This essay examines fundamental concepts of management and organization, drawing on multiple definitions to establish a foundational understanding of planning, organizing, leading, and coordinating resources. It distinguishes between managing and leading, citing scholars such as Warren Bennis to highlight key differences in approach. The essay also surveys the forces driving a new management paradigm — including globalization, workforce diversity, technological change, and stakeholder accountability — and discusses their implications for both business and non-governmental organizations. Emerging organizational trends such as flat hierarchies, networked structures, and participatory management are analyzed alongside the tensions they create for leaders and employees.
A survey of the literature reveals various definitions of management in use. Management has been defined as the process of getting things done through and with people. It is the planning and directing of effort and the organizing and employing of resources — both human and material — to accomplish some predetermined objective (Jones and Bartlett, 2011).
BusinessDictionary.com (2011) defines management as the organization and coordination of the activities of an enterprise in accordance with certain policies and in achievement of defined objectives. Management consists of the interlocking functions of formulating corporate policy and organizing, planning, controlling, and directing an organization's resources to achieve the policy's objectives.
Traditionally, the term management refers to the activities — as well as the group of people — involved in four general functions: planning, organizing, leading, and coordinating resources. These four functions recur throughout the organization and are highly integrated (McNamara, n.d.).
Planning includes identifying goals, objectives, methods, and resources needed to carry out tasks. Organizing resources takes place to achieve goals in an optimum manner. Leading involves setting direction for the organization and influencing people to follow that direction. Coordinating or controlling the organization's resources takes place to efficiently and effectively reach goals and objectives (McNamara, n.d.).
Another common view is that management is getting things done through others. Still another view holds that the job of management is to support employees' efforts to be fully productive members of organizations and citizens of the community. There is also the position that management should focus more on leadership skills — on establishing and communicating visions and goals (McNamara, n.d.).
Emerging trends in management assert that leading is different from managing, and that the nature of how the four functions are carried out must change to accommodate a new paradigm in management (McNamara, n.d.).
In the discussion of leadership versus management, Clemmer makes a key distinction: we manage things and we lead people. Clemmer also quotes Warren Bennis, Professor of Business Administration at the University of Southern California: "Management is getting people to do what needs to be done. Leadership is getting people to want to do what needs to be done. Managers push. Leaders pull. Managers command. Leaders communicate" (Clemmer, 2010).
McNamara also discusses the driving forces of change that necessitate a new paradigm in management. The environment of today's organizations has changed a great deal from a generation ago. The power of telecommunications technology has shrunk the world considerably. Increasing diversity among workers is responsible for a wide array of differing values, perspectives, and expectations. Public consciousness has become more sensitive and more demanding that organizations be socially responsible. Many developing countries have joined the global marketplace, creating wider opportunities for sales and services. Organizations have become responsible not only to stockholders but also to a wider community of stakeholders (McNamara, n.d.).
As a result of all these forces, organizations are required to adopt a new paradigm — to be more sensitive, flexible, and adaptable to the demands and expectations of stakeholders. Today's leaders must therefore deal with continual, rapid change and cannot necessarily rely on earlier-developed plans for direction. Managing change does not mean controlling it, but rather understanding and adapting to it.
McNamara provides a summary of old versus new paradigms, based on Ferguson's The New Paradigm: Emerging Strategies for Leadership and Organizational Change:
Old Paradigm vs. New Paradigm
Promote consumption at all costs → Appropriate consumption
Imposed goals, top-down decision making → Autonomy encouraged, worker participation
Short-sighted → Ecologically sensitive
People to fit jobs → Jobs to fit people
Emphasis on short-term solutions → Recognition that long-range efficiency must account for a harmonious work environment
Strictly economic motives → Spiritual values transcend material gain
Manipulation and dominance → Cooperation with nature
Source: C. McNamara, Traits of the New Paradigm
"Organizational structure, vision, mission, and values"
"Globalization, diversity, flexibility, flatness, and networking"
All these trends, along with the tensions they produce, result in greater organizational or systems complexity for both leaders and employees in organizations. The tensions cannot be solved, but rather they have to be managed (Tan, 2011).
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