Greetings to all MGT 701.
The powerpoints slides are up in your Blackboard. So please go in and view the ppt and also download the audio for your lectures. In the class, which we only have two hours, we will touch on the issues, especially current issues faced in the real world, which you are supposed to raise on the discussion board. I will highlight some of the issues here that you should seriously think about and discuss them on the board. Remember that you have 30 marks allocation on the board discussion.

The first slide says' The Bottle Neck is at the top of the bottle'. This is a good saying which very few people give much thought to. In an organization, it is the leaders and managers that make decisions, allocation of resources, control etc. If they are not right at the top, things will not get done on time, and efficiently. So what causes problems down in the shopfloor actually starts from the top.

Skills that managers need are basically three: conceptual, human and technical. For managers, technical is the least importance, although managers must know the technical of the core business of the organisation. More importantly are the human and conceptual skills as they are supposed to manage people and strategise the goals of the organizations.

The studying of the behavior of people involved four approaches.
scientific management, human relations approach, contingency approach and culture quality movement. Study all the four approaches and think which is working in Malaysia. Each has their qualities and disadvantages. It is this observations and some thinking that you must do and put them on the board for discussion..