CHAPTER 3
MANAGEMENT PRINCIPLES
Coming to Terms with Terms
Dynamics is the science which deals with action of forces whether
producing equilibrium or motion, forces governing activity or movement of
any kind. And oftentimes, this action of forces is synergetic in the sense
they are interacting.
Management is the skillful means to accomplish purpose. It is the
utilization of the human resources and material resources, which are the
means, in order to accomplish assigned objectives.
There are three types of management. These are private management,
institutional management, and governmental management.
Private management is concerned with private enterprises, which may
or may not be business enterprises. The key consideration is that it is
concerned with private organizations. Institutional management is also
concerned with private organizations but it pursues non-profit activities; it is
responsible to the members of the organization. Under private management,
the manager is responsible to the stockholders or the owners. This presents
some kind of a legal dichotomy between stock and non-stock organizations.
Governmental management is concerned with government agencies
and its responsibility is to public.
Management Theory
The schools of thought in management theory are the Operational
School, the Empirical School, the Human Behavior School, the Social
School, the Decision Theory School and the Mathematical School.
The operational school views management from the standpoint of
operations and processes. It advocates that management is really a series of
processes which, when analyzed, could provide guidelines for successful
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management. The empirical school emphasizes that management can be
appreciated from the standpoint of experience and that from experience one
may be able to draw certain generalizations or principles that could guide
managers. The human behavior school considers management as a manner
of utilizing people to achieve certain purposes. It looks at management as a
process of generating active interaction among individuals in an organization
to influence individual or collective behavior. The social school of thought
is closely related to the human behavior school. The difference is that the
social school of thought looks at management from the standpoint of the
organization as a social organism that must live, and live well only if the
internal components or organs in the system are working efficiently and
effectively. It is a recognized fact that the organization is not isolated and it
must operate within the milieu of social organisms in a changing
environment. The decision theory school regards management as a matter of
decision making. It considers the management process as a series of
decisions that be must be made by a manager as he encounters problems.
The mathematical school views management in terms of mathematical
models.
Management Functions
There are five functions of management. They are (1) planning, (2)
organization, (3) staffing, (4) direction, and (5) control.
Planning is essentially looking into the future, identifying the
problems and anticipating the steps to be taken to solve the problems,
organizational objectives and changes in these objectives, and determining
the courses of action one may wish to consider in the pursuit of these
objectives.
Plans take many forms, some of which include policies, procedures,
rules, budgets, projects, programs and strategies.
Some management authors differentiate objectives from plans but this
is merely an exercise. Everytime one makes a plan he must have objectives
and, therefore, objectives are part of a plan.
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Policies are rules instituted at high levels, such as the Constitution and
other laws of the land. Directives when issued at a high level may be
classified as policies.
Procedures are implementing rules. They are more detailed than
policies and they prescribe step by step the process involved in the
compliance to policies. Rules can be a series of statements showing what
should be done and what should not be done. Budgets are the master plans.
They are monetary translation of expected activities. The budget is a
presentation of the organization's activities in terms of money. Projects are
what one might call component packages of plan.
Programs, as
differentiated from projects, may be larger in context. Strategies are broad
approaches toward the solution of a problem or the achievement of certain
objectives.
Planning
A plan must be geared to the objectives of the organization. There are
broader objectives than just the organizational objectives, and that there is a
hierarchy of objectives from the broad to the specific ones. A research
organization must have clear objectives that are related to the broader
objectives. One might say in terms of structure, there are primary objectives
and secondary or derivative objectives. Objectives are useful because they
tend to focus attention and efforts to specific goals.
The second principle is that the plan must be within the capabilities of
available human and material resources.
The plan must be efficient. It should be a primary concern of every
manager that resources available to him are utilized efficiently. In other
words, a manager must be able to achieve the most with the least. His inputoutput ratio must be as low as possible.
A good plan should be effective in terms of its targets. No plan is
perfect but if its batting average is 80 percent up, one might say that the plan
is good.
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The plan must be flexible. This principle recognizes the fact that
situation change over time and the plan, as presented originally, should be
adjusted to the changes of the times.
The plan must be timely. Very often, a plan can generally be good on
paper but when it is related to the demand of the times, the picture could
change.
A plan must be able to produce measurable results. If a plan does not
have this characteristic, it runs the risk of not being understood in the first
place or, if it is understood and accepted, it is difficult to evaluate during or
after implementation.
Measurable results should be distinguished in terms of quantitative or
qualitative evaluation. If a plan is devised in such a way that its results can
be quantitatively measured, it is bound to be better than otherwise. The
qualitative aspects of a plan are important but difficult to measure. The
outcome of a plan should not be measured quantitatively alone.
Organization and Staffing
An organization can be simply defined as the identification of
functions, the grouping of these functions, the assignment of these functions
to certain positions, and the authorization of people occupying these
positions to exercise powers that would make possible the performance of
these functions.
Staffing is the process of filling the positions in the organization with
qualified people who can perform the functions, and keeping these people at
high levels of performance or effectiveness. Staffing is not just placing
people but seeing to it that they remain, on a continuing basis, at high levels
of performance.
Theories of Organization
There are two concepts of organization theory, namely, the traditional
theory and the modern theory. The contribution of traditional theory to the
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science of management is the design of formal structures of organization,
that is, putting the organization in very clear structural relationships on paper
and listing down the functions of each component of the organization.
The contribution of modern theory involves the human behavior
school of thought and the social school of thought. This is called the modern
theory because the concern of management specialists has been to
understand how people can be grouped together, and how they can be
motivated to work collectively.
Principles of Organization
Unity of command
First, in organization there must be unity of command. We must be
able to identify who is at the top of the organization or each of its units at
each hierarchical level. At the top of the triangle is one man.
Span of control
Another principle is the span of control. Ordinarily, a person is able
to supervise only a certain number of persons. The parameter in most
organizations is 6 to 7 people. The more highly trained people are in an
organization, the greater the span of control the supervisor can have. This is
so because well trained people can be left to themselves without much
supervision.
Scalar pattern
The scalar pattern is another phrase for the chain of command. In the
entire organization, the chain of command must be clearly identified and in
every component of the organization, the chain of command must, likewise
be identified.
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Departmentation
The principle of departmentation governs the grouping of functions
and people who perform these functions. When one begins to classify and
organize functions together, he generally gravitates in the process toward the
compartmentation or departmentation of the organization, with each
department representing a series of closely related functions.
Decentralization
The principle of decentralization assumes that the people at the
fringes of the organization are able to take on greater responsibilities and,
therefore, could make decisions on their own.
Another important guideline is the principle of exception under which
certain responsibilities or functions that are recurring and routine are usually
delegated by the decision maker or the manager to his subordinates. This
principle is related to decentralization and decentralization.
In the arrangement of functions, there are a number of techniques.
One is the principle of use. If the department has the most use of certain
function is assigned to that department. Another is the principle of interest.
If a person in a department is interested in performing a function, even if
such function is tangentially related to his department's objectives, such a
function may be assigned to that department merely because the person who
is interested in the function is located in that department
Competition
Sometimes, functions are divided and assigned to two departments in
order to promote competition. An organization is a living organism and it
moves only because of certain motivating forces and competition is one of
them. Also, sometimes, instead of being divided, functions are fused and
this is what might be called an application of the principle of suppressed
competition.
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Control, Separation and Coordination
The assignment of functions must consider the principle of control. A
manager must see to it that he has continuing control of the use of his
resources.
One must also consider the principle of impossibility of cleavage.
There are functions that are just impossible to separate because when they
are separated and assigned to different departments, divisions or sections
then competition or coordination becomes a problem.
On the other hand, there is the principle of separation which refers to
the check-and-balance systems in the organization. There are certain
function in the organization which must be separate in order to achieve a
check-and-balance system.
Then there is the principle of coordination. This principle requires
recognition of the fact that an organization could be so vast, in the sense that
it encompasses a great variety of activities, vast in the sense that the people,
who are part of the organization, are widely separated geographically, so that
there is a problem of communication and coordination.
Principles of Staffing
In staffing, it should be helpful to mention certain processes and
principles. Staffing is getting people placed in the organization to fill certain
positions.
Recruitment
The first problem is recruitment. Organizations use different ways of
recruitment.
If a scientist is needed, the contacts that are made by the head of the
research institution are many and diverse. He goes to the universities. He
goes to various organizations such as foundations, international and national
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organizations, to obtain information on the availability of certain people.
Once a few candidates are identified, an interview process follows.
As on goes down the line, as in the case of research assistants, the
recruitment procedures are a little different. Examinations may be required.
The transcript of academic record of the candidate may be examined. The
experience of the candidate may be given a bit of weight. Interviews may
follow.
Compensation
Before a candidate is appointed, the employer should have a frame of
reference for providing him compensation. Government research
organizations follow standardized salary scales.
Direction and control
Direction is the process of seeing to it that the output generated by the
utilization of human resources and material resources is aimed sharply at the
objectives and not elsewhere. It should not tolerate leakages nor diversions
of the output. Control, on the other hand, is the process of ensuring that such
output is funneled through a particular channel so that it is able to hit the
objectives more directly.
In direction, there should be a system of conveying messages, a
system of message vehicles. Such a system could be presented by an array
of orders, directives, memoranda, circulars and bulletins.
The chapter on Management Principles ends here.
You may now perform the activities
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Activities
1. Find out how research institutions in the Science City of Muñoz
recruit their researchers.
2. Make a comparison of the compensation packages including
perquisites of any two of the following research institutions:
CLSU, PhilRice, PCC, and BPRE. Report your findings in the
class.