New words and word combinations:

1) business – коммерческая деятельность 2) a firm – фирма, предприятие; 3) a staff – штат служащих; 4) a head – глава, начальник, руководитель; 5) technical means and equipment – оргтехника; 6) paper work – канцелярская работа; 7) an engagement – дело, встреча; 8) an appointment – деловое свидание, условная встреча; 9) to make an appointment – назначить встречу; 10) to have an appointment – иметь встречу; 11) to keep an appointment – прийти в назначенное время; 12) to cancel an appointment – отменить встречу; 13) to arrange – устроить, условиться; 14) to call, to phone – звонить по телефону; 15) hold the line – не вешать трубку; 16) to leave a message with – оставить сообщение у кого-либо; 17) to discuss the matter – обсуждать вопрос; 18) to come to an agreement – прийти к согласию.

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The Office

Management is the administration of an organization, whether it is a business, an organization, or government body. Management includes the activities of setting the strategy of an organization and coordinating the efforts of its employees to accomplish its objectives through the application of available resources, such as financial, natural, technological, and human resources. The term "management" may also refer to those people who manage an organization.

Larger organizations generally have three levels of managers, which are typically organized in a hierarchical, pyramid structure:

Senior managers, such as members of a Board of Directors and a Chief Executive Officer (CEO) or a President of an organization set the strategic goals of the organization and make decisions on how the organization will operate. Senior managers are generally executive-level professionals, and provide direction to middle management who directly or indirectly report to them.

Middle managers, examples of these would include branch managers, regional managers, department managers and section managers, who provide direction to front-line managers. Middle managers communicate the strategic goals of senior management to the front-line managers.

Lower managers, such as supervisors and front-line team leaders, oversee the work of regular employees (or volunteers, in some voluntary organizations) and provide direction on their work. In smaller organizations, an individual manager may have a much wider scope. A single manager may perform several roles or even all of the roles commonly observed in a large organization.

When we see or hear the word "business", however we think first of all not of different shops, factories or mines, but of offices. Modern business is done chiefly there, and a day of a modern businessman is a day spent at an office. That is probably why business people pay so much attention to the way their offices look like.

I am sure you can easily imagine this place. Usually it is situated in a large or not very large well-planned building somewhere in the centre or in a prestige district of the city. How large the office itself is depends on the dimensions of the firm, which the businessman owns. But in any case it should be light and clean and have not necessary very chic and expensive but comfortable furniture of good quality. One more very important thing is the air. It should always be fresh and neither hot nor cold. For this purpose a lot of modern businessmen use various types of air-conditioners.

Office work usually means different forms of communication. A businessman often needs to speak to other people and he can do this by using the telephone, which is an important part of the communications system. The head of a large firm usually has two telephones on his desk. One is a usual telephone, which connects the businessman with other people in the town and in other countries. But the other one is connected to a private internal system and this makes it possible for members of the staff in different parts of the same building to talk to one another without leaving their rooms.

A businessman also communicates by writing. But he doesn't write his letters himself, he dictates them to his secretary, usually a woman, who types them on a typewriter or with the help of a computer, and then takes them to be signed. After that she posts all the letters or (which is more common nowadays) sends them using fax. Thus⁴⁾ we can say for sure that different technical means and equipment like personal computer, fax, xerox, printer occupy a considerable part of the office interior. And of course speaking about offices of any kind we shouldn't forget the person, who actually organizes the work there, who arranges meetings, makes appointments, cancels them, does most of the paper-work and answers telephone calls thus helping her boss in his business.

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