Course: SLF 125 Business Planning and Startup

Reading

Management Basics
Management Basics
Credits
Adapted from Business, Boundless Business Open Textbook, Chapter 8 Management
www.boundless.com/business
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License

Many small businesses serve NICHE markets which are customer groups that are relatively small and who possess specific needs to be filled. Health and beauty products targeting customers with specialized needs, wants and requirements, are an example of niche marketing. Niche customers are generally willing to pay more for products that they need and want.

Management Basics: Big and Small

Management in all business and organizational activities is the act of getting people together to accomplish desired goals and objectives using available resources efficiently and effectively.

Management functions (in all types and sizes of businesses) include:

- Planning: Deciding what needs to happen in the future (today, next week, next month, next year, over the next five years, etc.) and generating plans for action.
- Organizing: Implementing a pattern of relationships among workers and making optimum use of the resources required to enable the successful carrying out of plans.
- Staffing: Job analysis, recruitment, and hiring for appropriate jobs.
- Leading/directing: Determining what needs to be done in a situation and getting people to do it.
- Controlling/monitoring: Checking progress against plans. Making decisions or changes to make sure that goals are met.
- Motivating: Motivation is a basic function of management, because without motivation, employees cannot work effectively. If motivation does not take place in an organization, then employees may not contribute to the other functions.

Most of these terms are self-explanatory.  However, controlling is used in a different way than usual. “Controlling” on the part of a manager is controlling resources in a way to meet objectives. If objectives – like sales or customer service ratings – are not being met, management must make decisions to improve performance.

Since organizations can be viewed as systems, management can also be defined as human action to facilitate the production of useful outcomes from a system. This view opens the opportunity to 'manage' oneself, a pre-requisite to attempting to manage others.

In for-profit work, management has as its primary function the satisfaction of a range of stakeholders. This typically involves making a profit (for the shareholders), creating valued products at a reasonable cost (for customers), and providing rewarding employment opportunities (for employees).