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Unit 1: Introduction to Management

5. Managers are symbols: Managers are symbols of corporate success or failure. They get Notes
applause when they succeed and get depreciated and attacked when they fail. In short,
they represent corporate as well as employee aspirations. They are shown the door when
these aspirations do not materialise.
Managers, obviously, are there to utilise corporate resources in the best possible way.

More popular and widely accepted is the classification given by Henry Fayol. According to him,
the managerial functions may be broadly classified into five categories: planning, organising,
directing, staffing and controlling. Managers perform these functions within the limits
established by the external environment and must consider the interests of such diverse groups
as government, employees, unions, customers, shareholders, competitors and the public. For
theoretical purposes, it may be convenient to separate the management functions and study
them independently but practically speaking, they defy such categorisations. They are highly
inseparable.
Each function blends into the other and each can be performed in any order or sequence, not
necessarily in the order shown above, but tend to be performed (normally) in the planning,
organising, leading and controlling sequence. A brief discussion of the five basic functions is
presented under:

Figure 1.3: Henry Fayol—Functions of a Manager

Planning
Commanding

Organising

Controlling

Coordinating

1. Planning: Planning is the process of making decisions about future. It is the process of
determining enterprise objectives and selecting future courses of actions necessary for
their accomplishment. It is the process of deciding in advance what is to be done, when
and where it is to be done, how it is to be done and by whom. Planning provides direction
to enterprise activities. It helps managers cope with change. It enables managers to measure
progress toward the objectives so that corrective action can be taken if progress is not
satisfactory. Planning is a fundamental function of management and all other functions of
management are influenced by the planning process.
2. Organising: Organising is concerned with the arrangement of an organisation’s
resources - people, materials, technology and finance in order to achieve enterprise
objectives. It involves decisions about the division of work, allocation of authority and
responsibility and the coordination of tasks. The function increases in importance as a
firm grows. A structure is created to cope with problems created by growth. Through this
formal structure, the various work activities are defined, classified, arranged and
coordinated. Thus, organising refers to certain dynamic aspects: What tasks are to be
done? Who is to do them? How the tasks are to be grouped? Who is to report to whom?
Where the decisions have to be made?
3. Staffing: Staffing is the function of employing suitable persons for the enterprise. It may
be defined as an activity where people are recruited, selected, trained, developed, motivated

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