Issues on Management Concept - Essay Example

'Fayol said that management is comprised of four principal functions: planning, organising, leading and controlling. Describe and discuss these functions.' Your Name, University/College Name, March 28, 2008 INTRODUCTION Management is a process. It is a process of getting things done, by working with the people at work and resources applied with a view to accomplish the task set for within the framework of the policies and programmes. Management is an action oriented process. Actions in any given set of circumstances are not decided in advance. Management is a never ending process. It is dynamic in nature because it is changing fast and new dimensions are added to it. Managers create and maintain an internal environment, commonly called the organization, so that others can work efficiently in it. A manager's job consists of planning, organizing, directing, and controlling the resources of the organization. These resources include people, jobs or positions, technology, facilities and equipment, materials and supplies, information, and money. Managers work in a dynamic environment and must anticipate and adapt to challenges. The job of every manager involves what is known as the functions of management: planning, organizing, directing, and controlling. These functions are goal-directed, interrelated and interdependent. Planning involves devising a systematic process for attaining the goals of the organization. It prepares the organization for the future. Organizing involves arranging the necessary resources to carry out the plan. It is the process of creating structure, establishing relationships, and allocating resources to accomplish the goals of the organization. Directing involves the guiding, leading, and overseeing of employees to achieve organizational goals. Controlling involves verifying that actual performance matches the plan. If performance results do not match the plan, corrective action is taken. FAYOL'S PERSPECTIVE Henri Fayol, the father of the school of Systematic Management, was motivated to create a theoretical foundation for a managerial educational program based on his experience as a successful managing director of a mining company. In his day, managers had no formal training and he observed that the increasing complexity of organizations would require more professional management. Fayol's legacy is his generic Principles of Management. Of Fayol's six generic activities for industrial undertakings (technical, commercial, financial, security, accounting, managerial), the most important were The Five Functions of Management that focused on the key relationships between personnel and its management. The Five Functions are: Planning: Drawing up plans of actions that combine unity, continuity, flexibility and precision given the organization's resources, type and significance of work and future trends. Creating a plan of action is the most difficult of the five tasks and requires the active participation of the entire organization. Planning must be coordinated on different levels and with different time horizons; Organizing: Providing capital, personnel and raw materials for the day-to-day running of the business, and building a structure to match the work. Organizational structure depends entirely on the number of employees. An increase in the number of functions expands the organization horizontally and promotes additional layers of supervision; Commanding: Optimizing return from all employees in the interest of the entire enterprise. Successful managers have personal integrity, communicate clearly and base their judgments on regular audits. Their thorough knowledge of personnel creates unity, energy, initiative and loyalty and eliminates incompetence; Coordinating: Unifying and harmonizing activities and efforts to maintain the balance between the activities of the organization as in sales to production and procurement to production. Fayol recommended weekly conferences for department heads to solve problems of common interest; Controlling: Identifying weaknesses and errors by controlling feedback, and conforming activities with plans, policies and instructions. Fayol's management process went further than Taylor's basic hierarchical model by allowing command functions to operate efficiently and effectively through co-ordination and control methods. For Fayol, the managing director overlooked a living organism that requires liaison officers and joint committees. The American Luther Gulick and Brit Lydnall Urwick expanded Fayol's list to seven executive management activities summarized by the acronym POSDCORB: Planning: determine objectives in advance and the methods to achieve them; Organizing: establish a structure of authority for all work; Staffing: recruit, hire and train workers; maintain favorable working conditions; Directing: make decisions, issue orders and directives; Coordinating: interrelate all sectors of the organization; Reporting: inform hierarchy through reports, records and inspections; Budgeting: depend on fiscal planning, accounting and control. www.provenmodels.com OTHER WRITERS PERSPECTIVES Fayol's work is highly criticized for the failure to differentiate between administration and management. A lot of writers have expresses their views in this regard. Some of the views are: According to G.E. Millwork, Management is a process and the agency through which the execution of policy is planned and supervised. Administration is the process and the agency to establish the object or purpose which an undertaking and its staff are to achieve. These broad lines are in their turn usually called policies. According to Newman, Administration is the guidance, leadership and control of efforts to a group of individuals towards some common goal. Newman further elucidates his discussion stating that administration and management are synonymous. According to Sheldon, Administration determines the organization and management uses it. Administration defines the goal; management strives towards it. Organization is the machine of management in its achievement of the ends determined by the andministration. According to Spriegel, Administration is the function in industry concerned with the determination of corporate policy, the coordination of finance, production and distribution, resettlement of the organization under the ultimate control of the executive. Management is the function in industry concerned with the execution of policy within the limits set up by administration and employment of the organization for the particular objects set before it. According to E.F.L. Breech, Management is responsible for effective planning and for the regulation of efforts of an enterprise with an aim to achieve maximum success in the field. This further elucidates that while organizing the efforts of an enterprise, management divides itself into three levels viz- Top, Middle and lower Management. ANALYSIS Fayol's principles of management focus mostly on administration. The following comparison compares administration with other views of management and organization: Administration management organization It is the process of determining the object to be achieved. It is the process of planning the work as per the object laid down by the administration It is the process of dividing the work into different tasks and duties as planned by the management within the objectives It lays down the policies and principles It executes the policies and programmes It organizes the work It prepares the framework under which one is asked to work and execute. It supervises and controls the execution of assigned work It draws out the line of authority and determines the line of action It provides the direction, guidance and leadership It coordinates the activities It delegates the authority and fixes responsibility It is the first and provides the guidelines for management and organization It comes second and derives strength from administration It occupies third place and carries out the plan of management and objectives set by administration CONCLUSION Management systems continue to evolve. Despite the multitude of theories, experts and popular culture books dealing with management, there is no one theory which seems to provide the answer for all types of businesses. It is generally accepted that the worker-as-machine characteristics of Scientific Management have the potential of abusing workers, the rigid hierarchy of Administrative Management may not work in many situations, and more modern theories are equally limited because they may not apply to all situations in the same way. There are only two aspects of management that remain constant. The first is that each environment is a unique combination of the needs of the industry, the needs of the particular business and the combination of workers who happen to be employed. The other constant is change. In this fast-paced society, one of the few things that a business can count on is that conditions will be different a year, two years or five years from now. To be successful, therefore, any management system must take into consideration these two realities. Word Count: 1400 REFERENCE Herbert A. Simon, Administrative Behavior, 1946, Free Press, United States, ISBN 0684835827 Henri Fayol, General and industrial management 1947, Pitman, United Kingdom, ISBN 0879421789 John Sheldrake, Management theory, 1996, Thomson, United Kingdom, ISBN 1861521995 Luther Halsey Gulick, Notes on the Theory of Organization, 1937, Institute of Public Administration, United States, ISBN B0007E6PVC Dr. Manmohan Prasad, Management Concepts and Practices, Himalaya Publishing House, Fourth Edition, 2008. www.provenmodels.com www.12manage.com http://ollie.dcccd.edu/mgmt1374/book_contents/1overview/managerial_functions/mgrl_functions.htm Read More