Makerere University: Modern Management Theories and Practices Report

This report, originally presented at the 15th East African Central Banking Course, offers a comprehensive overview of modern management theories and practices. It begins by defining management and exploring its objectives, functions (planning, organizing, staffing, leading, and controlling), and essentiality in various organizations. The report then delves into the importance of managerial skills and the organizational hierarchy, highlighting the significance of women in management. It enumerates reasons for studying management theory and discusses different management theories in detail. Furthermore, it contextualizes the significance of management as a practice and concludes with suggestions for the future. The paper emphasizes the need for managers to integrate theory into their daily practices for more efficient and effective organizational management, stressing the importance of problem-solving, administration, human resource management, and organizational leadership. It also discusses the goals of managers, including achieving a surplus, productivity, effectiveness, and efficiency, making it a valuable resource for understanding the fundamentals of management.

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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 15th 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 increasingin importanceand 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 managerialskills and the organizationalhierarchy will be sketched;the
importanceof women in the organizationalhierarchy will be emphasized;
reasonsfor studying managementtheory 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
managersalso supervise,managementcan be interpretedto 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
environmentin 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,delegationand crisis management.Third, human resource
managementshould be based on strategicintegration of human resource,
assessmentof workers, and exchangeof ideas between shareholdersand
workers. Finally, organizational leadership should be developed along lines of
interpersonalrelationship,teamwork, self-motivationto 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 managementobjectives.One objectiveis 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 environmentfor 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.

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Goals of All Managers
First and foremost, the logical and publicly desirable aim of all managers in all
kinds of organizations, whether business or non-business, should be a surplus.
Thus, managers must establish an environment in which people can accomplish
group goals with the least amount of time, money, materials, and personal
dissatisfaction or in which they can achieve as much as possible of a desired goal
with available resources. In a non-business enterprise such as units of a business
(such as an accounting department) that are not responsible for total business
profits, managers still have goals and should strive to accomplish them with the
minimum of resources or to accomplish as much as possible with available
resources. A manager who achieves such an aim is said to be a strategic manager.
The second goal or aim of all managers is that they must be productive. Indeed,
government, and the private sector recognize the urgent need for productivity
improvement. Productivity improvement is about effectively performing the
basic managerial and non-managerial activities. Simply defined, productivity is
about the output-input ratio within a time period with due consideration for
equality.
Lastly, productivity implies effectivenessand efficiency in individual and
organizationalperformance.Effectivenessis the achievementof objectives.
Efficiency is the achievement of the ends with the least amount of resources.
Managers cannot know whether they are productive unless they first know their
goals and those of the organization.
The :Essentiality of Management in Any Organization
Managers are charged with the responsibility of taking actions that will make it
possible for individuals to make their best contributions to group objectives.
Thus, management applies to small and large organizations, to profit and not-

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for-profit enterprises, to manufacturing as well as service industries. However, a
given situation may differ considerably among various levels in an organization
or various types of enterprises. The scope of authority held may vary and the
types of problems dealt with may be considerably different. All managers obtain
results by establishing an environment for effective group endeavor.
In addition, all managers carry out managerial functions. However, the time
spent for each function may differ. Thus, top-level managers spend more time on
planning and organizing than do lower-level managers. Leading, on the other
hand, takes a great deal of time for first-line supervisors. The difference in the
amount of time spent on controlling varies only slightly for managers at various
levels.
The manager is, therefore, the dynamic, life-giving element in every business.
Without the leadership of the manager, resources of production remain mere
resources and never become production. In a competitive economy, the quality
and performance of the managers determine the success of a business; indeed,
they determine its survival.
Furthermore, today, we no longer talk of “capital” and “labor”, but we talk of
“management”and “labor”. While the “responsibilitiesof capital” and the
“rights of capital” have disappeared from our vocabulary, today we hear of the
“responsibilities of management” or “prerogatives of management”.
Thus, the emergence of management as an essential, a distinct and a leading
institution is a pivotal event in social history. Management is likely to remain a
basic and dominant institution as long as human civilization itself survives.
Management, which is the organ of society specifically charged with making
resources productive, that is, with the responsibility for organized economic

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advance, reflects the basic spirit of the modern age. In fact, because management
is indispensable, this explains why it grew so fast and with so little opposition.
Hence, the developed and developing worlds have an immense stake in the
competence, skill and responsibility of management.
Managerial Skills and the Organizational Hierarchy
Mangers require four main kinds of skills, namely: technical, human, conceptual
and design. What do each of these skills mean?
Technical skill is knowledge of and proficiency in activities involving methods,
processes, and procedures. Thus, it involves working with tools and specific
techniques.
Human skill is the ability to work with people; it is cooperative effort; it is
teamwork; it is the creation of an environment in which people feel secure and
free to express their opinions.
Conceptual skill is the ability to serve the “big picture”. It is also about
recognizing significant elements in a situation, and to understand the
relationships among the elements.
Design skill is the ability to solve problems in ways that will benefit the
enterprise. To be effective, particularly at upper organizational levels, managers
must be able to do more than see a problem. In addition, they must have the skill
of a good design engineer in working out a practical solution to a problem.
Managers must also have that valuable skill of being able to design a workable
solution to the problem in the light of the realities they face. It has, however, got
to be mentioned that the relative importance of these skills may differ at various
levels in the organization hierarchy.

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For purposes of elaboration, technical skills are of greatest importance at the
supervisory level and less at the middle-management level, human skills in the
frequent interactions with subordinates at all levels, conceptual skills not critical
for lower-level supervisors but gain in importance at the middle-management
level. At the top management level, conceptual and design abilities and human
skills are especially valuable, but there is relatively little need for technical
abilities. The assumption, especially in large companies, that chief executives can
utilize the technical abilities of their subordinates. In smaller firms, however,
technical experience may still be quite important.
Women in the Organizational Hierarchy
In recent times, women have made significant progress in obtaining responsible
positions in organizations. Among the reasons for this development are laws
governing fair employment practices, changing societal attitudes toward women
in the workplace, and the desire of companies to project a favorable image by
placing qualified women in managerial positions.
However, in some organizations, women have difficulties in making it to the top.
Besides historical reasons, discrimination has been one of the main reasons why
women do not make it to the top.
Why Study Management Theory?
Theories are perspectiveswith which people make sense of their world
experiences (Stoner et. al. 1995, pp. 31-2). Theory is a systematic grouping of
interdependent concepts (mental images of anything formed by generalization
from particulars) and principles (are generalizations or hypotheses that are tested
for accuracy and appear to be true to reflect or explain reality) that give a
framework to, or tie together, a significant area of knowledge. Scattered data are

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not information unless the observer has knowledge of the theory that will
explain relationships. Theory is “in its lowest form a classification, a set of pigeon
holes, a filing cabinet in which fact can accumulate. Nothing is more lost than a
loose fact”(Homans 1958, p. 5).
However, the variety of approaches to management analysis, the welter of
research, and the number of differing views have resulted in much confusion as
to what management is, what management theory and science is, and how
managerial events should be analyzed. This is why some scholars have called
this situation “the management theory jungle”(Koontz 1961, pp. 174-188; 1962, p.
24; 1980, pp. 175-187). Since that time, the vegetation in this jungle has changed
somewhat, new approaches have developed, and older approaches have taken
some new meanings with some new words attached to them, but the
developments of management science and theory still have the characteristics of
a jungle.
There is a body of opinion that says that management theory evolved during and
after Second World War; it has only been studied in-depth since then. The
industrial revolution that brought in mass production, specialization, seeing
people as critical resource,all intensified managementas a critical area of
discourse.
Principles in managementare fundamentaltruths, explaining relationships
between two or more sets of variables, usually an independent variable and a
dependent variable. Principles may be descriptive or predictive, and not
prescriptive. That is, they describe how one variable relates to another – what
will happen when these variables interact.

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managers who apply theory to managing must usually blend principles with
realities. Once managers know about theory, they will have the capacity to
forestall future problems that may occur in the enterprise.
At this point it is worth distinguishing management theory from management
techniques. Contrary to the theory we have discussed above, techniques are
essentially ways of doing things; methods of accomplishing a given result. In all
fields of practice, including management,they are important. Techniques
normally reflect theory and are a means of helping managers undertake activities
most effectively.
In the field of management, then, the role of theory is to provide a means of
classifying significant and pertinent management knowledge. For example, in
the area of designing an effectiveorganizationstructure,there are several
principles that are interrelated and that have a predictive value for managers.
The theory of management is grouped into the five functions of management.
In sum, there are basically three main reasons why we have to study
management theory. First, theories provide a stable focus for understanding
what we experience. A theory provides criteria for what is relevant. Second,
theories enable us to communicate efficiently and thus move into more and more
complex relationships with other people. Third, theories make it possible –
indeed, challenge us – to keep learning about our world. By definition, theories
have boundaries.
Management Theories
Contemporary theories of management tend to account for and help interpret the
rapidly changing nature of today’s organizational environments. This paper will
deal with several important management theories which are broadly classified as