'Management' comprises directing and controlling a group of one or more people or entities for the purpose of coordinating and harmonizing that group towards accomplishing a goal. Management often encompasses the deployment and manipulation of
human resources,
financial resources,
technological resources, and
natural resources. 'Management' can also refer to the person or people who perform the act(s) of management.
The verb 'manage' comes from the
Italian ''maneggiare'' (to handle — especially a horse), which in turn derives from the
Latin ''manus'' (hand). The French word ''mesnagement'' (later ''ménagement'') influenced the development in meaning of the English word ''management'' in the 17th and 18th centuries.
[1]
Management has to do with
power by position, whereas
leadership involves power by influence. Compare
stewardship.
Management functions
Different levels of management
Top-level management
★ Top-level managers require an extensive knowledge of management roles and skills.
★ They have to be very aware of external factors such as markets.
★ Their decisions are generally of a long-term nature.
★ They are responsible for 'strategic' decisions.
Middle management
★ Mid-level managers have a specialised understanding of certain managerial tasks.
★ They are responsible for and carrying out the decisions made by top-level management.
★ They are responsible for 'tactical' decisions.
Lower management
★ This level of management ensures that the decisions and plans taken by the other two are carried out.
★ Lower-level managers' decisions are generally short-term ones.
★ They are responsible for 'operational' decisions.
Good qualities for a general manager
★ Has educational and management qualifications, and experience
★ Has experience in all of the business's departments
★ Is able to coordinate the departments
★ Is realistic in outlook regarding the business's prospects
★ Has good interpersonal relationships
★ Works for the good of the business
★ Able to plan and act with creativity
★ Believes in own abilities as well as colleagues'
Formation of the business policy
★ The 'mission' of the business is its most obvious purpose -- which may be, for example, to make soap.
★ The 'objective' of the business refers to the ends or activity at which a certain task is aimed.
★ The business's 'policy' is a guide that stipulates rules, regulations and objectives, and may be used in the managers' decision-making. It must be flexible and easily interpreted and understood by all employees.
★ The business's 'strategy' refers to the plan of action that it is going to take, as well as the resources that it will be using, to achieve its mission and objectives. It is a guideline to managers, stipulating how they ought to use best the factors of production to the business's advantage. Initially, it could help the managers decide on what type of business they want to form.
How to implement policies and strategies
★ All policies and strategies must be discussed with all managerial personnel and staff.
★ Managers must understand where and how they can implement their policies and strategies.
★ A plan of action must be devised for each department.
★ Policies and strategies must be reviewed regularly.
★ Contingency plans must be devised in case the environment changes.
★ Assessments of progress ought to be carried out regularly by top-level mangers.
★ A good environment is required within the business.
The development of policies and strategies
★ The missions, objectives, strengths and weaknesses of each department must be analysed to determine their roles in achieving the business's mission.
★ The 'forecasting method' develops a reliable picture of the business's future environment.
★ A 'planning unit' must be created to ensure that all plans are consistent and that policies and strategies are aimed at achieving the same mission and objectives.
★ Contingency plans must be developed, just in case.
All policies must be discussed with all managerial personnel and staff that is required in the execution of any departmental policy
Where policies and strategies fit into the planning process
★ They give mid- and lower-level managers a good idea of the future plans for each department.
★ A framework is created whereby plans and decisions are made.
★ Mid- and lower-level management may add their own plans to the business's strategic ones.
Basic elements of management
Management operates through various functions, often classified as planning, organizing, leading/motivating and controlling.
★ Planning: deciding what needs to happen in the future (today, next week, next month, next year, over the next five years, etc.) and generating
plans for action.
★ Organizing: making optimum use of the resources required to enable the successful carrying out of plans.
★ Leading/Motivating: exhibiting skills in these areas for getting others to play an effective part in achieving plans.
★ Controlling: monitoring -- checking progress against plans, which may need modification based on feedback.
Theoretical scope
Mary Parker Follett (1868–1933), who wrote on the topic in the early twentieth century, defined management as "the art of getting things done through people".
[2]
One can also think of management functionally, as the action of measuring a quantity on a regular basis and of adjusting some initial
plan; or as the actions taken to reach one's intended goal. This applies even in situations where planning does not take place. From this perspective, Frenchman
Henri Fayol
[3]
considers management to consist of five functions:
#
planning
#
organizing
#
leading
#
co-ordinating
#
controlling
Some people, however, find this definition, while useful, far too narrow. The phrase "management is what managers do" occurs widely, suggesting the difficulty of defining management, the shifting nature of definitions, and the connection of managerial practices with the existence of a managerial
cadre or
class.
One habit of thought regards management as equivalent to "business administration", although this then excludes management in places outside
commerce, as for example in
charities and in the
public sector. Nonetheless, many people refer to university departments which teach management as "
business schools." Some institutions (such as the
Harvard Business School) use that name while others (such as the
Yale School of Management) employ the more inclusive term "management."
Speakers of English may also use the term "management" or "the management" as a collective word describing the managers of an organization, for example of a
corporation.
Historical development
Difficulties arise in tracing the history of management. Some see it (by definition) as a late modern (in the sense of late
modernity) conceptualization. On those terms it cannot have a pre-modern history, only harbingers (such as
stewards). Others, however, detect management-like activities in the pre-modern past. Some writers trace the development of management-thought back to
Sumerian traders and to the builders of the pyramids of
ancient Egypt. Slave-owners through the centuries faced the problems of exploiting/motivating a dependent but sometimes unenthusiastic or recalcitrant workforce, but many pre-industrial
enterprises, given their small scale, did not feel compelled to face the issues of management systematically. However, innovations such as the spread of
Hindu-Arabic numerals (5th to 15th centuries) and the codification of
double-entry book-keeping (1494) provided
tools for management assessment, planning and control.
Given the scale of most commercial operations and the lack of mechanized record-keeping and recording before the
industrial revolution, it made sense for most
owners of enterprises in those times to carry out management functions by and for themselves. But with growing size and complexity of organizations, the split between owners (individuals, industrial dynasties or groups of
shareholders) and day-to-day managers (independent specialists in planning and control) gradually became more common.
19th century
Some argue that modern management as a discipline began as an off-shoot of
economics in the 19th century. Classical economists such as Adam Smith (1723 - 1790) and
John Stuart Mill (1806 - 1873) provided a theoretical background to
resource-allocation,
production, and
pricing issues. About the same time, innovators like
Eli Whitney (1765 - 1825),
James Watt (1736 - 1819), and
Matthew Boulton (1728 - 1809) developed elements of technical production such as
standardization,
quality-control procedures,
cost-accounting, interchangeability of parts, and
work-planning. Many of these aspects of management existed in the pre-1861 slave-based sector of the
US economy. That environment saw 4 million people, as the contemporary usages had it, "managed" in profitable quasi-
mass production.
By the late 19th century,
marginal economists Alfred Marshall (1842 - 1924) and
Léon Walras (1834 - 1910) and others introduced a new layer of complexity to the theoretical underpinnings of management.
Joseph Wharton offered the first tertiary-level course in management in
1881.
20th century
By about
1900 one finds managers trying to place their theories on what they regarded as a thoroughly scientific basis (see
scientism for perceived limitations of this belief). Examples include
Henry R. Towne's ''Science of management'' in the 1890s,
Frederick Winslow Taylor's ''
Scientific management'' (1911),
Frank and
Lillian Gilbreth's ''Applied motion study'' (1917), and
Henry L. Gantt's charts (1910s). J. Duncan wrote the first
college management
textbook in
1911. In
1912 Yoichi Ueno introduced
Taylorism to
Japan and became first
management consultant of the "Japanese-management style". His son
Ichiro Ueno pioneered Japanese
quality-assurance.
The first comprehensive theories of management appeared around
1920. The
Harvard Business School invented the
Master of Business Administration degree (MBA) in 1921. People like
Henri Fayol (1841 - 1925) and
Alexander Church described the various branches of management and their inter-relationships. In the early
20th century, people like Ordway Tead (1891 - 1973),
Walter Scott and J. Mooney applied the principles of
psychology to management, while other writers, such as
Elton Mayo (1880 - 1949),
Mary Parker Follett (1868 - 1933),
Chester Barnard (1886 - 1961),
Max Weber (1864 - 1920),
Rensis Likert (1903 - 1981), and
Chris Argyris (1923 - ) approached the phenomenon of management from a
sociological perspective.
Peter Drucker (1909 – 2005) wrote one of the earliest books on applied management: ''Concept of the Corporation'' (published in 1946). It resulted from
Alfred Sloan (chairman of
General Motors until 1956) commissioning a study of the
organisation. Drucker went on to write 39 books, many in the same vein.
H. Dodge,
Ronald Fisher (1890 - 1962), and Thornton C. Fry introduced statistical techniques into management-studies. In the
1940s,
Patrick Blackett combined these statistical theories with
microeconomic theory and gave birth to the
science of
operations research. Operations research, sometimes known as "management science" (but distinct from Taylor's
scientific management), attempts to take a
scientific approach to solving management problems, particularly in the areas of
logistics and operations.
Some of the more
recent developments include the
Theory of Constraints,
management by objectives,
reengineering, and various
information-technology-driven theories such as
agile software development, as well as group management theories such as
Cog's Ladder.
As the general recognition of managers as a class solidified during the 20th century and gave perceived practitioners of the art/science of management a certain amount of prestige, so the way opened for
popularised systems of management ideas to peddle their wares. In this context many
management fads may have had more to do with
pop psychology than with scientific theories of management.
Towards the end of the 20th century, business management came to consist of six separate branches, namely:
★
Human resource management
★
Operations management or production management
★
Strategic management
★
Marketing management
★
Financial management
★
Information technology management responsible for
management information systems
21st century
In the
21st century observers find it increasingly difficult to subdivide management into functional categories in this way. More and more processes simultaneously involve several categories. Instead, one tends to think in terms of the various processes, tasks, and objects subject to management.
Branches of management theory also exist relating to
nonprofits and to government: such as
public administration,
public management, and educational management. Further, management programs related to
civil-society organizations have also spawned programs in
nonprofit management and
social entrepreneurship.
Note that many of the assumptions made by management have come under attack from
business ethics viewpoints,
critical management studies, and
anti-corporate activism.
As one consequence,
workplace democracy has become both more common, and more advocated, in some places distributing all management functions among the workers, each of whom takes on a portion of the work. However, these models predate any current political issue, and may occur more naturally than does a
command hierarchy. All management to some degree embraces democratic principles in that in the long term workers must give majority support to management; otherwise they leave to find other work, or go on strike. Hence management has started to become less based on the conceptualisation of ''classical'' military command-and-control, and more about
facilitation and support of collaborative activity, utilizing principles such as those of
human interaction management to deal with the complexities of human interaction. Indeed, the concept of
Ubiquitous command-and-control posits such a transformation for 21st century military management.
Nature of managerial work
In for-profit work, management has as its primary function the satisfaction of a range of stakeholders. This typically involves making a profit (for the shareholders), creating valued products at a reasonable cost (for customers), and providing rewarding employment opportunities (for employees). In nonprofit management, add the importance of keeping the faith of donors. In most models of management/
governance, shareholders vote for the
board of directors, and the board then hires senior management. Some organizations have experimented with other methods (such as employee-voting models) of selecting or reviewing managers; but this occurs only very rarely.
In the
public sector of countries constituted as
representative democracies, voters elect politicians to public office. Such politicians hire many managers and administrators, and in some countries like the
United States political appointees lose their jobs on the election of a new president/governor/mayor. Some 2500 people serve at the pleasure of the United States Chief Executive, including all of the top US government executives.
Public, private, and voluntary sectors place different demands on managers, but all must retain the faith of those who select them (if they wish to retain their jobs), retain the faith of those people that fund the organization, and retain the faith of those who work for the organization. If they fail to convince employees of the advantages of staying rather than leaving, they may tip the organization into a downward spiral of hiring, training, firing, and recruiting. Management also has the task of
innovating and of improving the functioning of organizations.
The importance of control
At least two perspectives on role of
control exist:
# Top management expects to control everything, making all decisions, while middle and lower managers implement decisions, and production workers operate only as instructed
# Top management does not decide the "right" way to do something, and lower-level staff become involved in decision-making processes.
# Some companies use "slopey shoulder syndrome" style management, where people will take credit for when things go right. However when things go wrong they will pass the blame and responsibility to people either below or adjacent in the company structure.
Managerial levels/hierarchy
The management of a large organisation may have three levels:
#
Senior management (or "top management" or "upper management")
#
Middle management
# Low-level management, such as
supervisors or
team-leaders
Areas and categories and implementations of management
References
1. Oxford English Dictionary
2.
''Vocational Business: Training, Developing and Motivating People'' by Richard Barrett - Business & Economics - 2003. - Page 51.
3.
''Administration industrielle et générale - prévoyance organisation - commandement, coordination – contrôle'', Paris : Dunod, 1966
See also
★
Adhocracy
★
Administration
★
Administrative incompetence
★
Collaboration
★
Collaborative method
★
Corporate governance
★
Design management
★
Engineering management
★
Futures Studies
★
Knowledge visualization
★
Leadership
★
Management consulting
★
Management control
★
Management development
★
Management fad
★
Management styles
★
Management Technology
★
Managerialism
★
Managing upwards
★
Micromanagement
★
Macromanagement
★
Middle management
★
Music management
★
Organizational studies
★
Organizational empowerment
★
Predictive analytics
★
Public administration
★
Scientific management
★
Senior management
★
Social entrepreneurship
★
Virtual management
★
Peter Drucker's
management by objectives
★
Eliyahu M. Goldratt's
Theory of Constraints
★
Pointy Haired Boss — a negative stereotype of managers
Lists
: ''Main lists:
List of basic management topics and
List of management topics''
★
List of marketing topics
★
List of human resource management topics
★
List of economics topics
★
List of finance topics
★
List of accounting topics
★
List of information technology management topics
★
List of production topics
★
List of business law topics
★
List of business ethics, political economy, and philosophy of business topics
★
List of business theorists
★
List of economists
★
List of corporate leaders
; Timelines
★
Timeline of management techniques
External links
#
Management Courses at MIT Sloan, OpenCourseWare
#
Research on Organizations: Bibliography Database and Maps
#
(United States) Academy of Management: dedicated to the scholarship and practice of management
#
Managing programmers and software development
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