CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION TO OFFICE ADMINISTRATION AND MANAGEMENT
DEFINATION OF MANAGEMENT
The emergence of management as an essential distinct and leading institution is a pivotal event in social history, purely if ever has a new leading group emerged as fast as has management since the turn of 20th century. peter w drucker.
All kinds of institution –social, political, religious .etc. are formed by groups of individual to pursue common goals and objectives. The attainment of these commonly defined objectives shall be fulfillment of these groups.
A business enterprise for example has the objectives of maximizing its profits through increased output and sales and to create an image in the society in general as a good employer and a good producer of quality products. It also contributes to the economic growth
If the activities of various individuals in the enterprise are not coordinated the results will be chaos. Each man in the enterprise shall be pushing his own activity with no collective objective in the mind, but if there is an agency that directs the activities of various individuals in an organization the results will be synthesis and cohesion. Men will work on machines and materials to achieve the common objectives set forth by that agency.
Management can therefore be defined as principally a task of planning, coordinating, and motivating the efforts of others towards the specific objectives. In brief, management is the task of unifying efforts efficiently to achieve well defined objectives. The resources available to an organization remain idle till they are directed by the dynamic human effort. Management therefore aims at seeing that the job gets done efficiently.
MANAGEMENT AND ADMINISTRATION
There has been a lot of controversy in the use of these two words. Different authorities on the subject have expressed conflicting opinions. Others authorities makes no distinction between management and administration while others consider them as separate functions.
Administration is a higher level activity while management is a lower level function Administration is determinative function concerned with the determination of objectives and policies while management is an executive function involving the implementation of policies and direction of efforts for the achievement of objectives.
At every level of management an individual management performs both types of function. Every manager spends a part of his time in administration and remaining time on management.
Managers at a higher level spends more time on administration function i.e. determination of objectives and policies, while managers at lower level devote greater time on management function. As one descends the organization hierarchy the emphasis is on execution of plans increases. For the purpose of this course office management and office administration will be considered synonymous.
OFFICE MANAGEMENT
It can be defined as a task of planning, coordinating, motivating the efforts of others towards specifics objectives of the office. The institute of administrative management England says “Office management is the branch of management which is concerned with the services obtaining, recording and analyzing information of planning and communicating by means of which the management of a business safeguards its assets, promotes its affairs and achieve its objectives’. Thus it can be understood from these definitions that office management means planning,organizing,coordinating and controlling the activities of the office.
AN ORGANISATION
Organization is an element of management An organization occurs when two or more people work together and coordinate their activities to achieve common goals. It refers to structure of relationships among individuals. It can also be defined as a social unit that is structured and managed to meet a need or to achieve common objectives and collective goals. Organizations have a management structure that determines relationships between the different activities and the members and subdivides and assigns roles responsibilities and authority to carry different tasks.
Principles of an organization
- Divisions of work
- Unity of command
- Unity of direction
- chain of command
- span of control
- Adequacy of authority
- Coordination and balance
- Discipline
Features of an organization
- Division of work
- Common objectives
- Coordination and communication
- Plurality of persons.
- Chain of command.
- Principles of organization
- Span of control
- Unity of direction
- Authority
- Scalar chain
- Specialization
- Discipline
- Coordination
Organizational structures
An organization structure is the basic framework within which the decision making behavior occurs It shows the different posts in organization and the responsibilities attached to these different posts
Various types of organizational structure
- Line organization (military)
The authority move from top levels to lower levels. There is direct vertical relationship connecting the positions at each level with those above and below
Advantages
- Simple and is readily understood but the staff
- Responsibility for work at different levels in clear
- Lines of communication both upward and downward are indicated
- Chain of command are shown
- Economic and effective
- Discipline can easily be maintained
Disadvantages
- Works on a dictatorial basis
- The organization is rigid and in inflexible
- Each department tends to become an empire of its own
- Where there is no overall planning, there are possibilities of lack of coordination of work at different departments
- Staff organization(functional organization)
Various departments are established and each department is required to perform some specific duties e.g. production, marketing, finance etc.
Advantages
- There is specialization by each department and responsibilities is also fixed
- Coordination is a must as each department relies on each other and thus discipline can be maintained
- Methods and operations can be standardized
- Mass production is made by standardization and specialization
Disadvantages
- In a large organization with several departments, there may be too many experts and many bosses
- The workers become confused because of the many bosses
- The system becomes very much detailed and thus uneconomical
- There are too high overhead expenses
- Its difficult to fix responsibility on workers
- 3. Line and staff organization
Under this structure, a company is divided into departments each engaged in a particular undertaking.
Services are carried out in such a way that those very close or important are carried out independently by each unit e.g. purchasing of raw materials, production, planning and personnel.
Other service departments e.g. accounts, sales etc. provide service to all departments
The underlying idea of this method is that specialized work is to be left to experts who will give advice on specialized grounds e.g. investigation, research etc.
The staff officers have no executive positions in the concern and are thinkers while the officers are the doers
Advantages
- The principle of specialization is retained and responsibility fixed
- Coordination is possible yet discipline can be maintained at the same time
- Increased efficiency of operations is possible
- Mass production is possible
Disadvantages
- Staff may be confused by those with higher power i.e between the executives and staff officers
- Conflicts between line and staff officers
- There is a possibility of issuing contradicting orders
