The Process of Management

Summary:

The note provides an overview of the process of management and also includes managerial skills, functions, types of managers, and roles and competencies of managers. It explains that the process of management includes planning, organizing, staffing, directing, and controlling and that there are different levels of management, including top-level, middle-level, and supervisory levels. The note also discusses the types of managers based on the nature or area of their managerial job, as well as their roles and competencies, including interpersonal, informational, and decisional roles.

Excerpt:

The Process of Management (The Functions of Management)
The Process of management is a systematic way of doing things. Management is a process to emphasize that all managers, irrespective of their aptitude or skill, engage in some interrelated functions to achieve their desired goals.

The functions of management are planning, organizing, leading, and controlling managers perform to accomplish business goals efficiently.

1. Planning – Determining Courses of Action
Looking ahead into the future and predicting possible trends or occurrences that are likely to influence the working situation is the most vital quality of and manager’s job. Planning means setting an organization’s goals and deciding how best to achieve them.

Planning is decision-making regarding the goals and setting the future course of action from a set of alternatives to reach them. The plan helps maintain managerial effectiveness as it works as a guide for future activities. Selecting goals as well as the paths to achieve them is what planning involves. Planning involves selecting missions and objectives and the actions to achieve them. It requires decision-making or choosing future courses of action from among alternatives.

In short, planning means determining the organization’s position and the situation should be in the future and deciding how best to bring about that situation. Planning helps maintain managerial effectiveness by guiding future activities. For a manager, planning, and decision-making require an ability to foresee, visualize, and look ahead purposefully.