Nature and Significance of Management
This domain tests how management is defined as a process of getting things done through other people, the efficiency-versus-effectiveness distinction, the three levels of management, and the debate over whether management is an art, a science or a profession.
Core concepts
- Process view: management is planning, organising, staffing, directing and controlling (POSDC) to reach organisational goals. Efficiency means doing a task at minimum cost; effectiveness means completing the right task.
- Coordination is the essence of management. It is not a sixth function - it runs through every function and every level.
- Levels: top (board and CEO - policy, strategy), middle (departmental heads - interpret policy, assign targets), supervisory or operational (foreman, supervisor - day-to-day execution and worker morale).
- Nature: science, because a systematic body of knowledge and cause–effect principles exist, though it is a behavioural science with far less precision than physics; art, because it requires practice, skill and creativity; profession, only partly - a code of conduct exists, but no licence is compulsory to practise.
- Features: goal-oriented, pervasive, multidimensional (work, people, operations), continuous, intangible, composite and dynamic.
Worked example
A supervisor reassigns three workers so a delayed order ships today without overtime. Reasoning: the right goal (ship today) is achieved and cost is held down, so the act is both effective and efficient. Had the order shipped late after heavy overtime, effort was efficient but the outcome was ineffective. Marks are earned by naming both terms correctly.
Traps that cost marks
Writing coordination as a separate function; calling management a full profession; swapping efficiency and effectiveness; forgetting that the supervisory level is also called the operational level.