What Is Management?

Abstract

A ubiquitous feature of the modern world, management is also one of its more poorly understand institutions. Commonly, as evidenced in management textbooks, “management” is associated with four functions: planning, organizing, leading, and controlling. This section argues that this narrow view is in grievous error, encompassing as it does systems of work based on slavery and totalitarian control. Accordingly, we need to extend our definition to include five other characteristics. First, management – if it is properly fulfilling its functions – is attentive to costs, including the value it places on labor. Second, management involves maximizing “competitive advantage” built on firm and labor specialization. Third, output is directed toward competitive mass markets, markets that help sustain production based on specialization. Fourth, management can only properly function when it is supported by legal frameworks that guarantee contracts and protect property and individual rights. Finally, modern management is unlike that found in preindustrial societies based on hereditary privilege – and that found in totalitarian regimes – in that it deals with free labor vested with a genuine capacity for choose in deciding on both an occupation and an employer.