Management [antikvár]

Preface Aims of the book This book aims to offer an excellent package to support students following courses in management. These may be within an undergraduate programme or among those offered at postgraduate level to those who come from other disciplines. Its intention is to be comprehensive and thorough, yet flexible, readable and interesting. Theory is explained and applications are discussed. From this source, students can both learn about, and develop skills in, management. The complexity of management as a held of study is reflected in the range of approaches taken to its presentation. From among these, we can pick out four: ¦ Management as a process Variants of the sequence of planning, organising, implementing and controlling can be found in management thought from the earliest days. In this book. Parts 3 to 7 represent stages of this process. The constraints of book design inevitably lead to a sequential presentation. Yet, the management process should really be seen as a number of loops. In practice, not only is there neither beginning nor end, but managers are engaged in several stages simultaneously. As we shall see in Chapter i, this way of presenting management does not constitute a descriptive theory, even less a prescriptive one. It merely offers a useful way of sorting and examining ideas. One further comment concerns the division of chapter topics among the process stages. The sequence could be changed. For instance, control could be discussed much earlier than in the last two chapters. Further, the discussion of organising is divided rather arbitrarily into large and small groups. The split was made because of the amount of material to be covered under the general heading of organising people. ¦ Themes in management A less structured approach is to use current themes and controversies as the basis of book design. The starting point is to examine what questions are of greatest concern to the modern manager. In this book, we select four of these: globalisation; ethics and social responsibility; quality; and enterprise. This selection does not mean that other issues are ignored. Questions such as diversity, gender and governance could have warranted their own chapters. The limited space, however, kept the list to four and other issues are included at appropriate points. The book is designed to relate the chosen themes to the management process. They are, therefore, set out in Part 2 and then referred to again at appropriate points throughout. iX