Defining Management from Different Perspective- Implications For Management Education

Abstract

Students of Management in any part of the globe are conversant with one or other definitions of management or with one or several approaches to the attainment of management objectives. But, the traditional definitions of management from processes, functions or in any other perspective seem to have over shadowed the vision to visualize the all important external environment of any social system have failed to go beyond seeing management, at the best, not more than that of 'designing and maintaining an environment in which individuals working together, in groups accomplish efficiently selected aims, Thus, there remains a need to define management which shall attach supreme importance to 'environment'. In this paper we have hoisted a trial balloon. We like to define management as the social process of designing and maintaining an environment and/or subsystems thereof to enhance and ensure congruence between work setting factors as well as relating each of them or all of them to each other or all other effectively and efficiently with the internal stakeholders and influences and external forces, factors, circumstances, institutions, issues, events etc. in a reciprocal manner to generate surplus. This definition, we think, has several implications and added importance for management education. First of all, this definition tends to minimize the disputes and discrepancies between o~-quoted operational theory and the role theory of management. Second, this definition is likely to integrate all the wealth of the different approaches to the attainment of management objectives whatever way we want to formulate them i.e. in terms of dynamic equilibrium between the organization and its environment or in terms of generating surpluses. Third, this definition may help to draw our attention away only from structure strategy, processes, people and culture to why such strategy, structure, processes, behavior or culture, at the least, do arise or need to be deployed. Thus, an outward looking search and way of finding solutions tend to begin at the level of external environment. This is perhaps the right orientation in view of the supreme importance of the external environment mostly as an independent variable and some time as a dependent variable. Obviously, such an orientation shall cause paradigm shift The implication of this shi~ is far reaching for designing and implementing curricula and syllabi of management education and writing text books which will enable students to discover science of exploring scanning, measuring the environment and devising ways and means of taming the environment without being a passive spectator or subservient to it.