Scope of Management Functions – Part2
In the scope of autocratic style, superior is responsible for giving instructions to subordinates without expectations and needs for feedback, ie, the one-sided communication is implemented. As part of that subordinates also do not communicate with each other, but it unfolds through their superiors.
Unlike the previous, Democratic or participative leadership style supports two-way communication superior-subordinate, and subordinate to communicate with each other. However, decisions are made at top management level, although the participation and taking into account the opinion of the lower levels of management.
In Laissez Faire system superior lets his subordinates great freedom in their decision-making and serves as a support, whereby the working communication is completely free within and outside the organization. In this system communication is one of its most important factors. If the leader (manager) is not well trained in communication there is a great opportunity not to “hear” people in close working environment, and for this reason to endanger the achievement of goals.
5. Controlling
Control of plans and performance is the last function of management, but by no means the least important. This function has the task of monitoring the achievement of tasks and approaching the goal. The basis on which this function is based on is the business plan (and therefore reiterates that the organization without a successful plan is in a great risk in failing to achieve its goals), and its next task is to monitor the plan and control the proper direction of movement toward a goal – to analyze deviation from that goal.
In case of discrepancies task management must as soon as possible decide to apply corrective actions. As part of this function monitoring is done of all other functions together with deviations from the plan in each of them. However, it should be noted that the plan is just a guideline and that any deviation from it doesn’t necessarily mean plan is negative. This is reason why control function exists for analyzing of deviations and investigating of its positive and negative effects. There should be noted that as part of this function are the most important roles for information:
- information must be accurate,
- timely
- and reliable.
Only in this way can be implemented corrective actions.
This function works on the principle of feedback by which the observed variation in a particular function, and based on the analysis indicates the possible need for timely correction.
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Overview of the management functions includes also list of prerequisites that should have a specific person to be a successful manager. Thus, a successful manager must be fluent in all the above functions (planning, organizing, staffing, management and control for achieving the set goals) and in all aspects of these functions. However, it should be noted that although all managers involved in the above-mentioned functions, do not deal with them equally in time. The time they spend on each function depends on hierarchical level at which they are located.
With leadership in a larger time scale are involved more managers at lower levels because they have a greater number of subordinate rather than top management. On a contrary, planning function is more present at higher level of management (top management). The reason is the formulation of strategic plans at higher levels, while lower level management mostly make operational plans that require less time consumption.
Organizing and personnel activities are also functions which are mainly present in higher levels of management because they are the ones who determine the organizational structure that is best suited for achieving the goal. Based on this, lower level only makes operational adjustments to certain organizational structure, which requires less expenditure of time. Also, at lower management levels do not exist wide range of jobs that should be organized as opposed to top management who must create the entire organizational structure and to determine strategies and to adapt the structure to the company’s goals.
When talking about control, most of the time for control is spent on those levels of management which plan and organize more. Consequently, on control most of the time spends higher level of administration.
It appears that the managerial job very complex and demanding, and the above function is linked to another function that extends and combines them all together, and it is making decisions.
More information about Scope of Management Functions is available in articles: Scope of Management – Part 1 and Scope Management – Part 3.
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