[MUSIC] Okay, now that you know that the material on the management of people at work covered in this course is evidence based. What else do you need to know about this program? Well, let's have a look at what management is, what it consists of. Over 100 years ago, Henry Fayol suggested that management consists of six fundamental functions. One, forecasting. Two planning. Three organizing. Four commanding. Five coordinating. And six controlling. Although this is not a list of functions that everyone would agree with. It does give us a good feel for some of the important things that managers are required to do. Modern textbooks on management often breaks management down into topics such as strategic planning, the recruitment and selection of staff, motivating and rewarding staff. Employee learning and training and development. And the relations between management and employees. The management of changing organizations. Financial management. The management of specific organizational systems, such as operations, production, finances, and marketing. So management at work is concerned with a variety of interrelated functions, processes, and tasks. It involves recruiting and selecting people to carry out organizational roles. It involves planning and leading and directing operations. It involves the coordination of activities of people and with providing people with the resources they need to carry out their job roles effectively. It involves ensuring that people are happy as well as effective in the things they do. Therefore, management is also concerned with the resolution of conflicts between people. And to be able to do these things, managers must consider the resources available to them. Not only human resources, that is people, but also financial resources and material resources, like buildings, rooms and technology. Academic disciplines such as human resource management, organizational psychology, and organizational behavior have developed over the last 100 years to develop theories of practical use to managers. And to carry out research to answer management related questions. As I explained earlier, we wont be able to deal with all aspects of management in this course. But we will deal with some key ones. We hope the material we cover will whet your appetite and that you will want to learn more. There are many excellent academic programs of study to turn to. Such as those run by the University of London International Programs. If you wish to deepen and broaden your knowledge of management. In this course the areas of management we have chosen to introduce you to are employee motivation and in particular the role of pay as a motivator. The selection of staff with a particular focus on interviews because they are used so widely. The nature and management of conflict between people at work. Taking each of these in turn it is self-evident that if staff feel switched on and motivated, they're going to perform their roles better than if they are feeling lazy and switched off. One of the primary reasons that most of us work, is to be paid. And from this, it follows that the amount people are paid will influence how motivated they are. Put simply, the more people are paid the more motivated to perform their jobs we might expect them to be. But is this necessarily true? In this topic we will examine the role of pay as a motivator and ask the question does the amount that someone is paid really influence their job performance? Our second topic, staff selection, is another vital aspect of managements work. It's important that organizations, large and small, are able to identify people who are going to perform their jobs well. Perhaps the most widely used selection method of all is the interview. In this topic, we will focus on different sorts of interview, and explain the characteristics of the types of interviews which many years of careful scientific research has shown to be the most effective. The third topic is the nature and management of conflict at work. It is hard to imagine any group of people or any organization in which conflict does not sometimes occur. Such conflict can be effectively managed, contained, and dealt with, or it can escalate, get out of hand, have a strong negative impact on large numbers of people and lead to poor performance, unstable group dynamics, unpleasant working relationships, sickness, absence and worse. Understanding the causes of conflict at work, and ways in which it can be managed is therefore really important. I will finish this introduction to the course by briefly explaining what you can expect to see, hear, and do. For each of the principle topics in the course, you will see and hear an presentation from an expert in the field. These presentations will be accompanied by videos or still images designed to help you understand the key-learning points. During the presentations, you will be asked to respond to small number of multiple-choice questions. That is you will be given a question. And you will be asked to indicate which of several possible answers to the question is correct. This way you can check that you have understood the material we have covered. After each topic, you'll be given some reading. This is likely to take you 30 to 60 minutes to complete. The reading material is designed to deepen and broaden your understanding of the topic. After you have seen the presentation of the topic and read the written material that we provide you with on it, there will be another set of multiple choice questions to answer. Once again, you can use these questions to check your understanding of the topic, but they will also be used by us to examine how well you're doing on the course. After you have completed the multiple choice questions at the end of a topic, you're free to begin the next one. I hope that you found this introduction to the module useful. And that you will find this course on managing people at work stimulating and enjoyable. Thanks for watching. [MUSIC]
