You are welcome to this class on Introduction to Business management. We are going to be looking at the meaning and functions of management.
Meaning Of Management
Management is the process of setting organizational goals, deciding what actions and Resources must contribute to meeting goals and then co-ordinating, building and encouraging the co-operative work of other people to meet the goals. In a summary, it is the process of co-ordinating all resources through the process of planning, organizing, leading and controlling in other to attain stated objective.
According to Peter drucker, management is a task, management is a discipline. But management is also people. We can also define management as the process of using authority to organize, direct and control subordinates in order to achieve the objectives of the business.
Functions Of Management
The following are the basic functions of management in Commerce.
1. Planning: This is the function which involves setting goals and devising specific activities, procedures and schedules for meeting the goals or objectives. It is a process which entails formulating targets or objectives for an organization and outlining the strategies or means of achieving these Objectives.
Benefits of Planning
- Planning enables and organization to set up goals and targets.
- It helps to accomplish the set goals and objectives.
- Planning helps in setting up policies, procedures and schedules for meeting the goals.
- Planning leads to acceptable decisions.
- It helps in forecasting the objectives of an organization over a period of time.
2. Controlling: Controlling involve settings standards, measuring progress with the set standard and making corrective action to minimize or avoid errors, thus achieving the objectives. It helps in reducing wastage by taking corrective measures. Actual performance will be compared with this set standards and where there is deviation, corrective measures will be taken.
Elements of controlling
- Setting of standards
- Measuring progress with standard
- Interpretation of results.
- Taking corrective actions
3. Organizing: This is another functions of management which involves the bringing together or arranging whatever resources that are available, e.g, people, time, money, equipment to achieve the objectives of an organization. Organizing involves the division of work into different sections, are located responsibilities and authority to all components of the organization in order to achieve the objectives.
4. Motivating: This is the process which deals with the various ways by which an organization’s leaders can channel the inner Force in the people towards behaving in the ways that will coincide with the corporate goals. This involves the ways the leaders get the subordinates to willingly carry out their responsibilities to the business, by inspiring them through monetary and non monetary welfare packages.
5. Staffing: This is the process of organizing human resources in such a way that the organization has the right people in the right place or position at the right time to achieve the objectives. It involves the provision of qualified, skilled and efficient personnel to manage the affairs of the organization.
6. Directing: This involves getting people to carry out the decisions quickly, efficiently and with minimum fuss. Directing entails using leadership, motivation and other skills to ensure that people in the organization you know what their work is and have it.
7. Communication: This is the transfer of information and ideas with feedback between people. It is the process by which people attempt to share meaning via transmission of symbolic messages. Planning, organizing and leading require managers to communicate with subordinates so that group goals can be achieved.
Summery: What to take home and note down is the definition of management, and the seven functions of management.
This article is from the continuation from our previous class on Introduction to Business management, business resources and objectives of business. To join that Class [Click Here]