Despite a proliferation of management gurus, management consultants, and management schools, it remains murky to many of us what managers actually do and why we need them in the first place. Unless someone has actually performed managerial work, it is hard to understand exactly what managers do on an hour-by-hour, day-to-day basis.
Managers at every level perform ten roles, which are grouped into informational roles, interpersonal roles, and decisional roles.The relative emphasis that a manager puts these roles depends on a number of factors, such as the manager’s position in the hierarchy, natural skills and abilities, type of organization, and departmental goals to be achieved.
Management is the attainment of organizational goals in an effective and efficient manner through planning, organizing, leading, and controlling organizational resources. There is a shift from the traditional management approach to the new management competencies that are essential in today’s environment. There are managers in all types of organizations who are learning to apply new management skills and competencies in oversight, results, relationships, and design.
The definition of management also encompasses the idea of attaining organizational goals in an efficient and effective manner. Management is so important because organizations are so important. An organization is a social entity that is goal directed and deliberately structured. Organizations pervade our society, and managers are responsible for seeing that resources are used wisely to attain organizational goals.
There are four basic functions of management, planning, organizing, leading, and controlling. We’ll explore each as we define management in today’s organization. The ultimate responsibility of managers is to achieve high performance, which is the attainment of organizational goals by using resources in an efficient and effective manner.
Managers perform a wide variety of activities that fall within four primary management functions of planning, organizing, leading, and controlling. Although some management theorists propose a long list of skills, the necessary skills for managing a department or an organization can be placed in three categories: conceptual, human, and technical.
Good management skills are not automatic. In recent years, numerous highly publicized examples have shown what happens when managers fail to apply their skills effectively to meet the demands of an uncertain, rapidly changing world. Managers have complex jobs that require a range of abilities and skills.
