Subway

The Role of Managers within the Functional Areas of Business

Alec M. Salunga

MGT/521

October 21, 2013

Dr. Norris Dorsey

Management has been practiced for a long time. The construction of Egyptian pyramids and the Great Wall of China are proof of organized endeavor directed by people responsible for planning, organizing, leading, and controlling activities that have existed for thousand years. Someone have defined and set a goal, established strategies, and developed a plan to build those pyramids or wall. Someone had decided what need to be done, how it was done. It took more than 100,000 workers some 20 years to construct a single pyramid. Though it was a very hard, grueling and tedious work, somebody lead or even motivated those workers each day until the work was done and completed as planned. Who ensured and monitored that there would be enough stones at the site to keep workers busy? The Manager. Perhaps they may have been many managers who have to plan what had to be done, recruited, trained and organized people, acquired materials to get the job done. Managers made sure those workers got the work done, and imposed some controls to ensure that everything was done as planned.

The Role of Managers within the Functional Areas of Business

Most of us think of management as the people or person who is in-charge of managing anything from materials to labor and this is true, but there is more. This being said, what are the functions of management within the business. There are four basic functions of management within a business-planning, organizing, leading and controlling. All of these are important in order to a business to succeed and a business cannot have one without the other. A classic 1916 book Administration Industrielle et Generale, Henri Fayol was the first person to identify elements or functions of management. He a director of a large French coal-mining firm. He based his book upon his experiences as a practitioner of...