Henri Fayol (1841-1925) who is known as the Father of Modern Management, was a French industrialist who developed a framework for studying management. He wrote “General and Industrial Management”. His five functions of managers were plan, organize, command, coordinate, and control. Classification of Business Activities According to Fayol, all activities could be classified into Technical (manufacturing or production) Commercial (buying, selling and exchange) Financial (search for and optimum use of capital) Security (protection of property and persons) Accounting (including statistics) and Managerial Henri Fayol’s Principles of Management His fourteen principles of management included division of work, authority and responsibility, discipline, unity of command, unity of direction, and subordination of individual interests to general interests, remuneration of personnel, centralization, scalar chain, order, equity, and stability of tenure of personnel, initiative, and esprit de corps (union is strength). 1. Division of Work The work of every person in the organization should be Continue reading
Management Basics
Operational Decisions – Meaning and Characteristics
Operational decisions are what make your business strategy real and ensure that your organization runs effectively, right down to the front-lines interacting with your associates. To ensure that operational decisions are effective, you need to manage operational decision making. Operational decisions helps the organization to understand some fundamental cost-volume relationship relate to the operation in the company. In operational decision making, the decision makers have to consider about volume, latency, variability, managing risk, self service and personalized. Volume is the number of decisions of a specific type that decision makers made must be high. The volume can cause problems or exacerbate another decision problem, such as compliance and risk assessment. Besides that, latency means when you could foresee problem is coming but still couldn’t change how you are going to make decision in time. So you might have an operational problem. The change in mind-set required is akin to the Continue reading
Management by Objectives (MBO) – Definition, Advantages and Disadvantages
Many approaches have been utilized to integrate individual and group goals with overall goals of the organization of an enterprise. Management by Objectives (MBO) is basically a process whereby the superior and subordinate managers of an enterprise jointly (i) identify its common goals, (ii) define each individuals major areas of responsibility in terms of results expected of him, and (iii) use these measures as guides for operating the unit (or enterprise) and assessing the contribution of each of its members. The goals are jointly established by the manager and his subordinates and agreed upon in advance. These goals emphasize either output variables or intervening variables, or some combination of both. At the end of the pre-decided time period, the subordinate’s performance is reviewed in relation to preset goals. Both superior and the subordinate participate in this review/evaluation. If, after evaluation it is found that there is some discrepancy between the Continue reading
Centralization – Meaning, Advantages and Disadvantages
Centralization of Authority In any business organization, concentration of authority and powers in the hands of top management is referred to as centralization, everything which goes to reduce the importance of subordinates role in an organization is known as centralization. In such a type of office organization, the authority and powers of each and every activity lies in the hands of top few, say office manager and his immediate subordinate, and other subordinates play the second and subsequent fiddles. In fact, they are not to play any role. Instead they asked to work and only work according to the dictates of what the boss wants and orders. Centralization of the powers in respect of planning and control in not a new thing in any management. But centralization refers to the reduction of subordinates to a naught. Thus, treatment accorded to them is only that of a machine. Subordinates are asked Continue reading
Organization – Meaning, Definition, Importance and Principles
Meaning of Organization Organization is the foundation upon which the whole structure of management is erected. Organization is associated with developing an outline where the overall work is divided into manageable components in order to facilitate the achievement of objectives or goals. Thus, organization is the structure or mechanism that enables living things to work together. In a static sense, an organization is a structure or machinery manned by group of individuals who are working together towards a common goal. Examples of organization are Corporations, governments, non-government organizations, armed forces, non-profit organizations etc. The term organization has been used in four different senses; Organization as Framework of Relationships: Organization refers to the structure and interactions among various job positions which are created to realize certain objectives. Organization as a process: Organization is viewed as a dynamic process and a managerial activity which is vital for planning the utilization of company’s Continue reading
Transfer Pricing – Definition, Objectives and Principles
Meaning and Definition of Transfer Pricing Large organizations are divided into a number of divisions to facilitate managerial control. The problem of transfer pricing arises when one division of the organization transfers its output to another division as an input. A transfer price is the price one segment (sub unit, department, division etc.) of an organization charges for a product or service supplied to another segment of the same organization. The transfer from one segment to another is only an internal transfer and not a sale. Transfer pricing is needed to monitor the flow of goods and services among the divisions of a company and to facilitate divisional performance measurement. The main use of transfer pricing is to measure the notional sales of one division to another division. Thus the transfer prices used in the organization will have a significant effect on the performance evaluation of the various divisions. This Continue reading