Management and Operations Management
James Anderson
HCS 442
Pat Blaisdell
November 28, 2005
Managers have many functions in an organization. Traditionally, the term "management" refers to the set of activities, and often the group of people, involved in four general functions, including planning, organizing, leading and coordinating activities. Organizations often have 3 levels of managers. First-line managers are responsible for day-to-day operation. They also supervise the people performing the activities required to make the good or service. Middle managers supervise first-line managers. They are also responsible to find the best way to use departmental resources to achieve goals. Top managers are responsible for the performance of all departments and have cross-departmental responsibility. They establish organizational goals and monitor middle managers (jpkc).
There are four functions for managers to use to assist and ease in making decisions on goals and projects. Those functions are: planning, organizing, leading, and controlling. All four functional areas are important and require attention for an organization to succeed. In regards to managing there is numerous projects that need focus and attention. Planning functional area of management is the first essential phase of the overall management process. What comes out of planning provides a need for the other functional areas of management: organizing, leading and controlling.
Planning is the process used by managers to identify and select appropriate goals and courses of action for an organization. Three good steps to planning are: Which goals should be pursued? How should the goal be attained? How should the resources be allocated? This function is used to determine how effective and productive the organization is and used in the strategy process of the organization. Planning, including identifying goals, objectives, methods, resources needed to carry out methods,...