Discuss 5 characteristics of a basic system and provide answers
Answers
Answer:
1. Management is a process – Continuous, Social, and Unique:
Management is a continuous process because an organization goes on perpetually and it needs solutions to problems on a continuing basis. A process has a beginning and an end, and management begins with planning and ends with control and restarts with planning. It is a social process because it is managing by people (employees and managers) for the people (customers) and of the people (investors and society at large).
It is a unique process because it deals with group activities; it is integrative in nature as it meshes different resources in a coordinated manner; and intangible in appearance (since presence of management is felt through performance only).
2. Management is a science, an art, and a profession as well:
A science is a systematised body of knowledge, accumulated through use of scientific method (through observation and research), it has a cause and effect relationship, can be imparted formally, and has universal application.
Management has all the ingredient of being a science, but it is a soft science rather than a hard science (where 2 + 2 may not always be 4) because it deals with human beings, whose behavior is most difficult to predict.
Art refers to practical application, through creative use of body of knowledge to get desired results by personal possession of skill where scope for personal judgment is there. This way management is definitely an art, as it is a social process. Even many of the pure sciences are closer to art.
Two doctors prescribing the same medicines to two different patients suffering from the same disease may have different result with different doses. Management is rightly called as art of arts. Since management is both a science and art, it is right to call it as artistic science (art-based science) or scientific art (science-based art) (see Figure6.1)
A profession is an occupation, requiring some significant body of knowledge, which is formally acquired and applied with ethical standards as declared by the apex body of whose certification is a must, for service to society.
Management is not a profession like accounting, law or medicine, which are thousands of years older to management, because to be a manager no qualification is essential, there is an apex body — All India Management Association — but its membership is not mandatory.
Yet, management is moving towards becoming a profession as management education is expanding and firms demand managers who are thoroughly professional. With liberalisation, globalisation and privatisation demand for professional managers is bound to grow further.
3. Management influences and is influenced by environment:
Management does not work in vacuum. It has to face the internal (controllable) and external (non-controllable) environment. Internal environment consists of employees, processes and systems. External environment comprises STEEPLE (Social, technological, economic, ecological, political, legal and ethical environments).
Internal environment indicates strengths and weaknesses and external environment indicates opportunities and threats. Management tries to convert threats into opportunities and weaknesses into strengths; but at times changes itself according to environment.
4. Management’s core is to take decisions:
When Peter F. Drucker said that “whatever a manager does he does through decision making”, he was very clear of management’s core that it was decision making.
Since management is interdisciplinary (management has heavily borrowed concepts from economics, psychology, sociology, anthropology, law, mathematics, statistics, et al), it makes use of multiple and inter-disciplinary knowledge to take decisions and makes use of authority to get those decisions enforceable.
5. Management is goal-oriented:
The process of management is a purposive activity and starts and ends with the goals. All organizations, both for-profit and not-for-profit, are directed towards goals. It is the responsibility of management to attain those goals.
Without goals an organisation would be like a ship without rudders. Management always begins with goals, and remains conscious of their attainment. If there are any gaps in performance and goals, management tries to bring the two in tune with each other. Management is concerned with both efficiency and effectiveness.
Explanation:
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