~ balance your world ~
Wikipedia describes business administration ....
In business, administration consists of the performance or management of business
operations and thus the making or implementing of major decisions. Administration
can be defined as the universal process of organizing people and resources efficiently
so as to direct activities toward common goals and objectives.
Administrators, broadly speaking, engage in a common set of functions to meet the
organization's goals. These "functions" of the administrator were described by Henri Fayol.
- Planning is deciding in advance what to do, how to do it, when to do it, and
who should do it. It maps the path from where the organization is to where it
wants to be. The planning function involves establishing goals and arranging them
in logical order.
- Organizing involves identifying responsibilities to be performed, grouping
responsibilities into departments or divisions, and specifying organizational
relationships. The purpose is to achieve coordinated effort among all the elements
in the organization.
- Directing is leading people in a manner that achieves the goals of the
organization. This involves proper allocation of resources and providing an
effective support system. Directing requires exceptional interpersonal skills and the
ability to motivate people. One of the crucial issues in directing is to find the correct
balance between emphasis on staff needs and emphasis on economic production.
- Controlling is the function that evaluates quality in all areas and detects
potential or actual deviations from the organization's plan. This ensures high-quality
performance and satisfactory results while maintaining an orderly and problem-free
environment. Controlling includes information management, measurement of
performance, and institution of corrective actions.
- Budgeting, exempted from the list above, incorporates most of the administrative
functions, beginning withthe implementation of a budget plan through the application
of budget controls.
Henri Fayol was a management theorist. Fayol was one of the most influential
contributors to modern concepts of management, having proposed that there are
five primary functions of management: (1) planning, (2) organizing, (3) commanding,
(4) coordinating, and (5) controlling. Controlling is described in the sense that a manager
must receive feedback. Fayol's work has stood the test of time and has been shown to be
relevant and appropriate to contemporary management. Like Socrates, Fayol suggested that
management is a universal human activity that applies equally well to the family as it does
to the corporation...management deals with the efficient organization of production in the
conext of a competitive enterprise that has to control its production costs.
