MANAGEMENT
Management
In the highly commercialized world today we often synchronize the term management with regulating a business. It can be called the process of leading and managing all activities in an organization.
Origin
Origin of the world “Management” comes from “Manage” that it originated from the Italian world “Maneggiare” meaning hand. A specific definition was endorsed for the first time by Mary Parker Follet who defined management as “the art of getting things done through people”. This definition of management envisions management as entrepreneurship or leadership in business.
Features
Management, however, is not limited to leadership alone. Even in its narrowest sense management covers at least five specific fields namely, planning, organizing, leading, co-coordinating, and controlling. Others who prefer to give the term a wider definition include in its ambit everything relating to business administration and foresee a managerial cadre or class. Sometimes the term management refers to the entire top executive body in an organization and in this case management is a collective term. These are often the cases of academic institutions and Public Sector Undertakings where management is a collective term since it refers to the Board of Directors or equivalent bodies. Corporations and such collective organizations also follow this pattern of management by a group.
Activities
Management consists of very high levels of mental and communication activities by way of tasks emission and is always goal oriented. The main objectives of management are matching objectives with feasibility; formulate the plans, and leading the autonomous human units towards a specified goal. In such case the management is symbolized as the decision-making authority or unit in the organization.
History
Scholars differ on the history of management. Some of them consider it a relatively modern term that may not have a distant past history while others consider this as a development concept that has been present in the human society since long. Even the origin of management has been traced back to the Egyptian pyramids. However, in old days there was no systematic formulation of management policy and its proper implementation. However, innovations like the invention of Arabic numerals during the 5th centuries can also be considered to be a symbol of management tools.
The 19th century concept
Research scholars advance an argument that management developed as a discipline in the 19th century with theoretical backgrounds provided by Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill. However, it was Matthew Boulton who first identified the elements of technical production such as standardization, quality control and cost accounting processes. The theory was further improved by Alfred Marshall and Leon Walras during the first part of twentieth century. Ultimately it was Joseph Wharton who offered the first tertiary-level course in management in 1881.
Twentieth century concept
It was the twentieth century that saw the emergence of the first comprehensive theory of management in 1920. Henri Fayol and Alexander Church narrated various branches of management and the relationship that established between them. Walter Scott was the proponent of tagging psychology to management. Mayo, Follet, Barnard, Weber, Likert, and Argyris were some of the economists who examined the concept of management from a sociological point of view. Next came the concept of Applied Management with Drucker and Sloan during the 1950s. On the other hand Blackett combined the statistical theory of Fisher and Fry with microeconomic theory in 1940s. Ultimately the study came to be known as Operations Research.
Modern concept
In the last part of the twentieth century and first part of the twenty-first century management is considered to have six branches. They are human resource management, operations management, strategic management, marketing management, financial management, and information technology management.
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