Management is the process of coordinating and overseeing the work performance of individuals working together in organizations, so that they could efficiently and effectively accomplish their chosen aims or goals.
It is also defined as the process of designing and maintaining an environment for efficiently accomplishing selected aims (Weihrich and Koontz 2005). Management functions include the following:
Planning
Involves determining the organization’s goals or performance objectives, defining strategic actions that must be done to accomplish them, and developing coordination and integration activities.
Organization
Demands assigning tasks, setting aside funds, and bringing harmonious relations among the individuals and work groups or teams in the organization.
Staffing
Indicates filling in the different job positions in the organization’s structure; the factors that influence this function include: size of the organization, types of jobs, number of individuals to be recruited, and some internal or external pressures.
Leading
Entails influencing or motivating subordinates to do their best so that they would be able to help the organization’s endeavor to attain their set goals.
Controlling
Involves evaluating and, if necessary, correcting the performance of the individuals or work groups or teams to ensure that they are all working toward the previously set goals and plans of the organization.
Coordination, Efficiency, and Effectiveness: Intrinsic to the Nature of Management
Management functions—planning, organizing, staffing, leading, and controlling—will all go to waste if coordination, efficiency, and effec-tiveness are not practiced by an organization’s appointed managers. In other words, top-level managers, middle-level managers, and team leaders or supervisors must all be conscious of the said practices of successful organizations as they perform their management functions.
Webster’s Dictionary defines coordination as the harmonious, integrated action of the various parts and processes of an organization; efficiency as the character of being efficient or being able to yield the maximum output from a minimum amount of input; and effectiveness as being adapted to produce an effect, or being able to do things correctly. When applied to management functions, coordination ensures that all individuals, groups, or teams are harmoniously working together and moving toward the accomplishment of the organization’s vision, mission, goals, and objectives; efficiency, meanwhile, refers to the optimal use of scarce resources—human, financial, physical, and mechanical—in order to bring about maximum productivity; and effectiveness means “doing things correctly” when engaged in activities that will help the organization attain its aims.