Commerce: 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:
  1. Planning
  2. Organising
  3. Coordinating
  4. Leading/Commanding and
  5. Controlling
• 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