Management?

What is management? Why is management necessary? How do you think management has evolved in that last 20 or 30 years?Management?
Well hun, this is a very broad question and quite hard to answer considering the space and time constraints.



I will give you my own explanation cosidering you already have the common definitions from the literature.



Management is a science that deals with organization of the way a certain matter should be carried out in order for goals to be attained.



That is as broad as I could go.



Management is used withing all types of organizations, for profit and not, educational institutions, hospitals, political parties, churches and in any other group of people that have joint together to reach a certain goal.



However, management takes part in the life of the individual, going from personal values, aims and ways to make dreams come true, to the daily chores and time organization in order to complete them.



In the last 20 or 30 years organizations as a whole have become much flatter, meaning layers of management have been decreased considerably. Hirearchy has been lowered. Power distance, which is the different levels of power that management holds as opposed to the power the employess have, have also been loosened.



Organizations have switched from industrial orientation of producing and then pushing the product though the channels to researching the market looking for a need and then producing the product - marketing orientation.



Participative management has taken the stage and centrally organised decision making has decreased. In other words, managers tend to seek and approve suggestions from subordinates since they are the ones on the operational level that execute the goals set forth by the management. As a result, the subordinates usually have a clearer picture as to what is attainable and the time it needs to be attained then the managers do. The participative management was brought to the West from Japan, after Japanese products floded the American market with consumer products.



Management by objectives is another development in the last couple of decades that has be introduced. Simply put, it is the management of setting clear, concise, attainable, time restricted goals and palnning the strategy to achieve them.



This brings me to the most major development that would encompass all the rest which is Strategic Management. Planning for the future and being able to predict using analysis as well as hunches what the environment will be like in five or ten years is the issues that executives today deal with the most. The ever changing global environment and the globalisation of business has made that environment full of threats but also full of opportunities. That is when the new science of Change Management was introduced, my favorite field if I may add, to help organizations through the internal changes sussessfully so they could deal with the changing external environment.



Planning the resources needed for a certain product from the R%26amp;D stage all the way to the store is a lenghty and crucial process. Accents have been placed on the need of the market, thus marketing, the quality, the prices that the market would respond to, the relations with all the other stakeholders.



Stakeholders relations have been worked on quite extensively in the past 30 years. Stakeholders are all the individuals that have any stake/interest in the organisation: creditors/banks, government, customers, employees, shareholders, society, environment and others.



New development has been the pouring money into environmental causes to strenghten the organizations image as well as humanitarian causes. The value of public relations.



As you might have already realised, management has evolved a lot and it is a very extensive science.



Best luck to ya!