The Function of Management
Like most things in our modern, changing world, the function of management is becoming more complex. The role of the manager today is much different from what it wasone hundred years, fifty years or even twenty-five years ago. At the turn of the century, for example, the business manager's objective was to keep his company running and to make a profit. Most firms were production oriented. Few constraints affected management's decisions. Governmental agencies imposed few regulations on business. The modern manager must now consider the environment in which the organization operates and be prepared to adopt a wider perspective. That is, the manager must have a good understanding of management principles, an appreciation of the current issues and broader objectives of the total economic, political, social, and ecological system in which we live, and he must possess the ability to analyze complex problems.
The modern manager must be sensitive, and responsive to the environment - that is he should recognize and be able to evaluate the needs of the total context in which his business functions, and he should act in accord with his understanding.
Modern management must possess the ability to interact in an ever-more-complex environment and to make decisions that will allocate scarce resources effectively. A major part of the manager's job will be to predict what the environment needs and what changes will occur in the future.
Management is the process by which human efforts are combined with each other and with material resources. Management encompasses both science and art. In designing and constructing plans and products, management must draw on technology and physical science, of course, and, the behavioral sciences also can contribute to management. However much you hear about "scientific management" or "management science", in handling people and managing organizations it is necessary to draw on intuition and subjective judgement. The science portion of management is expanding, more and more decisions can be analyzed and programmed, particularly with mathematics. But although the artistic side of management may be declining in its proportion of the whole process it will remain central and critical portion of your future jobs. In short:
• Knowledge (science) without skill (art) is useless, or dangerous;
• Skill (art) without knowledge (science) means stagnancy and inability to pass on learning.
Like the physician, the manager is a practitioner. As the doctor draws on basic sciences of chemistry, biology, and physiology, the business executive draws on the sciences of mathematics, psychology, and sociology.
1. The function of management is becoming more complex. Why?
2. What must management possess nowadays?
3. Management encompasses both science and art. In what can we see it?
Ex. 7. Read the text. Divide it into logical parts. Give the title to the text and to each part.
No school, professor or book can make you a manager. Only you can do this, and you can become a manager only by managing. Of course, you can learn the skills that are extremely helpful, particularly in such clearly defined areas as accounting, statistics, law, and finance. But this will not make you a manager. Experience is the only teacher, but it is not the uniformly effective teacher. An old aphorism criticizes the person who has worked for 20 years but has only re-experienced the first year 20 times. Learning is not automatic. What schools can do, and what books can do is to provide you with some insights and intellectual tools to be applied against your experience. Most of you are practical people; certainly most managers are. You are
more concerned about doing things than about thinking about them. You are more concerned with action than with contemplation. Most business students and managers are uneasy about theory. It is abstract and difficult, too unrelated to real problems, it seems, 'too academic' and just 'too theoretical'. But theory is very important because you and all men and women of action are also theorists. No matter how pragmatic you consider yourself, no matter how rooted in reality a manager views himself or herself, you and he/she operate on theories. You all possess your own theories about motivation, authority, objectives and change. You will need them - and you will have them whether you know it or not. You will be a better manager if you are aware of your assumptions and you examine them periodically and modify them when necessary. Nothing is as practical as a good theory. A great deal of management theory and practice must be described as 'common sense'. For the objectives of management may be defined as the formulation of priorities and plans.