Chapter one

1-

Managerial function

there are four basic functions of Management. These are:

- Planning: Planning relates to decisions on about the present and the future. It relates to how resources
should be efficiently allocated.

- Leading: Leading deals with proper communication of goals and plans and motivating the employees to
achieve them.

- Organizing: In this function, managers have to decide the optimum usage of resources.

-Controlling: Keeping a check on the progress of plans and performance.

Apart from these four functions, Staffing is also considered a main function of management.

managerial roles are duties perform by the head of organisation. he could be charge of all
department and seeing to the wellfare of members of the organisation, their promitio.

Mintzberg's observations and research indicate that diverse manager activities can be organized
into ten roles. For an important starting point, all ten rules are vested with formal authority over
an organizational unit. From formal authority comes status, which leads to various interpersonal
relations, and from these comes access to information, which, in turn, enables the manager to
make decisions and strategies.

managers needed three essential skills. These are technical skills, human skills and conceptual
skills. Technical skills include knowledge of and proficiency in a certain specialized field, such
as engineering, computers, financial and managerial accounting, or manufacturing. These skills
are more important at lower levels of management since these managers are dealing directly with
employees doing the organization's work. Human skills involve the ability to work well with
other people both individually and in a group. Because managers deal directly with people, this
skill is crucial! Managers with good human skills are able to get the best out of their people.
They know how to communicate, motivate, lead, and inspire enthusiasm and trust. These skills
are equally important at all levels of management. Finally conceptual skills are the skills
managers must have to think and conceptualize about abstract and complex situations. Using
these skills managers must be able to see the organization as a whole, understand the relationship
among various subunits, and visualize how the organization fits into its broader environment.
These skills are most important at top level management.
A professional association of practicing managers, the American Management Association, has
identified important skills for managers that encompass conceptual, communication,
effectiveness, and interpersonal aspects. These are briefly described below:

Conceptual Skills: Ability to use information to solve business problems, identification of

opportunities for innovation, recognizing problem areas and implementing solutions, selecting
critical information from masses of data, understanding the business uses of technology,
understanding the organization's business model.

Communication Skills: Ability to transform ideas into words and actions, credibility among
colleagues, peers, and subordinates, listening and asking questions, presentation skills and
spoken format, presentation skills; written and graphic formats

Effectiveness Skills: Contributing to corporate mission/departmental objectives, customer focus,

multitasking; working at multiple tasks at parallel, negotiating skills, project management,
reviewing operations and implementing improvements, setting and maintaining performance
standards internally and externally, setting priorities for attention and activity, time management.

Interpersonal Skills: Coaching and mentoring skills, diversity skills; working with diverse
people and culture, networking within the organization, networking outside the organization,
working in teams; cooperation and commitment.

In today's demanding and dynamic workplace, employees who are invaluable to an organization
must be willing to constantly upgrade their skills and take on extra work outside their own
specific job areas. There is no doubt that skills will continue to be an important way of
describing what a manager does.

(2)

A manager is someone who works with and through other people by coordinating their work
activities in order to accomplish organizational goals. In other words, they were the
organizational member who told others what to do and how to do it. A manager’s job is not
about personal achievement; it’s about helping others do their work and achieve which means
coordinating the work of a departmental group or supervising a single person. It could involve
coordinating the work activities of a team composed of people from several different
departments or even people outside the organization, such as temporary employees or employees
who work for the organization’s suppliers.

Nowadays, manager in a company not only give orders to their employees to do their works but
also responsible to focus them towards performance of work activities to achieve desired
outcomes. Manager is responsible for creating a work environment in which organizational
members can do their work to the best of their ability and help the organization achieve their
goals. In addition, they have to think creatively and use their imagination in helping others find
meaning and fulfillment in their work. Manager also has to support, coach and nurture others and
help their peoples to make good decisions.

To perform in a work, the manager can give some advantages to the employees in order to rise
up their spirit while doing the work. Such as give them some holidays, bonuses or awards for the
things they have done. Do not push them with lots of work and also provide comfortable
working area. Those entire things will help them to perform in their field. As the result, the
image of the company will rise up and the company itself will gain more profit. Besides that, the
manager also need to give moral support to their workers; not scold them without any reason.
This is because, once the employees had been accused, their moral will down. They will become
rebellious, absent from work and of course they will not...

(3)

In an earlier post I pointed out that the science (or art) of management is still in the middle ages,
where the alchemists still tell us they can change lead into gold. The underlying problem is that
management is (not yet) perceived as a profession. But what is the definition of a profession?
This morning I was searching for papers on this subject and found an interesting publication
dealing with the same question (Khurana, Nohria, and Penrice; 2005). In order to establish if
management is a profession and compare it to professions like law and medicine, these authors
choose four criteria.

1. a common body of knowledge resting on a well-developed, widely accepted theoretical

base;
2. a system for certifying that individuals possess such knowledge before being licensed or
otherwise allowed to practice;
3. a commitment to use specialized knowledge for the public good, and a renunciation of
the goal of profit maximization, in return for professional autonomy and monopoly
power;
4. a code of ethics, with provisions for monitoring individual compliance with the code and
a system of sanctions for enforcing it.

I’m not going to run down the list, it is merely a nice framework. The authors note that the study
of management is very young compared to law, medicine and theology. During the time that the
first business schools were being constituted, at the beginning of the twentieth century,
“scientific management” was in the air, as Frederick Taylor’s application of scientific methods to
the study of physical labor had begun to be extended to the organization of industry as well as to
spheres such as higher education and government. Management differs from medicine, law, and
other recognized professions in having neither a formal educational requirement nor a system of
examination and licensing for aspiring members. Although the MBA has been the fastest-
growing graduate degree for the past twenty years, it is not a requirement for becoming a
manager. You can argue, that management is struggling for recognition. Big cataclysmic events,
like to global melt down of the financial system fuel the discussion on professionalism (the
blessing in disguise). Still, judgement, context and personal experience are always part of the
equation. No matter how many codes of ethics, bodies of knowledge and permanent education
become mandatory for a management position. Decision making is not the same as solving a
puzzle. On thing where I see the first improvement in the road toward professionalism is
permanent eduction. This could bridge the gap between science and practice. On the other hand,
management science should explore the field more and test their hypotheses. This partially
validates Mark Learmonth’s argument for pluralistic research methods. Most articles in A rated
journals have no connection to the real world. It is just a political game for tenure.
An observation which was made earlier by Howard Johnson. We still have a long road ahead of
us.

(4)
The one which enables effective interactions within the organization members and with the others
stakeholders toward mutual benefits. (This is quite common to most of the cultures)
The one which optimizes the resources usages by output.(This is totally common to all cultures)
(5)

(6)
In its simplest terms, being efficient means having internal and external processes that lead to the
desired end result. Efficiency refers to having the means to produce the desired effects. For example, a
sales team may have a weekly sales goal and it is met 90% of the time. The team is considered to be
efficient in that the desired amount of sales is produced with the least amount of waste or overtime.

But is being able to meet a weekly sales goal an indication of an effective sales team? Could the
goal or the sales figures be higher? Effectiveness in an organisation is doing the right things
which leads to an adaptable environment capable of competing in the future. An effective sales
team does not just meet sales goals without question. An effective sales team will manage
relationships with people and organisations that can prove to be the foundation for new business
in the future. The effective sales team can create a viable customer base that includes high rates
of retention and customer satisfaction.

Efficiency and effectiveness are applicable to all organisational functions including management
or leadership, team building and employee performance, sales, production, innovation, and all
internal processes including those in the business office. For example, an efficient accounts
payable department pays company bills on time. An effective accounts payable department has a
system in place which enables the company to take advantage of discounts for early payment and
is able to integrate payment information with purchasing data in order to insure the least cost is
incurred at all times. It is accounts payable that often becomes the information source for
trending prices.