Part 3. Management and its functions.

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No one can predict tomorrow's economic world, but one thing is certain: it will be different from today's. In order to make the necessary adaptations to this economic world with an eye to the future, organizations must take continuous improvements now while focusing on the long-term environment. This change in emphasis requires a flexible organization totally responsive to the customer. Although a completely accurate prediction of the most important forces in tomorrow's world is not possible, certain forces seem likely to predominate. These forces are: economic pressures, global competition, people issues, and ever-advancing technology.

Economic pressures will continue to dominate choices and decisions in public and private organizations. The demand for increasing value at a lower cost will continue into the next century. Global competition will no doubt increase among all nations. The competition for world markets and scarce natural resource will govern the new world order. People issues will undoubtedly escalate in the coming years. Labour markets will shrink at the same time the demand for people with specific education and skills increases. In addition, the demand for quality of work, life for all people will influence the future work environment. Technology will continue to grow at an astounding pace. The impact of new technology, especially, in information processing and communications, could determine supremacy.

Total Quality Management provides a flexible, responsive management approach able to act or to react to all of the forces of today's and tomorrow's economic world. TQM is the only known approach that focuses the resources of an organization on identifying and acting on the internal and external forces that will influence the world of tomorrow. It gears an organization toward continually improving quality, increasing productivity, and reducing costs to ease economic pressures. TQM focuses on total customer satisfaction through highest product and service quality at lowest life cycle costs to compete in the global environment and stresses constant training and education downsizing and decentralizing organizations using people's capabilities to add product and service value. Along with maximization of the human impact, TQM advocates the optimum use of technology to achieve a competitive advantage.

Organization for management. People generally do not live and work in isolation, they depend upon one another for many things because no man possesses an unlimited capacity for work. Brainpower, educational background, aptitude, time, place and many other factors restrict human activity. Whatever the problem is, if a man obtains the assistance that he needs, he must decide how the work is to be allocated and he must pass down to others part of the responsibility for running an agency or an enterprise. Now that he employs the services of others, so part of his control over the production process falls to others.

Division of the workload solves the problem of one man's inability to cope but it creates the problem of coordinating the activities of the people among whom the work is divided in order to avoid duplication, emission and general confusion, if specific objectives are to be achieved. The objectives of each organization determine the work to be done though such work may vary from level to level within the organization. As a result, an organization may be defined as the division of work among people whose efforts must be coordinated to achieve specific objectives. It is management that serves this purpose today. Management refers to the work of planning, organizing coordinating (directing), controlling and forecasting.

Planning implies finding the ways to achieve the optimum results with minimum losses of time and resources. Organizing serves to establish a sequence of steps in order to achieve planned targets. To organize the work management has to see to it that necessary jobs and shops are set up, adequate number of manpower is employed, sufficient machinery is supplied and installed and reasonable communication channels are used. Coordinating is aimed at achieving harmony and cooperation with outside bodies and agencies. Control means a continuous supervision and comparison of state of affairs against planned targets. Such data and information cease to be of use as soon as conflicting situation is eliminated. Forecasting is partially based on controlling data and information enabling managers to look into the future and to predict the nature of trends and the sort of things likely to happen in economy or production process.

Management can be divided into three approximate levels. The highest level problems at top management are concerned with the strategic decisions such as what business the firm is in and what should be its objectives. At middle management level problems are more tactical, concerned with, the management of operations, that is the process of ensuring that routine work of the organization is carried out effectively. Operational management involves a lot of decisions about timing and amount of resource, commitment, the level of performance expected and the organizational responsibilities involved. Decisions are committed in the form of budgets, schedules, organization charts, etc.

Management is based on information. Once the production elements have been put into operation, the manager needs to be well informed of how they are operating and what failures are to be eliminated. Management involves a set of operations such as data-collecting, data-processing and data exchange which are carried out for the purpose of decision-making. As modern organizations are of complex nature, the continuous form of data circulating between various levels of management can only be handled by computerized data-processing systems. Such systems are being introduced to minimize the manager's paperwork and to allow him to make more intelligent decisions than he was able to make before.

The first step towards computerization of management information systems (MIS) included only some operations relating to the processing of initial data, as it was very important for making decisions at various levels of management. In this way managers were freed from a burden of time consuming operations. Another step is computerization of the whole data-processing cycle along with transmitting data over long distances. As human society progresses, the flow of information is bound to grow; at the same time there will always the need for the information that must reach management in due time.

Vocabulary:

issue – a subject to be taken about, argued about or decide

to gear – to allow (an activity, or course of action) to be dependent on or influenced by (a particular fact or condition)

to advocate – to speak in favour; to support publicly

capability – the act or quality of being capable (having the power, skill, or other qualities needed)

capacity – 1. the amount that smb can hold or contain; 2. ability or power; 3. a particular position or duty; role

aptitude (for) – natural ability or skill, esp. in learning

workload – the amount of work that a person or a machine is expected to do in a particular period of time

objective – an aim, esp. one that must be worked toward over a long period; goal

purpose - an intention or plan; a person's reason for an action; use; effect; result

target – a total or amount; object which one aims to reach

 

Exercise 1. Suggest the meaning:

Environment, people issues, ever-advancing technology, at an astounding pace, to ease economic pressure, the optimum use, brainpower, educational background, to employ the services of others, to avoid duplication, emission and general confusion, finding the ways, a sequence of steps, to be supplied and installed, to cease to be of use, to eliminate the conflicting situation, to carry out effectively, to put into operation, to be of no use, to minimize the paperwork, data-processing cycle, to transmit data over long distances.

 

Exercise 2. Find the English equivalents for:

Оказывать влияние на выбор, повышать стоимость при низких издержках, управлять мировым порядком, подход в управлении, подчёркивать снижение постоянной подготовки и образования, ограничить деятельность, неспособность справиться, внешние подразделения, постоянный надзор и сравнивание состояния дел, контрольная база данных, заглянуть в будущее, предсказать суть перемен, обязательства, сбор данных, обработка данных, обмен информацией, компьютеризация, освободиться от бремени трудоёмких операций, поток информации растёт.

 

Exercise 3. Enrich your vocabulary and make up sentences with the words:

to manage – manager – managerial – management; computer – to computerize – computerization; to compete – competitor – competitive – competition; product – production – productive – productivity; to commit – commitment; to be responsible – responsibility; to organize – organization – organizational; to be capable – capability – capacity.

 

Exercise 4. Fill the gaps with an appropriate item:

To be of no use; people issues; to cease to be of use; capacity; to carry out; sequence of steps; to eliminate; workload; commitments; aptitude; to gear; to supply and install; to put into operation; paperwork; capability; objective; purpose; target

1. We have failed to meet this year's production ___ of 25,000 cars but we'll have to hold our prior ___ to catch up next year.

2. This computer is not quite as powerful as the other one, but for all practical ___ it is just as good though the ___ increases every year.

3. Our ___ is to achieve full employment and to ___ the conflicting situations. So it is important to ___ a ___.

4. To minimize the ___ and to ___ effectively we need a computer with good graphics ___.

5. The factory has a productive ___ of 200 cars a week. The new efficient machinery has been ___ and ___ because the old one ___.

6. We must ___ the amount of products we make to the level of public demand.

7. Nowadays when the demand for skilled workers increases ___ are especially important.

8. She didn't show any ___ for learning languages and it ___ to employ such a person.