Management

Management. Our society is made up of all kinds of organizations, such as companies, government departments, unions, hospitals, schools, libraries & so on. & all of us depend on such specialized institutions & organizations. They are essential to our existence, helping to create our standard of living & our quality of life, they provide the goods & services we desire. & all of these organizations are guided by individuals designated as “managers”.

There are managers in every kind of human organization. We can hardly speak of any kind of operation being organized without a group of people under managers. Managers exist not only in business, but also they are found in large numbers in government agencies, hospitals, churches & universities. In all these organization there are people carrying out the work of a manager although they do not have that title.

Presidents, vise presidents, department directors, chancellors, deans, bishops, pastors are all managers. They have e responsibility to use the resources of their organization effectively & economically to achieve its objectives. We must make a conclusion that any organized group, even the smallest, needs a manager. We can’t imagine a business working successfully without managers. Managers are needed whether a business is small or large.

We can then define a manager as someone responsible for the performance of one or more persons who report to him or her. So as I’ve already stated, our society consists of many organizations that are guided & directed by the decisions of managers. In that case it’s very important to learn management. & learning about management is important for two reasons. First, we all depend on manager’s decisions & work.

Managers have the authority & responsibility to build safe or unsafe products, seek war or peace, build or destroy cities, clean up or pollute the environment. Managers establish the conditions under which we are provided jobs, incomes, lifestyles, products, services, protection, health care & knowledge. It would be very difficult to find anyone who is neither a manager not affected by the decisions of

a manager. Second, individuals not trained as managers often find themselves in managerial positions. Many individuals presently being trained to be teachers, accountants, musicians, salespersons, artists, physicians, or lawyers will one day earn their livings as managers. They will manage schools, accounting firms, orchestras, sales organization, museums, hospitals, & government agencies. But are there certain activities common to all managers?

Can we define the task of a manager? A French industrialist, Henri Fayol, wrote in 1916 a classic definition of a manager’s role. He said that to manage is “to forecast & plan, to organize, to command, to coordinate & control”. This definition is still accepted by many people today, though some writers on management have modified Fayol’s description. Instead of talking about “command”, they say a manager must “motivate” or “direct

& lead” other workers. Henri Fayol’s definition of a manager’s function is useful. However in most companies the activities of a manager depend on the level at which he/she is working. Top managers such as the chairman & directors will be more involved in long range planning, policy making, & the relations of the company with the outside world. They will be making decisions on the future of the company, the sort of products line it should develop,

how it should face up to the competition, whether it should diversify etc. These strategic decisions are part of the planning function mentioned by Fayol. On the over hand, middle management & supervisors are generally making day-to-day decisions, which help an organization to run efficiently & smoothly. They must respond to the pressures of the job, which may mean dealing with an unhappy customer, chasing

up supplies, meeting an urgent order or sorting out technical problems. Managers at this level spend a great deal of time communicating, coordinating & making decisions affecting the daily operation of their organization. An interesting modern view on managers is supplied by an American writer Peter Drucker. He has spelled out what managers do.

In his opinion managers perform five basic operations: 1. Managers set objectives. They decide what these should be & how the organization can achieve them. For this task they need analytical ability. 2. Managers organize. They must decide how the resources of the company are to be used, how the work is to be classified & divided. Furthermore they must select people for the jobs they done.

For this they not only need analytical ability but also understanding of humans being. 3. Managers motivate & communicate effectively. They must be able to get people to work as a team, & to be as productive as possible. To do this they will be communicating effectively with all levels of the organization – their supervisors, colleagues, & subordinators. To succeed in this task managers need social skills.

4. Managers measure. Having set targets & standards, managers have to measure the performance of the organization, & of its staff, in relation to those targets. Measuring requires analytical ability. 5. Managers develop people, including themselves. They make people more productive, & to grow as human beings. They make them bigger & richer persons. In Peter

Drucker’s view successful managers are not necessarily people who are liked or who get on well with others. They are people who command the respect of workers & who set high standards. Good managers need to be geniuses but more bring character to the job. They are people of integrity, who will look for that quality in others. So I’ve already define what skills are needed exactly for the 5 operations of a manager (according

to Peter Drucker’s classification). But let’s sum it up & assign 3 groups of basic skills: 1. Human skills (social skills). Managers perform their work through over people. It’s the ability to work with, communicate with, & understand others. 2. Technical skills – the ability to use specific knowledge, techniques & resources in performing work. 3. Conceptual skills (analytical ability) – ability to see the big picture & understand how

the various parts fit together. So as it was said above a manager is someone responsible for the performance of one or more persons who report to him or her. But what does the word “management” mean? We can define a management as a process undertaken by one or more individuals to coordinate the activities others to achieve results not achievable by one individual acting alone. Peter Drucker believes that the work of management is to make people productive.

To regain our competitive edge in the international arena, society must have managerial competence. Drucker’s view emphasizes performance, quality & service. But there is another view of management, which is presented in the popular best-seller “In Search of Excellence” by Peters & Waterman. They emphasize mentorship, a love for managing & working with people; managers are excellent communicators & value shapers, lightning rods to get

the job done. In XX century management pays special attention to converting management into science. We see that the tasks of a manager can be analyzed & classified scientifically & we can speak here about scientific approach to management. But the study of management is relatively new. Many of first individuals to study & write about management were practicing managers. They described their own experience & tried to generalize the principles of management.

Even today, great deal of what we know about management comes from the autobiographies & memories of men & women who were or are practicing managers. But there are much more people who were & are interested in management. For example a lot of social & behavioral scientists. Also between the two extremes of management practice & management science there are individuals

who have contributed to the study of management. They are engineers, lawyers, economists, accountants, mathematicians, philosophers etc. But no one has had more influence on managers in the XX century than Frederick W. Taylor, an American engineer. He set a pattern for industrial work which many others have followed, & although his approach to management has been criticized, his ideas are still of practical importance.

Taylor founded the school of Scientific Management just before the 1914-18 war. He argued that work should be studied & analyzed systematically. The operations required to perform a particular job could be identified, then arranged in a logical sequence. After this was done, a worker’s productivity would increase, & so would his/her wages. The new method was scientific. The way of doing job would no longer be determined by guesswork &

rule-of-thumb practices. Instead management would work out scientifically the method for producing the best results. If the worker followed the prescribed approach, his/her output would increase. Taylor made a lasting contribution to management thinking. His main insight that work can be systematically studied in order to improve working methods & productivity was revolutionary. Also he correctly emphasized that detailed planning of jobs was necessary.

The disadvantage of his approach was that it focused on the system of work rather than on the worker. With this system the worker becomes a tool in the hands of management. & another criticism is that it leads to de-skilling – reducing the skills of workers. Because the tasks are simplified workers become frustrated. So many people think that it’s wrong to separate doing from planning.

The two tasks can & should be done by the same person. A worker will be more productive if he/she is engaged in such activities as planning, decision-making, controlling & organizing. For all these reasons a reaction has set against the ideas of Frederick Taylor. I’ve already said a lot about management as a science. But a lot of specialists think that management is more art rather than science, because you can learn

management based only on your personal experience & only talented people can achieve a lot in this sphere. But personally I think that management is a kind of mixture of art & science. Because even if you have great talent in management & intuition you should have at least some basic knowledge in this sphere, you should know some specific question about country you are working in (like taxes, low etc). Without it, it would be just impossible to be a good manager.

So to have a talent & intuition is good but it’s not enough. & from the over hand, you can have a lot of theoretical knowledge, but have no intuition & talent of a manager, & again you wouldn’t succeed, because the theory of management & the result of scientific researches are not the absolute truth but only an instruments that help us to understand management. Using our theoretical knowledge in practice in the proper way we can predict & prevent difficulties

& take right decisions. So for best results a real manager should combine theoretical knowledge & intuition & has an ability to use his/her theoretical knowledge in practice.