Introduction to Management

Management (or managing) is the administration of an organization, whether it is a

business, a not-for-profit organization, or government body.

Management includes the activities of setting the strategy of an organization and

coordinating the efforts of its employees (or of volunteers) to accomplish its
objectives through the application of available resources, such as financial, natural,
technological, and human resources. The term "management" may also refer to those
people who manage an organization.
• System: A whole composed of relationships among the members.
• Resource: Something that one uses to achieve an objective. An examples of a
resource could be a raw material or an employee.

Management’s primary function is to get people to work together for the attainment
of an organization’s goals and objectives.
• Management processes include planning, organizing, directing and
controlling.
• An important aspect of management’s function is the allocation of finite
resources.
• Resources can be human, financial, technological or natural.
• There are different management styles: Traditional, team, and servant.

Management is the act of getting people together to accomplish desired goals and
objectives using available resources efficiently and effectively. Since organizations
can be viewed as systems, management can also be defined as human action,
including design, to facilitate the production of useful outcomes from a system. This
view opens the opportunity to manage oneself, a pre-requisite to attempting to
manage others.
Management functions include: Planning, organizing, staffing, leading or directing,
and controlling an organization (a group of one or more people or entities) or effort
for the purpose of accomplishing a goal.

There are several different resource types within management. Resourcing

encompasses the deployment and manipulation of:

• Human resources
• Financial resources
• Technological resources
• Natural resources

Different type of Management Styles

There are different types of management styles, and the management process has
changed over recent years. The addition of work teams and servant leadership has
changed what is expected from managers, and what managers expect from their
employees.

Traditional Management

There is a hierarchy of employees, low level management, mid-level management,

and senior management. In traditional management systems, the manager sets out
expectations for the employees who need to meet goals, but the manager receives the
reward of meeting those goals.

Team Managment

In a team management arrangement the manager is a guiding hand to help the

members of the team work together to solve problems but doesn’t dictate policy and
the entire team receives the reward of meeting those goals.
Servant Management

With this approach, the manager helps supply resources the employees need to meet
company goals. In servant leadership, the organization recognizes employees as
experts in their field and work to help them work efficiently.

No matter which type of management style is used by an organization, the main

objective of managers is to help employees reach company goals and maintain
company standards and policies.

The Need for Management

Management is needed in order to facilitate a coordinated effort toward the

accomplishment of an organization’s goals.

• Management in all business and organizational activities is the act of getting

people together to accomplish desired goals and objectives using available resources
efficiently and effectively.
• Good managers are needed to keep their organizations on track by ensuring
that everything that’s being done is ethically geared toward providing what
customers want.
• Good management is needed to inject motivation, creativity, discipline, and
enthusiasm into areas in which they either don’t exist or they’re not necessarily
wanted.
• People who work for managers must realize that it is their job to make their
managers value them.

The Purpose of Management

The purpose of management is to serve customers. Good managers constantly

streamline their organizations toward making a sale. In other words, good managers
are needed to keep their organizations on track by ensuring that everything that’s
being done is ethically geared toward providing what customers want. In this
regard, a good manager is responsible for reducing waste and ambiguity, keeping
costs down, and motivating others to do the same. In the same vein, good managers
regularly take educated risks and exercise good judgement (the basis of
entrepreneurship).

Management is needed in order to coordinate the activities of a business and make

sure all employees are working together toward the accomplishment of the
organization’s goals.

• Trying new things;

• Successfully adjusting to constant change;
• Developing subordinates (good managers aren’t afraid of letting other people
shine and, in fact, they encourage it);
• Improving their own skills.

Functions of management

Management in all business and organizational activities is the act of getting people
together to accomplish desired goals and objectives using available resources
efficiently and effectively. Since organizations can be viewed as systems,
management can also be defined as human action (including design) to facilitate the
production of useful outcomes from a system. Therefore, management is needed in
order to facilitate a
coordinated effort toward the accomplishment of the organization’s goals.

Since most managers are responsible for more work than one person can normally
perform, a good manager delegates and integrates his or her work (or the work of
others). A manager does this by acting as a clear channel of communication within
the business that he or she serves. Good management is needed to inject motivation,
creativity, discipline, and enthusiasm into areas in which they either don’t exist or
they’re not necessarily wanted.
The various functions of management are classified as:

• Planning
• Organizing
• Staffing
• Leading/Directing

• Controlling/Monitoring
• Motivation

Management is also responsible for the formation and implementation of business

policies and strategies.

Trends in Management

Modern trends in management favor agile, iterative processes that focus on

innovation, software development, and social impacts.

• Management is a constantly evolving field, with a wide variety of formal and

informal approaches and perspectives.
• While new management perspectives are emerging everyday in
manufacturing, technology, software, and social entrepreneurship, some of the most
notable new perspectives are in software development.
• Scrum and agile management styles focus primarily on iteration and the
capacity to build non-hierarchical work structures that empower growth and
innovation without the rigidity of traditional management.
• Social entrepreneurship is a recent emergence in management, in which
entrepreneurial management styles are being taken to the non- profit and
community development sectors.

Key Terms
• iteration: The process of repeating a process in pursuit of incremental
improvement.
• Scrum: A management philosophy predicated upon a feedback-driven
iterative evolution of process.

Management is a rapidly evolving field. Even now startups all over the world are
trying out new, innovative ways of looking at how to align their resources, how to
make decisions, and what managerial approaches (or lack of managerial approaches)
might yield the best culture for growth. It’s an intriguing time for management, and
experimentation is constant.

When looking at new management approaches, it’s useful to consider the area in
which these organizations operate. Software, non-profit, and entrepreneurship are
all seeing substantial deviations from standard corporate management approaches.

What is the Difference Between Management and Leadership?

Leadership and management must go hand in hand. They are not the same thing.
But they are necessarily linked, and complementary. Any effort to separate the two
is likely to cause more problems than it solves. Perhaps there was a time when the
calling of the manager and that of the leader could be separated. A foreman in an
industrial- era factory probably didn’t have to give much thought to what he was
producing or to the people who were producing it. His or her job was to follow
orders, organize the work, assign the right people to the necessary tasks, coordinate
the results, and ensure the job got done as ordered. The focus was on efficiency.

But in the new economy, where value comes increasingly from the knowledge of
people, and where workers are no longer undifferentiated cogs in an industrial
machine, management and leadership are not easily separated. People look to their
managers, not just to assign them a task, but to define for them a purpose. And
managers must organize workers, not just to maximize efficiency, but to nurture
skills, develop talent and inspire results.

The late management guru Peter Drucker was one of the first to recognize this truth,
as he was to recognize so many other management truths. He identified the
emergence of the “knowledge worker,” and the profound differences that would
cause in the way business was organized.

With the rise of the knowledge worker, “one does not ‘manage’ people,” Mr.
Drucker wrote. “The task is to lead people. And the goal is to make productive the
specific strengths and knowledge of every individual.”

Still, much ink has been spent delineating the differences. The manager’s job is to
plan, organize and coordinate. The leader’s job is to inspire and motivate. In his 1989
book “On Becoming a Leader,” Warren Bennis composed a list of the differences:

– The manager administers; the leader innovates.

– The manager is a copy; the leader is an original.

– The manager maintains; the leader develops.

– The manager focuses on systems and structure; the leader focuses on people.

– The manager relies on control; the leader inspires trust.

– The manager has a short-range view; the leader has a long-range perspective.

– The manager asks how and when; the leader asks what and why.

– The manager has his or her eye always on the bottom line; the leader’s eye is
on the horizon.
– The manager imitates; the leader originates.

– The manager accepts the status quo; the leader challenges it.

– The manager is the classic good soldier; the leader is his or her own person.

– The manager does things right; the leader does the right thing.

The main difference between leaders and managers is that leaders have people
follow them while managers have people who work for them. A successful business
owner needs to be both a strong leader and manager to get their team on board to
follow them towards their vision of success. Leadership is about getting people to
understand and believe in your vision and to work with you to achieve your goals
while managing is more about administering and making sure the day-to-day things
are happening as they should.