Schermerhorn / Management 16th Edition Instructor’s Guide
Chapter 1
CAREERS, MANAGEMENT, AND MANAGERS
Learning Objectives
In studying this chapter, students should consider the following questions and be able to complete the
accompanying objectives:
Learning Objective 1.1: Summarize the challenges of career readiness in a complex and changing
economy
Learning Objective 1.2: Describe organizations as work settings, what it means to be a manager, and
how managerial work is changing.
Learning Objective 1.3: Explain the functions, roles, and activities of managers, and the skills needed
to perform them well.
Overview
Work in today’s economy is increasingly knowledge based, and people, with their capacity to bring
valuable intellectual capital to the workplace, are the ultimate foundation of organizational performance.
The chapter begins with a section on understanding the challenges of working today. The world of work
is undergoing dynamic and challenging changes that provide great opportunities along with tremendous
uncertainty. These changes are due to the impact of important trends regarding worker talent,
technological change, ethical standards, workforce diversity, and careers. After setting up this framework
for the changing environment in which organizations operate, the chapter goes on to describe
organizations as open systems which interact with their environments in the process of transforming
resource inputs into finished goods and services as product outputs. From this point, the bulk of the
chapter describes managers and their work; detailing that managers directly support, supervise, facilitate
and help activate the work efforts of other people in organizations. Next, the chapter explores the
management process consisting of the four functions of planning, organizing, leading, and controlling,
followed by the roles and skills managers need for success. The chapter concludes with a discussion of
the essential managerial skills and how they are learned. These skills are categorized as technical skills,
human skills, and conceptual skills. The chapter emphasizes that the importance of these skills varies by
management level and that effective managers help other achieve both high performance and job
satisfaction.
Lecture Outline
Teaching Objective: To increase awareness of how a dynamic and changing environment affects
organizations, managers, and the management process in the new workplace.
Copyright © 2026 1-1
,Schermerhorn / Management 16th Edition Instructor’s Guide
Suggested Time: Two hours of class time are typically required to present the material in this chapter.
Learning Objective 1: Summarize the challenges of career readiness in a complex and changing
economy.
Career Readiness
Talent
Technology
Ethics
Diversity and Inclusion
Self-Management
Learning Objective 2: Describe organizations as work settings, what it means to be a manager, and
how managerial work is changing.
Organizations as Work Settings
Who Are the Managers?
Levels of Management
Accountability and Managerial Performance Changing Nature of Managerial Work
Learning Objective 3: Explain the functions, roles, and activities of managers, and the skills needed
to perform them well.
Functions of Management
Managerial Roles and Activities
Managerial Agendas, Networking, and Social Capital
Managerial Learning Essential Managerial Skills
Supporting Materials
Figures
• Figure 1.1: Make critical thinking about career readiness work for you.
• Figure 1.2: Soft skills quick check
• Figure 1.3: Using a personal SWOT analysis for self-management and strategic career planning.
• Figure 1.4: Organizations are open systems interacting with their environments.
• Figure 1.5: Performance effectiveness and efficiency as dimensions of organizational
performance.
• Figure 1.6: The manager’s challenge— fulfilling performance accountability while depending on
others to do the work.
• Figure 1.7: The organization viewed as an upside-down pyramid.
• Figure 1.8: Four functions of management—planning, organizing, leading, and controlling.
• Figure 1.9: Interpersonal, informational, and decisional roles of managers.
• Figure 1.10: Katz’s essential managerial skills—technical, human, and conceptual.
Copyright © 2026 1-2
,Schermerhorn / Management 16th Edition Instructor’s Guide
Thematic Boxes
• Insight: Gain Self-Awareness
• Issues: Stay Informed
• Ethics: Know Right from Wrong
• Choices: Think Before You Act
Management Learning Review
• Summary
• Quick-Quiz 1
Career Skills & Competencies
• Manage a Critical Incident: Team Lead Faces Test
• Contribute to the Class Exercise: My Best Manager
• Collaborate on a Team Project: “Back to Work Five Days … or Else”
• Put AI to Work: Identifying Career Challenges
• Analyze and Update a Case: Lego Thrives on Ideas/Spin Master Sells Imagination
LECTURE NOTES
CAREER READINESS TODAY
Learning Objective: Summarize the challenges of career readiness in a complex and changing
economy.
Today’s working environment has changed dramatically due to the complex world in which we live. No
longer can one be complacent, unskilled, or even expect job security. Innovation, cost competitiveness,
and technology are the driving forces today.
Career advancement today demands career readiness, which is a living portfolio of skills, competencies,
aspirations, and goals that can advance your career success, even in a rapidly changing environment.
Employees also need initiative, self-awareness, and continuous learning to upskill (continually updating
skills to keep them aligned with emerging job markets and new ways of working.) and develop
transferable skills (skills that apply across job types and occupations; for example, creativity, problem
solving, communication, collaboration, and technology usage).
TALENT
According to management scholars Charles O’Reilly and Jeffrey Pfeffer, high performing
companies achieve success by being better than competitors by getting extraordinary results from
the people working for them.
People –– what they know, what they learn, and what they do with it –– are the ultimate
foundations of organizational performance.
Copyright © 2026 1-3
, Schermerhorn / Management 16th Edition Instructor’s Guide
People represent intellectual capital, which is the collective brainpower or shared knowledge of
a workforce that is used to create value.
The intellectual capital equation of Intellectual Capital = Competency x Commitment defines
today’s workplace. Workers’ talents and job-related capabilities represent competency, while
willingness to work hard and apply talents and capabilities to important tasks defines
commitment.
Competency represents your personal talents or job-related capabilities.
Commitment represents how hard you work to apply your talents and capabilities to goals, tasks,
problem-solving, and opportunities.
A knowledge worker is someone whose mind is a critical asset to employers and who adds to the
intellectual capital of the organization.
A smart workforce has members with both “hard” technical and “soft” human skills and who
work together to solve ever changing problems.
TECHNOLOGY
We are currently in the fourth industrial age, which means change is driven by the cloud,
mobile Internet, automation and robotics, and artificial intelligence.
The world is driven by technology, so one must develop a high Tech IQ, that is, the ability to use
technology and commitment to stay informed on the latest technological developments.
Analytical competency is the ability to evaluate, analyze, and interpret information to make
decisions and solve problems. AIQ is the ability to use an ever-expanding variety of artificial
intelligence platforms to improve work performance.
We hold meetings in virtual space, eliminating physical distances. Work is done from home or
anywhere we might be. We meet as virtual teams, sharing files and information, all without ever
meeting face-to-face.
ETHICS
Ethics set moral standards of what is “good” and “right” in the conduct of a person or group.
Every week, we learn about the unethical behavior of business executives that cause great harm to
those who entrust them to do the right thing. Much of this is due to the lack of active oversight of
management decisions and company actions by boards of directors. As such, it is imperative that
students realize integrity is the key to leadership and the responsibility for setting the ethical tone
of the organization comes from the top.
Copyright © 2026 1-4
Chapter 1
CAREERS, MANAGEMENT, AND MANAGERS
Learning Objectives
In studying this chapter, students should consider the following questions and be able to complete the
accompanying objectives:
Learning Objective 1.1: Summarize the challenges of career readiness in a complex and changing
economy
Learning Objective 1.2: Describe organizations as work settings, what it means to be a manager, and
how managerial work is changing.
Learning Objective 1.3: Explain the functions, roles, and activities of managers, and the skills needed
to perform them well.
Overview
Work in today’s economy is increasingly knowledge based, and people, with their capacity to bring
valuable intellectual capital to the workplace, are the ultimate foundation of organizational performance.
The chapter begins with a section on understanding the challenges of working today. The world of work
is undergoing dynamic and challenging changes that provide great opportunities along with tremendous
uncertainty. These changes are due to the impact of important trends regarding worker talent,
technological change, ethical standards, workforce diversity, and careers. After setting up this framework
for the changing environment in which organizations operate, the chapter goes on to describe
organizations as open systems which interact with their environments in the process of transforming
resource inputs into finished goods and services as product outputs. From this point, the bulk of the
chapter describes managers and their work; detailing that managers directly support, supervise, facilitate
and help activate the work efforts of other people in organizations. Next, the chapter explores the
management process consisting of the four functions of planning, organizing, leading, and controlling,
followed by the roles and skills managers need for success. The chapter concludes with a discussion of
the essential managerial skills and how they are learned. These skills are categorized as technical skills,
human skills, and conceptual skills. The chapter emphasizes that the importance of these skills varies by
management level and that effective managers help other achieve both high performance and job
satisfaction.
Lecture Outline
Teaching Objective: To increase awareness of how a dynamic and changing environment affects
organizations, managers, and the management process in the new workplace.
Copyright © 2026 1-1
,Schermerhorn / Management 16th Edition Instructor’s Guide
Suggested Time: Two hours of class time are typically required to present the material in this chapter.
Learning Objective 1: Summarize the challenges of career readiness in a complex and changing
economy.
Career Readiness
Talent
Technology
Ethics
Diversity and Inclusion
Self-Management
Learning Objective 2: Describe organizations as work settings, what it means to be a manager, and
how managerial work is changing.
Organizations as Work Settings
Who Are the Managers?
Levels of Management
Accountability and Managerial Performance Changing Nature of Managerial Work
Learning Objective 3: Explain the functions, roles, and activities of managers, and the skills needed
to perform them well.
Functions of Management
Managerial Roles and Activities
Managerial Agendas, Networking, and Social Capital
Managerial Learning Essential Managerial Skills
Supporting Materials
Figures
• Figure 1.1: Make critical thinking about career readiness work for you.
• Figure 1.2: Soft skills quick check
• Figure 1.3: Using a personal SWOT analysis for self-management and strategic career planning.
• Figure 1.4: Organizations are open systems interacting with their environments.
• Figure 1.5: Performance effectiveness and efficiency as dimensions of organizational
performance.
• Figure 1.6: The manager’s challenge— fulfilling performance accountability while depending on
others to do the work.
• Figure 1.7: The organization viewed as an upside-down pyramid.
• Figure 1.8: Four functions of management—planning, organizing, leading, and controlling.
• Figure 1.9: Interpersonal, informational, and decisional roles of managers.
• Figure 1.10: Katz’s essential managerial skills—technical, human, and conceptual.
Copyright © 2026 1-2
,Schermerhorn / Management 16th Edition Instructor’s Guide
Thematic Boxes
• Insight: Gain Self-Awareness
• Issues: Stay Informed
• Ethics: Know Right from Wrong
• Choices: Think Before You Act
Management Learning Review
• Summary
• Quick-Quiz 1
Career Skills & Competencies
• Manage a Critical Incident: Team Lead Faces Test
• Contribute to the Class Exercise: My Best Manager
• Collaborate on a Team Project: “Back to Work Five Days … or Else”
• Put AI to Work: Identifying Career Challenges
• Analyze and Update a Case: Lego Thrives on Ideas/Spin Master Sells Imagination
LECTURE NOTES
CAREER READINESS TODAY
Learning Objective: Summarize the challenges of career readiness in a complex and changing
economy.
Today’s working environment has changed dramatically due to the complex world in which we live. No
longer can one be complacent, unskilled, or even expect job security. Innovation, cost competitiveness,
and technology are the driving forces today.
Career advancement today demands career readiness, which is a living portfolio of skills, competencies,
aspirations, and goals that can advance your career success, even in a rapidly changing environment.
Employees also need initiative, self-awareness, and continuous learning to upskill (continually updating
skills to keep them aligned with emerging job markets and new ways of working.) and develop
transferable skills (skills that apply across job types and occupations; for example, creativity, problem
solving, communication, collaboration, and technology usage).
TALENT
According to management scholars Charles O’Reilly and Jeffrey Pfeffer, high performing
companies achieve success by being better than competitors by getting extraordinary results from
the people working for them.
People –– what they know, what they learn, and what they do with it –– are the ultimate
foundations of organizational performance.
Copyright © 2026 1-3
, Schermerhorn / Management 16th Edition Instructor’s Guide
People represent intellectual capital, which is the collective brainpower or shared knowledge of
a workforce that is used to create value.
The intellectual capital equation of Intellectual Capital = Competency x Commitment defines
today’s workplace. Workers’ talents and job-related capabilities represent competency, while
willingness to work hard and apply talents and capabilities to important tasks defines
commitment.
Competency represents your personal talents or job-related capabilities.
Commitment represents how hard you work to apply your talents and capabilities to goals, tasks,
problem-solving, and opportunities.
A knowledge worker is someone whose mind is a critical asset to employers and who adds to the
intellectual capital of the organization.
A smart workforce has members with both “hard” technical and “soft” human skills and who
work together to solve ever changing problems.
TECHNOLOGY
We are currently in the fourth industrial age, which means change is driven by the cloud,
mobile Internet, automation and robotics, and artificial intelligence.
The world is driven by technology, so one must develop a high Tech IQ, that is, the ability to use
technology and commitment to stay informed on the latest technological developments.
Analytical competency is the ability to evaluate, analyze, and interpret information to make
decisions and solve problems. AIQ is the ability to use an ever-expanding variety of artificial
intelligence platforms to improve work performance.
We hold meetings in virtual space, eliminating physical distances. Work is done from home or
anywhere we might be. We meet as virtual teams, sharing files and information, all without ever
meeting face-to-face.
ETHICS
Ethics set moral standards of what is “good” and “right” in the conduct of a person or group.
Every week, we learn about the unethical behavior of business executives that cause great harm to
those who entrust them to do the right thing. Much of this is due to the lack of active oversight of
management decisions and company actions by boards of directors. As such, it is imperative that
students realize integrity is the key to leadership and the responsibility for setting the ethical tone
of the organization comes from the top.
Copyright © 2026 1-4
