essay on role of management

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1.1 The Role of Management

What is the role of management?

Management is the process of guiding the development, maintenance, and allocation of resources to attain organizational goals. Managers are the people in the organization responsible for developing and carrying out this management process. Management is dynamic by nature and evolves to meet needs and constraints in the organization’s internal and external environments. In a global marketplace where the rate of change is rapidly increasing, flexibility and adaptability are crucial to the managerial process. This process is based in four key functional areas of the organization: planning, organizing, leading, and controlling. Although these activities are discussed separately in the chapter, they actually form a tightly integrated cycle of thoughts and actions.

From this perspective, the managerial process can be described as (1) anticipating potential problems or opportunities and designing plans to deal with them, (2) coordinating and allocating the resources needed to implement plans, (3) guiding personnel through the implementation process, and (4) reviewing results and making any necessary changes. This last stage provides information to be used in ongoing planning efforts, and thus the cycle starts over again. The four functions are highly interdependent, with managers often performing more than one of them at a time and each of them many times over the course of a normal workday.

The four management functions can help managers increase organizational efficiency and effectiveness. Efficiency is using the least possible amount of resources to get work done, whereas effectiveness is the ability to produce a desired result. Managers need to be both efficient and effective in order to achieve organizational goals. For example in 2016, Delta , one of the most efficient network U.S. airlines, operated at revenue of 12.15 cents per seat-mile, which is the revenue the company makes on one seat (occupied or not) the distance of one mile. No other airline came close to operating this efficiently except Southwest , which flew seats that produced 12.51 cents a mile, the best performance of all U.S. airlines. 1 There are many ways that airlines can manage to produce higher revenue per seat-mile. For instance, they can raise ticket prices, fill more of their seats, operate more efficient aircraft that utilize less fuel, or negotiate favorable salaries with their employees. While efficiency and effectiveness are sometimes lauded by investors, airlines also need to account for customer satisfaction, which can mean extra costs. 2

To meet the demands of rapid growth, Skechers hired a new chief financial officer, John Vandemore, which allowed their existing CFO (David Weinberg) to concentrate on international expansion. Skechers CEO Robert Greenberg commented: “As international now represents more than 50 percent of our total business, we must continue to ramp up operations and infrastructure to meet the demand. David (Weinberg) understands how to do it the right way at the right speed to maintain our forward momentum. With John (Vandemore) handling CFO responsibilities, David will now have the bandwidth to travel and find opportunities to maximize our efficiencies around the globe.” 3

As these examples and Table 1 .1 show, good management uses the four management functions to increase a company’s efficiency and effectiveness, which leads to the accomplishment of organizational goals and objectives. Let’s look more closely at what each of the management functions entails.

CONCEPT CHECK

Define the term management .
What are the four key functions of managers?
What is the difference between efficiency and effectiveness?

Source contents: Principles of Management and Organizational Behavior . Please visit OpenStax for more details: https://openstax.org/subjects/view-all

Introduction to Management and Organizational Behavior Copyright © by OpenStax is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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The Role of Management in Business

Categories: Quality Management

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Published: Jan 31, 2024

Words: 880 | Pages: 2 | 5 min read

Introduction, overview of management, deductive approach to understanding management's role, analysis of management's role in business.

Planning: The process of setting goals, objectives, and strategies to achieve them.
Organizing: The process of arranging resources and activities to achieve the set goals.
Leading: The process of motivating, inspiring, and directing employees to achieve organizational goals.
Controlling: The process of monitoring and measuring the performance of the organization to ensure that it is on track and taking corrective actions as necessary.

A. Planning

B. organizing, d. controlling.

Hitt, M. A., Ireland, R. D., & Hoskisson, R. E. (2012). Strategic management: Concepts and cases: competitiveness and globalisation. Nelson Education.
Robbins, S. P., Coulter, M., & DeCenzo, D. A. (2017). Fundamentals of management. Pearson.
Gulati, R., Puranam, P., & Tushman, M. (2012). Meta-organizational design : Rethinking design in interorganizational and community contexts. Strategic Management Journal, 33(6), 571-586.

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The Role of Management in organization Essay

Introduction, the role of management, management role by other writers.

The main role of management is categorized into four functions, i.e. Controlling, Leading, Organizing and planning. Many textbooks depict these functions as the simple, clear and unchanging guidelines to perfect management. However, the role of management is more than just following simple rules of procedure.

These functions looks very ideal to work with and they lay out a god framework through which managers should work with, but they do not represent the day-to-day challenges that face a manager. This essay analyses various textbooks and how each of them depict the role of management.

Role of management as depicted by the study book

The text book paints the role of management as a rational and technical function. F.W. Taylor, for example, believed that “the way to create the most efficient division of labor could best be determined by scientific management techniques rather than intuitive of informal rule-of-thumb knowledge,” (Waddell et al 2007, P. 43).

He further four principles of management as “developing a for each job element, scientifically selecting an training workers, formulating science principles to be followed and equal division of work and responsibilities between workers and management,” (Waddell et al 2007, P.44). This may be conclusively said to be his idea of management’s role of planning, leading, organizing, and controlling.

The Gilbreth’s too, in “their goal to achieve maximum efficiency, undertook to develop efficiency principle of management to be applied in all areas,” (Waddell et al 2007, P. 47). To increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the administrative function, Max Weber developed “formalized rules, Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) and norms,” (Waddell et al 2007, P. 49), popularly known as principles of bureaucracy.

To him bureaucracy was the gateway to achieving organizational goals by enabling effective directing and control of workers. Henri Fayol too believed that the only way “to achieve efficiency of management is by the use of some standard principles which he came up with, to be used by managers in their management role which he identified as planning, organizing, commanding, coordinating and controlling” (Waddell et al 2007, P. 52), which equate to the modern management functions as POLC.

This stand was challenged by Parker Follet who disagreed with flow of authority from top to bottom and viewed that workers too should be included in the decision making, but Fayol’s principles have stood the test of time and are still very applicable to date.

Jackall maintains that scientific principles of management are crucial to management process when it comes to middle-managers. Well formulated principles outlines what a manager needs to do when and thus removes the constant fear that such managers feel of “being found not measuring up to the expectations in their social world,” (Jackall, 1988, P. 79).

Tasks are broken into smaller portions and also knowledge conferred and required by each piece. However, he admits that scientific principles will not be helpful to a senior manager who need to make, what he calls, ‘gut decisions’ which are complex and involve large amounts of capital outlay.

According to him, “numeric measures and other seemingly sophisticated analytical tools can only be “guideposts” in making such decisions,” (Jackall 1988, P.81). But Parker was of the opinion that management cannot be a rational and technical role. He states that management must conform to industrial changes and social progress. In his own words, “it would make no sense to disentangle…‘management’ from the everyday skills through which life was lived,” (Parker 2002, P. 5).

He views management, though, as an art that once learnt becomes universally applicable to all situations. Roberts views scientific methods of management as essential sources of techniques that managers can use to effectively manage their entities. On the other hand, “such techniques are inadequate to the task that is set for them and, only by acknowledging the moral character of their practice, will managers be able to become truly effective,” (Roberts 1984 P. 288).

Thus, managers are morally neutral characters in their ways of controlling others. Others like Knight and Roberts believe that management power does not only rest with the managers but also the subordinates, (Knight & Roberts, 1928). Managers draw their power from the people they manage and therefore this cannot be rational and technical as in scientific management.

Terkel, in his narration of his job in the executive says that, he can’t tell “of any situation in the corporate world where an executive is completely free and sure of his job from moment to moment,” (Terkel 1974, 335). This is because they are constantly under pressure from both within, e.g., shareholders and outside the organization. Thus, management role cannot be rational and technical.

The study book by Waddell et al, 2007, holds a rigid position on the role of management. Most of the theories of management discussed hold that from management to be effective, managers must follow some preset standards and procedures. According to them, failure to adhere to such principles would lead to total failure of the management.

Their principles have been applied over a long stretch of time and even now some of their principles have trickled down to modern management. Some writers still believe that scientific methods help managers to reduce uncertainty found in management and makes performance of tasks relatively easy since they are well broken down and defined, (Jackall, 1988).

But modern writers have realized that management is more than being technical and rational. It involves the ability to cope with the industrial developments and social progress, (Parker 2002). Others believe that both methods are intertwined and it is hard to separate the two from each other. Simply put, none can survive without the other.

The most logical line of argument is that the two methods are paramount to success of an organization since as much as management is about dealing with day to day life, lack of clear guidelines to indicate what is to be done, when and by who may result to a state of chaos and conflicts. On the other hand religious adherence to some rational and technical guidelines will be a hindrance to creativity and innovation and it may take long adapting to change.

This in effect will lead to slow development of the entire organization. Therefore managers should adopt methods of management that are a combination of both methods. The laid down policies and procedures should not be too rigid as to make it hard to adapt to new circumstances. On the other hand, they should be such as to enable one to know his authority and scope of duty.

Jackall, R. (1988) Moral Mazes: The World of Corporate Managers . Chapter 4, Oxford, Oxford University Press

Knights, D & Roberts, J. (1928) The Power of Organization or the Organization of Power? Department of Management Science, University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology, Manchester, England.

Parker, M. (2002) Against Management: Management and its Discontents , Cambridge, Polity

Roberts, J. (1948) The Moral Character of Management Practice . Journal of Management Studies, 21, 3. Department of Accounting and Business Finance, University of Manchester

Terkel, S. (1974) Working . Middlesex. ND Penguin.

Waddell, et al. (2007) Contemporary management. McGraw Hill: Australia pty limited.

The role of management in business
Ursula M. Burns the chief executive officer and chairwoman of Xerox
Henri Fayol’s Contributions to Management Today
Henri Fayol’s Management Theories
Fayol Principles and Stauffacher's Leadership
Managing Recourses in IT Industry
The Management Systems Related to Internal and External Environment
Strategic Planning and Using Market Information Systems
The Importance of Management Theories (Critical Writing)
Human Resource Management's Successful Strategies
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Chicago (N-B)

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