I am presenting this reflective paper as a student who is aspiring to land a well-paying position as a fund manager. At the beginning of the course, I never thought that it had anything to do with fund management or anything in finance. After all, there were no financial models, capital markets, or even forex rates mentioned in the course material. However, as I progressively read the course materials, I find the course on diagnosis and management of human behavior in organizations as exceptionally useful and informative. It is particularly important to the understanding of the human aspects of fund management and investments and this short reflective paper, I well dwell briefly on the impact that the course had had on my life as a student and the opportunities that I was able to visualize after reading the course materials. The bottom line is that I this course plays out importantly as a course that everyone in all professions ought to and must take.
I have had the opportunity to reflect on my life as a student in light of the lessons learned from the course on diagnosis and management of human behavior in organizations. I had the chance to look at the organization of the several study groups that I have worked with throughout my life as a scholar. One good thing about the study groups in which we solve academic problems is that they include people coming together to focus on a particular goal or objective. During the group formation stages, there are people who join only to leave shortly after and if the group survives the leadership wrangles that storm it at the formation stages. Even after formation, every group or organization is rocked from inside, especially by differences among the members of the organization or the group. One particular example from the study group setting is that different members of the group had different answers that they defended. Lessons from the class indicate that such is the situation in every social group, and organizational settings and the success of the group or organization depends on how the organization handles these concerns.
Combining my study group experience and the lessons learned from the course on diagnosis and management of human behavior in organizations, there are various observations that I have made on both my strengths and weaknesses. The strengths include my ability to be assertive without necessarily being aggressive when making a point in an organizational setting. This means that I can accommodate the views of other members of the organization as much as I am focused on convincing them about my views. Through this, I have been able to keep the group united, and I believe that these strengths remain applicable in the role that I look forward to as a fund manager. On the weaknesses, I learned that one of my limitations is believing that I can handle everything by myself. The do-it-all attitude may not necessarily be good in the organizational setting where the contributions of other people are equally important. Normally, I do this in pursuit of perfection and excellence, and it has worked in some instances. However, the attitude resulted in less than optimal outcomes in a few occasions. This gave me the crucial lesson of accommodating the contributions of other people in the group and the organization.
I have been working on improving my weaknesses and optimizing my strengths as I prepare for the coveted role in fund management. One particularly important thing that I have come to learn is that an organization is as successful as the human elements in the organization are. The importance of this to the fund management role is that I will be interacting with people across the board, and these include the customers and senior managers or investors in the organization. In fund management, the most important that one can give the customers is to assure them that the funds invested cannot be wasted out of wrangles between the fund managers and all other people in the organization; including the research analysts and the legal experts. Consequently, displaying the image of a successful organization marks the beginning of ensuring that a fund manager operates successfully.
Another particularly important lesson from the course on diagnosis and management of human behavior in organizations is the relationship between the organization and the understanding of human behavior in general. On the narrow scope, human behavior in this instance deals mainly with the interactions between people and how successful relationships in the organization help in building excellence and success. On the other hand, there is the other aspect of human behavior and its relation to investing attitudes. This applies to both the employees of the organization and the investors giving their money to the organization for management. Looking at the perspective of the employees, there is the possibility of their human element influencing their decisions on the investment positions they take. For instance, the organizational environment may instill fear; hence, making them commit funds to less than optimal investments that would result in less than optimal returns on investment. On the other hand, it is possible for the organizational element to instill behaviors that lead to reckless investments, which result in losses on the investment. To manage such conditions and situations, it is critically important for the organization to nurture a culture that promotes doing the right at all times. For such to be achieved, my actions as a manager must be geared towards instilling this positive energy on all people that I work with. Achieving this requires a thorough understanding of the root causes of human attitudes and behavior and the way to influence that through actions (Wagner III and Hollenbeck). This understanding gave me a new understanding of the importance of the course in my life, and I am determined to continuously pursue this knowledge. There exist a gap and an opportunity concerning the availability of fund managers who have both finance and human behavior related perspectives. This is the opportunity that I seek to fill by acquiring the requisite knowledge and experience between now that I am a student and when I get to the position of a fund manager.
In concluding, it is important to point out that I have a plan of action that I will follow in pursuit of the requisite qualifications, skills, and experience required for to fill the opportunity outlined above. My main goals are to acquire as much academic and research experience on the interaction between human behavior and fund management. I will achieve this by taking more classes on organizational behavior and management. Secondly, I seek to conduct a self-commissioned research on the interaction between fund management and human behavior. In the research, I will involve professionals in organizational management, organizational behavior, and fund management to acquire a holistic perspective on how the three frontiers come together increasing excellence in fund management. The importance of this is that it will give a new perspective to the field of fund management especially when considered that the study will be borrowing information from two dedicated frontiers of professional knowledge, and these include finance and organizational management. In other words, I seek to test theories of finance and theories of organizational behavior in a single research paper, which I consider to be one of a kind in the field of finance and fund management. In all this, I will be able to learn about organizational culture especially in fund management firms and how that creates organizational excellence in the field.
Work Cited
Wagner III, John A., and John R. Hollenbeck. Organizational Behavior: Securing competitive advantage. London: Routledge, 2014. Print
