What is Management?
Overview
Chapter 1 examines what management is including what mangers do, and how they use resources to achieve organisational goals. The chapter highlights the four main functions of management (planning, organising, leading and controlling) as well as exploring the levels of management (first line, middle and top) as well as the importance of three types of managerial skills (conceptual, human and technical). The chapter concludes with a discussion of the major changes and challenges brought forth by increased globalisation and advancement in information technology and competition faced by managers today.
What is management?
Management is the planning, organising, leading and controlling of human and other resources to achieve organisational goals effectively and efficiency. Managers operate within an organisation, a group of people who work together to achieve a wide variety of goals or desired future outcomes.
Achieving high performance: A manager’s goal
Organisational performance is how effectively and efficiently a manager uses resources to satisfy customers and reach organisational goals. Efficiency measures how well or how productively resources are used. Effectiveness measures the appropriateness of the goals chosen by a manager.
Why study management?
Managers decide how to allocate society’s most valuable resources effectively. Studying management provides perspective on understanding and learning how to deal with bosses and coworkers. Students of management have the potential to compete successfully for interesting and well paying jobs. As managerial responsibility increases and people move up the organisation hierarchy, salaries grow with responsibility.
Salaries paid to top managers and CEOs are often quite large. In addition to a large salary, most top executives also receive shares in the company they manage and options that give them the right to sell them in the future.
Managerial functions
Planning is