Reflection on the Connection between Management Theory and Practice Throughout

Section 1: Reflection on the Connection between Management Theory and Practice Throughout the tutorial program, the different organisations that were presented had evident connections between theory and practice. Although the connections may never be crystal clear, and may sometimes have more than one “right” answer, the connections were still inevitable in the case studies. One thing that I found most challenging from the case studies was choosing an exact management theory to apply to the particular organisation.
This difficulty was shown throughout all of the case studies, demonstrating that there is never one right method to apply to an organisation. For example, in the Outback Steakhouse case study (Tutorial 2), the Historical Perspectives of Management were being considered. Out of the four options, there were two options that were both equally contributable to the success of Outback Steakhouse (Administrative Principles [B] and combining Systems Theory with Humanistic Perspective [D]).
Even though we did not have to choose an option in that tutorial, it would still be extremely difficult to put my hands down on one particular statement if we had to. Sometimes, theories that applied to one case study may not be relevant if applied to another, for example, trying to apply theories from Two Leaders: The Commander and the Principal (Tutorial 4) – which consisted of how effective the two leaders are in leading, to the QB House – 10 minutes, Just Cuts (Tutorial 3) case study would be like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole – it would be almost impossible.

The theories that were presented in the case studies looked at different parts of the organisation, one was about people traits and the other was about the company traits, which made it irrelevant to apply knowledge from one case study to another. However, if we were to look at a particular part of the QB House – 10 minutes, Just Cuts (Tutorial 3) case study – i. e. information about Konishi, it shows that he is a charismatic leader and is supported by transactional leadership, as he created an atmosphere of change to the hairdressing industry and has a clear structure in his organisation.
Every organisation has different goals, objectives, obstacles and are all managed differently by different leaders with various mindsets. Therefore, some organisation may seem to have more or less difficulty to achieve their organisational goals compared to others. For example, ethical issues may arise that may jeopardise the reputation of the company and the leaders, as shown in the The Whole System Seems Wrong (Tutorial 5) case study.
Also, some organisations may operate on an international scale instead of a national scale, which means that they have to take into account many other factors such as cost, cultural barriers and many more which may ultimately take more time to achieve their organisational goals – i. e. Qantas (Tutorial 8) case study. Overall, the case studies presented had evident connections between management theory and practice. Some may seem less obvious that others or less straightforward, but there is a definite connection in the case studies.