Managers With Conceptual Skills See

Organization As Whole Management

Essay
Managers with conceptual skills are able to see the organization as a whole, conceptualize about
abstract and complex situations and to think strategically (Robbins & Coulter 2005). With reference
to Forbes Magazine, Mark Zuckerberg, the creator of marvel Facebook and one of the youngest
billionaire yet, contributes the ability of vast conceptual skills. Zuckerberg has the ability to think
critically and plan for long term. For example, he is able to see the potential of success by using the
Internet to connect with people more effectively. Therefore, he created Facebook at 2004 and now it
becomes the largest social networking site with millions of users worldwide. Moreover, Zuckerberg
carries out his role as disturbance handler with the combination of conceptual skill to solve the
difficulties. For instance, he received criticize from users when Facebook introduced new features and
issues about privacy. However, Zuckerberg resolve these problems appropriately and continue to
operate the company successfully. Although Zuckerberg made mistakes in decision making, most of
the people believed that he have the potential to improve his conceptual skill and consequently bring
Facebook to upper level of achievement.
As the CEO of Facebook, Zuckerberg plays multiple roles in managing the organization. Directing,
training, motivating and organizing subordinates, supervising their improvement, promoting and
reassuring their development are the duties required from the role of leader (LMC 2008). As a leader,
Zuckerberg is skilled in making clear decision and limiting unwanted debate. Employees are allowed
to recommend various solutions and gain knowledge on possible problems solved by him. Employees
are encouraged to argue with his thought on projects to find a better solution (Bosworth 2010).
Zuckerberg plays a good leader role by adapting in the human skills and conceptual skills.
Next role that he is acting on is resource allocator, which carries the responsibility related to
resources allocation of the organization among all concerned people or department. It involves
budgeting, scheduling, allocation of duty to subordinates and authorization. From time to time,
Zuckerberg has been scheduling for the 'f8 platform which is the like button in Facebook. There is
three f8 in total in which the first one occuring on May 24th, 2007, second one happening on July
23rd, 2008 and consequently the third one happening on April 21-22 in 2010. During this period, the
active user had increase tremendously.
Figurehead role involves handling ceremonial and symbolic activities for the department or
organization (Daft 2010). Mark Zuckerberg has successfully carried out the role of figurehead in Web
2.0 global social networking trend. For example, Zuckerberg discusses hiring the right people and
challenges of an entrepreneur in the lectures on Entrepreneurship for Stanford University students
on October 26, 2005 (Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders Lecture 2005). Furthermore, Zuckerberg
planned to set up a foundation with $100 million of Facebook's closely held stock to the Newark

Public Schools in New Jersey (Martinez & Fowler 2010). His philanthropic donation has helped to
improve Facebook image. The figurehead role played by Zuckerberg has enabled him to get more
attention than Google's co-founder, Larry Page and Sergey Brin.
In general Mark Zuckerberg use a great skill of conceptual skills and plays extensive character in all
informational, interpersonal and decisional roles in the Facebook which allows and makes it to be the
leading social media today.
Q2)
The only thing that would not change in the world is: the world is kept on changing. The external
organizational environment is the elements happen outside of its boundary and may affect the
growth of the organization. Figure 1 shows that Facebook's number of users is obviously more than
its competitor, Twitter. Although Facebook currently rank as the top social networking sites, they still
have to persist in innovating to hold on the honor.
From the dimension of legal-political, Facebook created an opportunity that encourages users to
share information online for the purpose of communication and business transactions.
Unfortunately, it is also a threat that causes Facebook confronts disputation on privacy issue once
beacon is launched. Beacon is a platform which takes data from 44 web destinations and combined
with Facebook's internal information for the purpose of advertising. It allowed third parties site being
posted on the wall of the users' profile. It can also track everything people done online even they had
logout from Facebook and despite who is using the computer. Regarding to this issue, many
investigations have been carried out by security researcher Wednesday, Canadian privacy
commissioner, Press coverage and European Commission. There is more than 100 million users'
personal information being used or spread out to the public without users' authorization. This issue is
not just about data leakage for user but also for developers and marketers who uses Facebook to
operate their business. To pacify this issue, Facebook paid $9.5 million settlement to a class action
lawsuit and it is being approved (Kravets 2010). Under the settlement, Facebook agreed to terminate
Beaon platform started from November 2009. Facebook should provide a more user friendly privacy
settings for the user to avoid the issue above to happen again.
For international and sociocultural dimension, Table 1(pg) indicates that the number of users in USA
is surprisingly high and owns the first place in the ranking. Although China and India has the largest
population in the world but India only owns the fifth place. However, Table 2 (pg) indicates that a
month later, India is the leading country which owns the highest audience growth rate. Reason for
China did not appear in the ranking is Facebook is being censored by China since 2009. Prediction
made by Daft said that China will overtake United State economy as number one by midcentury
(Daft 2010, p.66). Unfortunately, China banned Facebook bring down a lot registration in China
Mainland population which is about 1,330,141,295 (CIA World Factbook, Jan 2011) and opportunities
to generate profit. China government always being tight to the access of internet, information flow
and media banned Facebook because of the fatal riots happen in western region of Xinjiang in
province of China. Perhaps they believe that such an action will contain the reports or discussions of
the riots or stop them from happening completely. Recent news reported that, Mark Zuckerberg still
wanted to get connected to China and is now creating some localized version of site to fit China's
government and hope to launch it in China.

Therefore, every organization should be prepared to react to subtle environment shifts and adapt to
various challenges environment that are increasingly dynamic. Facebook had tried their best to
grapple with challenges like settlement of privacy issues and intervention with China. After
conquering the challenges, Facebook is now one step nearer to its mission to connect the whole
world.
Q3)
Ravasi and Schultz (2006) define organisation culture as a set of shared mental assumptions that
guide organisation understanding and action by defining appropriate behaviour for various
situations.
In the past, hierarchy of management is vital for a corporate. However, CEO of Facebook, Mark
Zuckerberg has created a relaxed, unstructured and open corporate culture that emphasizes more
on equality (Boissonneau 2011). At Facebook, there are no cubicles, no walls, just mainly office
furniture. This enables employees to work in a relaxed environment as they have more employee
freedom with no standard work schedules. Furthermore, Facebook's managers also practice this
working environment. Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook's Chief Operating Officer, and even Zuckerberg
himself has no office. They work among the employees in the open workspace that could enhance
openness and problem solving process. Every Friday, Zuckerberg holds a public question-and-answer
session for an hour for the entire organisation. The openness created by this session, according to
Zuckerberg, encourages collaboration, team-work and an informal atmosphere and communication
among organisation.
Facebook is ballooning into an empire, but it remains shabby, funky and slightly adorable. That is
partly attributable to a workplace that combines playful start-up culture with muscular ambition and
bite. Facebook's goal is to be viewed as a hip geek culture in order to attract the best talent (Finch
2011). Zuckerberg is responsible for the foundations of this culture, creating a fun environment by
knocking a gong when someone finishes a big coding project. Facebook even hired well-known graffiti
artist David Choe to paint murals in its first offices. According to Yiannopoulos, there's a block of
Facebook's meeting rooms named after inventors, with one given to Al Gore, who invented the
internet (2011). Facebook uses adaptability culture to interpret and respond quickly to the high-risk
decision-making and rapid alteration environment. Besides, Facebook adapts involvement culture
that emphasizes employees' needs and responses towards environment changes. Facebook is
creating an intrinsically social culture, rather than enterprise software or geeky, engineer-driven
algorithms. At Facebook, the employees can play video or table tennis games whenever they need to
unwind on the job. This fun working environment has increased employees' job satisfaction. Job
satisfaction is the primary factor in intrinsic motivation. Therefore, due to the corporate culture
recognized by Zuckerberg, Facebook employees are satisfied with their jobs and as a result do their
jobs well and raise the productivity of Facebook.
Facebook's slogan is Facebook is a social utility that connects you with the people around you. This
slogan explains slightly about the social platform. Facebook has taken a very practical standpoint on
providing a social network by created a framework and are expecting users to do most of the work.
Facebook internal environment changes when Zuckerberg brought on Sheryl Sandberg, a respected
executive from Google in March 2008. Besides, Zuckerberg is willing to take risks by hired Chris Cox,
who was grad school dropout as Facebook HR manager. Organisational hierarchy was generally

indicated through the price of suit. However, Zuckerberg has changed this culture by still wears Tshirts, jeans and Adidas flip-flops to work just as he did in 2004, when he co-founded Facebook at age
19 (Deneen 2011).
Mark Zuckerberg shows effectiveness as a cultural leader for Facebook by able and willing to take the
risks in hiring the executives for the company and motivate employees to achieve Facebook's goals by
established a comfortable, amusing and unstructured corporate culture.
Q4)
As time passed, many professions developed several management theories as a guide for manager to
run the organization. There are Classical Perspective, which occurred during nineteenth and early
twenty, Management Science Perspective, which emerged during World War Two, Recent Historical
Trend which happen after the World War Two and Modern Management which combine all different
theories. Today business world required different management thinking and theory to fits in different
industries and achieve organisational goals (Sridhar n.d). Facebook is the new trend in twenty-first
century, which manage and lead by the founder name Mark Zuckerberg.
Humanistic perspective was conducted by Mary Parker Follett and Chester Barnard. They believe that
manager need to first value peoples' feelings, needs, thoughts and social relations (Daft 2010). Mark
Zuckerberg had this management thinking of creating a social network that allowed people all over
the world to engage which each other and get updates even faster. Besides, Zuckerberg also adapting
this theory to his employees by providing those free meals along the day, bottomless finger foods
and unrestricted dry cleaning service. He allowed subordinates to express themselves, motivate them
to have the same goals as the organisations goals by giving opinions on improvement of the
organisation. He claims that an office is only a place to gather people to brain storming to generate
profits and human are the most important resources for the organisation. Therefore, he design his
headquarter with no wall between departments, and meeting rooms are located at the middle of
work space separated by glass walls so everyone can see through the meetings.
Besides, a study under A Theory of Human Motivation' of Abraham Maslow theories claims that
people are influenced by several needs in pyramid order (Kendra n.d). Zuckerberg has fulfilled three
levels of need for employees by providing employees free meals and considerable income to satisfied
physical needs, allowing them to disclose their thoughts and opinions, appreciate them contribute
many ideas and plans to run the business. This will increase employees' esteem needs and belief that
they are the proper source in helping make the world improve, and Zuckerberg will somehow
challenge employees to meet certain goals (Bosworth 2010). This theory will increase organisation
growth and acknowledges employees to fulfil their self-actualization needs. But, it required more
psychological thinking from Zuckerberg, takes time for him to observe employees personalities and
make organisation goals as part of their interest goals.
Learning organisation is a modern theory which allows people not afraid to make mistakes and hope
they can learn from the mistakes. It allows managers to raise the capability to discover and grow
(Senge 1990:3). When Facebook dealing with the mistakes they made in beacon, they understand that
not all people like to disclose their thoughts to the public, certain privacy are required from them.
Facebook has learnt from this mistake and change their privacy settings. But, they also face the
challenge of missing certain trust and confidence from the user.

After Zuckerberg combining classical and modern theory, facebook will be creating a better
competitive advantage to adapt into today rapid change world. Facebook will be more effective and
efficient after adapting with all the theory, although Zuckerberg face a certain weight of challenges.

To order your own custom written Essay, Dissertation or Coursework, call UK Essays on:

0115 966 7955

or visit our website at:

www.ukessays.com
Copyright 2003 - 2014 - UK Essays is a trading name of All Answers Ltd, a company registered in
England and Wales. Company Registration No: 4964706. VAT Registration No: 842417633. Registered
Data Controller No: Z1821391. Registered office: Venture House, Cross Street, Arnold, Nottingham,
Nottinghamshire, NG5 7PJ.