Management is a key thing in organizations and our lives today. Be it life or business, we need to manage things in one form or the other in order to get the best result in optimal efforts. Management involves various activities which are called as functions of management. These functions of management are much different than branches of management. While branches of management differ in nature, functions of management are the same in all walks of management and all levels of management.
Different scholars have approached the topic differently and reached quite similar observations and theories. We will have a look at some definitions and then study in detail about the most accepted definition.
“There are four fundamental functions of management i.e. planning, organizing, actuating and controlling”
George & Jerry
“To manage is to forecast and plan, to organize, to command, & to control”
Henry Fayol
Luther Gullick coined a term POSDCORB which is an acronym for Planning, Organizing, Staffing, Directing, Co-ordination, Reporting & Budgeting.
The most popular and widely accepted definition is the one by Koontz and O’Donnell. They classified all the activities of management in 5 functions – Planning, Organizing, Staffing, Directing, Controlling or POSDC in the short form. We will look into the details of each function now.
Functions of Management
Planning
“Planning is deciding in advance – what to do, when to do & how to do. It bridges the gap from where we are & where we want to be”.
Koontz
“Planning is the continuous process of making present entrepreneurial decisions systematically and with best possible knowledge of their futurity, organizing systematically the efforts needed to carry out these decisions and measuring the results of these decisions against the expectations through organized and systematic feedback”
Peter F. Drucker
Planning is the most basic and crucial function of management. Planning is to evaluate the current situation and forecast the future while aligning the resources to gain from that future.
Organizing
“To organize a business is to provide it with everything useful or its functioning i.e. raw material, tools, capital and personnel’s”.
Henry Fayol
Organizing means getting all the required men, material and capital to execute the plan and putting them all together effectively.
There are various steps involved in organizing such as-
- Identify the activities
- Group similar activities
- Assign them to people
- Define a line of authority and chain of responsibility
- Co-ordinate according to defined authority and responsibility
Staffing
“Managerial function of staffing involves manning the organization structure through proper and effective selection, appraisal & development of personnel to fill the roles designed un the structure”.
Kootz & O’Donell
This is again a very crucial function. This is all about finding the right talent for the task. People are not just about a task, they are whole. So it becomes important to get such people who not only do their own work but inspire others also with their persona and impact.
Staffing involves the following-
- Performance Appraisal
- Feedback and Performance Counselling
- Career Planning
- Training and Development
- Rewards
- Employee Welfare.
Directing
Directing is about giving directions to people in order to achieve the predefined targets. It is vast in nature. Directions are not just a set of instructions. Managers need to take care of people’s morale and motivation and keep them high in order to get the task done.
Below are the important concepts in directing function-
- Leadership
- Communication
- Motivation
- Morale
- Incentive
Controlling
“Controlling is the measurement & correction of performance activities of subordinates in order to make sure that the enterprise objectives and plans desired to obtain them as being accomplished”.
Kootz & O’Donell
Controlling is keeping checks and balances. The process involves-
- Standard performance value
- Actual Performance value
- Assessment from both the values
- Corrective actions based on the results from the processed data