Definition. Management function. Process of Management

“ Management is the process of designing and maintaining an environment in which individuals working together in groups, efficiently accomplish selected item”

“ Management is the process of getting things done, through & with people in organization”

The word ‘management’ derives from the sixteenth century Italian maneggiare, to handle or control a horse. The application has been extended over the centuries from horses to weapons, boats, sportspeople and nowadays to people and affairs quite generally, but the connotation of control remains. Indeed, in management theory, as we teach it in business schools, control is a central preoccupation. Theories differ in the assumptions they make about human motivation and behaviour, and in the organizational structures, incentives, reward systems and managerial techniques they prescribe.

Some treat working people as willing or unwilling cogs in a machine, to be disciplined so as to maximize the efficiency of the machine. Others treat them as enterprising but self-interested individuals, to be manipulated through incentives to do what is required. Still others see them as cooperative problem-solvers, to be harnessed to an organization’s culture and goals. But all seek to control them in one way or another so as to maximize their output or efficiency.

What do managers make?

Managers get things done through other people. They make decisions, allocate resources, and direct the activities of others to attain goals. Managers do their work in an organization. This is a consciously coordinated social unit, composed of two or more people, who functions on a relatively continuous basis to achieve a common goal or set of goals. On the basis of this definition, manufacturing and service firms are organizations and so are schools, hospitals, churches, military units, retail stores, police departments, and local, state, and federal government agencies. The people who oversee the activities of others and who are responsible for attaining goals in these organizations are managers (although they’re sometimes called administrators, especially in not-for-profit organizations).

Managers – Individuals who achieve goals through other people.

Organization – a consciously coordinated social unit, composed of two or more people that functions on a relatively continuous basis to achieve a common goal or set of goals.

Management functions (or) Process of Management:

In the early part of this century, a French industrialist by the name of Henri Fayol wrote that all managers perform five management functions: They plan, organize, command, coordinate, and control.

Today, we have condensed those down to four: planning, organizing, leading, and controlling.

If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there. Since organizations exist to achieve goals, someone has to define those goals and the means by which they can be achieved. Management is that someone.

The planning function encompasses defining an organization’s goals, establishing an overall strategy for achieving those goals, and developing a comprehensive hierarchy of plans to integrate and coordinate activities.

Managers are also responsible for designing an organization’s structure. We call this function organizing. It includes the determination of what tasks are to be done, who is to do them, how the tasks are to be grouped, who reports to whom, and where decisions are to be made.

Every organization contains people, and it is management’s job to direct and coordinate those people. This is the leading function. When managers motivate subordinates, direct the activities of others, select the most effective communication channels, or resolve conflicts among members, they are engaging in leading.

The final function managers perform is controlling. After the goals are set, the plans formulated, the structural arrangements delineated, and the people hired, trained, and motivated, there is still the possibility that something may go amiss. To ensure that things are going as they should, management must monitor the organization’s performance. Actual performance must be compared with the previously set goals. If there are any significant deviations, it is management’s job to get the organization back on track. This monitoring, comparing, and potential correcting is what is meant by the controlling function.

6.2 Managerial Skills. Order of Management. Efficiency & Effectiveness

Still another way of considering what managers do is to look at the skills or competencies they need to successfully achieve their goals. Robert Katz has identified three essential management skills: technical, human, and conceptual.

Technical skills encompass the ability to apply specialized knowledge or expertise. When you think of the skills held by professionals such as civil engineers, tax accountants, or oral surgeons, you typically focus on their technical skills. Through extensive formal education, they have learned the special knowledge and practices of their field. Of course, professionals don’t have a monopoly on technical skills, and not all technical skills have to be learned in schools or formal training programs. All jobs require some specialized expertise, and many people develop their technical skills on the job.

TECHNICAL SKILLS – means the ability to apply specialized knowledge or expertise. Many people are technically proficient but interpersonally incompetent.

HUMAN SKILLS The ability to work with, understand, and motivate other people, both individually and in groups, describes human skills. Many people are technically proficient but interpersonally incompetent. They might, for example, be poor listeners, unable to understand the needs of others, or have difficulty managing conflicts. Since managers get things done through other people, they must have good human skills to communicate, motivate, and delegate.

CONCEPTUAL SKILLS Managers must have the mental ability to analyze and diagnose complex situations. These tasks require conceptual skills. Decision making, for instance, requires managers to spot problems, identify alternatives that can correct them, evaluate those alternatives, and select the best one. Managers can be technically and interpersonally competent yet still fail because of an inability to rationally process and interpret information.

Effective & successful management activities

Fred Luthans and his associates looked at the issue of what managers do from a somewhat different perspective. They asked the question, Do managers who move up most quickly in an organization do the same activities and with the same emphasis as managers who do the best job? You would tend to think that the managers who were the most effective in their jobs would also be the ones who were promoted fastest. But that’s not what appears to happen. Luthans and his associates studied more than 450 managers. What they found was that these managers all engaged in four managerial activities:

Traditional management. Decision-making, planning, and controlling.

Communication. Exchanging routine information and processing paperwork.

Human resource management. Motivating, disciplining, managing conflict, staffing, and training.

Networking. Socializing, politicking, and interacting with outsiders.

The "average" manager in the study spent thirty-two percent of his or her time in traditional management activities, twenty-nine percent communicating, twenty percent in human resource management activities, and nineteen percent networking. However, the amount of time and effort that different managers spent on those four activities varied a great deal. Among successful managers, networking made the largest relative contribution to success, and human resource management activities made the least relative contribution.

Among effective managers, communication made the largest relative contribution and networking the least. This study adds important insights to our knowledge of what managers do. On average, managers spend approximately twenty to thirty percent of their time on each of the four activities: traditional management, communication, human resource management, and networking. However, successful managers don’t give the same emphasis to each of those activities as do effective managers. In fact, their emphases are almost the opposite. This finding challenges the historical assumption that promotions are based on performance, vividly illustrating the importance that social and political skills play in getting ahead in organizations.