outputs (finished
goods and services) ⇒ Feedback from the environment tells the organization how
well it is meeting the needs of customers and society so that they can evaluate their
products & services and innovate or improve them to meet customers’ needs
❖ Organizational performance
- Organizations create values ⇔ they use resources well to produce good products + take care
of their customers
- Productivity: an overall measure of the quantity and quality of work performance with
resource utilization taken into account
● Performance effectiveness: an output measure of task or goal

❓
accomplishment
Results vs. goals/ objectives/ desired outcomes
● Performance efficiency: an input measure of the resource costs associated

❓
with goal accomplishment
Results vs. costs

B. What is the management process?

- Managers achieve high performance for their organization by best utilizing its human and
material resources
➔ The management process: the process of planning, organizing, leading, and
controlling the use of resources to accomplish performance goals

❖ Functions of management
- All managers are responsible for the 4 management functions → those functions are carried
on continually
● Planning (lên kế hoạch): set objectives + actions
- The process of identifying and setting performance objectives and goals and
determining what actions should be taken to accomplish them
➔ Managers identify desired results (objectives and goals) and ways to achieve them
(action plans)

● Organizing (tổ chức): define tasks → assign tasks → allocate resources → arrange
coordinated activities
- The process of defining and assigning tasks, allocating resources, and arranging the
coordinated activities of individuals and groups to implement plans
➔ Managers put plans into action: define jobs and tasks → assign them to responsible
individuals or groups (those jobs and tasks should be suitable to the individuals or
groups’ skills and knowledge) → provide resource support (technology, time,..)

● Leading (chỉ huy): motivate people + direct their efforts

- The process of arousing people’s enthusiasm to work hard and directing their efforts
to fulfill plans and accomplish objectives
➔ Managers build commitments to a common vision, encourage activities that support
goals, and influence others to do their best work on the organization’s behalf
➔ It is about how leaders/managers can motivate + influence + inspire

● Controlling (kiểm soát): compare results to objectives → find out problems → provide
solutions
- The process of measuring work performance, comparing results to objectives, and
taking corrective action as needed
 ➔ Managers stay in active contact with people as they work, gather and interpret
performance measurements, and use this info to make constructive changes
➔ It is about how managers can follow up on all the activities in the plan → try to find
out the problems → actively solve them

🔎EX: Tổ chức 1 buổi đi Đà Nẵng 4n3đ cho lớp gồm 42 người

1. Lập survey khảo sát về chuyến đi
- Thông tin về sự kiện
- Có tham gia hay không tham gia?
2. Planning
- Liệt kê hoạt động
- Sắp xếp các hoạt động → Nhóm các hoạt động vào (hoạt động nào liên
quan đến hoạt động nào) → Chia nhóm để phân công công việc (việc chia
nhóm làm phụ thuộc vào khối lượng công việc, tầm quan trọng của công
việc, sĩ số)
+ Leader
+ Nhóm tài chính → kế toán - group leader
+ Nhóm đối ngoại (xin tiền, xin tài trợ, tận dụng mối quan hệ) →
group leader
+ Nhóm hậu cần (lo ăn, ở, đi lại, y tế,...) → group leader
+ Nhóm tổ chức sự kiện (chuẩn bị các hoạt động) → group leader
- Cần có internal control và external control
3. Organizing
- Phân công công việc
+ Human resources
+ Finance resources
- Quyền lợi của leader (motivation tools để động viên/thuyết phục/khuyến
khích)
+ Free
+ Power
4. Leading và Controlling
- Sau khi plan xong, cần keep tracking để đảm bảo tiến độ và chất lượng
công việc

Lesson 2 - Chapter 1. The Management Process

❓Why do we call an organization an “open system”?
Because an organization interacts with the external environment to obtain resource

❓
inputs and transform them into product outputs
What do managers do within the transformation process to transform inputs into
outputs?
+ Planning: set objectives and goals
+ Organizing: assign tasks and allocate resources
 + Leading: motivate and punish people to work hard to fulfill plans and achieve
objectives
+ Controlling: compare results with goals/objectives/expectations to find out the gap
➔ In overall, managers plan, organize, lead, and control the organization

1. What are the challenges of working in the new economy?

2. What are organizations like in the new workplace? What is the management process?

3. Who are managers and what do they do?

❖ What is a manager?
- Managers: directly support, supervise, and help activate the work efforts and performance
accomplishments of others
➔ The people who managers help are the essential human resources whose tasks
represent the real work of the organization

❖ Levels of managers

● Members of the board of directors

- Make sure the organization is well run and managed in a lawful and ethical manner

● Top managers (director of a company, principal of a university,...)

- Guide the performance of the organization as a whole or for one of its larger parts
+ Analyze the external environment (both microeconomics and
macroeconomics) → find out the organization’s strengths -
weaknesses/opportunities - threats → find out the strategy for the
organization in the long term
 + Set strategy/objectives/the most general goals for the whole organization in
the long term
+ Know how to identify + adopt + solve the problems
➔ Lead the organization consistent with its purpose and mission

● Middle managers (brand manager,...)

- Oversee the work/activities of large departments or divisions
+ Work with top managers
+ Coordinate with peers
+ Support lower-level team members
➔ Make sure everyone develops and pursues action plans that implement
organizational strategies to accomplish key objectives

● Team leaders/First-line managers/Supervisors (leaders of any team,...)

- Supervise a small work group of non-managerial workers and report to middle
managers

🔎EX: Lấy ví dụ trong trường học (NEU)

- Top managers
+ Hiệu trường (thầy Chương)
+ Hiệu phó: được xếp vào top managers khi nắm giữ nhiều quyền lực → căn cứ trên
trách nhiệm, chức năng (functions), nhiệm vụ (tham gia vào quyết định quan trọng
của tổ chức)
- Middle managers
+ 3 hiệu trưởng (trong trường hợp NEU bị tách thành 3 trường)
+ Trường khoa (head of departments)
+ Hiệu phó: được xếp vào middle managers khi nắm giữ ít quyền lực hoặc không có
quyền lực
- Team leaders/Supervisors/First-line managers
+ Trưởng bộ môn (head of academic) - Người chịu trách nhiệm quản lý người lao
động trực tiếp (non-managerial workers)
- Non-managerial workers
+ Giảng viên - Người lao động trực tiếp
- Customers
+ Người chi trả học phí (people who pay the tuition fee - could be parents or students
if they could pay themselves)
- Products
+ Semi-product: Students who are studying
+ Final product: Students after graduated

❖ Types of managers

● Line - staff managers

- Line managers: are responsible for work activities that directly affect the
organization’s outputs
 - Staff managers: use technical expertise to advise and support the efforts of line
workers

● Functional - general managers

- Functional managers: are responsible for a single area of activity
- General managers: are responsible for more complex units that include many
functional areas

● Administrators: managers who work in public and nonprofit organizations

❖ Managerial performance and accountability

- Accountability: the requirement of one person to answer to a higher authority for relevant
performance results → flows upward in the traditional organizational pyramid
➔ Effective managers fulfill performance accountability by helping others to achieve
high-performance outcomes and experience satisfaction in their work
- The changing nature of managerial work: emphasizes being good at “helping/coaching” and
“supporting” rather than “directing” and “giving orders”
➔ The upside-down pyramid: the entire organization is devoted to serving customers
(at the top) - the job of managers is to support the operating workers who make this
possible

4. How do you learn the essential managerial skills and competencies?

❖ Managerial roles and activities

- A manager plays many roles in an organization (1 nhà quản lý đóng nhiều vai trong 1 tổ
chức)
+ Interpersonal roles: involve interactions with people inside and outside the work unit
(liên lạc, tương tác người với người)
+ Informational roles: involve the giving, receiving, and analyzing of information (thông
tin)
+ Decisional roles: involve using information to make decisions in order to solve
problems or address opportunities (ra quyết định)
➔ Managers: master key roles → implement them in intense and complex work settings

- Sự thay đổi trong mối quan tâm của managers và leaders:

+ Xưa: managers quan tâm result, benefit, revenue - leaders quan tâm process, value
của tổ chức, quan tâm con người
 + Nay: managers và leaders là 1

❖ Managerial agendas and networks

- Agenda setting: managers develop action priorities that include goals and plans spanning
long and short time frames
➔ Managers implement agendas by networking
- Networking: the process of building and maintaining positive relationships with people who
can help advance or implement agendas
➔ Networking creates social capital
- Social capital: a capacity to attract support and help from others in order to get things done

❖ Essential managerial skills

- Skills: the ability to translate knowledge into action that results in desired performance

● Technical skills (kỹ năng chuyên môn)

- The ability to apply a special proficiency or expertise to perform particular tasks
➔ Know how to apply expertise within the working area of each position in the
company
- EX: a market researcher has to know how to analyze data
- Gain importance at lower levels of management

● Human and interpersonal skills (kỹ năng xã hội)

- The ability to work well in cooperation with others
➔ Know how to communicate, interact, and solve problems or conflicts among
employees within the organization
- The interpersonal nature of managerial work makes human skills consistently
important across all levels of managerial responsibility
- Emotional intelligence: the ability to manage ourselves and our relationships
effectively → the ability to recognize + understand + manage feelings while
interacting and dealing with others

● Conceptual and critical-thinking skills (kỹ năng nhận thức và tư duy)

 - The ability to think critically and analytically to solve complex problems
➔ Know how to think critically and analytically like brainstorming and finding
out problems
- Gain importance at higher levels of management

Lesson 3 - Chapter 7. The Decision-Making Process

1. What is the role of info in the management process?
- Managers must have 3 kinds of competency
+ Technological competency: the ability to understand new technologies and to use
them to their best advantage ⇒ managers should be aware of the technologies,

🔎
know how to use them as tools, and apply them to daily work
EX: use Chatgpt and share information
+ Information competency: the ability to locate, gather, organize, and display

🔎
information for decision making and problem solving
EX: use reliable sources to search for information (Google Scholar to get
academic information; Google Advance to get PDF files)
+ Analytical competency: the ability to evaluate and analyze information to make
actual decisions and solve real problems (download → evaluate + analyze → process
info)

● What is useful info?

- Data ≠ Information
+ Data: raw facts and observations
+ Info: data made useful and meaningful for decision making ⇒ Info drives
management functions
- Useful info needs to meet 5 criteria:
+ Timely - the info is on time, at hand, available when it is needed
+ High quality - the info is clear, stable
+ Complete - the info is complete, sufficient
+ Relevant - the info is relevant to the problem that needs to be solved
+ Understandable - the info is easy to understand, used simple words and
sentences
- Analytics: systematic gathering and processing of data to make it useful as
information

● Data mining and analytics

- Data mining: the process of analyzing data to produce useful info for decision makers
+ Big data: exists in huge quantities and is difficult to process without
sophisticated mathematical and computing techniques
- Management with analytics: involves systematic gathering and processing of data to
make informed decisions

● Business intelligence and executive dashboards

 - Management info systems: use IT to collect, organize, and distribute data for use in
decision making
- Business intelligence: taps info systems to extract and report data in organized ways
that are helpful to decision makers
+ Executive dashboards: visually update and display graphs, charts, and
scoreboards of key performance indicators and info on a real-time basis

● Internal - External info needs in organizations

- External info: info exchanges with the external environment → can be taken from:
survey, individual/group/direct/...interview, research on the internet
+ Gather intelligence info to deal with stakeholders - suppliers, investors,
shareholders, customers, government, community
+ Provide public info in the form of financial statements, info about new
products

- Internal info: info exchanges within the organization to facilitate decision making +
problem solving → can be taken from:
+ Info flow downward: upper managers send to lower managers/employees in
the form of emails, rules, policies, commands, demands
+ Info flow upward: lower managers/employees send to upper managers in
the form of reports, suggestions, solutions, guides, complaints
+ Info flow horizontally: managers send to managers for collaboration in the
form of procedures,...

2. How do managers address problems and make decisions?

❖ Managers as problem solvers

- Managers = info nerve centers in the process of planning, organizing, leading, controlling
activities in organizations
❖ Problem-solving approaches and styles
- Problem solving: the process of identifying a discrepancy between actual and desired
performance and taking action to resolve it

+ Performance threat: the result/actual performance is less than the objective/desired

🔎
performance
EX: revenues go down, thiếu vốn, talents/employees left the organization
+ Performance opportunity: the result/actual performance is higher than the

🔎
objective/desired performance
EX: sales vượt mong đợi

● Openness to problem solving

- Problem avoiders: inactive in gathering info and solving problems
➔ Managers try to avoid the problems and do not want to collect the info
related to the problems
- Problem solvers: reactive in gathering info and solving problems
 ➔ Managers are willing to solve problems after they happen but only when
they are forced to do it because of the situation
- Problem seekers: proactive in anticipating problems and opportunities + taking
appropriate action to gain an advantage
➔ Managers proactively collect info + seek problems → prepare the solutions
for the problems in the future + try to solve problems even before they
happen

● Systematic vs. Intuitive thinking

- Systematic thinking: approach problems in a rational, step-by-step, analytical fashion
➔ The process is slower: managers break the complicated problem into small
parts and then carefully step by step to solve the problem ⇒ more logical
- Intuitive thinking: approach problems in a flexible and spontaneous fashion
➔ The process is faster and more flexible: sometimes managers use their
feelings/experiences to solve the problem ⇒ use feelings rather than facts

● Multidimensional thinking
- Sometimes managers can combine both types of thinking to solve the problem
➔ Multidimensional thinking: the ability to view many problems
simultaneously, in relationship to one another, and across both long and
short time horizons ⇒ effective multidimensional thinking requires skill at
strategic opportunism
+ Strategic opportunism: the ability to remain focused on long-term
objectives while being flexible enough to resolve short-term
problems and opportunities in a timely way

● Cognitive styles
- Cognitive styles: the ways individuals deal with info while making decisions

+ Info processing (info gathering): sensation (cảm giác) vs. intuition (trực giác)
+ Info evaluation: feeling vs. thinking
❖ Types of problems
- Structured problems: ones that are familiar, straightforward, and clear with respect to
information needs
➔ Programmed decisions: apply solutions or decision rules that are readily available
from past experiences to solve structured problems
- Unstructured problems: ones that are full of ambiguities and information deficiencies ⇒
commonly faced by higher-level management
➔ Nonprogrammed decisions: apply a specific solution to meet the demands of a
unique problem

❖ Crisis problems
- Crisis decision: involves an unexpected problem that can lead to disaster if not resolved
quickly and appropriately
➔ Good info systems + active problem seeking + good preparation are needed

❖ Problem-solving environments
- Managers face problems and make decisions under different conditions/environments with
different amounts of info
+ Certain environment: offers complete information on possible action alternatives
and their outcomes
+ Risk environment: lacks complete information but offers probabilities of the likely
outcomes for possible action alternatives
+ Uncertain environment: lacks so much information that it is difficult to assign
probabilities to the likely outcomes of alternatives

3. What are the steps in the decision-making process?

❖ Step 1: Identify and define the problem - Phát hiện ra vấn đề (symptoms → causes →
objectives)
- Focus on the symptoms of the problem (tín hiệu/triệu chứng?): tìm số liệu, dữ liệu

🔎
cho thấy triệu chứng
EX: the number illustrating the revenue going down compared to the
same period last year; the number of employees leaving the organization

🔎
- Give solutions to solve the causes, not the statement (nguyên nhân? → giải pháp)
EX: get bad marks → find the causes leading to the bad marks → find
solutions for them
- Define and set decision objectives: after the managers solve the problem, what do
they expect to achieve?
- Common mistakes in defining problems
+ Define the problem too broadly or too narrowly
+ Focus on symptoms instead of causes: be alert to spot problem symptoms →
dig deeper to address root causes (cần tập trung vào nguyên nhân của vấn
đề thay vì biểu hiện)
+ Choose the wrong problem

❖ Step 2: Generate and evaluate alternative courses of action - Solution 1, solution 2,...
- Data are analyzed → Info is gathered → Potential solutions are formulated + their
possible outcomes/consequences/effects are identified → The advantages and

💡
disadvantages of alternative solutions are identified
Set criteria before find out the solutions → the solutions are based on the
criteria after find out the causes
+ Cần có hệ quy chiếu để đánh giá các tiêu chí
+ Đánh số theo rational method
- Approaches for evaluating alternatives:
+ Cost-benefit analysis: compare the costs and benefits of each potential
course of action
+ Stakeholder analysis: actively seek consultation and the involvement of
others ⇒ add more people to the process → bring new perspectives and
info to bear on the problem → generate more alternatives for consideration
 → reveal more about the possible consequences of the alternatives → result
in a chosen course of action that is better for everyone involved in or
potentially affected by the decision
- Common mistakes: abandoning the search for alternatives and evaluation of their
consequences too quickly

❖ Step 3: Choose a preferred course of action

- Make actual decision to select a preferred course of action
- 2 approaches:

+ Classical model: the decision of the preferred course of action is rational ⇔

made by a decision maker who is fully informed about all possible
alternatives (decision making with complete info)
➔ Optinimizing decision: the choice of the alternative that gives the
absolute best solution to the problem
+ Behavioral model: the decision of the preferred course of action is rational
⇔ only within the boundaries set by the available info and known
alternatives, both of which are incomplete (decision making with limited info
and bounded rationality)
➔ Satisficing decision: the choice of the first satisfactory alternative
that comes to one’s attention

❖ Step 4: Implement the decision - Triển khai phương án như nào? (việc cần làm/thời gian
dự kiến triển khai/phòng bàn đảm nhận triển khai)
- Take action to make sure the solution decided upon becomes a reality
➔ Managers need to have willingness and ability to implement action plans
- Lack-of-participation error: a failure to involve in a decision the persons whose
support is needed to put the decision into action ⇒ should be avoided
➔ Managers who use participation wisely get the right people involved in
problem solving from the beginning

❖ Step 5: Evaluate results - So sánh kết quả đạt được so với mong đợi
 - Gather data to measure performance results → compare the actual results against
the desired results/objectives → actual results < desired results: managers return to
earlier steps in the decision-making process
- Positive and negative consequences of chosen course of action should be examined

⚠️NOTE
- Cô quan tâm problem → cause → objective (mục tiêu) → criteria (tiêu chí) →
solution phải liên kết với nhau

🔎
+ Mục tiêu bao gồm các tiêu chí → các tiêu chí được số hóa
EX: mục tiêu là tăng doanh thu → tiêu chí: tăng bao nhiêu % so
với cái gì?
+ Tìm giải pháp dựa trên mục tiêu và tiêu chí