Management Concepts and Applications (Essay Sample)

Management Concepts and Applications Name Institution Management Concepts and Applications Introduction As a central element, management covers some areas namely planning, organizing, leading, and controlling to ensure an organization's success; the functions primarily overseen by a person in a leadership position as a manager. The essence of this essay is to present the four functions of administration, the management concepts of contingency and classical approaches, the roles of a manager or leader, and servant leadership in supervision. Functions of Management Planning Mullins (2011) argued that as a function of administration, planning entails setting an institution's objectives and clarifying the course of action that would ultimately lead the business into achieving the outlined goals. Consequently, this process requires excellent decision-making skills as well as a leader's awareness of the organization's environment such that the identified objectives are realistic and achievable. Organizing Simply put, organizing is an administrative function in which managers bring physical, financial, and human resources together and develop a productive relationship amongst them with an aim of achieving the business objectives (Daft & Marcic, 2016). Nonetheless, leaders identify and classify activities, assign and delegate duties, and coordinate authority as well as build responsibility relationships among colleagues. Leading According to Mullins (2012), planning and organizing are mere preparations for undertaking duties; leading/directing is considered as the epicenter of the organization operations which entail a manager's initiatives or endeavors to set employees into a productive motion through adequate supervision, motivation, leadership, and communication. Moreover, observing all these factors by a leader would enhance a staff's work morale (Daft & Marcic, 2016), and the outcome is high productivity/worker's performance with the consequent result of the achievement of the business goals. Controlling Often, institutions set out standards which anchor every action to ensure that there is no deviation from the initial plan; controlling works in measuring and correcting the workforce's performance activities to ascertain that their actions are lined with the projected objectives and the business plan (Mullins, 2012). Hence, the focus areas by the manager are: establishing of standard performance, measurement of actual performance, comparison of actual performance against the criteria, and corrective actions where necessary. Contingency Approach to Management versus Classical Approach Contingency Approach to Management Watson (2013) argued that the contingency concept acknowledges an organization's structure as an essential ingredient to its performance, highlighting the need to differentiate among the varied forms of business structures and management systems. Notably, the theory postulates that the organization's structure and its success rely on (contingent upon) the nature of tasks and environmental influences; the implication is that the institution should examine the situational and contextual factors which affect management decisions. Classical Approach to Management As clarified by Mullins (2012), the Classical approach emphasizes the need for an organization to plan work, identify its technical requirements, and base its operations on defined principles while assuming rational and logical behavior. Particularly, the method stresses on the necessity to understand the business purpose such that how it works and the means of improving its methods are clear; objectives are identified, purpose clarified and responsibilities at all organizational levels defined, hence the most efficient structure. Comparison The major similarity between contingency approach and classical approach to management is that the two theories lay emphasis on the organization structure as a key determinant of its success; both acknowledge the focus on hierarchical management and formal relationships in the institution (Watson, 2013). Conversely, the two approaches differ in that classical approach operates on one factor (determination of an organization purpose) as the primary ingredient to business success (Daft & Marcic, 2016). Besides, Watson (2013) argued that in contingency method, the corporation does not settle on one best way to manage the business but rather, considers all the situational and contextual factors with equal intensities. Role of Manager and Examples According to Mullins (2011), a manager performs the organizational functions of planning, organizing, staffing, leading, and controlling to ensure that an institution achieves the desired outcomes as projected in the plan which defined the objectives of the business. Consequently, a manager may perform as a team leader, planner, a coach, decision maker, an organizer, or a problem solver among others; the roles fall into three categories of interpersonal (human interaction), informational (information sharing/analyzing) and decisional (decision making). Servant L...