Modern Management Theories and Practices

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MODERN MANAGEMENT THEORIES AND
PRACTICES
By
Dr. Yasin Olum
Lecturer
Department of Political Science and Public Administration
Makerere University
Contact Address:
Makerere University
Faculty of Social Sciences
Department of Political Science and Public Administration
P. O. Box 7062
KAMPALA-Uganda
Tel.(Off.): 041-531499
Tel.(Mobile): 077454019
Fax: [phone]
E-Mail: [e-mail]
Being a paper presented at the 15 th East African Central Banking Course, held on
12th July 2004, at Kenya School of Monetary Studies.

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MODERN MANAGEMENT THEORIES AND PRACTICES: A CRITICAL
OVERVIEW
Introduction
Managing is one of the most important human activities. From the time human
beings began forming social organizations to accomplish aims and objectives
they could not accomplish as individuals, managing has been essential to ensure
the coordination of individual efforts. As society continuously relied on group
effort, and as many organized groups have become large, the task of managers
has been increasing in importance and complexity. Henceforth, managerial
theory has become crucial in the way managers manage complex organizations.
The central thesis of this paper is that although some managers in different parts
of the world could have achieved managerial success without having basic
theoretical knowledge in management, it has to be unequivocally emphasized
that those managers who have mixed management theory in their day-to-day
practice, have had better chances of managing their organizations more
efficiently and effectively to achieve both individual and organizational
objectives. Therefore, managers of contemporary organizations ought to
appreciate the important role they play in their respective organizations if they
are to achieve set goals. Secondly, there is need to promote excellence among all
persons in organizations, especially among managers themselves.
To address these concerns, the paper will proceed along the following spectrum:
management will be defined for purposes of conceptual clarity; management
objectives, functions, goals, and essentiality, will be highlighted; the importance
of managerial skills and the organizational hierarchy will be sketched; the
importance of women in the organizational hierarchy will be emphasized;
reasons for studying management theory will be enumerated; the different
management theories, the core of the paper, will be discussed at length; the

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significance of management as a practice will be contextualized; and ‘the way
forward’ in form of a conclusion will be offered.
Definition of Management
Management is the art, or science, of achieving goals through people. Since
managers also supervise, management can be interpreted to mean literally
“looking over” – i.e., making sure people do what they are supposed to do.
Managers are, therefore, expected to ensure greater productivity or, using the
current jargon, ‘continuous improvement’.
More broadly, management is the process of designing and maintaining an
environment in which individuals, working together in groups, efficiently
accomplish selected aims (Koontz and Weihrich 1990, p. 4). In its expanded form,
this basic definition means several things. First, as managers, people carry out
the managerial functions of planning, organizing, staffing, leading, and
controlling. Second, management applies to any kind of organization. Third,
management applies to managers at all organizational levels. Fourth, the aim of
all managers is the same – to create surplus. Finally, managing is concerned with
productivity – this implies effectiveness and efficiency.
Thus, management refers to the development of bureaucracy that derives its
importance from the need for strategic planning, co-ordination, directing and
controlling of large and complex decision-making process. Essentially, therefore,
management entails the acquisition of managerial competence, and effectiveness
in the following key areas: problem solving, administration, human resource
management, and organizational leadership.
First and foremost, management is about solving problems that keep emerging
all the time in the course of an organization struggling to achieve its goals and

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objectives. Problem solving should be accompanied by problem identification,
analysis and the implementation of remedies to managerial problems. Second,
administration involves following laid down procedures (although procedures
or rules should not be seen as ends in themselves) for the execution, control,
communication, delegation and crisis management. Third, human resource
management should be based on strategic integration of human resource,
assessment of workers, and exchange of ideas between shareholders and
workers. Finally, organizational leadership should be developed along lines of
interpersonal relationship, teamwork, self-motivation to perform, emotional
strength and maturity to handle situations, personal integrity, and general
management skills.
Management Objectives, Functions, Goals, and Essentiality
Management Objectives
There are basically three management objectives. One objective is ensuring
organizational goals and targets are met – with least cost and minimum waste.
The second objective is looking after health and welfare, and safety of staff. The
third objective is protecting the machinery and resources of the organization,
including the human resources.
Management Functions
To understand management, it is imperative that we break it down into five
managerial functions, namely; planning, organizing, staffing, leading, and
controlling.
Planning involves selecting missions and objectives and the actions to achieve
them. It requires decision-making – i.e., choosing future courses of action from
among alternatives. Plans range from overall purposes and objectives to the most
detailed actions to be taken. No real plan exists until a decision – a commitment

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of human and material resources – has been made. In other words, before a
decision is made, all that exists is planning study, analysis, or a proposal; there is
no real plan.
People working together in groups to achieve some goal must have roles to play.
Generally, these roles have to be defined and structured by someone who wants
to make sure that people contribute in a specific way to group effort. Organizing,
therefore, is that part of management that involves establishing an intentional
structure of roles for people to fill in an organization. Intentional in that all tasks
necessary to accomplish goals are assigned and assigned to people who can do
them best. Indeed, the purpose of an organizational structure is to help in
creating an environment for human performance. However, designing an
organizational structure is not an easy managerial task because many problems
are encountered in making structures fit situations, including both defining the
kind of jobs that must be done and finding the people to do them.
Staffing involves filling, and keeping filled, the positions in the organization
structure. This is done by identifying work-force requirements; inventorying the
people available; and recruiting, selecting, placing, promoting, appraising,
planning the careers of, compensating, and training or otherwise developing
both candidates and current jobholders to accomplish their tasks effectively and
efficiently.
Leading is the influencing of people so that they will contribute to organization
and group goals; it has to do predominantly with the interpersonal aspect of
managing. Most important problems to managers arise from people – their
desires and attitudes, their behavior as individuals and in groups. Hence,
effective managers need to be effective leaders. Leading involves motivation,
leadership styles and approaches and communication.

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Controlling, for example, budget for expense, is the measuring and correcting of
activities of subordinates to ensure that events conform to plans. It measures
performance against goals and plans, shows where negative deviations exist,
and, by putting in motion actions to correct deviations, helps ensure
accomplishment of plans. Although planning must precede controlling, plans are
not self-achieving. Plans guide managers in the use of resources to accomplish
specific goals; then activities are checked to determine whether they conform to
the plans. Compelling events to conform to plans means locating the persons
who are responsible for results that differ from planned action and then taking
the necessary steps to improve performance. Thus, controlling what people do
controls organizational outcomes.
Finally, coordination is the essence of manager-ship for achieving harmony
among individual efforts toward the accomplishment of group goals. Each of the
managerial functions discussed earlier on is an exercise contributing to
coordination. Because individuals often interpret similar interests in different
ways, and their efforts toward mutual goals do not automatically mesh with the
efforts of others, it, thus, becomes the central task of the manager to reconcile
differences in approach, timing, effort, or interest, and to harmonize individual
goals to contribute to organizational goals.
Although these management functions concern the internal environment for
performance within an organization, managers must operate in the external
environment of an organization as well. Clearly, managers cannot perform their
tasks well unless they have an understanding of, and are responsive to, the many
elements of the external environment – economic, technological, social, political,
and ethical factors – that affect their areas of operation.