Management Functions: Organising Staffing Directing and Controlling
CONCEPT AND DEFINITION OF ORGANISATION
Organising is the process of identifying and grouping of various activities in the organisation and assigning them to various persons, working together for achieving specific organisational goals.
The organising function leads to the creation of organisational structure, which includes designing roles to be filled by suitably skilled people and defining the relationship between these roles.
Functional Alignment: All efforts within the organisation are directed toward achieving goals established under the planning function. Organising refers to arranging everything in an orderly form to make the best use of business resources.
Verbatim Definitions:
Ralph C. Davis: "Organisation is a group of people, who are co-operating under the direction of leadership for the accomplishment of a common end."
Northcott: "The arrangement by which tasks are assigned to men and women so that the individual efforts contribute effectively to some more or less clearly defined purpose for which they have been brought together."
Koontz & Donell: "Organisation is the structure of relationship by which an enterprise is bound to-gether and the framework, in which individual effort is co-ordinated."
CHARACTERISTICS OF ORGANISATION
Group of Persons: Every business relies on the services of people. An organisation exists when two or more persons come together to undertake common work.
Common Objectives: Organisations possess common objectives. Individual and departmental objectives must lead to the achievement of these common organisational goals; moving in a common direction is the essence of an organisation.
Division of Work: The total labor of an enterprise is divided into specific activities and functions. Repeated performance of the same task allows a person to develop specialization, increasing efficiency and aiding goal achievement.
Co-ordination: Since different persons perform different tasks in their own ways, their activities must be co-ordinated so that individual efforts align with main business goals.
Authority-Responsibility Relationship: Positions are arranged in a hierarchy with well-defined authority and responsibility. This establishes a clear superior-subordinate relationship. Authority is delegated to accomplish assigned tasks, and responsibility is fixed at every level.
Communication: An effective communication system is required. Information passes downward (orders), and reactions (feedback) move upward. This informs personnel of their tasks and allows management to assess achievement through performance reports.
Structure as a Means to Goals: The organisational structure is the mechanism for achieving common goals. Sub-segment objectives are integrated into the overall objectives.
Basic Management Function: Organising is the core function used to define and co-ordinate various activities. It is closely associated with all other ministerial functions.
Performance at All Levels: All managers perform the organising function. Departmental managers decide activities for their departments, and supervisors arrange activities for their direct reports.
Continuous Process: Organising is performed continuously as managers are constantly involved in the organisation of their specific functions.
Relationship to Objectives: Authority and responsibility are assigned based on planned business objectives to ensure efficient working.
STEPS IN THE ORGANISING PROCESS
Identification and Division of Work: The process begins by dividing the total work into smaller, manageable units called "jobs." Assigning a person to a recurring job fosters specialization.
Departmentalisation: After classification, similar activities are grouped together under a single department. This grouping can be performed in various ways.
Assignment of Duties: Suitable persons are appointed to different jobs based on their skills and qualifications. Specialists are often appointed as department heads.
Establishing Reporting Relationships: Management must allocate authority and responsibility so that every employee knows to whom they are responsible and for what. There must be parity between the responsibility assigned and the authority given.
IMPORTANCE OF ORGANISING
Benefit of Specialisation: Division of work ensures that tasks are assigned based on qualifications, leading to increased productivity as individuals repeatedly perform the same tasks.
Clarity in Working Relationship: Clearly defined positioning, authority, and responsibility allow every manager to know from whom to take instructions and to whom they may issue orders.
Optimum Utilisation of Resources: Clearly defined roles prevent overlapping and duplication of activities, avoiding wastage and ensuring tasks are completed on time.
Expansion and Growth: A well-knit, flexible organisational structure facilitates growth and diversification. It allows for the employment of more personnel without straining existing management.
Adaptation to Change: Organising allows the structure to be modified to accommodate changes in the business environment.
Effective Administration: It provides clear job descriptions and clarifies the superior-subordinate relationship, which prevents confusion and improves execution.
Development of Personnel: Through delegation, managers can focus on strategic issues while subordinates are motivated to take on challenging jobs. This builds experience and trains personnel for higher roles.
Helps in Administration: It provides the foundation for managerial control. Functions like co-ordination and control require proper division and assignment of work.
Easy Co-ordination: Dividing activities into complementary segments brings about automatic co-ordination between different departments.
Encourages Initiative: A good structure allows talent to flourish. Policies provide guidance, but within those limits, employees have the freedom to try new ideas.
Increase in Managerial Efficiency: Work is divided according to skill and suitability, motivating people to improve performance.
Reduction in Labour Turnover: Satisfaction with working conditions and the absence of unnecessary interference reduces the rate at which employees leave. Initiative and creativity make the organisation dynamic and responsive to change.
DELEGATION OF AUTHORITY
Concept of Authority: Authority is the degree of discretion conferred on people to use their judgment. In small enterprises, power is centralized; as they grow, authority must be delegated.
Purposes of Delegation: Delegation is the administrative process of getting things done by giving others responsibility. All major decisions are made at the top level by the Board of Directors, then entrusted to the Chief Executive, who assigns work to departmental managers, who then delegate to subordinates.
Elements of Delegation:
Responsibility: The assignment of a task or duty to a subordinate. It is the role description of the subordinate and the basis of the delegation process.
Features: Arises from the superior-subordinate relationship; arises from the assigned duty; flows upward from junior to senior; cannot be delegated; is the obligation to complete the job as instructed.
Authority: The grant of power to order or command. It is derived from responsibility and is necessary for completing a task.
Features: The right to take decisions due to managerial position; determines superior-subordinate relationship; used to influence subordinate behavior; restricted by organisational rules; subjective and influenced by personality; must be equal to responsibility.
Accountability: The byproduct of assigning work and delegating authority. It is the obligation to perform duties. While authority flows downward, accountability flows upward.
Features: Refers to performance; cannot be delegated; enforced through feedback; flows upward to the superior; is unitary (answerable to one boss).
CONCEPT AND DEFINITION OF STAFFING
Staffing is the managerial function of employing suitable persons for various positions. It involves finding the "right persons for the right jobs having right qualifications."
Modern Role: It now emphasizes human resource management, including recruitment, selection, development, appraisal, and compensation. Large organisations have dedicated Personnel Management or Human Resource Development Departments.
Verbatim Definitions:
Koontz and O'Donnell: "The managerial function of staffing involves meaning the organisational structure through proper and effective selection, appraisal and development of personnel to fill the roles designed into the structure."
French Wendell: "Staffing or human resource management is the recruitment, selection, development, utilisation, compensation and motivation of human resources of the organisation."
FEATURES AND IMPORTANCE OF STAFFING
Features of Staffing:
Managerial Function: Performed after planning and organising.
Concerned with Human Resources: Focuses on individuals and groups.
Continuous Function: Vacancies arise due to expansion or labour turnover.
Undertaken at all Levels: Required throughout the organization by various managers.
Optimum Utilisation of Personnel: Aims for personal and social satisfaction while maximizing human resources.
Dynamic Function: Must incorporate new technology and recruitment methods.
Influences Performance: Shaped by the internal and external environment.
Importance of Staffing:
Appointing Persons as per Requirements: Fills specific positions needed for activities.
Placing Right Persons at Right Jobs: Ensures higher efficiency by matching qualifications/skills to the task.
Survival and Growth: The enterprise’s future depends on the capabilities of its employees.
Optimum Utilisation of Manpower Resources: Prevents human assets from becoming a burden through proper development.
Improves Job Satisfaction: Includes training, promotion, and compensation to motivate staff.
Effectiveness of Other Functions: staffing ensures the people carrying out other functions are suitable.
Helps in Competing: Efficient manpower allows an organisation to compete better in the market.
THE STAFFING PROCESS
Estimating Manpower Requirements: An assessment of needs based on production schedules and demand forecasts.
Workload Analysis: Determining the number and type of employees required.
Workforce Analysis: Analyzing existing employees to see who is over- or under-burdened.
Comparison: Determining if more persons are needed or if excess staff should be transferred or removed.
Recruitment: Searching for and persuading prospective employees to apply. Can be internal or external.
Selection: Scrutinizing applications to spot suitable persons. Matching persons to jobs helps control training costs.
Placement and Orientation: Placing selected candidates in their roles and introducing them to colleagues, rules, and policies to help them adjust.
Training and Development: Equipping new entries with job-specific knowledge and skills. A formal approach avoids the risk of trial and error and minimizes waste.
Performance Appraisal: Assessment by the immediate superior to evaluate qualities and deficiencies.
Promotion and Career Planning: Offering higher status, better emoluments, and more responsibility based on performance and attitude.
Compensation: Fixing fair wage and salary rates that commensurate with worker contribution.
Separation: Managing turnover due to retirement, resignation, termination, retrenchment, or death. Efforts are made to keep transition rates reasonable due to the high cost of replacement training.
DIRECTING: CONCEPT, FEATURES, AND ELEMENTS
Directing involves instructing, guiding, communicating, inspiring, and motivating employees. It is where the actual work starts through supervisor instructions.
Verbatim Definitions:
Ernest Dale: "Directing is telling people what to do and seeing that they do it to the best of their ability."
Koontz and O’Donnell: "Direction is the executive function of guiding and observing subordinates."
Haimann: "Directing consists of the process and techniques utilising in issuing instructions and making certain that operations are carried out as originally planned."
Features of Directing:
Initiates Action: Moves the organisation toward planned performance.
Continuing Function: Managers must provide ongoing guidance and motivation.
Takes Place at Every Level: Every manager has subordinates to supervise; time spent on direction is higher at the operational level.
Flows from Top to Bottom: Seniors provide directions to those below them.
Performance Oriented: The motive is to improve person-specific performance to meet organisational goals.
Human Element: Deals with relationships and group harmony to achieve unity of action.
Elements of Directing:
Supervision: Overseeing subordinates to ensure work matches instructions.
Motivation: Stimulating and inspiring people. Positive motivation uses incentives; negative motivation uses fear.
Leadership: Influencing people to willingly try to achieve goals.
Communication: Passing information and understanding. Requires a sender, message, media, receiver, and feedback.
IMPORTANCE OF DIRECTING
Initiates Action: Resources (human and non-human) are utilized only after directions are given.
Means of Motivation: Creates a sense of belongingness so employees perform to their best ability.
Integrates Effort: Directing activities such that diverse individuals at different levels work as one unit.
Balance in the Organisation: Balances differing attitudes (e.g., a Marketing Manager suggesting a price cut vs. a Managing Director disagreeing) to ensure interests don't clash with the organisation.
Facilitates Change: Instructs and guides employees to adopt new technology or situations (e.g., clearing misunderstandings about fear of job loss due to new tech).
CONTROLLING: CONCEPT AND DEFINITION
Controlling is the process of checking whether plans are being adhered to, recording progress, and taking corrective measures for deviations. It connects back to planning, which sets the goals while control ensures performance according to plan.
Verbatim Definitions:
George R. Terry: "Controlling is determining what is being accomplished that is evaluating the performance, and if necessary, applying correct measures so that the performance takes place according to plans."
Robert N. Anthony: "Management Control is the process by which managers assure that resources are obtained and used effectively and efficiently in the accomplishment of an organisation's objectives."
Ernest Dale: Control "pin-points the reason why it has happened and provides data that enable the chief executive or the departmental head to take corrective steps."
Koontz and O'Donnell: "The measurement and correction of the performance of activities of subordinates in order to make sure that enterprise objectives and plans devised to attain them are being accomplished."
Example of Controlling: If planned output is and actual output is in a set period, controlling involves finding the reason for the deviation (e.g., worker inefficiency) and applying a solution (e.g., training).
FEATURES AND IMPORTANCE OF CONTROLLING
Features of Controlling:
Goal Oriented: Ensures performance is monitored and corrected to reach goals on time.
All Pervasive: Exercised at top, middle, and operational levels.
Continuous Activity: Exercised as long as the organization survives.
Forward Looking: While it evaluates past results, it does so to determine controls for the future to prevent mistake repetition.
Related to Planning: Planning provides the base for controlling; control is incomplete without planning and vice versa.
Importance of Controlling:
Achieving Organisational Goals: Ensures slackness is rectified.
Proper Use of Resources: Ensures activities stay on schedule.
Improves Employee Motivation: Communicating standards in advance helps employees self-assess and solve problems.
Ensures Order and Discipline: Constant watch discourages dishonesty and fraud.
Improving Efficiency: Regular checks and self-appraisal reports motivate employees to exceed standards.
Minimising Errors: Early detection of mistakes prevents large-scale losses.
Facilitates Decentralisation: Uses techniques like budgeting and "management by exception" to allow top management to focus on policy while subordinates handle tasks.
Facilitates Co-ordination: Controls act as checks to provide unity of action.
Promotes Decision Making: Requires assessing reasons for deviations and deciding on corrections.
Coping with Environment: Allows for remedial measures when the environment changes.
Improvement of Quality: Control is exercised over both the product and its standard of quality.
THE CONTROL PROCESS
Setting of Control Standards: Goals are converted into quantities, value, or man-hours. Levels of achievement (satisfactory, average, or poor) are determined in advance.
Measurement of Actual Performance: Measured against standards. Quantitative goals are measured via work figures; qualitative goals (morale, relations) require psychological tests and surveys.
Comparing Actual and Standard Performance: Minor deviations are ignored, but significant gaps require action.
Analysing Deviations: Deviations are categorized into those requiring urgent top-management attention and those that are insignificant.
Taking Corrective Action: The most important step. If performance is low, measures are taken to set things right. This may involve reviewing plans, changing work methods, reassignment of tasks, changing direction techniques, or altering the organisation structure.