Four Functions of Management Essay

1. Explain the relationships among the four functions of management. The four functions of management are planning, organizing, influencing, and controlling. Each can be discussed individually, but as the text says are integrally related. Each play a key role in meeting organizational goals. Planning involves choosing the tasks that are to be performed to meet the organizations goals, this is tied to organization. Because organizing is tied to planning it can be interpreted as used the planned task, and then assigning them to people within the organization to put into action. Next is influencing, as you have made plans, and organized it into task, your influence over the personnel assigned and how they approach the organizations goals is key. How you motivate, lead, or direct them toward the goals is the primary goal. In a sense, influencing is a way you can obtain the fourth and final function, controlling. By measuring the performance of the personnel who have responsibility for the assigned tasks, you can then compare this to expected standards, then either influence them towards more positive gains, plan additional tasks, or steps to achieve, more, or continue to monitor progress towards goals. Each function with separate is integrally related and implements to meal organizational goals. 2. How can controlling help a manager to become more efficient? This ongoing process gives the manager the ability to gather information that measures performance, compare that progress to established standards, and then decide of addition steps or changes need to be made to insure compliance with the established standards. This process of continued process improvement, and supervising the results is paramount to achieving goals. 3. What is the value in having managers at the career exploration stage within an organization? Why? The decline stage? Why? Managers in the career exploration stage, are in a growth or upward trend in their careers, they are active in the tasks of finding that position that suits them and meets a certain comfort level, these managers are in a learning stage, willing to take on new challenges, and try new things. They are highly motivated, and working towards established goals. The decline stage is usually identified as a follow on to a maintenance phase, where no upward growth has occurred, and or the employee/manager has begun to stagnant in their position. These older, longer serving employees, have a wealth of experience, but are failing to meet the originally Scott D. Oram  and expected performance standard. They can be used to train new levels of management, and finding those members of the next generation who are going to become the next set of exploration-minded individuals. 4. Discuss your personal philosophy for promoting the careers of women managers within an organization. Why do you hold this philosophy? Explain any challenges that you foresee in implementing this philosophy within a modern organization. How will you overcome these challenges? 5. How will you be able to use the classical approach to management in your job as a manager? 6. How does Henri Fayol’s contribution to management differ from the contributions of Frank and Lillian Gilbreth? 7. Discuss the primary limitation of the classical approach to management. Would this approach be more significant to manager of today than managers would in the more distant past? Explain. 8. What is the ‘systems approach’ to management? How do the concepts of closed and open systems relate to this approach?