ZIMSEC O Level Commerce Notes: Management Functions: Introduction
- No doubt you have heard of people who work as managers within a business
- These people carry out management duties in the organisations in which they are employed
- It is important to note that depending on an organisation a manager can be known by several titles
- Popular titles for people who carry out management duties include:
- Finance Manager
- Human Resources Manager
- Supervisor
- Chief Executive Office
- President yes even the president of a country is a manager
- Minister again ministers are just managers who work in government
- All these titles are used to refer to a manager
- The exact choice of what title to use is entirely up to the business (organisation in question)
- They can choose to call these people by whatever title they desire
- For example, one organisation might be led by a General Manager in a certain organisation while a person who occupies the same position might be called a Chief Executive Officer or a President in other businesses
- However, all people in those positions are essentially managers
- It is also important to note that while managers can be employees in different fields, organisations/businesses or even countries
- They carry out a core set of functions that are similar
- These functions can be used to define what a manager is
- As already said above a manager is someone who carries out management duties within the organisation
- A manager is, therefore, someone who does management within an organisation/business
- Management can be defined as an organisational activity that involves the planning, organizing, leading/commanding, controlling and coordinating of the organisation’s activities so as to make sure the organisation’s objectives are achieved in an efficient and effective manner
- All organisations have objectives i.e. a reason for existing, for example, making a profit, expansion and surviving economic downturns
- Managers ensure that these objectives are achieved
- They act on behalf of entrepreneurs to combine all the other three factors of production (resources) to achieve these objectives
- One of these resources (factor) is labour
- This means that managers drive other employees (labour) within the organisation in order to achieve the organisations’ goals
- For this reason, management is often defined as doing work through others
- As already mentioned above there are various types of managers such as:
- Marketing managers, production managers, human resources managers etc
- But all managers perform the same basic functions namely:
- These are five management functions i.e. there are five functions that all managers carry out
- Naturally, we call them management functions
- To learn more about each function just click/tap on it to be taken to the relevant post where we talk about it
To access more topics go to the Commerce Notes page
