What is Management?

What is Management?

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the role and function of management in society and the workforce and to look into how it is implemented. Three main questions will be discussed, outlining, ”What is management? aWhat do managers do? And what skills do managers need?” We will define management as a profession, look into what managers undertake and deliver in their daily output of work, different levels of management, and what skills managers need in order to produce the desired beneficial outcome for their organization.

It could be said that the idea of having both of these methods is both ineffective and inefficient as they clash on how a manager should go about his/her job, but Mintzberg’s model is a more in depth version of Fayol’s model, that takes into consideration the wide variety of daily activities a manager must perform, not just a basic input/output/review scheme. A Study from the University of Nebraska by Fred Luthans challenges both Fayol’s and Mitzberg’s models and puts forward a new concept. This concept being that there are 4 main roles a manager must undertake, those being Communication, Traditional management, human resource management and networking (Luthans, 1988). Looking at all three of these models we can depict some similarities; that being that all models include the basic premise of planning, organizing and implementing, leading and motivating subordinates and then reviewing progress of both the project as a whole and employee output and work satisfaction. Depending on a manager’s responsibilities held, there are different levels of management; top manager, middle manager and first level (front line) manager. In relation to what each of these levels of manager do, front line managers will automatically be more involved in leading and motivating as their main purpose is to supervise and make sure the job is being done. Middle managers will be heavily involved in organizing and implementing as they will delegate to the front line managers what must be done.