Practise distinguishing manager functions, roles and styles and applying Fayol, Mintzberg or McGregor to analyse effects on employees and overall business performance.
Direct News (DN)
Shila and Lucy own and manage DN, an online publishing business. DN produces a daily online local newspaper called QNews. Readers pay a subscription to access QNews. DN's mission statement is: 'to be a daily community newspaper for local people, about local people'.
DN recently tested a monthly online magazine aimed at the 18-30 age group called QLine. DN's plan is to stop publishing QNews and produce only QLine. Secondary market research suggests QLine will be popular with national businesses wanting to promote their products.
Shila is aware that revenue from online newspapers is decreasing. However, she has found national market research data about online monthly magazines (see Table 2.1).
Table 2.1 National revenue for online monthly magazines
Shila thinks that before the business decides to produce QLine, more market research data will be needed. Shila and Lucy will have to decide on new objectives for DN.
To ensure a quality product that meets customer expectations, Lucy thinks it is important to have careful management of the supply chain, from content creation to customer delivery.
Identify one function of a manager.