1. What is you understanding of management?

2. Whose views of the notable people are very close to yours?

3. Substantiate your point of view.

Text 4.

The Process of Management.

The systems approach to organisations is based on the three major elements of inputs, throughputs or conversion, and outputs. The process of management is concerned with all three of these elements, and especially with the conversion processes of organisations. As Drucker (1955) first put it, over fifty years ago, management is concerned with the 'systematic organisation of economic resources' and its task is to make these resources productive. The following paragraphs introduce the idea of management as a conversion process, describe its principal elements and emphasise that management is oriented towards results as well as towards action.

Management is not an activity that exists in its own right. It is rather a description of a variety of activities carried out by those members of organisations whose role is that of a 'manager', i.e. someone who either has formal responsibility for the work of one or more persons in the organisation, or who is accountable for specialist advisory duties in support of key management activities. These activities have generally been grouped in terms of planning, organising, motivating, and controlling activities. These groupings describe activities which indicate broadly what managers do in practice, primarily in terms of their inputs. They apply to supervisory and junior management positions as well as to middle and senior management roles.

The groupings of management activities can be summarised as follows:

• Planning deciding the objectives or goals of the organisation and preparing how to meet them.

• Organising determining activities and allocating responsibilities for the achievement of plans; coordinating activities and responsibilities into an appropriate structure.

• Motivating meeting the social and psychological needs of employees in the fulfilment of organisational goals.

• Controlling monitoring and evaluating activities, and providing corrective mechanisms.

These traditional groupings – the POMC approach – are the ones chosen to represent the framework for this book. It is appreciated that they do not tell the whole story about what constitutes management, but they are a convenient way of describing most of the key aspects of the work of managers in practice.

Before moving on to look at each of these groupings in detail, it will be useful to consider some of the shortcomings of the POMC approach. As stated above, the approach focuses on the actions (inputs) of managers rather than on results (outputs). It also ignores the role elements of a managerial job, and does not take into account the different levels of management job.

Firstly, let us turn to the question of results. One particularly influential writer on the subject of managerial effectiveness, Professor Bill Reddin of the University of New Brunswick, considers it essential for the job of management to be judged on output rather than by input, and by achievements rather than by activities. In his book 'Managerial Effectiveness' (1970), he argues that we tend to confuse efficiency with effectiveness. Efficiency is the ratio of output to input. However, whilst 100% efficiency can be obtained by high output in relation to high input, the same result can be achieved where both output and input are low. Effectiveness, as Reddin defines it, is the extent to which a manager achieves the output requirements of his position. This assumes that the outputs have been identified and made measurable. Examples of differences between 'efficient' managers and 'effective' managers, according to Reddin, are that 'efficient' managers seek to solve problems and reduce costs, whereas 'effective' managers seek to produce creative alternatives and increase profits. On this basis the POMC approach is more concerned with efficiency than 'effectiveness'.

It has to be recognised that the POMC approach is essentially a leader-centred approach to management. It does not take account of the variety of roles that managers can be called upon to play. We saw above that Mintzberg's analysis of managerial roles identified seven key roles, which clearly encompass more than just planning, organising, motivating and controlling. Other crucial, albeit lower-key, roles include liaison activities and disturbance-handling, for example.