Scope of Management
Man is gregarious by nature. Since the dawn of civilization, and even before it, human beings have been flocking together to form groups, tribes and races. The age of living alone, all by ones self are over thousands of years ago. Human beings have identified and appreciated the need and advantages of group effort for a common goal.They have come to understand the superiority of joint effort in pursuit of a common goal over the individual effort for the individual goal. They have also come to know that while working together, there can be a lot of room for the improvement of their individual capabilities and performance and hence the specialization can become possible. Keeping in view the complex and unpredictable nature/responses of the human beings, need for management of the affairs, was realized. This marked the beginning of management-although in a very crude form.
The scope of management has ever since on increase. The managers were entrusted with more and more important roles over period of time. This widened the scope of management, crucially and considerably. From the simplest managerial practices of the distant past, the management assumed more and more complex, specialized, sophisticated and scientific role. The management, thus, evolved as more of a science than an art. Now-a-days, the activities of a group, in pursuit of a common goal (material or abstract), are managed by the person who has got excellent management qualities.
An excellent manager gives the cutting edge to organizations in comparison to its competitors. They work for the Surplus, as the non-managers call it. But to get to this very surplus, or any other common goal of the organization, the managers have to tackle, face and neutralize the internal and external odds. It has become very explicit that the management has become necessary at each and every step of organizational activity. A good manager has to take very systematic, organized and calculated steps, right from planning to the production of output.
Well Planned is Half Done
The saying goes,” well planned is half done.” The managers have to plan the activity keeping in view all the internal and external factors favoring, or otherwise, the achievement of the set goals. Once the planning is finalized, the manager has to organize the activity with respect to required departments. The departmentalization or organizing gives rise to the need of filling the posts thus created and to keep them filled or the staffing stage. The workforce employed through staffing needs guidance and supervision at each and every step and the need for leading arises. A good manager, thus, has to have leadership qualities. As all these are taking place in order to get the output and achieve the goal of the organization. There may take place deviations, here and there, in the production process. These deviations have to be identified and rectified/controlled by the manager in the controlling, so that the system can produce out puts effectively and efficiently.
As this conceptual distribution of the managerial functions holds good for almost all the organizations-whether profit based or non-profit based, the management has got immensely important. The managers, thus, have to have good management knowledge and the required technical, human, conceptual and design skills. These have become all the more important in the emerging electronic business era.
The bottom line is that the management is the most important function in the perspective of organization and its success. It covers each and every aspect of the group activity. The scope of management can be limited by the flight of imagination alone.