Principles of Management - Cygnus Company and Marintek - Case Study Example

Principles of Management Abstract Proper management is the key to success in any activity. In business sector proper management can be achieved following the principles of planning, organizing, leading and controlling at different management levels. The current paper discusses the importance of each of the principles of management briefly using examples from corporate sectors. The paper shows the detrimental effects of inefficient use of the principles in Cygnus in contrast to the more encouraging outcomes of Marintek due to the ideal use of the management principles not only internally but also at a broader perspective. Introduction With the evolution of management thought over the years there were different contributions to the management thought and those in the process have created several definitions of management. Among them the most modern and simplest definition of management is that - management is the process of Planning, Organizing, Leading and Controlling the organizational members and organizational resources to achieve some stated or pre-determined goal (“Management”, n.p.). Now it has become a quite common practice to define management in terms of the above four words which are referred to as the four functions, rather four pillars of management. These four pillars in a harmonic action help us to achieve our goal. Commonly management is always referred to as a process meaning that is an ongoing continuous, systematic way to doing things. To achieve our objectives the four functions of management: Planning, Organizing, Leading and Controlling have to be carried out on an ongoing systematic way for some period of time depending on the type of objective. These four pillars of management have become even more significant with the current process of working in project mode. A project can only be successful when the dangers or problems can be predicted beforehand and the project can accordingly be planned, organized and controlled by the efficient project leaders (Lock, 1). Planning Planning implies that we must think before we start a process through our goals and actions and decide – What to do? How to do? A plan is a blueprint for goal achievement that specifies the necessary resource allocations, schedules, tasks, and other actions and the goal is the desirable future state that an organizes attempts to realize (“Defining Planning”, n.p.). Planning is all about logical and systematic thought process that is based entirely on the real world. Any kind of hunch or clumsiness should be avoided in plan formation. Planning should be carried out in a manner that it can produce a realistic picture of our desirable future. The process of planning involves both the determination of the goals of the organization and definition of the means to achieve the goals. What to do component of a planning involves a clear understanding of the incident and how to do involves a search to find out which is the most efficient way to accomplish the work to be done. Planning allows the managers the opportunity to adjust to the requirement and the environment rather than just to react to the situations. Planning helps in anticipating the risks that may occur in the future and manage the business activities accordingly to increase the possibility of survival in detrimental conditions. Again planning can be divided into short, medium and long term depending upon the time span a plan encompasses. To achieve long-term plans we must develop medium term plans for two to three years of duration. Still to achieve medium term plans we must prepare short term operational plans deciding what we should do on a day to day basis, to achieve our medium term plan and finally thereby achieve our long term plans. Organizing Planning can be pretty high sounding but mere planning will not help us to achieve our objectives unless we organize ourselves in a systematic way. Allocation of work among the concerned persons and distribution of resources among various people have to be done in a proper way so that achieving our plans become easy. It has often been found that a brilliant plan has often failed to materialize as people involved failed to organize themselves (“Going from Planning to Organizing”, n.p.). A suitable organization of work and resources by the managers can minimize business cost and maximize the efficiency of the organization and increase its ability to compete effectively in the global market. Effective organizing depends on the mastery of several important concepts such as work specialization, chain of command, authority, delegation, span of control, and centralization versus decentralization. Though it can not be denied that every organization has its unique situations, still the basic concepts of proper division of labor, effective communication, proper decision making, perfect delegation of responsibilities and effective control measures need be followed molding them according to the requirement of the organization to reach the goal successfully (“Concepts of Organizing”, n.p.). Leading The management deals mostly with humans than machines. So to achieve the objectives the managers have to motivate and lead people who are entrusted with the achievement of the objectives. Good managers lead people, motivate them and constantly communicate with them, so that they become interested in carrying out what had been allocated to them. Unless people are properly motivated they will not do the intended task. People need to be constantly motivated and directed to perform the intended task that the organization expects out of them. Only then achievement of the objective will be certain. Effective leadership qualities include the ability to multitask, to affect human behavior in order to accomplish a mission and to influence a group of people to progress towards the fixed goal and finally achieve the same. Making proper decision and directing employees accordingly is a very important aspect of leadership in management. Proper leadership of a group of people makes them share the vision of the leader, thereby the organization and inspire them to work for the same.  Controlling Controlling is that the management must ensure that all the planning, organizing and leading in fact move the organization towards the established objectives. This is, while planning, organizing and leading are carried out as a process, it must be ensured that the management measure the ongoing performance of the task and compare such current performance with the established objectives, to see whether the entire process is heading towards the right directions. If it is clear, that the objectives may not be achieved then some corrective actions must be taken to ensure that the organization is in fact heading in the right directions to achieve the objectives, which were predetermined. The control techniques may be of several types like budgetary control or non-budgetary control. The budgetary control takes into account the finance, the production and also the time factor. The budgetary control techniques express the plans in definite terms and ensure comprehensive management, proper communication, coordination, profit maximization and fixation of responsibility. The limitations of this type of control are its incomprehensiveness, difficulty to set rational standard, risk of over-budgeting, lack of coordination and inability to control inefficiency (Anbuvelan, 253). The non-budgetary control on the other hand tries to ensure efficiency through direct personal observation and supervision, submission of reports at regular interval, etc. Management audit, internal audit, social audit, etc. are the techniques followed to implement non-budgetary control. Functioning at Different Management Levels There are different levels of managers carrying out these four functions in different ways in an organization to run the system smoothly, the top managers, the middle managers and the first line managers (Baddorf, 18). The top level managers are the ones who basically run the entire organization. Their basic role is to conceptualize and formulate the new ideas and concepts. They perform the four basic functions of management from conceptual point of view. They make plans to spread the new concept in the organization, they communicate their concepts and organize infrastructure as well as the people at par the plans, they motivate them or lead them to achieve the objectives of the new idea and plan and impose the budgetary control. The middle level managers are responsible for implementation of the strategies developed at the top level. They are more concerned with the organization and leadership functions of management. They communicate the requirements and coordinate the functions of the organization explicitly. They are involved with the control of activities, time and manpower more than with the budget directly. They plan for the better implementation in each department rather than the entire organization. The first line managers are directly involved with the employees actually operating the project. They implement the project at a very basic level and need expertise in organization and leadership as well as technical skills to manage the employees. They are the ones who can control the activities with direct supervision of the work in progress and consequent reporting to the higher level (Blackwell, n.p.). Case Study I: Cygnus Business Consultancy and Research Let us now check how the above four pillars of management is governing the actions of today’s corporate houses and what is the difference between the ideal (stated so far) and the actual (that much being implemented) level of these practices there. Cygnus Business Consultancy and Research is a corporate research organization that delivers consultancy to the other corporate houses. Their clients include banks, pharmaceuticals, automobile, government, embassy and different corporate houses from various industries (Cygnus, n.p.). Planning: Time management and providing quality output is the soul words at Cygnus, but with a very sleek structure it’s always very hectic for the employees to meet the dead line. Often either dead line is missed or a compromise on quality of the product is inevitable. Resource base exempting the workers are also not up to the mark; no paid database or online journal or library subscription, severely hampering the time frame as well as the product quality. Problem regarding Cygnus is there announced goal and there planned resources have a disparity that creating gap in between announced and the actual customer satisfaction. Organizing: Ridden with inter organization politics and a single window system regarding instructions when an order from the director reaches an employee then already it has passed through several persons and that is eating up valuable time that is needed to organize. While quick organizing is a prescription from conventional management practices, at Cygnus the picture is diametrically opposite, often ending up in a last time hue and cry to meet the dead line. Leading: As Cygnus workers are not always a specialist in their respective field they are working with, they often lacks the confidence to lead the way for their fellow members. As an example if a worker from economics background is working on a project called “Indo-Bangladesh-Myanmar” gas pipe line then it is hard to expect that s/he will take all the responsibilities from the very beginning and lead the way setting examples (here the worker being from a different background and without any knowledge on construction of pipe line will definitely lack confidence). Controlling: This is where Cygnus performs almost at per the ideal set up as suggested by the management experts. But that control is often being imposed in a feudalistic way rather than an exact set of guidelines. This creates employee unrest and a high rate of attrition for the organization. Case Study II: Marintek Marintek is a research organization in the SINTEF Group, delivering marine technology research and development services to different leading organizations in marine industry. The business areas it works in are shipping, ship building, offshore marine industry, etc. (Marintek, n.p.). In contrast to Cygnus, Marintek exemplifies the consequences of the proper use of management principles. Planning: Since its establishment as the research organization for huge projects on coastal gas, cold climate specialists, maritime ICT supply, SMART shipping, etc. the company showed proper long term planning supported by small pilot plans. The vision of the company in developing international network helped achieve its goals of managing environmental pollution and increasing sea transport. Organizing: According to the plans they facilitated the establishment of European maritime collaboration and laid the foundation of sharing innovative ideas among different sectors related to maritime industry. This reflects their internal vision of coordination as a pillar of management for overall improvement of the industry. Leading: The visionary leadership in Marintek develops innovative ideas and takes efforts to motivate its own workforce as well as its clients to analyse market and social requirements and work accordingly to achieve the goal of developing the maritime industry. The “Fresh Fish” project of exporting seafood using new technology in shipping based transport is an example of such innovation. Controlling: Marintek and its associates developed decision support system for planning and control in maritime transport and logistics. They tried to ensure more efficient vessel utilization in terms of cost reduction and environmental protection. Conclusion The example of Cygnus portraits what can happen to an organization if it fails to stick to the basic management principles. In such cases management guideline that has been formed to extract untapped employee potentials end up in fabricating an inefficient set up for the firm. Marintek, on the other hand is an example proper use of management principles which not only help improve the company but also its associates and the national economy all together. Works Cited 1) Anbuvelan, K. Principles of Management. India: Firewall Media, n.d. 2) Baddorf, Bill. Principles of Management. N.d. Available at: (accessed on 29 August 2008). 3) Blackwell, Jeff. “Principles of Management”. Buzzle.com. 2007. Available at: (accessed on 29 August 2008). 4) “Concepts of Organizing”. Cliffs Notes. 2008. Available at: (accessed on 29 August 2008). 5) Cygnus Business Consultancy and Research. 2008. Available at: (accessed on 29 August 2008). 6) “Defining Planning”. Cliffs Notes. 2008. Available at: (accessed on 29 August 2008). 7) “Going from Planning to Organizing”. Cliffs Notes. 2008. Available at: (accessed on 29 August 2008). 8) Lock, Dennis. Project Management. Aldershot (UK) and Vermont (USA): Gower Publishing, 2000. 9) “Management”. Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. 2008. Available at: (accessed on 29 August 2008). 10) MARINTEK. 2007. Available at: (accessed on 29 August 2008). Read More