Management Process
Management questions test the four functions, levels and skills, the design of authority, and how decisions and controls actually operate.
The four functions
Planning sets goals and the means to reach them (strategic, tactical, operational). Organizing arranges resources, jobs, and reporting lines. Leading motivates, communicates, and resolves conflict. Controlling compares performance with standards, diagnoses deviations, and corrects them, then loops back into planning.
Levels, skills, and structure
Top managers need conceptual skill; middle managers blend all three; first-line supervisors rely on technical and human skill, following Katz. Span of control is the number of subordinates reporting to one manager; narrow spans create tall, costly structures with slow communication, while wide spans produce flat structures that need capable, self-directed staff. Departmentalization may be functional, product, customer, geographic, or matrix, the last trading efficiency for coordination and breeding dual-reporting conflict. Centralization concentrates decisions at the top; decentralization pushes them down for speed.
Authority and delegation
Authority is the right to direct; responsibility is the obligation to perform; accountability is answerability for results. Delegation transfers authority and responsibility but never final accountability. Unity of command says each employee reports to one manager, and the scalar principle describes an unbroken chain of command. Line authority is direct over subordinates; staff authority is advisory. Power differs from authority and may come from expertise, charisma, reward, coercion, or position.
Decisions, motivation, and leadership
Rational decision making: identify the problem, set criteria, weigh alternatives, choose, implement, evaluate. SWOT summarizes internal strengths and weaknesses plus external opportunities and threats. McGregor's Theory X assumes workers dislike work and need close control; Theory Y assumes they seek responsibility. Leadership styles run from autocratic to democratic to laissez-faire, and contingency views say the best style depends on task structure, the situation, and follower maturity.
Worked example
A supervisor with 24 direct reports is missing deadlines. Narrowing the span by inserting two team leaders improves control but adds a layer and slows decisions. The trade-off, not a universal rule, is the exam point: wide spans demand trained, autonomous staff and standardized work.
Traps
Claiming accountability can be delegated; treating staff advisers as holding line authority; confusing leadership with management; and forgetting that controlling always feeds back into planning.