Text 1. What is management?

Before you read discuss questions with your partner:

1. Is management an important part of business process? Why is it important?

2. What tasks does a manager have to deal with? Is this job a demanding one?

Peter Drucker the well-known American business professor and consultant, suggests that the work of a manager can be divided into planning (setting objectives), organizing, integrating (motivating and communicating), measuring and developing people.

First of all, managers set objectives and decide how their organization can achieve them. This involves developing strategies, plans, and precise tactics, allocating resources of people and money.

Secondly, managers organize. They analyse and classify the activities of the organization and the relations among them. They divide the work into manageable activities and then into individual jobs. They select people to manage these units and perform the jobs.

Thirdly, managers practise the social skills of motivation and communication. They also have to communicate objectives to the people responsible for attaining them. They have to make the people who are responsible for performing individual jobs form team. They make decisions about pay and promotion. As well as organizing and supervising the work of their subordinates, they have to work with people in other areas and functions.

Fourthly, managers have to measure the performance of their staff, to see whether the objectives set for the organization as a whole and for each individual member of it are being achieved.

Lastly, managers develop people – both their subordinates and themselves.

Obviously, objectives occasionally have to be modified or changed. It is generally the job of a company's top managers to consider the needs of the future, and to take responsibility for innovation, without which any organization can only expect a limited life. Top managers also have to manage a business's relations with customers, suppliers, distributors, bankers, investors, neighbouring communities, public authorities, and so on, as well as deal with any major crises which arise. Top managers are appointed and supervised and advised (and dismissed) by a company's board of directors.

Although the tasks of a manager can be analyzed and classified in this fashion, management is not entirely scientific. It is human skill. Business professors obviously believe that intuition and 'instinct' are not enough; there are management skills that have to be learnt. Drucker, for example, wrote over 20 years ago that ' Altogether this entire book is based on the proposition that the days of the "intuitive" manager are numbered', meaning that they were coming to an end. But some people are clearly good at management, and others are not. Some people will be unable to put management techniques into practice. Others will have lots of technique, but few good ideas. Outstanding managers are rather rare.

Task 1. Complete the following sentences with these words:

achieved board of directors communicate innovations

manageable performance resources setting supervise

1. Managers have to decide how best to allocate the human, physical and capital_________ available to them.

2. Managers - logically - have to make sure that the jobs and tasks given to their subordinates are _________.

3. There is no point in _________ objectives if you don't _________ them to your staff.

4. Managers have to _________ their subordinates, and to measure, and try to improve, their_________ .

5. Managers have to check whether objectives and targets are being_________.

6. A top manager whose performance is unsatisfactory can be dismissed by the company's_________.

7. Top managers are responsible for the_________ that will allow a company to adapt to a changing world.

Task 2. Match up these verbs and nouns to make common collocations:

allocate decisions

communicate information

develop jobs

make objectives

measure people

motivate performance

perform resources

set strategies

supervise subordinates

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Task 3. Write an essay about one of the famous thinkers (A. Smith, Stolypin, Kondratyev or some other).	\|	Text 2. How to be a great manager?

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