Management functions

[edit] Different levels of management

[edit] 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.

[edit] 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.

[edit] 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.

[edit] 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'

[edit] 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.

[edit] 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.

[edit] 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

[edit] 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.

[edit] 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.

[edit] 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:

1. planning
2. organizing
3. leading
4. co-ordinating
5. 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.

[edit] 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 [Who?] 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.

[edit] 19th century

Some argue [citation needed] 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.

[edit] 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

[edit] 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.

[edit] 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.