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Management comprises directing and controlling a group of one or more people or entities for the purpose of coordinating and harmonizing that group towards accomplishing a goal. Management often encompasses the deployment and manipulation of human resources, financial resources, technological resources, and natural resources. Management can also refer to the person or people who perform the act(s) of management.

The verb manage comes from the Italian language maneggiare (to handle — especially a horse), which in turn derives from the Latin manus (hand). The French word mesnagement (later ménagement) influenced the development in meaning of the English word management in the 17th and 18th centuries.Oxford English Dictionary

Management has to do with power (sociology) by position, whereas leadership involves power by influence. Compare stewardship.

Management functions Different levels of management Top-level management

Top-level managers require an extensive knowledge of management roles and skills.
They have to be very aware of external factors such as markets.
Their decisions are generally of a long-term nature.
They are responsible for strategic decisions.
They have to chalk out the plan and see that plan may be effective in future

Middle management

Mid-level managers have a specialised understanding of certain managerial tasks.
They are responsible for and carrying out the decisions made by top-level management.
They are responsible for tactical decisions.

Lower management

This level of management ensures that the decisions and plans taken by the other two are carried out.
Lower-level managers' decisions are generally short-term ones.
They are responsible for operational decisions.

Formation of the business policy

The mission of the business is its most obvious purpose -- which may be, for example, to make soap.
The objective of the business refers to the ends or activity at which a certain task is aimed.
The business's policy is a guide that stipulates rules, regulations and objectives, and may be used in the managers' decision-making. It must be flexible and easily interpreted and understood by all employees.
The business's strategy refers to the plan of action that it is going to take, as well as the resources that it will be using, to achieve its mission and objectives. It is a guideline to managers, stipulating how they ought to use best the factors of production to the business's advantage. Initially, it could help the managers decide on what type of business they want to form.

How to implement policies and strategies

All policies and strategies must be discussed with all managerial personnel and staff.
Managers must understand where and how they can implement their policies and strategies.
A plan of action must be devised for each department.
Policies and strategies must be reviewed regularly.
Contingency plans must be devised in case the environment changes.
Assessments of progress ought to be carried out regularly by top-level mangers.
A good environment is required within the business.

The development of policies and strategies

The missions, objectives, strengths and weaknesses of each department must be analysed to determine their roles in achieving the business's mission.
The forecasting method develops a reliable picture of the business's future environment.
A planning unit must be created to ensure that all plans are consistent and that policies and strategies are aimed at achieving the same mission and objectives.
Contingency plans must be developed, just in case.

All policies must be discussed with all managerial personnel and staff that is required in the execution of any departmental policy

Where policies and strategies fit into the planning process

They give mid- and lower-level managers a good idea of the future plans for each department.
A framework is created whereby plans and decisions are made.
Mid- and lower-level management may add their own plans to the business's strategic ones.

Basic elements of management Management operates through various functions, often classified as planning, organizing, leading/motivating and controlling.

Planning: deciding what needs to happen in the future (today, next week, next month, next year, over the next five years, etc.) and generating plans for action.
Organizing: making optimum use of the resources required to enable the successful carrying out of plans.
Leading/Motivating: exhibiting skills in these areas for getting others to play an effective part in achieving plans.
Controlling: monitoring -- checking progress against plans, which may need modification based on feedback.

Theoretical scope Mary Parker Follett (1868–1933), who wrote on the topic in the early twentieth century, defined management as "the art of getting things done through people".Vocational Business: Training, Developing and Motivating People by Richard Barrett - Business & Economics - 2003. - Page 51.One can also think of management functionally, as the action of measuring a quantity on a regular basis and of adjusting some initial plan; or as the actions taken to reach one's intended goal. This applies even in situations where planning does not take place. From this perspective, Frenchman Henri FayolAdministration industrielle et générale - prévoyance organisation - commandement, coordination – contrôle, Paris : Dunod, 1966considers management to consist of five functions:

coordination

Some people, however, find this definition, while useful, far too narrow. The phrase "management is what managers do" occurs widely, suggesting the difficulty of defining management, the shifting nature of definitions, and the connection of managerial practices with the existence of a managerial cadre or social class.

One habit of thought regards management as equivalent to "business administration", although this then excludes management in places outside commerce, as for example in Charitable organization and in the public sector. Nonetheless, many people refer to university departments which teach management as "business schools." Some institutions (such as the Harvard Business School) use that name while others (such as the Yale School of Management) employ the more inclusive term "management."

Speakers of English may also use the term "management" or "the management" as a collective word describing the managers of an organization, for example of a corporation. Historically this use of the term was often contrasted with the term Industrial relations referring to those being managed.

Historical development Difficulties arise in tracing the history of management. Some see it (by definition) as a late modern (in the sense of late modernity) conceptualization. On those terms it cannot have a pre-modern history, only harbingers (such as stewards). Others, however, detect management-like activities in the pre-modern past. Some writers trace the development of management-thought back to Sumerian traders and to the builders of the pyramids of ancient Egypt. Slave-owners through the centuries faced the problems of exploiting/motivating a dependent but sometimes unenthusiastic or recalcitrant workforce, but many pre-industrial business, given their small scale, did not feel compelled to face the issues of management systematically. However, innovations such as the spread of Arabic numerals (5th to 15th centuries) and the codification of Double-entry bookkeeping system (1494) provided management tools for management assessment, planning and control.

Given the scale of most commercial operations and the lack of mechanized record-keeping and recording before the industrial revolution, it made sense for most ownerships of enterprises in those times to carry out management functions by and for themselves. But with growing size and complexity of organizations, the split between owners (individuals, industrial dynasties or groups of shareholders) and day-to-day managers (independent specialists in planning and control) gradually became more common.

19th century Some argue that modern management as a discipline began as an off-shoot of economics in the 19th century. Classical economists such as Adam Smith (1723 - 1790) and John Stuart Mill (1806 - 1873) provided a theoretical background to resource allocation, production, costs, and pricing, and pricing issues. About the same time, innovators like Eli Whitney (1765 - 1825), James Watt (1736 - 1819), and Matthew Boulton (1728 - 1809) developed elements of technical production such as standardization, quality control procedures, cost accounting, interchangeability of parts, and plan. Many of these aspects of management existed in the pre-1861 slave-based sector of the United States of America economy. That environment saw 4 million people, as the contemporary usages had it, "managed" in profitable quasi-mass production.

By the late 19th century, marginal theory of value Alfred Marshall (1842 - 1924) and Léon Walras (1834 - 1910) and others introduced a new layer of complexity to the theoretical underpinnings of management. Joseph Wharton offered the first tertiary-level course in management in 1881.

20th century By about 1900 one finds managers trying to place their theories on what they regarded as a thoroughly scientific basis (see scientism for perceived limitations of this belief). Examples include Henry R. Towne's Science of management in the 1890s, Frederick Winslow Taylor's Scientific management (1911), Frank Bunker Gilbreth and Lillian Moller Gilbreth's Applied motion study (1917), and Henry L. Gantt's charts (1910s). J. Duncan wrote the first college management textbook in 1911. In 1912 Yoichi Ueno introduced Taylorism to Japan and became first management consultant of the "Japanese-management style". His son Ichiro Ueno pioneered Japanese quality-assurance.

The first comprehensive theories of management appeared around 1920. The Harvard Business School invented the Master of Business Administration degree (MBA) in 1921. People like Henri Fayol (1841 - 1925) and Alexander Hamilton Church described the various branches of management and their inter-relationships. In the early 20th century, people like Ordway Tead (1891 - 1973), Walter Scott and J. Mooney applied the principles of psychology to management, while other writers, such as Elton Mayo (1880 - 1949), Mary Follett (1868 - 1933), Chester Barnard (1886 - 1961), Max Weber (1864 - 1920), Rensis Likert (1903 - 1981), and Chris Argyris (1923 - ) approached the phenomenon of management from a sociology perspective.

Peter Drucker (1909 – 2005) wrote one of the earliest books on applied management: Concept of the Corporation (published in 1946). It resulted from Alfred Sloan (chairman of General Motors Corporation until 1956) commissioning a study of the organisation. Drucker went on to write 39 books, many in the same vein.

H. Dodge, Ronald Fisher (1890 - 1962), and Thornton C. Fry introduced statistical techniques into management-studies. In the 1940s, Patrick Maynard Stuart Blackett combined these statistical theories with microeconomics theory and gave birth to the science of operations research. Operations research, sometimes known as "management science" (but distinct from Taylor's scientific management), attempts to take a science approach to solving management problems, particularly in the areas of logistics and operations.

Some of the more as of 2006 developments include the Theory of Constraints, management by objectives, reengineering, and various information technology-driven theories such as agile software development, as well as group management theories such as Cog's Ladder.

As the general recognition of managers as a class solidified during the 20th century and gave perceived practitioners of the art/science of management a certain amount of prestige, so the way opened for business philosophies and popular management theories to peddle their wares. In this context many management fads may have had more to do with pop psychology than with scientific theories of management.

Towards the end of the 20th century, business management came to consist of six separate branches, namely:

Human resources management
Operations management or production management
Strategic management
Marketing management
Finance
Information technology management responsible for management information systems

21st century In the 21st century observers find it increasingly difficult to subdivide management into functional categories in this way. More and more processes simultaneously involve several categories. Instead, one tends to think in terms of the various processes, tasks, and objects subject to management.

Branches of management theory also exist relating to Non-profit organizations and to government: such as public administration, public management, and educational management. Further, management programs related to civil society organizations have also spawned programs in nonprofit management and social entrepreneurship.

Note that many of the assumptions made by management have come under attack from business ethics viewpoints, critical management studies, and anti-corporate activism.

As one consequence, workplace democracy has become both more common, and more advocated, in some places distributing all management functions among the workers, each of whom takes on a portion of the work. However, these models predate any current political issue, and may occur more naturally than does a command hierarchy. All management to some degree embraces democratic principles in that in the long term workers must give majority support to management; otherwise they leave to find other work, or go on strike. Hence management has started to become less based on the conceptualisation of classical military command-and-control, and more about facilitation and support of collaborative activity, utilizing principles such as those of human interaction management to deal with the complexities of human interaction. Indeed, the concept of Ubiquitous command and control posits such a transformation for 21st century military management.

Nature of managerial work In for-profit work, management has as its primary function the satisfaction of a range of stakeholders. This typically involves making a profit (for the shareholders), creating valued products at a reasonable cost (for customers), and providing rewarding employment opportunities (for employees). In nonprofit management, add the importance of keeping the faith of donors. In most models of management/governance, shareholders vote for the board of directors, and the board then hires senior management. Some organizations have experimented with other methods (such as employee-voting models) of selecting or reviewing managers; but this occurs only very rarely.

In the public sector of countries constituted as representative democracy, voters elect politicians to public office. Such politicians hire many managers and administrators, and in some countries like the United States political appointees lose their jobs on the election of a new president/governor/mayor. Some 2500 people serve at the pleasure of the United States Chief Executive, including all of the top US government executives.

Public, private, and voluntary sectors place different demands on managers, but all must retain the faith of those who select them (if they wish to retain their jobs), retain the faith of those people that fund the organization, and retain the faith of those who work for the organization. If they fail to convince employees of the advantages of staying rather than leaving, they may tip the organization into a downward spiral of hiring, training, firing, and recruiting. Management also has the task of innovation and of improving the functioning of organizations.

Managerial levels/hierarchy The management of a large organisation may have three levels:

Senior management (or "top management" or "upper management")

Middle management

Low-level management, such as supervisors or team leader s

Areas and categories and implementations of management

Accounting management
Agile management
Association management
Capability Management
Change management
Communication management
Constraint management
Cost management
Crisis management
Critical management studies
Customer relationship management
Design management
Disaster management
Earned value management
Educational leadership
Enterprise management
Environmental management
Facility management
Financial management

Human resources management
Information technology management
Innovation management
Interim management
Inventory management
Knowledge management
Land management
Leadership management
Logistics management
Lifecycle management
Marketing management
Materials management
Operations management
Organization development
Perception management
Program management
Project management
Process management

Performance management
Product management
Public administration
Public management
Quality management
Records management
Research management
Resource management
Risk management
Skills management
Social entrepreneurship
Spend management
Strategic management
Stress management
Supply chain management
Systems management
Talent manager
Time management
Visual management

References

See also Articles

Adhocracy
Administration (business)
Certified Business Manager
Collaboration
Collaborative method
Corporate governance
Design management
Engineering management
Evidence-based management
Futures studies
Knowledge visualization
Leadership
Management consulting
Management control
Management development
Management fad
Management styles

Managerialism
Micromanagement
Macromanagement
Middle management
Music management
Organizational studies
Organizational empowerment
Predictive analytics
Public administration
Scientific management
Senior management
Social entrepreneurship
Virtual management
Peter Drucker's management by objectives
Eliyahu M. Goldratt's Theory of Constraints
Pointy Haired Boss — a negative stereotype of managers

Lists

List of basic management topics
List of management topics
List of marketing topics
List of human resource management topics
List of economics topics
List of finance topics
List of accounting topics
List of information technology management topics
List of production topics
List of business law topics
List of business ethics, political economy, and philosophy of business topics
List of business theorists
List of economists
List of corporate leaders
Timeline of management techniques

External links

Association of Professionals in Business Management (APBM)
Management Courses at MIT Sloan, OpenCourseWare
Research on Organizations: Bibliography Database and Maps
(United States) Academy of Management: dedicated to the scholarship and practice of management
Institute of Certified Professional Managers

School of Management, University of Southampton
University of Southampton, School of Management, south UK, southern England, undergraduate, postgraduate, accounting, finance, entrepreneurship, health, information systems ...

Southampton University, Management School Research
MBA (Masters of Business Administration), University of Southampton, south UK - full time and part time

management.org.uk
The electronic gateway to AMED Association for Management Education and Development. Go to the ANET main menu: Management Development Services

Royal Holloway, University of London: School of Management homepage
The School of Management at RHUL combines international research with business expertise to deliver programmes that are highly valued worldwide

Bradford University School of Management
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The Register: Management News and Views for the World
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Debt Management - Gregory Pennington Debt Management Company
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Chartered Management Institute - home
UK source for professional management courses and accredited programs.