1. Read and translate the text "Management Functions".

Text a. Management Functions

The roles described by many researchers provide a basis for the study of management. It helps us to identify and analyze each of the management functions. It shows the component parts of the manager's job.

There are four basic functional areas of management: (1) planning the enterprise's direction, (2) organizing and staffing the structure, (3) leading and influencing the personnel, and (4) controlling organizational operations and resources.

Planning the enterprise's direction. Planning is the process of setting objectives and then determining the steps needed to attain them. In carrying out this process, organizations often rely on many different types of plans, such as purposes or missions, objectives, strategies, policies, procedures, rules, programs, and budgets. These types of plans vary in nature and scope, with some being developed at one level of the hierarchy exclusively while others are developed at every level. The planning process itself consists of five steps: (1) awareness of the opportunity, (2) establishment of objectives, (3) determination and choice of alternative courses of action, (4) formulation of derivative plans, and (5) budgeting of the plan.

In large companies the planning process is called strategic planning. The four elements of a strategic plan include the formulation of the basic mission, the setting of long-range objectives, the determination of strategy, and the management of the organization's product lines. Having determined its strategic plan, the organization then begins developing an operational plan that breaks the strategic plan into its component parts, delegates responsibility to the various departments or units, and helps bring the strategic plan to fruition.

Decision-making is the process of choosing from among alternatives. Decisions are made under one of three conditions: certainty, risk, and uncertainty. The man­ager must know under which condition the decision is being made in order to understand how to make the choice. The manager also needs to know what steps form the decision-making process and how this process is affected by behavioral factors such as simplification, subjective rationality, and rationalization. Finally, the man­ager needs to know how decision-making can be improved through the use of management science tools and techniques, through creativity, and through matching decision-making situations with leadership styles.

Organizing and staffing the structure. Organizing is the process of assigning duties to personnel and coordinating employee efforts in order to ensure maximum efficiency. Organizing is a natural outgrowth of planning and decision-making. Once the organization knows what goals it wants to achieve, it can organize to achieve them.

To organize, the manager must consider both structure and people. In dealing with structure, the manager's primary concerns are departmentalization, job descriptions, organizational charts and manuals, and organizational design. In organizing people, the manager works on the delegation and decentralization of authority, job design, coordination, and overall people - structure fit. The purpose is to meld the structure and the people.

Staffing is the process of recruiting, selecting, training, and developing organiza­tional personnel. This process begins with a forecast of the organization's staffing needs. The manager, for example, may try to determine how many people the organization should hire during a six-month period and what skills these people should have. The next steps are recruitment and selection, orientation of the new employees, and then training and development. At this stage, the new personnel who are workers receive technical training, while the new managers receive training that is behaviorally oriented. After the initial training period, some of the new personnel are let go, following performance appraisals; others receive additional training. The manager then starts to fill the empty position by beginning the staffing process over again.

Leading and Influencing the Personnel. As soon as an organization knows what its goals are and has the necessary people to achieve them, leading becomes the manager's most important function. Leadership is the process of influencing people to direct their efforts toward the achievement of some particular goal. To be good leaders, managers must be knowledgeable about human behavior, the concept of leadership, and communication.

More specifically, managers must understand the behavior both of individuals and of groups. Personality, attitudes, learning, values, interpersonal relations, and motivation all are important aspects of the individual's behavior. To understand the group, managers should have knowledge of group characteristics, intragroup behavior, intergroup behavior, and the informal organization. With regard to leadership, managers should study both leadership behavior and contingency leadership theory. They must also understand interpersonal and organizational communication. Because communication is the process of transferring meanings from sender to receiver, they need to know about communication flows, communication barriers, and ways to develop communication effectiveness.

Controlling Organizational Operations and Resources. The controlling process consists of three steps: (1) establishment of standards, (2) comparison of results against standards, and (3) correction of deviations. Every orga­nization needs to control both operations and people.

Techniques for controlling operations vary, depending on what needs to be controlled. The budget and the break-even point are particularly useful for handling departmental and divisional control problems. For control of the entire organization, many enterprises have developed key result area control systems. By monitoring performance on these key result areas, they ensure that everything is going according to plan. Additionally, expanding organizations are often turning to operations man­agement tools and techniques and computerized information systems.

Yet control is more than a mechanical process for analyzing quantitative results. Managers must also know how to control people. They must meet the challenge of managing conflict and change, inevitable events in every organization.