Managing People: Clearabee Ltd - Management Theories and Application

This report examines the management practices of Clearabee Ltd, a UK-based rubbish removal company. It explores the application of management theories, specifically Administrative Theory and Human Relations Theory, to address challenges such as employee retention, customer service, and cash flow management. The report provides an overview of the company's background, including its expansion plans and key issues like employee turnover and rigid credit policies. It analyzes functional areas like management, accounting, customer service, finance, and human resources, highlighting how these theories can improve operational efficiency and employee relations. The report also covers the roles and functions of managers, emphasizing planning, organizing, staffing, directing, and controlling. It concludes with recommendations for Clearabee Ltd to improve its management strategies and address potential future problems, suggesting the application of other management theories for a more comprehensive approach. The report emphasizes the importance of adapting to changes in the business environment and maintaining a balance between different management activities.

Managing People

Table of Contents
Table of Contents.............................................................................................................................2
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
OVERVIEW OF THE COMPANY................................................................................................1
Relevant Theories............................................................................................................................1
Application of theories....................................................................................................................2
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................5
Recommendations............................................................................................................................5
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................6

INTRODUCTION
Managing people refers to the management of the human resources within the
organization. It is the development, activities and performance of the employees for achieving
the goals of the entities by using the skills and talent of the manpower . Management of people
helps the manager to get the most out of the employees by providing required training. The
company covered in the report is Clearabee Ltd. The headquarters of the company is located in
Birmingham, United Kingdom (Hoefling, 2012). This report covers, theories of management
functions, roles and functions of managers, demonstration of different organizational structures,
strategies and other management issues.
OVERVIEW OF THE COMPANY
Clearabee Ltd was founded by Daniel Long and Rob Linton in the year 2012. The
company has its headquarters at Birmingham, United Kingdom. The company provides a service
a rubbish removal service across UK. The company is planning to open deports in the North East
and Scotland. The company has a turnover target of £15m which it wants to achieve in three
years since it wants to grow and earn profits and be sustainable in the long-run. The biggest
challenge faced by the company was to let go some of its employees who couldn't continue to
show their potential with the expansion of the company (Osland and Turner, 2011). Further, the
company lost some of its customers due to the rigid credit policy and payments methods. Due to
this, company suffered crisis in cash flow. Along with this, the management of the drivers of the
company's vans was getting difficult because of the proper training of and arranging the driving
license for them. The company plans to achieve its goals by maintaining a synergy all the aspects
operating in the business. For achieving the goals, it is keen to understand the various
management theories which it can apply in managing the staff and overcome the other problems
it is currently facing.
Relevant Theories
The problems faced by Clearabee can be resolved by using the two theories. The theories
are as follows:
1. Administrative Theory: This theory is given by Henri Fayol. According to him, a
company must focus on organizational management and human behavioural factors. This
theory emphasizes on two factors, improving the efficiency of the management for
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standardizing the processes in the organization and to make the workers accept the
changes and implement such changes in their assigned work responsibility. It is applied
in top-down approach for its best implement.
2. Human Relation Theory: This theory is given by Professor Elton Mayo, which is about
the factor that influences the productive relationships of employer and employees. The
theory conducted various experiments in order to know the impact of changes in payment
and work conditions on the employees and their work productivity. The conclusion of
these experiments were that human relations play a vital role and has direct connection
with the work environment and creation of bonds among the employees in the situation
of administrative pressure (Kamoche and Pinnington, 2012).
Application of theories
The functional areas in most of the businesses are marketing, accounting, customer
service, finance and human resources. The following areas and their impact have been discussed
below:
Management: The management is a process of planning, organizing, staffing, controlling and
leading. Planning is done set the long-term and short-term goals which the company aims to
achieve, organizing is concerned about utilizing the resources effectively, staffing is assigning
the roles and work to the employees working in the organization, controlling is to ensure the
goals are in track with the planning and strategies and in any variance, corrective measures are to
be taken to correct the difference and leading could be for development of groups or new process
or a new product by interacting with community, customers and suppliers. Proper management
process is key to the business different organizational structures cess as Clearabee can achieve its
goals only when all the above-mentioned steps are carried effectively by applying administrative
theory (Postel and Richter, 2012).
Accounting: The accounting information is important to make decisions regarding the allocation
of the resources available with the company. Accounts provide the financial transactions of a
business to various parties such as investors, government etc. The financial accounting provides
financial statements which is used to make financial decisions to strengthen the financial
soundness of the company and management accounting provides information about the costs,
budgets, asset allocation etc. which are used to make decisions about the cost and budget
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allocation also the assessment of potential and non-potential employees are done. Clearabee can
use financial information to manage the cash flows effectively.
Customer Service: Customer service is a core area of a business. Effective customer service
provides customer satisfaction which creates loyal and permanent customers. The impact that a
customer service has on business are it builds brand awareness, trust, reduces the problems,
appeals the customers etc. Clearabee should work on the customer service by providing
flexibility in credit policy so that it can attract large number of customers. Further, it can use
Administrative theory to manage the activities in order to provide customer satisfaction.
Finance: It is related to accounting but involves variety of functions such as planning the funds
required by the company, obtaining it, and managing the company's funds. It is done for the
long-term and short-term financial needs. Clearabee must use the financial transactions to decide
about the procurement of funds for required work. Also, Clearabee should make decision
regarding the funds required for expansion in future.
Human Resources: The employees or the workers are the most important asset of the
company. They are responsible for doing their work towards achieving the goals of the company.
The policies regarding the employees should be in favour of all and must give certain amount of
flexibility. Clearabee, should have understood the problems of those employees who left the
company in its growing phase in order to retain them in the company. The HR department of
Clearabee, should evaluate the performance of each and every worker to remove the inefficient
workers for reducing the cost and increasing the efficiency. For the purpose of maintaining
healthy relationship with its workers, Human Relation Theory and Administrative Theory should
be used to motivate the employees and reward them for their performance (Cartwright and
Cooper, 2012).
The strategy of Clearabee is to grow its business rapidly by expanding the business in
UK. Further, the company has been using the junk disposed by the people in a legal and
environmental friendly way by using the updated technology. Furthermore, it has a target of
making its turnover approx. £15 m in the coming three years, and working for retaining the its
employees and customers. The manager of Clearabee Ltd. Should analyse the current level of the
efficiency of the company. This will help to compare the level with the desired level and the
company will make strategies to remove the differences. Also, the manager should co-ordinate
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activities of various major departments as mentioned above to achieve the goals of the company
effectively.
Clearabee is a company operating as a small company. The company has formed to
provide the service of removing the rubbish across UK. Is has been doing quite well even after
facing problems such as high employee turnover, losing customers, using the cash flows
generated by the company for its expansion etc. Since the company is a small company, the
impact of a small mistake could lead the company face hard times. The functions of manager are
planning, organizing resources, staffing, directing and controlling the systems. A manager is
responsible to maintain a balance between all these activities. The manager of Clearabee should
discharge its functions while applying both of the above theories in managing the activities of
different departments while co-ordinating and maintaining a productive relationship with
employees.
Role of a manager are as follows:
 Planning: The manager must plan the strategies to be implemented for achieving the
goals of the company. The decisions will be made on the basis of logical thinking.
Further, planning is necessary as it provides a blueprint to the entity to survive in the
competition.
 Organizing: The manager must organize the available resources in a way which will
give the maximum output by using in less amount. In this step, the manager will
determine the internal functions and maintain the relationships and allot the resources as
per the requirement. Since, Clearabee is providing its services to large parts of UK, it
must use its resources in an optimal way.
 Staffing: This step involves recruiting, selecting, training the employees for performing
the job assigned to them. The manager must make policies to use the skills of the human
resources of the company for the accomplishment of goals.
 Directing: This involves motivating the individuals for their efforts by communication,
leadership, and supervising their work. The manager of Clearabee must motivate its
employees so that they adapt the changes and work accordingly.
A manager must have the following professional, technical, conceptual and interpersonal
skills.
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The functions of a manager can be divided into three categories viz. Interpersonal,
informational and decisional role. The details of these roles are mentioned below:
 Interpersonal role: This role is about providing information and ideas. He has the
responsibilities of society, ceremonial and legal, therefore, he is expected to be source of
inspiration. Further, he should provide leadership for managing the performance and
responsibilities of his team. Furthermore, he must communicate with various internal
and external parties and make effective network on behalf of the organization.
 Informational role: This role is about processing the information he has with him. In
this role, the manager will look into the information related to regulations that are
applicable to his entity and industry. He must disclose and disseminate the useful
information to his teams and other members of the company. Further, he should also
transmit information about his organization to the outside party.
 Decisional role: The manager must use the information for solving the problems, to
generate new ideas and implement them. Also, he must be able to handle the unexpected
situations, allocate the resources for obtaining the maximum result. Furthermore, he
must be a person who can negotiates in behalf of the company.
(Drucker, 2012).
CONCLUSION
Clearabee has been facing the problems of credit control, cash flow management, limited
access to finance because of it being deemed as a small company even after three years of
trading, no retention of surplus funds, some of the staff moving out of the company because of
the changes in the working conditions due to the expansion and arrangement of driving license
for the drivers driving the van for the company. The company can solve the major problems of
employees moving out of the company, customer retention and cash flow management by
applying Administrative Theory and Human Relation Theory. Administrative theory will be
applied to solve the problems of cash flow management as well the employee’s retention
problems and human relations is for solving the problem of employees moving out of the
company and losing the customers to the rigid credit policy.
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Recommendations
The above conclusion contains two theories which may be used to solve the major
problems. Clearabee can use the above two theories to solve the major problems it is facing but
there are other problems, if not solved may create problems in the long run. The company may
apply other theories as well for solving the problems other than major problems. The theories
that can be used to solve other problems is x and y theory.
This theory was explained by McGregor. There are two styles of management-
authoritarian (Theory X) and participative (Theory Y). This theory is applied if the workers
dislike their work which was assigned to them and have little motivation towards the work the
theory X can be applied. On the other hand, if people do their work in a motivated manner and
take is as a challenge, then theory Y can be applied i.e. participative management style. The
manager can make strategies to implement the theories effectively. The theories applied with
strategies will give the optimum results and resolve the problems other than cash flow
management, customer retention and employee’s retention. The problems are to be addressed as
soon as it occurs so that the level of seriousness can be assessed and company can make plans,
policies and various strategies to reduce or remove the problems. This will help in reducing the
costs and company utilize the costs for expansion and progress.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals:
Hoefling, T., 2012. Working virtually: Managing people for successful virtual teams and
organizations. Stylus Publishing, LLC.
Osland, J. and Turner, M., 2011. The organizational behavior reader. Pearson.
Kamoche, K. and Pinnington, A. H., 2012. Managing people ‘spiritually’: A Bourdieusian
critique. Work, employment and society. 26(3). pp.497-513.
Postel, S. and Richter, B., 2012. Rivers for life: managing water for people and nature. Island
Press.
Cartwright, S. and Cooper, C. L., 2012. Managing mergers acquisitions and strategic alliances.
Routledge.
Drucker, P., 2012. Managing the non-profit organization. Routledge.
Thompson, J.D., 2017. Organizations in action: Social science bases of administrative theory.
Routledge.
Şahin, F., 2012. The mediating effect of leader–member exchange on the relationship between
Theory X and Y management styles and affective commitment: A multilevel
analysis. Journal of Management & Organization, 18(2), pp.159-174.
Online
Functions and role of manager. 2017. [Online]. Available through:
<http://www.yourarticlelibrary.com/management/manager/manager-functions-skills-and-
role/90741>.
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