Professional football organization and management--Essay代写范文

Essay代写范文:“Professional football organization and management”，这篇论文主要研究的是职业足球俱乐部的组织管理，一场职业足球比赛的胜利，背后不光是有球员自身的努力，也是球队管理的一种成功的体现，本文以欧洲职业足球球队的组织管理为例，对球队的盈利、推销、市场、沟通等方面展开了研究。想要成为一个成功的足球队，不光要有扎实的技术，还需要能够为观众带来一种参与感，让观众感受到足球运动的氛围。

The subject of this project is Organizational Management using European professional football as an example of a business that must be managed. The focus of the project is money, merchandising, marketing and management, the real “Big 4” in professional football. Needless to say, a successful professional football organization almost must produce an acceptable product. That product is a team that produces an acceptable win/loss record and some exciting play for fans to cheer. The focus of this project is not building a team that is successful on the pitch, but about building a business organization that operates a successful business which both makes profits and produces a successful team. The real mission of the football club is not to simply build a successful football team, but to build an organization that entertains people, and gives them a cause with which to be involved. Part of this process is producing a team that succeeds on the pitch, but that is not the primary goal.

The major functions of management are planning, organizing, leading, and coordinating and controlling. These functions require decision-making, the delegation of responsibility, process planning, problem solving and an understanding of the communications within an organization or, how to conduct an effective meeting. (McNamara, 2007)

The parallels between managing “the clubs” which consists of the players on the pitch and the organizations are striking. A great coach is a master leader, inspirer and “delegates.” While many coaches were once players, they cannot go out on the pitch and execute plays, but must delegate others to do so. They then must delegate their Leadership position to the team captain who then directs the actual execution of the desired strategies on the pitch. The coach is very much the executive that leads and directs but does little of the actual physical work himself. The president or managing director of the club must do the same not only for the team, but also for all the members of the organization. He delegates the creation of the “product,” the football team to the coach. The use of football example is deliberate.

The four pillars of organizational managementThe subject of organizational management and leadership is vast. The initial Goggle search on “organizational management turned up 67 million hits. “Management Leadership” turned up 175 million. “Organization Leadership” produced only 104 million hits. To this a search on Amazon for books on “Organizational Management’ was added which produces almost 23,000 titles. Based on what obviously had to be an unscientific scanning of a minute fraction of the quarter billion sources of available data the following four pillars of organizational management were derived. While they are hardly original thought they cannot be sourced or cited properly. The presentation is believed to be original, and both the presentation and the pillars are certainly subject to criticism.

The four pillars are an attempt to crystallize the key elements in the functions of the management of any sort of enterprise. They are clearly duplicated in a football club in the CEO and the coach.

Each is responsible for the same four functions in doing their jobs. The coach decides who will play, and whether to concentrate on defense or attack. He delegates his direct leadership to the team captain and makes the decision whether or not to let him alter the defense/offense emphasis on the field. He spends a lot of time planning who to play and which strategy to use. He also observes the play each game and then makes decisions on which game elements to focus on during weekly drills. Finally he must lead the team in such a manner that he inspires cooperation and good play.

The CEO must provide similar management leadership and perform similar functions but for marketing and finance. He effectively delegates his responsibility for creating a “good product,” a winning team that is fun to watch to team manager who in turn delegates part of the responsibility to the coach. He remains ultimately responsible for the quality of team play even if he never walks onto the pitch. If the team is dull to watch and it’s following, ticket and merchandise sales fall he is ultimately responsible; not for the failure of the team, but of the organization.

The Organization in Organizational Management

There seems to be one other fundamental question in the management of an organization; the basic structure of the organization.

Again, there seems to be general agreement that here are two basic structures, a pyramid or the traditional authoritarian business or military structure and the matrix or participative structure. Within and between these to there seem to be an almost incredible number of variations. Current academic theory seems to favor the participative structure for a number of very good reasons. (David Mann, 2001) If things go wrong, and the team looses the coach and the manager are fired. If the club looses money the CEO must go. Merrill Lynch and Citigroup both fired their CEO’s recently as a result of thesub-prime mortgage fiasco and the incredible losses their companies suffered. When problems surface, the pyramidal form seems to re-assert itself.

Decision-making

The first step is to clearly state the question, define the problem. This requires careful analytical thinking. Assume for a moment that four different manufacturers want to produce shirts using the Manchester United logo, players, etc; the real problem is not, which of the four to choose, but how to maximize revenues from this particular element of team merchandising. License all four or select one as the exclusive provider. An exclusive royalty contract will produce a higher royalty rate, but is this enough higher to offset the volume four licensees could produce at a somewhat lower rate?

There is a large body of thought on decision-making generally referred to as decision theory. Sven Ove Hansson of the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm Sweden wrote an excellent non-technical and almost non-mathematical treatise, “Decision Theory A Brief Introduction” Dr. Hansson maintains, “ Almost everything that a human being does involves decisions.

Therefore, to theorize about decisions is almost the same as to theorize about human activities. However, decision theory is not quite as all embracing as that. It focuses on only some aspects of human activity. In particular, it focuses on how we use our freedom.” (Hansson, 1994)

A large amount of academic time and effort are devoted to the systemic making and organizing of decisions and the development of tools, in the case of management, quantitative tools, to assist managers in this endeavor. There is extensive discussion of normative and descriptive decision theories; how decisions should be (normative) and actually are (descriptive) made. A good executive understands and uses decision theory and any other tools available to make good decisions. (Hansson, 1994)

Process planning

What the CEO has really done is tell the merchandise manager to plan the production and marketing of shirts bearing the teams logo and possibly player names. The MM now has the problem of getting all the right people involved and in the correct order. In fact, he has two planning processes to develop, the first is to gather information on the entire problem and then plan the implementation of the decisions he makes. His first project is to organize himself. What are the elements of the problem and who in the organization can help him solve them. There are a couple of basic questions to which he needs answers in order to make a good decision.

Who would be willing to work on a non-exclusive basis? Obviously, all would like to be the exclusive producer.

What royalty would each is willing to pay for an exclusive and a non-exclusive license?

What volume would each is willing to guarantee on an exclusive and non-exclusive basis?

While he is determining the exclusivity question he might also want to meet briefly with Human Relations, Legal and Accounting to see what problems and suggestions they might have to maximize the productivity of the initial meeting with the potential producers. What the MM is really doing is identifying the inputs available to produce the desired output, a flow of royalty income. He would also clearly benefit from the use of Management By Objectives, and actually generating the documentation to implement MBO. He could easily track the progress of the project if he is doing all the work himself or if he in turn delegates elements to subordinates.

Leading

In its simplest form, leading is the ability to establishing a direction and then convincing or influencing people to follow in the desired direction. Different leaders have different styles. Some lead by example while others lead by logical argument. Some base their ability to lead on charisma and force of personality while others do so quietly by indirection. There is no single “best” leadership approach. Each situation may call for a different form of leadership with demands to switch from charisma to indirection occurring almost minute-by-minute. Truly great leaders are simultaneously charismatic, bombastic, logical and subtle. Each characteristic moves to prominence as required, based on the situation. (David Mann, 2001)

The CEO and the marketing manager both have leadership functions to fulfill in this simple example. The CEO is acting as a leader for the MM, and the MM is leading his subordinates if any.

In the example, the “orders” are given in broad as opposed to detailed form. It is assumed by the CEO that his marketing manager knows his job and does not need to be lead by the hand. This is a leadership decision presumably based on the previous experience of the CEO with the capabilities of the MM. Another form of leadership would be to call the MM in and go over each of the questions in detail. “Charley, first of all find out if all these people insist on an exclusive contract or will they accept being a licensee among many? Then find out what sort of royalty they would be willing to pay. Our standard is 15%, but tell them we want 20% plus 5% for each player name they use so they are actually paying 20+5. That way we can negotiate back to 15+5 and still make our players happy without reducing our take.” These are detailed instructions based on a lack of confidence in the negotiating skills and the understanding of the objectives by the marketing manager.

If the manager is a new hire, the CEO has a dilemma. Which approach to use. Test the MM by giving him his head or engage in training by using the second approach. This is a judgment call by the CEO, and will in part depend on his leadership style. A third approach might be to hold a one-on-one meeting with the MM, ask him for his views, and then determine the course of action. Any of the approaches to leadership are valid, and will depend in large part on the personalities of both parties. The objectives remain the same. First, handle a business problem for the organization, and second, develop and/or utilized the management skills of a subordinat.

Delegating is a critical element in leadership and at the same time a separate and distinct element of management skills.

Obviously, no single individual can be the ultimate expert on every subject, but the CEO is expected to assume responsibility for everything that happens in a firm. In an organization it is necessary to have responsibility delegated and to look at all the elements that go into a problem. To return for a moment to the shirt merchandising problem above there may be additional elements involved other than the potential revenue stream. Perhaps players whose names are not used in the merchandising program will feel slighted and a moral problem will develop among the players that reduce the quality or the performance on the field. This question is becoming more complex!

Part of the responsibility of the good CEO is the selection of quality subordinates that can accept responsibility. There are two possible courses of action, tell the merchandising manager to collect the financial data and provide a recommendation or have a meeting with all the people in the organization involved which would include the merchandise manager, the legal officer because there are contracts involved which may include player contracts and payments in addition to the manufacturers, the team human resources director because there is a potential moral problem, and accounting and finance because they are obviously involved in the administrative elements of the royalty licensing. If the CEO has done his job properly, he will call the merchandise manager and say something like, “Charley, A, B, C and D all want to license our logo. Look at the offers and tell me what you want to do.” The CEO may ad, “check with the coach, HR, legal and accounting and see if they have problems with this.”

If he has confidence in his merchandising manager he should not have to do any of these tasks himself. It is not his function to meet with all the people involved, locate al the required information, and personally make the final decision. He should have developed subordinates strong enough to handle the problem and have the confidence to back their decision.

One of the management techniques he might use in a situation like this is “Management by Objective.” MBO is nothing more than the aligning goals and subordinate objectives throughout the organization. He would expect the Merchandising manager to give him a simple document that identifies individual objective, names the person responsible for achieving the objectives, the time lines for completing the objective, etc. MBO includes ongoing tracking and feedback of each process involved in solving the problem or reaching the objective. It has the additional advantage of offering a method for the CEO to track the progress of the project without becoming directly involved or allowing it to absorb too much of his time.

The ability to delegating is critical for supervisors and leaders. No individual has more than 24 hours in a day or two hands with which to work. As organizations grow in complexity, the demands placed on those in charge grow and eventually either responsibility and authority must be delegated or the entire organizational structure becomes meaningless and inefficient. Delegating is based on working with subordinates to establish goals. To make the delegation process effective the subordinate must be granted sufficient authority to make it possible to assume the responsibility indicated by the assigned goals.

In most cases, it is best to allow considerable freedom to a subordinate that allows them to assume the responsibility required and making the decisions that will facilitate the accomplishment of the goals set.

The qualities of leadership are deeply imbedded in the delegation process. It is necessary for the superior first to make the subordinate enthusiastic about achieving the goal set and then remaining accessible to the subordinate for guidance as to how the goal is to be achieved, and on occasion to lend assistance in deciding how the goals will be achieved. The good leader remains both available and accessible as a resource to help subordinates to achieve their goals, and at the same time assessing the performance of subordinates. (The assessment involves both the quality of the effort and attainment of the goals.) Based on the assessment, performance issues can be addressed or success rewarded. The senior member of the group remains ultimately responsible for the attainment of the goals, but has the courage and the confidence in his subordinates to choose to achieve the goals through delegation. As an individual rises in an organization, and the success of his or her products no longer depend on individual efforts but on the efforts of a team of people young managers grow insecure. For this reason, delegation can sometimes become a major challenge for new supervisors. They must to learn to trust others while they are concerned about giving up control of certain elements. They struggle to gain confidence in the abilities of their subordinates. The ability to delegate effectively frees up a great deal of an executives time. It is a critical leadership skill.

The line between delegation and leadership is very unclear in many ways, but effective direction and leadership both require the development of the leaders skills in problem solving, goal setting, goal attainment and learning. (McNamara, 2007)

Coordinating and controlling

The final step in organizational management is the control function once a process has been set in motion. This depends on feedback mechanisms. These mechanisms can vary over a huge spectrum depending on the problems involved and the organization. This is the sector of organization where feedback, finding out if directions were carried out properly and had the desired result becomes the critical component.

It becomes a leadership problem if the results are not completely satisfactory. How does the “leader” get the process back on the desired track and make sure it is carried through to a satisfactory conclusion? The good leader can develop the required coordination and control not only without creating dissention, but by teaching and showing in such a way that the incident becomes a positive situation that will enhance overall organizational skills.

Finally there is feedback. In its simplest form a phone call from the Merchandise Manager to the CEO that says, “The shirt royalty problem is handled” may suffice. If the level of trust is high enough the CEO says, “Thanks Charley” and hangs up. More likely he will want details such as which company or companies were selected and how much royalty are they paying?

The alternative would be a memo outlining the result and distribution to the entire management team or a full-scale management meeting where the MM makes a presentation that brings the entire management team in on the information. Again, this is a judgment cal on the part of the CEO as to how he wants his company run.

Summary and conclusion

In the final analysis, management and leadership are indistinguishable. They are two sides of the same coin. A good manager must also be a strong leader. There is no other way he can do his job.

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