CONCEPTS OF MANAGEMENT

In the present context, the term management is used in three alternative ways:

• 1. Management as a discipline,
• 2. Management as a group of people, and
• 3. Management as a process.

MEANING AND CONCEPTS OF MANAGEMENT

The word ‘management’ can be styled as: Manage-men-t (i.e., manage men tactfully). Why manage men tactfully? This is intended to get things done. To manage men tactfully, one has to understand the highly unpredictable and uncertain human nature. Owing to this, management is a very complicated and challenging activity. A simple traditional definition defines it as the “art of getting things done by others.”. This definition brings in two elements, namely, the accomplishment of objectives and the direction of group activities toward the goal. The weakness of this definition is that firstly it uses the word “art,” whereas management is not merely an art, but it is both art and science. Secondly, the definition does not state the various functions of a manager clearly. The study of a discipline should start with its definition delineating properly its contents and characteristics, defining its scope and boundary, and prescribing the objectives for which it stands. From this point of view, we can proceed only when we define management. However, a precise definition of management is not so simple because the term management is used in a variety of ways. Being a new discipline, it has drawn concepts and principles from several disciplines such as economics, sociology, psychology, anthropology, statistics, and so on. The result is that each group of contributors has treated management differently. For example, economists have treated management as a factor of production; sociologists have treated it as a class or group of persons; practitioners have treated it as a process comprising different activities. Naturally, all these divergent groups view the nature and scope of management from their points of view. Thus, taking all these points of view together, it becomes difficult to define management comprehensively.

INTRODUCTION

Every human has needs and wants, but an individual can't satisfy all his desires by himself. Therefore, they join with fellow beings and work in an organized group to achieve what they cannot accomplish single-handedly. Thus, he organizes himself into groups, e.g., a family, hockey team, college, business firm, government, etc., and as these groups develop over time with complexities, managing becomes a difficult task. The need for the existence of management has increased tremendously. Management is not only essential to business concerns but also essential to banks, schools, colleges, hospitals, hotels, religious bodies, charitable trusts, etc. Every business unit has objectives of its own. These objectives can be achieved with the cooperative efforts of several personnel. The works of several persons are properly coordinated to achieve the objectives through the process of management. However, management is not a matter of pressing a button, pulling a lever, issuing orders, scanning profit and loss statements, or promulgating rules and regulations. Rather, it is the power to determine what shall happen to the personalities and happiness of entire people, the power to shape the destiny of a nation and of all the nations that make up the world. Peter F. Drunker has stated in his famous book “The Practice of Management” that the emergence of management as an essential, distinct, and leading social institution, a new leading group, emerged as fast as management since the turn of this century. Rarely in human history has a new institution proved indispensable so quickly, and even less often has a new institution arrived with so little opposition, so little disturbance, and so little controversy.