Functions of Management: Planning, Organizing, Leading, Controlling

This essay discusses the four functions of management: planning, organizing, leading, and controlling. It explains the importance of each function and how they contribute to organizational success. The essay also explores the challenges and strategies associated with each function. The content is relevant to the subject of management and can be used for academic assignments or research purposes.

Running head: MANAGEMENT ESSAY
MANAGEMENT ESSAY
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1MANAGEMENT ESSAY
Introduction
Henry Fayol provided four functions of management in his theory. These four essential functions were
planning, organizing, leading and controlling. These were deemed to be the functions that were the
most important for achieving organizational success. The entire career of Fayol was spent in a French
mining company. He started his work as a mining engineer and through the course of his career
achieved the position of the managing Director in the year 1888. This position was held by him until
his retirement in 1918.
The Question The Function The Result
What is the need? Planning Objectives, policies, procedures
and methods
Where should actions
take place and who
should do what work?
Organising Work division, work assignment,
and authority utilization
Why and how should
group members
perform their tasks?
Leading Leadership, communication,
development, and incentives
Are the actions being
performed according to
plan?
Controlling Reports, comparisons, costs and
budgets
The four functions of Management
1 Planning – Planning is the preparation of long term goals and objectives along with the allocation of
requisite resources to achieve them.
2 Organising- Insuring a firm’s smooth running including the effective implementation of the various
internal processes, structures and matching specific tasks with the most suitable employees.

2MANAGEMENT ESSAY
3 Leading - commanding, communicating, motivating and inspiring staff to achieve maximum
productivity
4 Controlling - Assessing how well a firm is achieving its goals and take action to maintain or
improve performance
Planning
-What is to be done?
-Who is going to do it?
-How are they going to complete the task?
Planning alone is not enough. There has to be a solid strategy when doing this function so you
have a fallback when ideas go wrong.
These are the types of question management must ask under the banner of planning.
A road map can be created by using al the intelligence that can be gathered from the analysis of the
management functions. This can help the organization to achieve essential success. The success
management has in performing this function has a direct positive correlation on the success of the
organization. Great planning is the foundation for both efficiency and effectiveness (Drucker, 1974).
● Change- managers will need to take into consideration. possible changes in their
decision-making. The plans have to be flexible. adapt their plans accordingly
Change can either be an exciting opportunity for some or a time of loss, disruption or threat for
others. How such responses to change are managed can be the difference between surviving and
thriving in a work or business environment. Change is an inherent characteristic of any
organisation and like it or not, all organisations whether in the public or private sector must
change to remain relevant. Change can originate from external sources through technological
advances, social, political or economic pressures, or it can come from inside the organisation as a
management response to a range of issues such as changing client needs, costs or a human
resource or a performance issue (Drucker 2012). It can affect one small area or the entire
organisation. Nevertheless, all change whether from internal or external sources, large or small,
involves adopting new mindsets, processes, policies, practices and behaviour.

3MANAGEMENT ESSAY
Critical to successful change is good planning. Successfully managing the complexity of change
is virtually impossible without a robust plan that is supported by strong project management.
Formal procedures for applying a planning process in preparation for change helps organisations
to:
 Take stock of their current position;
 Identify what is to be achieved, and what the future position following the change is
expected to be;
 Detail precisely the who, what, when, where, why and how of achieving and
implementing the change objectives;
 Assess the impact of the change on the organisation and the people within it, as well as
other stakeholders; and
 Ensure alignment with the organisation’s business model/strategy
● Complexity- managers will need to have a very good understanding of the different
components, processes, and their interactions to develop sustainable management and
development strategies for the specific system
Complex organizations are far more difficult to manage. It’s harder to predict what will happen,
because complex systems interact in unexpected ways. It’s harder to make sense of things,
because the degree of complexity often exceeds our cognitive limits. And it’s harder to place bets,
since the past behaviour of a complex system may not predict its future behavior. Complexity
management is needed when you have many and diverse elements that are quite autonomous, yet
interrelated in nonlinear patterns, and when emergence produces outcomes intended by nobody
(Edward 1975). Complexity may occur in business external environments, in the internal
organization or both.
● Conflict- Conflicting, values and perspectives are usually involved in resource allocation
and use decision. managers are often faced with conflict situations and have to recognize
and mediate between the two sides.(Jones and George, 2016)
A Conflict Management System is strategically tailored and customized to support the needs of an
organization based on this operational premise. Still, a well-designed Conflict Management
System consists of three interrelated components that are essential to its success.
● Training: raising employee conflict awareness which reduces the negative impact of
conflict in the workplace.
● Neutral Third-Party Intervention: provides professional resources early in the conflict
cycle to help constructively resolve the dispute before it cycles out of control.
● Supportive Infrastructure: Internal procedures and processes developed to support an
organisations’ ability to constructively manage and minimize the harmful effects of
conflict in the workplace.

4MANAGEMENT ESSAY
By developing conflict resolution skills and dispute resolution processes, you can help employees
and managers resolve problems early and avoid major disruptions to your business.
You can attend dispute resolution workshops and training, with topics such as:
● managing difficult behaviours
● negotiation
● prevention of bullying
● mediation
● managing groups.
Learn more about negotiating successfully.
Training employees to resolve disputes
Staff trained in dispute resolution techniques and good communication skills are less likely to
enter into conflicts. They are more likely to ensure agreements between employees and managers
about entitlements, roles and responsibilities are well understood and can advise on and help you
manage disputes.
Consider appointing an experienced employee with the necessary skills and authority to deal with
disputes - particularly complex or escalating disputes.
The person you appoint should be in a position to negotiate and communicate with upper as well
as lower management and act as a mediator within your business. They will need to be senior
enough to see that disputes are dealt with at an appropriate level, liaise with all necessary staff and
implement any changes that emerge from the process (Jones and George 2016).
Keeping accurate records
Conflict can be caused in an organization due to a breached agreement, lack of proper
information, misunderstandings and various other reasons. It becomes essential that good record
is kept in order to confirm with the facts when an agreement is being dealt with.

5MANAGEMENT ESSAY
Organising
● Fight against an excess of regulations, red tape and paperwork (eg mining industry) counta
productivity
Red tape is a characteristic of all kinds of organizations. Whether it is a civic body, a
business membership organization, local government or a school, red tape emerges as an
organization grows, changes and evolves. Red tape affects the performance of these
organisations, with severe impacts on individual performance and the levels of innovation,
dynamism and growth of the economy
Red tape is a characteristic of all kinds of organizations. Whether it is a civic body, a
business membership organization, local government or a school, red tape emerges as an
organization grows, changes and evolves. Red tape affects the performance of these
organisations, with severe impacts on individual performance and the levels of innovation,
dynamism and growth of the economy (Peaucelle and Guthrie 2012)
● The demand for skilled talent, adequate staffing eg; skill level, experience
HR and other business leaders have for some time expressed concern that it is growing
more difficult to locate job applicants who possess the needed skills, experience,
educational qualifications and credentials to be successful. Because a high-quality

6MANAGEMENT ESSAY
workforce is the most important determinant of business success, these challenges have a
direct influence on organizations’ competitiveness both today and in the future. Although
HR professionals are aware of the need for a skilled workforce, the problem of developing
a strong talent pipeline is not one that HR professionals can solve on their own. It involves
a complex mix of factors, including economic and social conditions as well as government
policy (Turriago-Hoyos, Alvaro, Ulf Thoene and Surendra Arjoon 2016). Included in this
mix are the efforts that organizations make to invest in their workforce through training
and development. Beyond these investments, it is imperative that business leaders,
especially HR leaders, are actively involved in efforts to improve the workforce readiness
of their local talent pools as well as the talent pools in their specific industry. HR
professionals possess valuable insights into talent issues and skills shortages due to their
role in staffing.
● Staff not having correct resources to accomplish their task
“You’re only as good as the tools you use”
This saying has been around for many years and highlights the importance of using the correct
tool for the job. Consequently, it means that your employees are only as good as the tools that
they use, too.
What do I mean by tools?
Tools are essentially the devices, equipment, mechanisms, resources, applications — anything
that is utilized during the job to assist you in completing your task.

7MANAGEMENT ESSAY
There are thousands of tools out there. The challenge for managers is to find the right ones to
implement in the workplace to aid their employees. Whether physical equipment that is needed to
perform a task or different applications to facilitate processes at work, it is important for your
business to have the correct tools available for your employees to do their work effectively.
Leading
● Being Clear About What You Want To Achieve. (staff need to understand what a
company's mission statement/ goals
It gives your employees' short-term goals context and helps everyone stay on track to success.
The mission statement also ensures strategic alignment across all levels of the organisation. So
whatever day-to-day task each employee or team is working on, everyone is unified towards the
company's bigger purpose.
● Getting The Buy-In Of People ( winning people over)
When your first impression doesn’t work in your favor, you must discover ways to course correct
– especially if this prospective new relationship has implications for your job performance and the
ultimate success of the organization that you serve.
Published in 1936, Dale Carnegie’s -- How to Win Friends and Influence People -- is described as
“one of the first best-selling self-help books ever published.” Nearly 80 years later, and 15
million copies sold world-wide, this book remains extremely popular.
What does this tell us? How to build sustainable relationships and influence others is still one of
today’s greatest mysteries. Winning people over is both an art and a science. With all of the
personality profiling that is done prior to hiring someone – whether it’s Myers Briggs or the DISC
profile – winning people over is not always in instantaneous thing. It takes time – and in a social
media world where everything is “immediate” and people expect things to happen in a moment’s
notice – leaders must be reminded of this. It’s still about people and their hierarchy of needs. In
other words, it’s not about you, it’s about using your leadership to serve others.
Leaders need to take more time to become better acquainted with others and their needs.
Establishing relationships by doing it right from the start will save a lot of time, energy and stress.
Offcourse, this commitment can be difficult but it’s also becoming increasingly important – not
only for leaders to get to know those they serve, but equally to allow themselves to be transparent
enough for others to get to know them.
● Keeping people engaged

8MANAGEMENT ESSAY
When employees are engaged, they adopt the vision, values, and purpose of the organization they
work for. They become passionate contributors, innovating problem solvers, and stunning
colleagues.
But what does it mean to be a disengaged employee? Well, according to that same post,
disengaged employees are “not poised to put in extra effort for success. They don’t like going to
work most days. They’re unlikely to recommend the products of, or employment with, their
employer.”
Laziness, apathy, and dissidence are merely symptoms of bigger problems that can affect
employee performance. And by the time many of those symptoms surface, remediation to
improve employee engagement might be impossible.
 Lack of Learning = Lack of Work Motivation
When was the last time that a quiet employee shared an article of interest about your company,
marketplace trends, or interesting research dealing with their role? When was the last time they
shared anything at all? Curiosity is a good sign that an employee cares about the bigger picture.
They have a high level of work motivation and want to learn and grow in their role. When you
encourage learning and growth as a company value and employees don’t share your enthusiasm,
it’s time to take a closer look at their employee engagement status.
Controlling
● Employee not sharing knowledge giving themselves power. To overcome this, ensuring
staff is cross trained.
Employees Fear Losing Power. If the workplace suffers from a lack of trust,employees
might be afraid to share knowledge. ... It is also possible employees don't share
knowledge with each other because they are afraid of giving up power and authority.
It’s essential to cross-train your employees so losing one won’t mean the end of your
company.
Cross-training your employees to mitigate risk may involve developing your team’s
capacity so your company has the flexibility to respond to fluctuating workflows. It can
also include training for different skill sets in the event that a key employee leaves, or
simply as a way to prepare a lower-level employee to move up in the organization. Either
way, cross-training can be extremely beneficial to your organization as a whole.
● Not having a clear organisational chart, if there's no hierarchy in place employee will put
it there for you.
An organization’s structure gets misaligned for many reasons. But the most common one
is simply inertia. The company gets stuck in an old way of doing things and has trouble
breaking free of the past. How did it get this way to begin with? When an organization is
in startup to early growth mode, the founder(s) control most of the core functions. The

9MANAGEMENT ESSAY
founding engineer is also the head of sales, finance, and customer service. As the business
grows, the founder(s) become a bottleneck to growth — they simply can’t do it all at a
larger scale. So they make key hires to replace themselves in selected functions – for
example, a technical founder hires a head of sales and delegates authority to find, sell, and
close new accounts. At the same time, the founder(s) usually find it challenging to
determine how much authority to give up (too much and the business could get ruined; too
little and they’ll get burned out trying to manage it all).
● Staff not being discipline coordinately
Controlling creates an atmosphere of order & discipline in the organization which helps to
minimize dishonest behavior on the part of the employees. It keeps a close check on the activities
of employees and the company can be able to track and find out the dishonest employees by using
computer monitoring as a part of their control system.
If an employee is “behaving badly” in the way they are relating to their colleagues and their
performance is suffering, is the problem bullying, or, a failure by the employer to accommodate
their illness? Should the employee be disciplined, counselled, investigated or put on a
performance plan? These are not straightforward questions, even for the seasoned Human
Resources manager.
In a number of recent cases at Worklogic Consulting, we have seen evidence of long standing
confusion by some supervisors and managers about the difference between poor performance
management and disciplinary action, and confusion about when these responses are appropriate to
initiate in the workplace. While the difference between poor performance and conduct requiring
disciplinary action may seem to be basic, in a complex workplace situation they can be difficult to
apply with clarity.
● Having systems in place that don't make sense
Internal and external factors that impact on the role of a manager
Internal Impacts
● Infrastructure- Is an organizational system of resources that is needed for a Firm to run
Most of the global tech analysts understand that there are several challenges related to IT
infrastructure that the companies face. The main challenges are regarding computing
platforms, data acquisition, compute provisioning and management, data storage
architectures, data analytics, and networks and communication. We have listed some of
the top infrastructure management challenges that your organization may face in the future
and their probable solutions -

10MANAGEMENT ESSAY
1. Lack of Powerful Computing Platforms Challenge -
The major challenge in growing processing power of computers has been the lack of
energy and space to power supercomputers. IT managers have always been on the
lookout for better and faster systems which will help in the faster processing of the
large amounts of data available today.
Solution - A simple solution to this challenge would be to employ new general
purpose graphical processors or multi-core platforms. By using better systems, the
existing software will have to be optimized and adjusted to provide the best results.
Many projects have been started to develop faster computers which will be available at
low costs and energy needs.
.
● Operational efficiency- Is about the output to input ratio etc.,; productivity
In this setting, operational efficiency is determined by the outputs produced as well as the
input resources or costs consumed. ... In other words, productivity is the ratio of output
level to the input level and efficiency is the ratio of the current productivity level to the
best practice productivity level.
To remain competitive in an increasingly competitive corporate world, businesses must
boost operational efficiency wherever possible. "Sooner or later, any company not
operating efficiently will be out of business," says Laurie McCabe, vice president of small
and medium-sized business (SMB) insights and solutions for research firm AMI-Partners.
It's particularly important for SMBs to operate efficiently, McCabe adds, because they
often have more limited resources than larger enterprises.
Effective, interactive collaboration between employees, partners, suppliers, and customers
is a sure-fire way to boost efficiency while also reducing costs. Integrated voice, video,
and data and wireless provides the kind of interactive calendaring, videoconferencing, IP
communications, and other technologies your business needs to foster seamless, easy
collaboration.
● Capital resource- If cash in bank is are too limited, it affects the number of
people you can hire, the quality of your equipment etc;
● Company Culture- Your internal culture consists of the values, attitudes and priorities
that your employees live by.
External Impacts

11MANAGEMENT ESSAY
● Customers demands-The power of your customers depends on how fierce the
competition for their dollars is, how good your products are, and whether your advertising
makes customers want to buy from you.
Building positive relationships with your customers requires you to have a good understanding of
their needs and wants. By improving your understanding of your customers, including their
purchasing motivations and habits, you can personalize the customer service you provide.
Understanding your customers will help you to:
● decide on the best price to set your products and services
● build relationships and rapport with your customers
● increase your sales and profitability
● increase how much and how often your customers buy from you
● decrease the costs associated with attracting new customers.
Customer profiling involves building a description of your customers, or a set of customers, that
includes their characteristics, location and behaviour. By segmenting (grouping) them based on
their gender, age, where they live, where they work, their family size and how, why and what they
spend money on, you can get an idea of how your products and services may best meet their
needs (Mohapatra and Mohanty 2017).
Here are some questions to consider when profiling your customers:
● Where are your customers located?
● What are their spending habits? What motivates them to buy?
● Do they have a budget?
● What is their average age, gender, occupation, interest and hobbies?
● Do they work in certain industries?
● Are they influenced by seasonal trends?
● How to they access and use your products and services?
● Have they used your products or services before?
● How likely are they to refer your business to others?

12MANAGEMENT ESSAY
● Laws-Whether you work with customers, businesses, provide services or sell goods, it's
important to know your rights and obligations and how the consumer laws affect your
business
Change in business laws means changes in the way businesses operate. Taxation policy is one the
government policies that affect businesses directly because taxation is based on the amount of
money earned by all businesses. For example, increase in corporation taxes which focus on the
businesses profits has an effect similar to increase in costs. VAT (value added tax) is also a tax
policy that will affect the bottom line, although in most governments VAT, is a cost on the
consumer and not the business owner.
Business laws affect employer to employee relationships and vice-versa. For instance, it is
mandatory for employers to follow government regulations regarding the way they treat their
employees and their hiring mechanism (Kinicki 2018).
When it comes to international trade, business laws are imposed in regards to international trade
tariffs. Such rules and regulations are strict on the kind of products going in and out
internationally. The international trade rules and regulations also enforce guidelines on the parties
that should take part in international trade.
If you are new in the business industry, then chances are that all this is new to you, right? As a
beginner, you should visit website relating to business law and read through different business
law articles or business attorneys’ intelligence. By so doing, you will grasp the basics of business
law and it would be a great start for you.
● Economic situation- In a bad economy, even a well-run business may not be able to
survive. If customers lose their jobs or take jobs that can barely support them
● Surrounding infrastructure- If the road to access the company is not well created will
create a barrier for the company.
Conclusion
Effective managers understand how planning, organising, leading, and controlling are used to
achieve organisational success.
Managers will need to have a very good understanding of the different components, processes,
and their interactions to develop sustainable management and development strategies for the
specific system Internal and external factors that impact on the role of a manager
There is a lot of contributing factors the success of the company which comes from both outside
and inside a business. Either outside or inside factors are of utmost importance for the
development of the company. If a business hopes to perform smoothly and successfully, they
need to take all these elements into consideration before making any decision.

13MANAGEMENT ESSAY

14MANAGEMENT ESSAY
References
Heimrich, B., (2016), 33 Ways to Define Leadership Business News Daily, Retrieved Dec 18,
2016 12:21 PM from http://www.businessnewsdaily.com/3647-leadership-definition.html
Jones, Gareth R, and Jennifer M George. 2016. Contemporary Management. New York: McGraw-
Hill.
Peaucelle, Jean‐Louis, Cameron Guthrie. 2012. "The Private Life Of Henri Fayol And His Motivation
To Build A Management Science". Journal Of Management History 18 (4): 469-487.
doi:10.1108/17511341211258774.
Edward, Bert. 1975 principles and practice of management, 3rd ed London: Longman,
Edward
Kinicki, Angelo. 2018. Management: a practical introduction. 2nd ed Sydney: McGraw-Hall.
Parker, Lee D. "The global Fayol: Contemporary management and accounting
traces." Entreprises et histoire 2 (2016): 51-63.
Turriago-Hoyos, Alvaro, Ulf Thoene, and Surendra Arjoon. "Knowledge workers and virtues in
Peter Drucker’s management theory." SAGE Open 6, no. 1 (2016): 2158244016639631.
Drucker, Peter. Management. Routledge, 2012.
Mohapatra, Sanjay, and Subhradeep Mohanty. "Improving operational efficiency in utility sector
through technology intervention." International Journal of Enterprise Network Management 8,
no. 4 (2017): 291-326.